'Talking about autism is political': Interviewing Joe Wells
Joe Wells is a critically acclaimed stand-up comedian and writer. I was new to the art of editing when this was published, but it's well worth a read.
Joe Wells is a critically acclaimed stand-up comedian and writer. He’s made numerous television appearances, won several awards, and written for various popular shows on the BBC and Channel 5 - including Have I Got News for You and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order. In 2023, his first solo tour as a comic sold out venues with up to 300 seats.
Joe was originally known for his political material, but in recent years has honed in on his mental health experiences. Most notably, his perspective as an autistic person.
It was great talking to a fellow autistic who loves comedy. I hope you’ll allow me some overindulgence with this article; I’ve transcribed most of the thirty-five-minute interview below, simply because I wanted to and there’s no one to stop me.
*Audio below the article
Why did you move away from overtly political material and start talking about your autism?
Well, the diagnosis changed so much for me. It turns out that a lot of my attraction to angry politics came from feeling like I didn’t fit in - and I was very angry about that. I began to fit in when I became a comedian, but I couldn’t see that before.
I relate to that so much. My bookshelf used to be full of books about politics, mostly unread or half-read; I had the ambition to read them and I wasn’t happy.
Yeah. And my politics hasn’t changed drastically. I’m still a big lefty, but I think my attraction to stuff like Mark Thomas, was to do with shouting and anger and having something to rant about. I think that’s where it came from.
I do still do some political bits, and I think talking about autism is in itself political, and I feel more like this is stuff where I can really back what I’m saying. Whereas politics broadly, I don’t always know what I’m talking about.
You’re constantly trying to process information in the world when you’re autistic and politics is complicated. You can easily overwhelm yourself.
For me, I think; if you’ve got a platform, you should use it, but also, I try to think about what I can speak authoritatively on. My beliefs about neurodiversity come from a deep thinking process. I’m sure the other people will have different views and maybe even deeper understandings, but there are things I’ve said in the I’m Autistic show that I’ve considered deeply.
In the past, I hadn’t read all the right books. I wasn’t able to back myself up in the same way. With my newest material, I can speak with ever so slightly more authority than I could on the latest political issue e.g. Keir Starmer’s first month in government. I don’t have a full enough understanding of that.
Was it always the dream for you to be a professional comedian?
Yeah, from quite young. I saw Mark Thomas when I would have been maybe fifteen or sixteen, and I thought “That’s what I wanna do”. I also saw Ross Noble and I’d never seen anything like it. I was impressed by both of them and how the whole show is just someone talking and their ideas.
You’re very economical with your words on stage, there’s no rambling. You’re intent on setting up the jokes quickly, and as clearly as possible. How did you learn this? Did a particular comedian influence you in that regard?
Well, I’ve been doing comedy for a while now. When I started clubs were so much a part of it. Y’know, you’re performing to a couple of hundred people on a Friday night from a mix of backgrounds, who want to have a good night and to laugh. And I think that forces you into the writing where you have to get to a quick punchline.
The newer comics have ways to circumvent the club circuit. Which is fine, I love all comedy but I’m a big defender of comics who do clubs; because sometimes it’s used dismissively as sort of “Oh, they’re a club comedian”, whereas actually, I think lots of people you’ll see in comedy clubs like Marcus Birdman are very good. They talk about interesting things but you’re never more than thirty seconds from a punchline.
There is some hack material in clubs, but I think they’ve also bred comics like Marcus, and Jeff Innocent’s another example… Of comics where they’re always very joke-heavy, and they’re not ramble-y, but there are some interesting ideas in there. So, I guess it’s a product of having to make money from clubs.
I’ve seen a few comedy specials from people who make funny videos online, playing big venues but never having done stand-up before. And it’s always quite good, but something is missing. And I’m not a comedian but I imagine the experience isn’t there. They haven’t had the experience, have they?
Yeah, I think it must be really hard for them, because there are some really good people making online sketches and stuff like that, and then they become famous and they could go straight into a tour, making lots of money. So, you can’t blame them for not going, “No actually I want to go to... Y’know, whatever club on a Thursday night and make £50 to try and learn the craft”. So yeah, I do feel for those people. I hope those tours give them the space to [learn]. Maybe if the first tour is a bit wonky, they might have to sort of learn in front of everyone.
I think that’s the thing with comedy, stand-up in particular - you can’t learn to do it in your bedroom. You’ve got to go out and struggle, and have bad gigs. And I think that’s the thing that is a bit of a double-edged sword for the people who’ve made it big online with sketches is they have to do that. Y’know, I did that in front of small audiences that weren’t recording and no one knew about them.
