1
[audience cheering]
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, please
welcome to the stage Mr. Daniel Sloss!
[applauding and cheering]
I'm just going to start up this show not
with a joke,
but with a question, that I'd like you
to answer honestly, please,
by raising of your hands,
who here thinks they are a good person?
That is terrifyingly low. That is low.
Germany put up more hands than you did.
Just so you're aware
of your current standing.
I was in Berlin, and they were like,
"We didn'tdo it. I wasn't there.
I don't give a shit."
I'm not sure if I'm a good person.
I'd like to be, but being a cunt is fun.
Like, you ever met those fucking weirdos
that are like,
"Is there any better feeling
than just doing a random act of kindness
for a stranger
and knowing that you've made
their whole day?"
Yeah, giving them the wrong directions.
What are you...
A lot of people think I'm a good person.
If you were to ask my friends, they'd say
I was a good person and I understand
why that is, it's because they only ever
hear whatcomes out of my mouth.
They never hear what's going on
in myhead,
and those are two hugely differentthings,
by the way.
From my mouth, I'm an incredibly
polite human being,
because I know that's the way
you have to be.
But sometimes, when I'm alone in my head,
sometimes...
Hitler.
Obviously not the same things
Hitler hated.
Just the same, you know...
Passion
that he had.
Say what you like about Hitler.
Passionate man.
About the wrong things.
Yes, we can all agree,the wrong things,
but passionatenonetheless,
like a trueartist.
Some of the thoughts I have
genuinely disturb me.
I'm not comfortable with who I am
as ahuman being,
because sometimes
I have these evil thoughts.
I never act on them!
For me, I would argue that's
conscious goodness.
I go against my natural instinct
to be good.
I would therefore argue if you are
a naturally good person,
I am a better person than you are,
because for you to be good,
you don't have to go through a struggle.
That's just your default setting.
I've got voices to compete with.
I don't trustpeople with not having
an evil voice in their head.
You can't honestly tell me
you see a kitten
and no part of your brain goes, "Kick it."
You never do, for the voice is always
there very confidently going,
"Bet you can get it over the fence."
Like if I ever need to cheer myself up,
like if I'm ever sad or on a bus,
those things are very related.
I just need to make myself smile.
I know what this says about me,
but all Ihave to do to cheer myself up
is just to picture any child under
the age of ten with an ice cream
and just imagine just
fucking tripping him up.
I know, it's awful. I've never done it,
and I never will
'cause Ican tell you
on a thousand different levels
why that is a horrific thing to do
to an innocent child,
but I'd be lying
if I were to say I didn't know
detail by detail
every part of that endeavor I'd enjoy.
Like, it's his birthday.
He's got a big badge on. It says "nine."
He's a got a balloon,
a big stupid grin on his face,
'cause the world hasn't fucked him yet.
'Cause it's his birthday,
his parents were like, "Go nuts!"
He did, the ice cream stacked up
precariously high.
There's sauce. There's sprinkles.
There's two flakes in there
'cause he's a greedy little cunt.
He's just so excited,
but the thing is
he's also a very good older brother,
and recently his little sisterhad
to come home from school
because she wasn'tfeeling well,
and his first thought, when he sees
all of this extra ice cream
on his birthday,
isn't to have it all to himself,
it's to runhome and share it
with his baby sister.
'Cause he loves her.
And while he's running home,
I just go, "Nah, cunt!" [cackles]
And because he's young and stupid,
he doesn't know
whether to prioritize theice cream,
the balloon or his face.
And he fucks all three up
in a spectacular fashion?
Like, as a rational adult,
you go drop the balloon.
We can buy you a new one, use that one
to break the fall, save the ice cream.
He's not dropping that balloon.
He loves that balloon.
He doesn't know,
that's fucking magic to them.
He's an idiot.
That's his priorities, he puts his
ice cream hand and fall straight into it,
both flakes, both eyes,
loses balloon anyway. Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!
[moans]
Does it not just warm your cockles?
All right, clearly some of you agree.
Clearly the rest of you have children
that you "love."
Let's see if we can take it
a little bitdarker.
Let's see if anyone can relate
to this horrific thought.
This thought normally occurs whenever
you're in a relationship,
one in the past for you,hopefully.
You know, one of those relationships where
you kind of just fall out of love
with the person.
You don't hate them.
You don't not like them.
You just don't love them anymore.
That's a really weird situation to be in,
because it's all on you.
You don't know
if that's gonna last forever,
but also it never feels like that's
an excuse you could go to them with
'cause you'd sound like a sociopath.
We need to break up! Why?
'Cause I'm fuckingdead inside.
But I thought you loved me. So did I!
Turns out I don't!
What about, like, three weeks ago?
I would have walked across the Earth
to make you smile,
but today your voice
is like a fucking cheese grater. So...
