Ryan Mold - Holding the Record

One of the coolest parts about get­ting to talk to friends from around the world is the cul­tur­al lessons. Our con­ver­sa­tion with Ryan Mold includes quite a few. Every­thing from ​“what is a fun­nel cake?”, to ​“what is a com­pere?” (more on that in a bit). Lucky for our friends on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s just a dif­fer­ence in ter­mi­nol­o­gy, so I’m per­son­al­ly heart­ened that were I to vis­it Eng­land, I’d sim­ply need to request a dough­nut rather than a fun­nel cake. At least I think that’s what Mold said, I might have drift­ed off think­ing about that deli­cious doughy fried treat espe­cial­ly since this is, in a nod to amus­ing tim­ing, our 4^th of July Inde­pen­dence Day episode.

Mold (along with our oth­er inter­na­tion­al guests on the Com­e­dy Wham Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy shows) holds an esteemed posi­tion among our guest comics for their will­ing­ness to be awake at odd hours just to per­form on our show. Mold did it sev­er­al times because he is so wit­ty we could­n’t wait to bring him back repeat­ed­ly. Out of respect, we put him on first on the line­ups so he could do his set at 2am local Ban­bury time, then go back to sleep.

Mold’s start as a standup com­ic is famil­iar to many — an inter­est in the art form (we’re in Eng­land now, we’re def­i­nite­ly going to fan­cy this up), a pint (maybe 2) of ale, and he hit the stage and nev­er turned back. We found a descrip­tion of Mold that fits quite nice­ly ​“engag­ing obser­va­tion­al come­di­an with a hint of aggra­va­tion and sar­casm” — what’s not to love? The inter­est­ing twist in Mold’s com­e­dy jour­ney is that he is the own­er of 2 bars wedged between Birm­ing­ham and Lon­don. These loca­tions for Mold are con­ve­nient as a standup since both have gen­er­ous offer­ings of stage time. And as you might imag­ine with large com­e­dy scenes in both cities, all sorts of com­e­dy is avail­able for audi­ences. And it’s pos­si­ble to find some­thing for dif­fer­ent tastes, Mold says, ​“Com­e­dy is dif­fer­ent for dif­fer­ent peo­ple.” It’s a mat­ter of find­ing what suits you.

As own­er of a bar that hosts com­e­dy shows, Mold is keen­ly aware of the efforts need­ed to pro­mote shows, a nod to a com­mon thread no mat­ter the address of the com­e­dy show. One such big event, occurred in 2018 when Mold’s Atic Ban­bury achieved Guin­ness World Record sta­tus by hold­ing a 96-hour non-stop standup com­e­dy show (best­ing the pre­vi­ous record held by a Nashville venue for its 80-hour show). While Mold does enjoy the role of com­e­dy pro­duc­er at his venues, he is care­ful to not cross a line at his own venues. He does­n’t book him­self at his venues because it’s too stress­ful.

Speak­ing of stress­ful, imag­ine own­ing 2 bars, being a standup com­ic, and hav­ing the entire per­for­mance struc­ture shut down? The glob­al Covid shut­down did hit Mold hard, but he admit­ted that he enjoyed per­form­ing online. He con­sid­ers him­self a the­atri­cal per­former who enjoys mov­ing around, and he man­aged to make that work for him dur­ing online shows. Cer­tain­ly we found him immense­ly enter­tain­ing when he did our show. We hope that one day he’ll be able to trav­el to the US so that we can watch him in per­son.

Much of the con­ver­sa­tion cen­tered on obser­va­tions of dif­fer­ences or com­mon­al­i­ties between Amer­i­can and British com­e­dy. Did you know that a com­pere is the com­mon ter­mi­nol­o­gy in Britain for what we in the US call a host of a show? I did­n’t! Did you know that reviews of com­e­dy shows in Britain aren’t the norm? I did­n’t (hav­ing researched a hand­ful of British comics and inevitably stum­bling upon show reviews)! Did you know that despite the prox­im­i­ty to Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe, comics in Eng­land don’t view the fes­ti­val as the Holy Grail (see what I did there?) of com­e­dy fes­ti­vals (akin to US comics view­ing JFL Mon­tréal as the com­pa­ra­ble Holy Grail)? I did­n’t! You too can learn a lot by lis­ten­ing to comics from across the globe!

As the world emerges from the shut­down, Mold and I dis­cussed the com­e­dy renais­sance that we’ve been see­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly here in Austin, with a wide breadth of inno­va­tion on dis­play by show pro­duc­ers. Mold has a strong opin­ion about going too far with inno­va­tion. ​“I’m all for inno­v­a­tive stuff. I think that’s fine. But just don’t waste peo­ple’s time.” We agree that inno­va­tion is fine as long as the core objec­tive is still to make audi­ences laugh. 

While I great­ly enjoyed chat­ting with Mold to learn about the unique nature of British com­e­dy, my hope one day is that our paths will cross in per­son. Not just so we can hear that protyp­i­cal British accent, but also so that we can share laughs. And hope­ful­ly a fun­nel cake.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Ban­bury, Eng­land (south of London)?

Ryan’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Eng­land include: Har­ry Hill, Spencer Jones, Michael McIn­tyre, Mo Mil­le­gan, James A. Custer, Scott Ben­nett, Andrew Bird, Ben Nor­ris, Jeff Inno­cent, Mike Gunn, Mar­cel Lucon­te. If you’re in the greater Lon­don area, check out the com­e­dy scene where you’ll watch com­peres in action and where very inven­tive and cre­ative shows abound.

Fol­low Ryan

• Web­site — ryan​mold​.com
• Twit­ter — @RyanMoldComedy
• Insta­gram — @RyanMoldComedy
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​R​y​a​n​M​o​l​d​C​omedy
• Atic Pub — Rock​the​At​ic​.com

Ryan can be seen and heard:

• Shoot­ing the Breeze Podcast
• At his bar ATIC in Oxford­shire and Banbury