DANIEL SLOSS is a comedian who is also a phenomenon. His Netflix specials have been watched by millions, and in 2020/2021 he managed the unthinkable by playing live shows and becoming the biggest ticket selling comedian in the world.
The achievements of this Scotsman are all the more remarkable given he is only 32. However, he is a comedy veteran of more than a decade and a seasoned performer, with many tours of Europe and North America under his belt.
Now, in October 2022, Daniel Sloss is one of this year’s major headliners at Galway Comedy Festival, with his show, ‘Daniel Sloss & Friends,’ in Leisureland on Sunday October 30.
‘World class’
Sloss made his stage debut at just 18 in London - The Times noted him as a comedy “teen prodigy” - and throughout his career he has enjoyed high levels of critical acclaim. The Scotsman said he is “blessed with a sharp mind and a potent stage persona.” The Mail on Sunday praised his “deliciously dark stand-up”; while Australia’s Herald Sun called him, “simply world class…Sloss skilfully weaves sensitive subject matter into a hilarious tapestry of politically incorrect and sexually inappropriate zingers…his humour intelligently and ironically calling out the hypocrisy of human nature.”
However it was in 2018 and 2019, with his tenth solo show, Daniel Sloss: X, that he made his major breakthrough. The show enjoyed 300 performances across 40 countries, and was broadcast on HBO in the USA and Canada. Its 2020 UK release made history as the first comedy special to make its national debut on the big screen.
Sloss’s Netflix specials - DARK and Jigsaw - are now streaming in 190 countries in 26 languages. Indeed, the infamous Jigsaw has been credited with breaking up more than 120,000 couples, and cited in more than 300 divorces world-wide (some fans even bringing their divorce papers for him to autograph at shows! ).
In the bleak year of 2020, Daniel, along with his regular touring partner Kai Humphries, defied the odds by performing Britain’s first post-lockdown permitted outdoor shows that July, and then the first indoor comedy tour anywhere in the world that autumn, including a show to 1,000 people at the London Palladium.
He would go one better in 2021, a period when restrictions remained largely in place, by becoming the biggest ticket selling comedian in the world for most of that year! With restrictions now gone, there is now nothing to stop Daniel Sloss from fully taking over the comedy world.
The charming Kai Humphries
The Galway Comedy Festival is delighted to announce that one of the friends joining Daniel on the night will be the supremely funny Geordie comedian, Kai Humphries.
A third big name act is also due to be announced to join Daniel and Kai on the night. Keep an eye on #GCF22 social media for who it will be.
Since his breakthrough in 2009 as a finalist in the prestigious comedy competition, So You Think You’re Funny?, Kai Humphries has become an in-demand performer at the biggest clubs in Britain and Ireland. He is also the winner of the 2016 Forth Fringe Award, the 2016 Chortle Award for Event Of The Year, and the 2017 Voice Magazine award for Pick Of The Fringe.
The Scotsman said his comedy “glows with positive vibes…you’ll be grinning like a loon”; Broadway Baby, praised Kai for managing to “combine a truly meaningful message with a fat load of side-splitting jokes; while Three Weeks said Kai’s comedy “wasn’t just funny; it was like being cuddled for an hour, bathed in his sunny friendliness and impossible likeability…His humour is unpretentious and charming.”
Daniel and Kai
Daniel and Kai have been working together for more than a decade, with Kai first supporting Daniel on the latter’s 2010 and 2011 tours.
That touring relationship developed throughout 2012 and 2013, with more than 120 shows, followed in 2014 with a three-week European tour, performing 20 shows in 15 countries.
Kai’s experiences of that tour were chronicled in a series of articles for the Huffington Post, and were later published as a book - Inside Daniel Sloss: Psychoanalysis Of Daniel Sloss: Tour Journal 2014.
In 2015, the pair co-wrote, guerrilla-style filmed, and starred in, a six-part, internet sitcom, M.U.F.F. Later that year, and again in 2016 and 2017, Daniel undertook massive European tours, with Kai as support.
2018 was a huge year for both Daniel and Kai. Kai supported Doug Stanhope on tour, and got married on a Spanish island - the hilarious story of his elaborately planned, but nearly botched, proposal forming part of his show.
Then came the massive Daniel Sloss: X tour which became a global phenomenon after Sloss made his Netflix debut. Kai was again support, and this tour saw him making his North American debut, with shows in the US and Canada.
Daniel and Kai are relatively young men, who are fairly old pros at this stage, and what a treat for this city that Galway Comedy Festival is bringing them to Leisureland this month.
Daniel Sloss and friends play Leisureland, Salthill, on Sunday October 30. Watch GCF social media for the big guest announcement of the third act on the night. Tickets are on sale via www.galwaycomedyfestival.ie
