The Graduate

Already impressing with his stunning solo debut, character comedian Jamie Demetriou is enjoying a well-deserved day off. Audiences at his show People Day can expect to see him commit wholeheartedly to a taxing hour in the name of originality, spanning a broad spectrum of unique personas, from falsetto choirboy to wailing nanny. But behind the scenes, his voice is in desperate need of a break. “All of my day is taken up with doing things like squeezing eucalyptus up my nose,” he says. Add to that the recent theft of his laptop and notebooks containing three years of work and it’s a wonder he’s holding it together at all.

“It’s been very nice," admits Demetriou. "The negatives would’ve outweighed the positives if it hadn’t been so nice.” The encouragement keeps coming, with effusive reviews across the board making comparisons with a young Steve Coogan and invoking the darkness of The League of Gentlemen. When prompted on these influences, though, he’s less inclined to agree: "Sure, you subconsciously absorb things—obviously who hasn’t watched Partridge—but I think I’m influenced a lot more by someone like my sister.”

Natasia, part of esoteric sketch group Oyster Eyes and featured in Demetriou’s Channel 4 Comedy Blaps, is credited as “the funniest person I know. Genuinely, she is the person who makes me laugh most in the world.” It’s adorable, sure, but it also reveals something crucial about his particular talent. There’s less of a fixation on a specific established style; rather, he seems more concerned with capturing his original vision of a character and moving towards the best possible laugh. “My degree involved a lot of video editing," he explains, "so I’m very keen on trying to make something the best it can be and I find that not having control, I know that excites a lot of people, but I just find it excruciating.”

This attention to detail has obviously served him well – you can’t help but marvel at the level of nuance on display in his work. And it is this desire for control that has prompted the 25-year-old to take on the challenge of his first solo hour. 

Having cut his teeth at the Fringe five years ago as part of Bristol Revunions, he’s forcefully deferent towards the much-maligned world of student sketch comedy.

“There’s no way in a million years I’d be doing stuff on my own if I hadn’t had the chance to do that, you learn your trade and what you are,” he says. “People have this preconceived idea that [student sketch] is going to be shit, so you’re not losing anything and it gives you free reign to just try out whatever you want.” Thankfully, this experience gave him the confidence required to go it alone and he was duly snapped up by alt comedy powerhouse The Invisible Dot who, following a workshop hour last year, committed to producing People Day.

“They’ve been very supportive. I’ve just been building on what I learned last year and without them I find it difficult to do slot gigs around London,” he says. Not only have they carved out a more alternative space for comedy development, the talent associated with their New Wave showcases is obviously providing more inspiration to Demetriou than anything you’d find in a DVD box set: “I’m in awe of everyone: Colin Hoult, Nick Mohammed, Liam Williams. It’s a unique situation where I genuinely feel that excitement you get as a kid watching comedy when I see a new Sheeps show.”

It’s heartening to get a sense of the impact this new movement has had on his development: “For this kind of thing you need to do full hours to test them out, you can’t take the nanny [one of his more scary, out-there characters] to a club night. I feel like I kind of need the first character [in People Day], who's a sort of natural chap, because without that I don’t know how easy it is to take in something like a man in a wig screaming in your face.”

Demetriou might have just lost three years of material, but it’s clear he has the experience along with the supporting infrastructure to keep exciting crowds in his own way.