Bye!
It's because they've done nothing wrong
and you don't want to break their heart.
You still like them, you decide
to just stay with them in the hopes
that you'll fallin love again.
Spoiler alert! You won't, it's dead.
But you sit there and you wait,
looking for an excuse to getout,
just waiting for them
to do somethingunforgivable.
So you can actually break up with them
with a real excuse
and leave with yourhead held high,
but because unlike you, they'renot
a piece of shit, they won't do that.
So you have to startlowering
your standards for what unforgivable is.
One week in and you're like,
"If they cheat onme, this is perfect.
I can leave with my head held high,
and I will not look like a dick."
Nine weeks later, they're faithful,
and you're like,
"Man, if they buy orange juice
with pulp in it, that is...
I can't live like that."
All I'm asking is, if you've never been
in a situation like that,
in a relationshipwhere you felt trapped,
like, you couldn't get out of it
and it was just easier to stay in it.
All I'm asking is if even
for the briefest ofseconds
have you ever accidentally
caught yourself thinking
how much easier life would be...
if they were to just die?
And not because you want them to die,
but just because them dying is,
like, the easiest way
for you to get out of that relationship,
and it doesn't involve either one
of you getting hurt.
Emotionally.
I've had that thought. I'm not
proud of it. I'm not bragging about it,
but I'm also not denying
that itcrossed my mind.
Having evil thoughts doesn'tmake
you evil, acting on them does.
I don't trust people that
deny adamantly, like,
"No! No, I've never thought that.
Of course I've never thought that."
Really? You've been in love forever?
You've never had anypartner in thepast
where just like the last two weeks
of that relationship...
you fucking hated them?
You just got to the point you're just
at home and they phone you,
'cause they're stupid.
And you don't want to answer the phone
'cause that would involve talking to them,
so you're just waiting until they hang up
so you can get back on Tinder.
And you don't want to answer the phone,
but theonly reason you do is
because that sameevil voice
in the back ofyour head
is telling you that whatthis phone call
actually means
is that somebody, somewhere...
has just found a phone on a body.
You've got to hide the disappointment
in your voice when they answer.
Hello. Aww, baby, it's you.
How are you? What are you up to?
Oh, you're driving?
No, I'll stay on the line. What's up?
What's happening?
Did anyone see my show last year,
by any chance?
[cheering]
That's not a great return ratio,
but thank you nonetheless.
For those of you who didn't see the show,
I spokeabout death a fair bit.
For the first time on stage,
I spoke about my sister Josie.
Josie had cerebral palsy, and she died
when she was seven years old.
I was nine, obviously a very tragic story,
but in the right hands...
fucking hysterical.
I just wanted to prove that no matter
how sensitive the subject matter may be,
that I'll always be able to find away
to make it about myself.
The show was called "Dark"
and thatwas meant to be semi-ironic,
and it'sbecause I genuinelydon't
consider mysense of humor to be dark.
Now that's not my way of saying it isn't.
I've had enoughemails to know that it is.
I just mean that in my spectrum
of mysense of humor
that I do in real life,
you're very much getting
the vanilla shit right now.
I have always had this sense of humor.
I thought it was normal
because it's my parents' sense of humor.
I was raised with it.
It wasn't until I then went out
into thereal world with it
that I find out that my parents
are fucked up people.
My parents will say the most
horrific things
at the most inappropriate times.
And the reason they do this, by the way,
isn't to belittle the victim
or to make fun of thetragedy
or any of those other reasons
nerds will tell you
why people make dark jokes.
The reason they do it is they are trying
to bring a level of humanity... laughter...
Back to a moment that seems to lack it.
Tragedy.
They're trying to make you,
the individual, laugh
in your moment of sadness so just
for the briefest of seconds,
you have a minor moment of respite by
where you forget how shit things are
and you get to have a giggle
with yourself.
But what that doesmanifest itself as
is they say fucked upthings.
Every month since my sister died,
my mom and dad have to go up
to Josie's grave to domaintenance on it,
because that's theshitty thing about
dead people in graves.
It's a very one-sided relationship.
They're very needy, the dead.
And they rarely give back unless
you're delusional or religious.
I could have just said religious.
Uh...
Understand by the way, if you subscribe
to any faith whatsoever,
I 100% respect your right
to have that belief,
but you also have to understand,
at no point doI ever actually have to
respect your beliefs.
It's stupid, and you're wrong.
But...
I do respect your right
to be wrong inpublic.
See if I give a fuck.
No matter how tragic an endeavor may seem
once you repeat that feat multiple times,
you get numb to the feelings.
That's how human emotions work.
There's nothing wrong with it.
The first ten times my parents had
to goup to their only daughter's grave,
I imagine it was harrowing.
