Joz Norris: You Wait. Time Passes. 2026 UK Tour Interview

“This is very much a piss-take of tortured artists who think the world cares as much about their work and legacy as they do, rather than being an actual ‘Greatest Hits’ celebration of anything I’ve done in real life.”

Joz Norris has declared his life’s work complete. It is a bold, even preposterous claim for a comedian who hasn’t yet reached the age of sensible cardigans and early-bird specials.

Yet the Comedians’ Choice Award winner and the absurdist brain behind BBC Radio 4’s The Dream Factory is touring the UK with the stated premise that his new show, You Wait. Time Passes., is exactly that.

He arrives on stage atop a white plinth, clutching a sweatband, presenting himself as a solitary genius ready to bestow his final masterpiece upon the masses. The critics, it seems, took the bait. The press release boasts five-star reviews and comparisons to the Mona Lisa.

Norris admits the reaction caught him off guard. “In many ways, it’s been quite confusing that the very lovely critical responses to the show kept throwing the word ‘masterpiece’ at it, because it left me wondering whether I had become the victim of my own in-joke. I still wonder that. But the show is very good, I’d hate for people to lose sight of that in amongst all the meta to-ing and fro-ing.”

Joz Norris and the Comedy of the Tortured Artist

The ambiguity is entirely deliberate. Norris has built a career on absurdist character comedy, and this latest iteration is pitched as his most complex trap yet.

“The tricky thing is, I’ve once again made a show in which I play a character called Joz Norris who looks and talks like me and whose life and outlook map onto mine in several ways but also significantly deviate in some key areas,” he explains.

It takes a specific kind of bravery to put your own name and face on a pumped-up narcissistic idiot character, but Norris argues it is a structural necessity.

“If an artist showed you a caricature they’d done of you and it was just some random person’s cartoon face you’d just go ‘Who’s that supposed to be?’”

He is also willing to throw a gentle, cynical dart at the rest of the comedy industry when examining this desire for validation. “I think very few comedians don’t have that part of themselves that deep down likes being looked at and validated by an audience,” he notes.

However, he is quick to turn that lens back on himself. “I also am acutely aware that that part of myself is inherently ridiculous and pathetic and wretched and, if I let it go unchecked in my day-to-day life, would make me a worse person. So to me, it feels like the healthiest way I can make peace with that part of myself in my work is to acknowledge the ridiculousness of it, and allow myself to become this caricature, because therein lies all the pathos and all the comedy.”

He chuckles at his own methodology, adding, “I’m sure there are many comedians who have found less complicated ways to make peace with that tension, but it works for me!”

Avoiding the Comedy Trauma Dump

It is a relief to find a performer actively rejecting the trauma dump genre. The Scottish comedy circuit is currently groaning under the weight of brave souls substituting stand-up for therapy. Norris tackles heavy themes like workaholism and obsession, but he claims to refuse to make the audience carry his actual emotional baggage.

“I personally believe that, although there’s a great impulse to use the stage as a place to feel heard and seen and validated, most audiences don’t come to comedy because they want to hear, see and validate somebody else’s experience,” he says. “They do it mostly to laugh and have a good time, and sometimes, in the shows that really stay with you, to leave having seen something that makes them think about their own life in a new way.”

He outlines his exact mechanism for avoiding the trap of onstage therapy.

“I so often play a version of myself in my shows who feels the same way as me, but the circumstances of his life are completely different, so that I’m not unpacking the specifics of my life onstage in a way that’s cathartic for me but tedious for the audience. Instead, I’m exploring a feeling onstage and trying to articulate it in a way that’s geared towards stupidity and fun, because ultimately that’s why the audience is there.”

To keep the absurdism from spiralling into total chaos, Norris recruited director Jon Brittain, best known for helping shape the narrative of Baby Reindeer.

