Comedian Adam Hess on penning his first Edinburgh show

Ropetackle, Little High Street, Shoreham, Wednesday, June 24

GOING from 20-minute appearances at comedy clubs to your first hour-long Edinburgh show seems like a big jump.

But 2011 Chortle Student Comedy Award-winner Adam Hess admits he found the jump from five-minute newcomer slots to 20 minutes much harder.

"An hour isn't as long as it sounds," he says. "At the end of the set you want to keep going, which is rare when you're working!

"I thought my first 20 minutes was really long - that's when you realise it's the same length of an episode of The Simpsons. An hour only feels long when no-one is laughing."

Perhaps that initial time-jump felt harder because of the change in Hess's approach and style. He started out very much as a nervy one-liner merchant, but as the time-slots grew longer he was able to settle more into a story-telling mode.

"I was very used to having a laugh every sentence," he admits. "When I first started doing stories I wasn't happy - I was constantly thinking: 'This isn't funny enough'. I trained myself to want to hear a laugh every other sentence, which was a good way of setting up a story. When a man walks into a room I want to make it funny in itself."

He tries to avoid crowbarring the one-liners in though.

"Often an audience picks up on it and don't like it, because they don't belong in a story," he says. "If they're laughing because they can't believe a story has actually happened to me, I can't through in a one-liner about a gingerbread man or a pony because it takes them out of the moment. You don't want to burst the bubble."

Hess's first solo Edinburgh hour is entitled Salmon.

"People assume from that it's about struggle or going upstream against the current," he says. "It's just salmon are really tasty!

"The show is mostly about me when I was eight years old and how I always felt like I was a weirdo, because I was always told I was by everyone.

"As I got older I realised everyone felt like a weirdo. If someone called me one it was more of a reflection on them."

He does feel that comics often regard themselves as outsiders.

"Comedians are quite self-reflective," he says. "A big part of the job is to be introspective.

"Comics still have to be relatable - you can't be too much of an outsider."

Sometimes the best observations on life are the ones that people know already, but have to be told - in Hess's case this ranges from his hatred of other families' plates, or his inability to imagine The Queen with wet hair.

"I did a bit on stage at the Caroline Of Brunswick in Brighton about how when I was a good boy when I was younger my mum used to treat me by letting me stare at the fish on the fishmonger's counter at Tesco," he says. "Everyone was laughing, so I thought I'd made a good observation - it was only when I spoke to [Brighton comic] Sean McLoughlin afterwards he told me there was something wrong with me!"

Hess's early stage appearances were characterised by a nervous energy - partly engendered by his own fear of being on stage.

"Before 2011 the only time I had spoken into a microphone was when a magician got me on stage and asked my name," he says.

"The reason I became more confident is because I had a bad gig where no-one laughed, and afterwards I realised I was still alive. That helped me become a lot more relaxed. Before I would be going to gigs hoping they would be cancelled, which wasn't a very viable career."

As well as Edinburgh this year will see Hess do a run at London's Soho Theatre and continue a sitcom he's writing about hiccups.

He has already learned a lot from his previous warm-up shows, having incorporated mood-setting music to Salmon and tried to slow his breakneck delivery.

"Originally I thought I would just talk for an hour and be funny," he says. "When you do a 20-minute gig at Komedia though you end by saying thank you and handing back to the compere. When I did the hour for the first time I realised there was an anti-climax at the end - it's like watching a film that just stops. I had to do a self-contained story."

With Ed Gamble.

Starts 8pm, tickets £5. Call 01273 464440.

* Adam Hess is also at Komedia, in Gardner Street, Brighton, on Wednesday, July 22, from 7.30pm, with Julian Deane. Tickets £8. Call 0845 2938480.