Seymour Mace: "My first ambition was to be a clown"

2010 wasn't exactly a vintage year for Seymour Mace. "Things seemed to fall apart," he tells me before headlining a Thursday night show at The Stand. Having been diagnosed with depression last year, he felt compelled to make his experience the subject of his 2011 show. "It was very cathartic. I had to focus. When I got to the festival, it was really well received. I think it's important to talk about issues like that – if you broke your leg, you wouldn't be afraid to talk about it. It's a chemical imbalance, something you don't have control over. I've come out of the depression now, and I have to be careful I don't fall back into it. Last year, I thought my career was over. Now, I feel better about it. With audiences, I could see them nodding in recognition, or coming up afterwards... it's nice for you, and them. If you put your feelings or emotions on the line, audiences are more prone to as well."

When I watch him later that evening, pulling fantastically contorted faces, imitating dogs and delivering sharp, cliché-free material about Facebook, it seems inconceivable that he ever doubted his comedic worth. 2011 has been "a reconfiguration - a going back to the start. I thought, after the festival, 'I can do comedy in a different way now'." Mace's performances surge with vitality and invention, as well as plain daftness. "I think I come to life more on stage. I remember at school, I loved drama, and the teacher said the only time he saw me alive was on stage. I loved performing. My first ambition was to be a clown, when I was a little kid. The follow on from that was that I wanted to be an actor. School was just something I had to get through. Performing is the closest thing to having a fantasy job.

 

"I've always loved being silly. My favourite comedians were silly – Tommy Cooper, Eric Morcambe, Vic & Bob... just daft for the sake of it. I've got to challenge people who say 'comedy's got to have a point'. No, it has to make you laugh. Silliness for the sake of it – we kind of lose it when we grow up. When you see adults who have got that, when people say 'he's got a twinkle in his eye', it means he's retained that. It can throw adults a bit – not being afraid to be daft, not trying to analyse 'why is this funny?' I did a thing called 'live hat judging' – it's not intrinsically funny, it works because it's stupid and unexpected."

 

The silliness of Seymour Mace is, of course, much cleverer than he's letting on. It's very funny, too.