Norris details Brittain’s influence specifically. “I think his big focus throughout was on making the show ‘undeniable,’ if that makes sense. We knew we were making a show that blends chaotic nonsense with artsy thoughtfulness, and we didn’t want to compromise on either of those things, but we did want to make it as efficient and streamlined as possible in the way it communicated its intentions, as dense as possible with jokes and silliness, as coherent and logical as possible in terms of its story and how the central character moved through it.”

Dismantling the Solitary Genius Myth

This collaborative reality stands in direct opposition to the man standing on the white plinth. It takes a village to build a solitary genius, and Norris is eager to credit his long time script consultants Miranda Holms and Christian Brighty.

He points out that Holms “is an essential collaborator on pretty much everything I’ve made for the last five years, and knows so much about story and character and point-of-view and aesthetics.” Meanwhile, Brighty helped weave in the kind of highly specific, slightly weird details that give a comedy show its flavour. “There’s a section of the show involving a phone call to a character called Karl that wouldn’t exist if Christian hadn’t workshopped it with me,” he reveals.

“The ‘solitary genius’ thing is such a tired, boring model and I hope it’s clear from the shows I make how ridiculous I think it is,” Norris insists. “I just want to see the comedy landscape come to function more like a thriving community and ecosystem and less like a trade fair of competing egos, and I do try my best to make the case for that shift just a little bit with each show I make.”

This rejection of ego is built directly into the narrative arc of his performances. “These days I often play these quite pumped-up narcissistic idiot characters who think they’re brilliant and always end the shows a little broken and humbled and reconnected with their actual life and community,” he explains.

Taking “High Art” to Scottish Comedy Basements

Dragging this high art concept out of pristine theatres and into the sweating basements of venues like Glasgow’s The Flying Duck and Edinburgh’s Monkey Barrel creates an inevitable friction.

“In some of the more slick theatrical spaces where we’ve performed it, the character’s outer reality sort of matches his inner reality up until the point where it can’t any more, and then the show snaps and erupts, basically,” he observes. “And when we do it in the more basement-y, Fringey venues, the inner reality and outer reality are visibly mismatched, and that creates a whole different tension that creeps into every moment of the show, so you’re sort of waiting for the character to realise that he’s not who he thinks he is.”

When the show finally snaps, it descends into a chaotic finale before abruptly steering back into something quiet and heartfelt. Norris acknowledges the risk.

“It’s such a ridiculous bit of tonal whiplash, but I also think a lot of people did find it genuinely moving. And it’s not even about the comedy industry itself necessarily; it’s also just how the world feels these days. It’s so chaotic and noisy, and it’s so hard to think. There is a big part of this show for me that’s saying ‘It’s ok to just carve out a space in the midst of all this noise and give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling.’”

Life After the “Masterpiece”

So what does an artist do once they have completed their life’s work? Norris admits he used to treat the festival circuit as a bit of a treadmill, but he is now balancing live performance with scriptwriting and directing to avoid burning out.

“I do want it to be a change of pace in as much as I want to avoid some of the more knotty meta-theatrical philosophical musings of this show,” he reveals regarding his next project. “I feel like we really nailed that, and the next show should aim to inhabit a different space. So it’s shaping up to be something very big and dumb and silly about Hugh Jackman and the Phantom of the Opera.”

Before he gets to Hugh Jackman, there is still the small matter of his current UK run to conclude. For Norris, the immediate joy lies in the unpredictability of the live rooms.

“It’s been really fun touring the show and realising how different spaces slightly change the way it tells its story,” he notes, reflecting on the journey from slick stages to the grittier basement spots. “I really love that the show has that flexibility within it to be watched in different ways.”

Whether he is having a genuine breakdown or a meticulously crafted one remains to be seen. Either way, the white plinth is making its way north, and audiences will soon find out exactly what happens when the tortured artist finally steps off it.

Featured Image: Joz Promo_YWTP-7085

Joz Norris brings You Wait. Time Passes. to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival
on March 19th, and Edinburgh’s Monkey Barrel Comedy on March 21st, as part of his 2026 UK tour.