What does the writing process look like for you? How do you develop the ideas on paper?
I still don’t feel like I have a proper writing process. A lot of the time I’m sort of thinking through things in my life or things that I’m trying to work out. Growing up I was a very anxious person and I had OCD. I am someone who just goes over things a lot… And I try to channel that tendency to go “Let’s re-think that thing over and over again”, and channel that into stand-up. Particularly on the way home from gigs, just sort of ruminating over the material, over and over again in my head.
But I think it’s hard; because my previews will usually be a load of stuff that I want to say, and a load of stuff that I want to talk about. So, the latest show, a lot of it is about genetics and autism, and thinking about how I feel about that. I guess it’s sort of trying to work out how I feel and often, when you come to a place where you know how you feel about a thing, there’s like a clear joke that can illustrate it.
So, it’s kind of like the feeling you have about something comes first and then you go, “Okay, how does that turn into a joke?”
Yes, absolutely, yeah. I used to do a lot of overtly political stuff, and I’d have a thing about “This politician has said X, Y, Z. Why is that particularly silly or hypocritical?” and then once I’d got that worked out, I could go “Oh it’s like that” [making an analogy].
But I don’t really write stuff. Well, I’ll usually make a quick note of things but it’s more about the idea of a joke, and then I just do it enough times. I shouldn’t say this but my early preview shows are really messy.
I’ve been to a few previews of comedians and yeah, it’s forgiven isn’t it, really? Because they’re not paying as much money, or it’s half price.
I try to sort of not take the piss with it, but yeah, it’s like when you’re starting [out], you do have to go out and sort of say stuff in front of people. I find often, after a preview, on the drive home I won’t listen to podcasts, I’ll listen to music and then I can work it out in my head. I guess a lot of the time I will have a social interaction with someone and it hasn’t gone how I meant it to, so I will ruminate on that away from the social reaction, and it’s just doing that in a less toxic way. Y’know, the stand-up show is the social interaction, and I go “Oh yeah I could have said that thing”.
I think it’s a strength with your comedy because we [autistic people] pick up on things that everybody else misses, and the very act of telling people about the thing that you’ve noticed is funny to them… Because they don’t think like that.
If you’re over-analysing things, you’re noticing things that other people aren’t noticing, yeah.
What was it like writing for Have I Got News for You and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order?
They were both fun. I think that with both those things, you’re sort of bound by the news, and what’s happening in the news. I think the HIGNFY session I did, was [during] the Trump/Hillary election. It was quite a while ago and I think he was quite a hard person to write jokes about because he’s so absurd anyway. And also, they were quite conscious at the time that there weren’t a lot of jokes about Hillary. It was all about Trump and Hillary is sort of quite boring, she was sort of the other end of it where there wasn’t a lot that you could easily make jokes about.
Yeah, I think I’d find that refreshing if I tuned in and there were a lot of Hillary jokes. I’d be like “Well, they’ve not gone for the expected thing” and it’s kind of a bit more fun really.
Yeah, it’s certainly more interesting to try and explore that. But yeah, they were both fun experiences. Frankie has been incredibly supportive of me, which is lovely, to have someone with that profile backing you.
How does standing in front of a large audience feel as an autistic person? Are you constantly avoiding eye contact?
Well, you don’t have to make it as much in front of a live audience. You just stare out into the ether. So, I find it a much easier conversation to have, to be honest. I feel like I’m a much more authentic version of myself when I’m talking on stage. The social parameters of that are well understood. I don’t have to worry about when it’s my turn… I don’t know whether you do this, but like, I saw some people I don’t know that well the other day, and there were four of us. So, in my head, that’s like 25% talking if there are four people. So, in those conversations, I’m always conscious of how much I’m talking. Making sure I’m talking enough but not too much. But on stage, there’s none of that because it’s just me, and so I think a lot of social things are much clearer on stage. I know when people are happy with what I’m saying because people are laughing. So, there’s not that aspect of it where I’m sometimes talking to people and having to read very subtle signs of like, are they bored with me? Are they offended by what I’m saying?
Yeah, it’s true, it’s a very audible signal as to whether it’s going well or not. Yeah, that would be good in… Well, I wouldn’t want to be laughed at all the time in conversation. Joe chuckled. But it would be good to have something similar for regular conversations.
Yeah. So obviously the first few times I did it, it was quite nerve-racking but now it feels like I’m able to have a much more natural conversation, in a way.
Plus, you’ve been open now about your autism, so it’s like you don’t have to [mask it] … Did you ever feel like you had to mask your autism on stage when you started?
