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Comedian Russell Hicks: ‘Chaos has a way of finding me’




Watching videos of American comedian Russell Hicks on YouTube ahead of our interview, his physical appearance, voice and slightly in-you-face presentation style reminded me of Canadian comic Tom Stade – and it turns out I’m not the only person who thinks that.

“That’s cool, man,” laughs Russell at the comparison, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from Hertfordshire (he has been living in the UK for 10 years now).

Russell Hicks. Picture: Matt Stronge
Russell Hicks. Picture: Matt Stronge

“When I first moved here, I finally met Tom Stade after a year and he was like ‘Oh, you’re that kid that everyone’s been telling me about’ and I was like ‘You’re that guy that everyone’s been telling me I look and sound like’.

“And honestly in some ways it was like meeting my future self. We are a lot alike and we have a very similar sensibility, so when we get together it’s kind of like watching me have a conversation with myself.

“It’s a lot of ‘Dude, yeahs’ and ‘Totallys’ said out loud… That’s a big compliment; I think he’s probably one of the most… I don’t want to say underrated, that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I do think he’s one of the better kept secrets in comedy in this country.”

Russell, a master of improvisation, who was endorsed as a Global Talent by Arts Council England in 2022, continues: “Anyone who’s got a really strong perspective, I think is always going to be a little more interesting.

“The kind of comedy that I like is guys like Bill Burr or Tom [Stade], where they’ll be like ‘Hey, this is what I think’ – and it’s funny because it doesn’t matter if it’s in step with what’s going on right now or anything.

“It’s ‘This is what I’m thinking’ and it’s so true and honest. That’s what I think makes it funny. It’s not really trying to make a point, but in just being so raw it does.

“I think the best kind of comedy is when someone’s not trying to be offensive, they just say something that is so honest and they think it, and it kind of is shocking but funny because if you’re honest maybe you think it too.

“A lot of my friends do that style of comedy, where they’ll just say something so true and it’ll be so out of step with what’s appropriate right now, but you have to laugh because it’s honest.”

Russell, who starred in the Prime Video series Lovestruck High, which was narrated by Lindsay Lohan, as Coach Hughes, started performing stand-up in his native California in January 2010.

“I recently kind of traced it back to how it started,” he says. “I was doing a show in San Diego and there was an Australian comic on…

“There’s a lot of Australian comics working in Los Angeles; it’s a big metropolitan city and so you get a little bit more of an international flavour there.

“And I remember she said ‘Oh you remind me of this comic’ and she described Ross Noble – because I was improvising a lot.

“So I looked him up because I thought ‘Well he sounds cool’ and then that led me down this whole rabbit hole of international comedians.

“Up to that point, I don’t know if you know this, but we Americans can sort of encase ourselves in a bit of a cultural bubble, so I hadn’t really looked outside our borders for other comedians – and I was kind of blown away.

“I remember finding out about Dylan Moran and Ross – and I always liked Eddie Izzard and Billy Connolly, because those people kind of penetrated our atmosphere, so I was aware of them.

“Then coincidentally at the same time, I met a British person who said ‘Hey, if you want to come over for a while...’ and that was it, I just fell in love with the circuit over here.

“But I was relatively new actually when I first started coming over.”

When Russell, who has opened for the likes of Axel Blake, Simon Brodkin, and Al Murray, first saw the great Ross Noble perform, could he understand what he was saying?

“I honestly couldn’t… I had never heard a Geordie accent and that just added to the fact that I thought he was an alien.

“Just his whole demeanour… I could barely understand what he was saying and I thought ‘This guy’s from Mars’ – and that’s what got me so excited about all these other comedians.

“I felt like for a while the range of my influences was so much wider than a lot of the comics in the States, because I was just into all these international comics.

“That’s what I liked about coming to the UK too, there’s certain people that you’d never see in America, like Stewart Lee or Daniel Kitson, Johnny Vegas, people like that.

“So I loved it when I first came here – still love it.”

The show that Russell will be bringing to Cambridge in February, as part of his first tour, is titled Happy to Be Here.

“It’s probably the most structured thing I’ve ever done,” he says of the piece, “which is kind of relaxing because at least I know ‘Oh, I’ve got this hour’.

“But I’m definitely all about what’s happening in the room, if there’s anything I can deviate on… I mean chaos has a way of finding me.

“I was doing a show in Luton recently and this guy was outside drinking and he saw everybody congregating in the foyer and he just joined them and then snuck back into the show with no ticket.

“And so when I went on, about 30 seconds in, he stands up, he starts shouting and he demanded that I stop taking the p*** out of Luton – which was funny because I hadn’t taken the p*** out of Luton at all in that section.

“The first section that was all I did, to be honest, but the second section, nothing.

“It was about 10 to 15 minutes and the audience had to basically restrain him. He started throwing his beer, and luckily there was an off-duty cop in the audience who grabbed him and chucked him out.

“And I just thought ‘This kind of thing doesn’t happen in musical theatre’.

“For some reason, for comedians it never ends, you’re never safe. But I was like ‘Man, that’s me trying to do a professional, organised show and here comes that kind of chaos’. I guess I invited it, I don’t know.”

Hopefully things will be a little less chaotic when Russell presents his show, and displays his impressive talent for improvisation, in Cambridge, a city he has performed in many times before.

Russell Hicks. Picture: Matt Stronge
Russell Hicks. Picture: Matt Stronge

As well as his live work, Russell, a fan of fellow stand-ups Rob Copland, Bobby Mair, Red Richardson, Tom Ward, and Sara Barron, regularly entertains studio audiences on TV on programmes such as Have I Got News for You, The Last Leg, and As Yet Untitled.

He will be appearing at the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Friday, 21 February. Tickets, priced £19, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on Russell, go to russellhicks.co.uk.



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