Daniel Sloss: Hubris

Ladies nd gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Mr. Daniel Sloss.

Ladies nd gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Mr. Daniel Sloss.

How you doing Glasgow?

Good. It's nice to be here. It's nice to mean that.

I've said it's nice to be here a lot in the last 18 months,

and I've rarely fucking meant it.

I dunno how your job was during pandemic,

but I bet nobody asks you to do it in a fucking car park.

I got to go to Australia earlier this year, got

to go over there, and a lot of Australians were very angry.

Very angry that I was allowed to go over.

But Australia's good. It's Melbourne.

that's the clitoris of Australia.

It's the clitoris. It's fun, but needlessly sensitive and,

and it's dangerously close to being sh*t.

Uh, I did a two week

quarantine in Sydney in March to get into Australia.

And when I got to Melbourne, they were like,

ha ha Sloss, heard about your little fucking quarantine.

14 days of isolation must be difficult.

Not what we've gone through here in Melbourne.

We had a three month lockdown.

Do you know how difficult that was?

Do you know where I just fucking came from?

Why didn't you go tell Oscar Pistorius

that you stubbed your fucking toe?

Honestly, Oscar, I walk into the living room

and the coffee table, it's where it always is.

It's not moved, but I just knack my little toe just off the,

and you know how the little toe's,

the worst one to hit Oscar?

You know, that's the worst one.

It's like the balls of your feet. It's the worst.

I'm there. I'm in agony. I'm on the floor.

I'm shouting on my girlfriend. You won't believe it.

She doesn't come and get me.

Can you imagine what I went through, Oscar?

Why are you crying?

The reason I like being back here doing comedy here is

because I know what upsets us, right?

I know the the minefield in Scotland, right?

Everyone is offended by something. Right?

That's the difficult thing to get across in comedy.

You have every right to be offended

by anything I say this evening.

People are allowed to be offended by jokes.

I'm just allowed not to care. Right? But I do care.

I do care. I don't wanna offend you. That's not why.

Don't think I'm here to upset you.

I'm here to make you laugh.

I need that more than you'd fucking believe.

It keeps me alive.

My job as a comedian is to find out where the line is

and then move the line

and then gaslight you into thinking that's

where the line always was.

And that I've done nothing wrong.

I'm just a victim of cancel culture. Wah!

But I promise you, I'm just here to make you laugh.

And it's fun in Scotland because I know

what upsets Scottish people and I know what doesn't.

And everyone is offended by something.

And I'm mean everyone, right?

Don't listen to these big bald gammon c*nts that'll fucking

walk around lecturing you on weaker generations.

They don't make 'em like me anymore.

They don't make 'em like me.

This fucking snowflake generation offended by anything

with their fucking pronouns offended by anything.

Not me. Not a hard man like me.

My granddad was in the fucking war.

Burn the Union Jack in front of him.

Let's,

Let's see who gets offended by stupid sh*t.

And I don't say that to disparaging him.

He's allowed to be offended by that.

But you don't get to claim brrrr.

Everyone is offended by something, right? It's the game.

I, I love going to new places to find out what upsets them

and how to, how to play that.

Um, I like when I go to America

and I make fun of America a lot, but it is very fun to gig.

And it's just very different to here.

'cause they get offended by sh*t

that nobody gets offended by here.

It's the certain country I've been to where most

of the adults will be sincerely offended by swear words.

Right? And I mean more, if it's not most,

it's at least 50% adults who can vote and pay taxes

and buy guns to shoot teenagers with

are offended by swear words.

And as a Scottish person that fascinates me

to be offended by 30% of language is,

it's to set yourself up to be sad every day.

Like you might as well just leave Lego

outside your own bedroom door at that point, if that's

how easily upset you want to be every day.

Naaaargh... But it fascinates me.

Why are the Americans more offended

by swearing than anyone else in the world?

And it's because they fucking suck at it.

The Americans are so bad at swearing.

They're the worst at cursing in the entire world.

So much so they don't even call it cursing.

They call it cussing

because they're bad when it comes to hard Rs.

So they can't say cursing.

They're just, they're just not,

and not being good at something

that really goes against the American national identity,

which is despite all evidence to the contrary,

we're the best at everything.

They like being number one.

It gives them the hug that their dad never did.

Makes them feel fucking strong. They need to be good.

That's why they shout about it all the time.

Greatest country in the world, greatest president in the world,

greatest army in the world,

highest death rates in schools in the world.

They've got to have that number one position.

You gotta fucking want it

nNw.

It's not their fault that they suck at swearing. English.

swear words were never designed for the American accent.

English swear words were designed for guttural accents.

Scottish, Irish, Australian.

And as much as it pains me to admit it,

the English are quite good at swearing.

It's all about vowels.

Vowels have to be short in swear words.

It's conducive to their functionality, right?

Listen to how I swear. F*ck sh*t, c*nt.

Look at that. In less than a second

I got three of the heavy hitters out. You barely even noticed.

I'd have to do a slow mo replay of that.

And you'd be like, oh, he did

M*therf*cker, p*ss, wank.

You see how quickly those roll of the tongue,

my swear words never dominate a sentence.

They're never the focal point of what I'm trying to say.

They're just flavouring.

They spice up my chat. Swearing,

well, as a Scottish person, is a lot like having a drum kit

backing up your rant.

F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck. Sh*t. F*ck, f*ck. Sh*t. F*ck.

Motherf*cker, motherf*cker, motherf*cker.

P*ss, p*ssing bastard, p*ssing bastard. Sh*t.

Sh*t. F*ck c*nt, c*nt

P*ss. It's musical

and it's rhythmic

and it just, it,

it adds a little je nest ce quoi to the conversation.

But in America,

they don't shorten down their vowels.

They elongate their vowels

because they sing everything, because they're happy.

Because they're,hmmm,

and it means when they swear it sounds fucking rancid.

Why don't you f*ck off assh*le? Oh,

What is that?

Oh, that was him trying to offend you. Huh?

It fucking worked.

You're being a real twot.

Oh, um, it's uh, it's tw*t.

You c*nt. It's tw*t.

It rhymes with hat. It rhymes with cat. Tw*t.

Twot, interestingly enough, not a swear word.

Not even close to a swear word. Twot is a rejected Telly

Tubby. I don't know why you are dead naming him at this

point after he became Po.

What is this?

The Americans have this very binary black

and white understanding of swearing,

like swearing is associated with anger.

So if you swear in front of a lot of Americans,

they'll assume you're raging as opposed

to just fucking talking.

Catches me off guard. I'll be sat down

with some American friends.

They say something interesting that surprises me. F*ck off!

And they will,

leaving in tears to fetch their gun.

It's why the word c*nt is so offensive in America,

because to them the word c*nt only has one meaning. And that

one meaning is vagina.

Gross, yuck, sexist sh*t.'a0

They don't even know that that word can mean child.

It's such a crucial but fundamental misunderstanding

of one Of the most fluid words that we

have in our arsenal.

A tree can be a c*nt if you hate it enough.

I've had cars that were

c*nts. That's why I like

our swearing.

I love how creative we get with swearing in this country.

Just making sh*t up all the time. Words are fluid.

The word tw*t, right?

I love the word tw*t because in Scotland it's got three

separate meanings by my last count. You can have a tw*t.

if you're a lady, that's you. That's what that is.