Yeah, definitely. My story is a bit complicated because I had an informal diagnosis when I was a child, which I didn’t know about. And then as an adult, I found out that they informally diagnosed me and I sought a formal diagnosis. And yeah, it definitely made me change. My comedy is a lot better because I think I was always trying to be a version of a comedian I’d seen.
You were talking about looking at the audience. I did have that sense of, y’know, you’ve got to look at the audience and engage with them in that way. And I was conscious of how my hands would be on stage and stuff like that.
When I had the diagnosis and went through some soul-searching on that stuff… I think if you look at the stuff I’m doing now, I’m not always looking at the audience. I’m moving my hands however I want to and that sort of thing. And I think that’s more authentic. I would always open with a big “Hello!” and project confidence, and now I’m happy to be sort of quite neurotic and not try to be like “Hey! Here’s the comedy!” because actually, I think audiences can pick up on inauthenticity.
Definitely, definitely.
People say “What makes a good comedian?” If you look at all the good comedians, they’re being, on some level, an authentic version of themselves. Even if it’s a character act, there’s still a level of authenticity where they’re drawing on part of themselves. And I think the diagnosis helped me with that. I’ve rambled away from your question, what was the question?
It’s alright, I don’t even know if it was one I had written down!
[Together we regained the thread of the conversation, from which followed…]
Joe: Now I feel if I’m myself, people will engage with it more. I don’t know if you’ve seen very new comics, and the biggest mistake you’ve seen them make is they are going “This is what comedy is meant to be”. So often you get people who go “Comedy has got to be really dark and controversial”. So you get new comics who are doing that, and it's not that it doesn’t work because it’s dark and controversial… Because there are dark comics who do really well on the circuit. It’s not working because it’s inauthentic to themselves, and you can see they’re trying to project this and go “This is what comedy is. It’s edgy and controversial”. Whereas if you watch Bobby Mair or Frankie Boyle, that’s what they find funny. It’s authentic, but they’re also quite dark in their comedy.
Oh god, the next question is such a change in tone because it’s really trivial…
That’s okay!
I’ve noticed that you sometimes wear funky shirts on stage. Do you have quite a colourful wardrobe? I mean the contents of the wardrobe by the way. I know we can sometimes take things literally.
There’s a specific black shirt that I like that’s really hard to get hold of. I’ve got quite a lot of those. Obviously, I have things over the top of that [colourful shirts]. So yeah, I do like unusual clothes. I’ve got some nice shirts that I wear over the top and some cool shoes. I drive now, so you used to have to be careful on trains because if you went on a late-night train with anything too outrageous then you would get hassle from drunks, but not while driving.
I’ve got a very cool green coat.
Green’s my favourite colour. Is that a stage thing or is it just what you like to do?
I always wanted to be like “I’m different” and sort of have that. I was a teenage goth.
Me too. Do you listen to Bauhaus?
No, I don’t, no. I had a uni friend who was really into them. I should listen to them. Where would you start with an album?
Oh gosh, basically anywhere except the Sky’s Gone Out because that’s the one album that just doesn’t quite work for me. Most of it. They have a live album that’s ridiculously good. Burning From the Inside - I like a lot.
[Joe presumably did some quick Googling.]
Is it Live at Hammersmith Palais?
[The album we were looking for was Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape (1982), which does feature some songs from that venue. Oh also, The Sky’s Gone Out has some great moments. It’s not a stinker by any stretch.]
I’ll listen to the first album on the car journey on Wednesday.
Which brings me to my next question. In one of your sets, you mention the rap group NWA. Could you tell me more about the music you listen to and what it means to you?
I think music has always been a special interest of mine.
[A special interest, dear reader, is something an autistic person gets very passionate about.]
Me too.
I’ve got one rack of CDs there [pointing], and I’ve got three more over there. My Discogs collection is about 1500 things.
I really like hip-hop music. I like anything that’s different and unusual, and I find myself going around rabbit holes of specific artists or genres. So yeah, it’s properly eclectic. There’s not much that I’m not into. The only stuff I don’t like is stuff that I find a bit boring.
When I was a teenager, there was a slew of very similar-sounding indie bands that I never quite got into.
Yeah, me too.
And I don’t get drum and bass. I like Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers and that sort of thing, but drum and bass dance music, I can’t quite get into.
Did you say on stage that you thought the Arctic Monkeys were overrated? Because I completely agree with you on that.
Yeah, I hate all that stuff. They came to the right place at the right time. For me, that stuff came out when I was getting really into hip-hop, and I was listening to weird electronic stuff like Venetian Snares and Aphex Twin, and I was listening to Zappa and Captain Beef Heart. I thought “This is so unusual, this stuff” and then another guitar band would come out and everyone was excited about it and I didn’t quite get why.
