BOOKING NOW: MUST SEE EVENT

Stephen K Amos

Otley Courthouse on October 13 and Selby Town Hall on October 14. Tickets and details stephenkamos.com/live-uk

Stephen K Amos is back with his brand new show Oxymoron, after treading the boards of London’s West End in the smash hit musical My Fair Lady, playing the iconic role of Alfred P Doolittle.

It’s been a challenging couple of years for everyone and Stephen’s solution to get through it all has been to find the funny side. The opportunity in the crisis, the joy in the sadness, the wisdom of fools. His show presents an hour of solid jokes and guaranteed belly laughs. Fresh from a sell-out tour in Australia and the US and as seen on BBC’s QI and Pilgrimage: The Road to Rome and Live at the Apollo, he is heading out on a UK tour throughout this autumn and next spring, with several Yorkshire dates.

An Amos stand-up gig is always special. No two nights are the same as he mixes hilarious routines with his trademark quickfire audience interaction. “The show is called Oxymoron,” he says. “It’s about how there are contradictions, which is what oxymoron means, everywhere.

It's what we've experienced in the last few years, people arguing about being vaccinated, questioning scientists about things like climate change, comedians becoming serious politicians, like Zelensky in Ukraine and politicians behaving like comedians like Boris Johnson in the UK.”

Amos is well-known for his off-the-cuff ad libs and entertaining diversions from his main narrative. “The script is in my head, but I veer off and come back to it,” he says. “I want every show to feel like we’re in the moment together. It’s a live comedy experience. Something wonderful often happens in the room, or maybe somebody says something that gives me an idea to go off on a tangent. I love it when something happens that couldn’t have happened anywhere else and I think the audience loves it too.”

An experienced actor, Amos has never been in a musical before and he enjoyed his experience in My Fair Lady. “One of the reasons for that was Covid. It gave me an opportunity to think outside the box about my career. If you’d asked me three years ago, would I ever do a musical I’d have said of course not. But I was very fortunate and blessed. Sometimes it's fun to take a risk.”