Roller skating replaced the adrenalin from gigs
Lou Sanders tells MARION McMULLEN she’s ready to unleash the comedy wow factor across the country
You are about to embark on your biggest ever tour with 45-date show One Word: Wow. What topics do you want to cover?
Love and fear and why we do things. Taking risks. It’s about someone I met in lockdown because I had been single for seven years, I think through choice, but hard to say, and then I met someone in the pandemic and started roller skating because there was nothing else to do.
You sort of think, well, put your commitment issues to one side and see what we can do with this.
Everyone got lonely as well and got a partner or a pet... one of the two. Give me a dog or a boy.
I started on the show about a year ago on and off in between other stuff, but I am going to take my time with the tour and stay a couple of days in each place, visit the local skate parks, see what every place has to offer.
Normally you don’t have time. People say ‘have you been to Norfolk?’ and you say,’ yeah, for about a day.’
Have you missed doing stand-up?
I didn’t miss gigging for the first six or seven months because I had a lovely snooze and it was like ‘ooh, not working is great’ but then I did miss it.
I missed working in general not just that one element of it. I do love stand-up, but there are some people who have to perform, but it’s exciting to be touring, for sure. It’s exciting to come back with a show that you really want to do.
What helped during lockdowns?
Roller skating really helped me, especially when you could only do one bit of exercise a day. You could go to the skate park and other people were there. It was outdoors so it was quite safe.
I did feel very bad for other people and think ‘why isn’t everyone roller skating?’ You’ve got a ready-made community and it was replacing the adrenalin I missed from gigs.
That adrenalin is addictive and you get that same adrenalin from roller skating. It’s very similar to comedy in that it is absolute nutters and you never finish learning.
You are always learning and you can have good or bad days.
Didn’t roller skating feature in your early shows?
Years ago I did a show in Edinburgh were I roller skated really badly onto the stage to the song Crazy Legs with some fake legs attached to me and I was very unstable.
That was the only roller skating I had done since I was seven, but obviously I am drawn to it in some way. I once fell onto someone, which was hard for them because I am not light.
I’m taking my roller skates on the new tour, but I’ll have to be careful I don’t end up on stage on crutches.
Do you need a lot of confidence to do stand-up?
I don’t know if you do. (Laughs) You need a chink in you. You need to be quite damaged and need the validation of strangers and that is more powerful, over-riding than the fear.
I worked in TV before comedy, but that was all-consuming so I went back to working as a PA so I could finish at 5pm and do gigs.
Sometimes you’d do a gig and get back at two or three in the morning and then go to work. Because you were still proving yourself, you were paid jack all, and I remember a time when I was being paid £60 for a gig in Wales, getting back at 3am and having to go to work the next day. It was a bit bleak sometimes if you travelled to the ends of the Earth and it was a bad gig, but if you did a good gig that carried you.
You are a Taskmaster champion. What was it like winning one challenge by nabbing co-presenter Alex Horne’s mobile phone and signing him up to everything from estate agents to evening classes?
(Laughs) I really did that. I signed him up for everything. He had this lovely lady calling him from Zumba or something like that and I said to her ‘he needs to express himself through dance’ and she said OK and phoned him up. I think she thought I was his wife. That was fun.
When you are doing the show you love it so much you don’t want it to end and if you win you get to come back for Champion of Champions. That’s the big thing. That’s why you really want to win.
You are back on Dave with Mel Giedroyc in Unforgivable, with celebs revealing their darkest secrets. What confessions stand out in your mind?
Jessica Knappett had some great stories. She gatecrashed a party and they were taking advantage of the free bar and pretending they knew this guy called Toby because they thought it was Toby’s do.
People were eyeing them suspiciously and stuff and started asking how she knew him and she said ‘Oh, we went to university together. Where is Toby?’
Well, it turned out that it was a wake for Toby and he was dead. She had gatecrashed a funeral.