I just think it’s all been done before. There’s a riff on the AM album which is just a Black Sabbath riff that they’ve nicked [in my opinion]. I think in the beginning they had something but they lost it.
I think also they were like the first band to get big on the internet, weren’t they? So, it was a thing of like “Oh there’s this band and they’re really big but they haven’t put an album out yet” and that was quite groundbreaking, how the music was distributed… But I don’t get it.
There’s always an indie band that everyone’s getting off on. There was the Libertines for a while.
Oh, I do like the Libertines I’m not gonna lie.
And then Wet Leg a few years ago.
The music is good but the name is awful.
I really like that new Blossoms album, that’s really great.
I haven’t heard it. I’ve heard some of their older stuff, which is good.
I think I should maybe revisit some of that [indie] stuff because there were some interesting things in there. The Coral were good, weren’t they? Anyway, I could talk about music for a long time.
Yeah, I’ve got my own CD collection. I think there probably is a link between autism and [collecting] physical media. Because I just love it. Is that how you feel?
Oh definitely. For me, I had very severe OCD growing up and my teenage years weren’t very happy, but CD shops – I remember that being a thing of like “I’ve got a new CD” and having sort of a real connection with that. And yeah, I think there’s definitely a thing with autism and physical objects generally.
I’m really into a writer called Polly Samuel who wrote under the name Donna Williams. She wrote a lot about physical objects and collecting things –jars of buttons and stuff like that. And I write for a TV show called Pablo, where he has a real connection with objects. A lot of objects are characters in the show.
I tried to do my research but I didn’t know you wrote for that show. What’s that about?
Oh, it’s fairly new news. It was a pre-school show called Pablo, and now it’s being “aged up”, so it’s just been announced last week.
Is it animated?
Yeah - he’ll be eight in the new animation. It’s really fun to write for and it’s a really interesting team. Me and do you know Eryn Tett? She’s really interesting, and Robert White who was on Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago. Robert is a really interesting writer and a brilliant musician as well. There’s just an incredible team. Aoife Dooley writes for…
[I excitedly cut him off with a question, sorry Aoife, it’s my ADHD brain.]
Is that going to be on CBeebies?
The preschool one was on CBeebies and the new one will be on CBBC. It’s a joint commission so it’s CBBC and RTÉ, the Irish state broadcaster. Crayola is starting a streaming service, so it’s one of the Crayola commissions. So, it was really fun to write for.
Are you sort of the “comedy guy” for that, or is everybody pitching jokes? Is it very joke-heavy?
Yeah, it’s quite joke-heavy. Eryn’s a comic too, Robert’s a comic and Aoife has done some stand-up and writes funny graphic novels.
I’ve been involved earlier than some other people, and yes, they wanted to have lots of jokes in this new series. The pre-school one’s got some jokes in but also you’re slightly restricted with what you can do in a pre-school show.
Cool, my final question is… Do you have any questions for me about what I do or anything you’re curious about? No worries if you can’t think of one.
I had a look. I saw you’d interviewed Luke Poulton who I think is really great. We had Luke on the podcast, he was good.
He’s got an album out, hasn’t he?
Yeah, [called] Cracking.
I feel like I want to get a copy of that. It’s a cassette, isn’t it?
It probably will be. I’ve got a few hardcore [punk] cassettes, and that genre does a lot of cassette stuff.
Yeah, that is the one player I don’t have. I’ve got lots of cassettes. I’ve just got a plug-in CD player, but I’m gonna get a cassette player at some point.
I love my CD player so much. I hope you enjoy it.
What’s your, sorry… I always want to know people’s favourite albums, so I can go away and listen to them.
Okay, this is where I get a little bit nervous because one of my favourite albums is from a guy who’s not very popular at the moment. It’s from Morrissey.
No no, I get it, don’t worry.
Oh god, which one [is my favourite]?
I think You Are the Quarry is great.
[Indeed, it flippin’ well is. Joe thinks it’s great because Joe is great.]
Yeah! You Are the Quarry was my favourite for a long time. At the moment I think it’s probably Vauxhall & I.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a shame he’s fallen off so… I mean all the musicians I like are horrible because I’m a huge Kanye fan and he’s really fallen off politically and musically as well.
Yeah, Kanye’s music is good.
When people are rebellious, they push against the status quo, and that’s sort of interesting, but they’ve got no ideology. Their default is just being against the status quo.
That’s the end of the interview! I like to think Joe went away and listened to Bauhaus and the Morrissey album. I’m so thankful to him for giving me his thoughts and time. It’s a cliché, but it really was a dream come true.
You can find out more about Joe on his website here.