The 97th time,essentially just gardening.
And because they didn't want to feel sad
every single time they did it,
what they did was, when they go up there,
they make little jokes just to each other,
just to make each other laugh
in their moments of sadness.
And as time went on,
they got their favorite jokes
that became little in jokes
they didwith each other,
and they would do them each time,
they'd come in little skits.
Eventually, they were just twopsychopaths
laughing beside a grave, but...
They're happy.
But what it also means is that
about every month
since I was about 13 years old.
So after they've been doing it
for acouple years.
I've heard my dad make
the same fuckingdad joke
every month the night before
he has togo upto Josie's grave
and he's so excited for the joke,
by the way.
I cannot stress how happy he is
about doing the joke.
Because it's a dad joke, and he knows
it ruins all of our days.
He lives for this moment.
And I know when it's coming,
he's not subtle.
Of course he's not subtle.
He makes the same face every dad
has ever made since the dawn of time
right when they're about to do the joke.
He just sat at the dinner table,
and he's got that smug top lip,
just quivering
while he waits
for the lull in conversations,
so he can really take a run up
to the setup, just like...
So... [laughs]
So tomorrow's the big day.
We've got to go and deflower your sister.
No, Dad. I don't want any dessert.
You can have it all.
I'm just looking at my mom
waiting for her to divorce him.
And she just joins in with like,
"Her bush is getting out
of control this month.
Neighbors are starting to complain."
I enjoyed talking about Josie on stage
last year for several reasons.
One, it was hilarious.I'm a genius.
Two, it was very therapeutic in a way
to talk about a tragedy
that I suffered when I was young,
but then sort of rationalize it
more as an adult
in a very one-sided narcissistic
group therapy typesituation.
Very cathartic, but that's the thing.
I can do a new show ever year,
that's my rule to myself.
I have to do a new show every year,
I getpeople to return to the shows.
I want to make sure you see new stuff
and I obviously want the material
to be different
because I don't want to have to flog
a dead sister.
Welcome to my favorite joke of the show.
I want this year's show
to be better than last year's show.
Of course I do, like, you always want
the new thing you create to be better
than the old version of it.
Parents, you'll understand that logic.
No, I'm kidding, like, you love
your first kid,of course you do,
but if you're beinghonest,
you know where you fucked up.
We'll just have another one,
we'll hit thisone less.
We'll hit him more, we don't know
where the problems lie.
Josie's death, that was a...
That was a struggle that I'd gone
through in my life,
that I managed to turn into material
to make dark and funny
and poignant, I hope.
But I've done it now.
But if I'm being honest with you,
I don't really have any other struggles.
I really don't, I'm a white, heterosexual
middle-class,
marginally successful,
extremely well-hung man.
Where are my struggles?
I've not even been molested.
Oh, I was dealt a cruel hand.
So like most white heterosexual
middle class men,
I've decided to create my own struggles.
That's what we do.
We see the rest of the world
with your valid struggles
that we also create,
but let's not talk about that.
I've gone for the classics,
alcoholism anddrug addiction,
the cool ones.
Now you can say drugsaren't cool,
but I've never seen a Mormon doing them.
And I really I never thought I'd
drink ordo drugs, I really didn't.
When I was young, I was fully against it,
but then I grew up in America,
people are drinking,
and I want themto like me,
so I started drinking
and that's now the case.
I drink like a goddamn fucking champion.
Same thing happened with drugs.
I used to hate the idea of drugs.
I really did and thenI got into comedy.
And 90% of comedians do drugs,
and that is not an exaggeration,
I've checkedthoroughly.
Right, 90% of comedians do drugs.
No, Daniel, surely that can't be true,
surely not him.
Yes, him, absolute coke fiend.
No, Daniel, not her, she's a mother.
Yes, a terrible one.
Let's follow the train of logic, shall we?
I didn't like alcohol.
I met people who drank alcohol.
Now, I drink alcohol.
I didn't like drugs.
I met people that took drugs.
Now I take drugs.
I've met loads of vegans...
Nah.
And that's why I love vegans,
because vegans are proving
that peer pressure does not work.
What a fucking myth.
Not drinking when your friends
are drinking, oh, that's tough.
Say no to a joint when all
of your friends are high,
it's never been done before.
But eating steak
at a table full of vegans.
[moans]
I didn't know it could taste better.
I am such an insensitive selfish
motherfucker.
If I'm at dinner with any
of my vegan friends,
I will order the bloodiest thing
on themenu,
and then spend the next three minutes
giving it a backstory.
That's mine. Yeah, thank you very much.
Her name was Lucky.
She was seven years old.
She had a little blacksplotch
in the backof her head.
It was in the shape of a love heart.
That's where we put the drill through.
Didn't even finish her on the first one,
it must have missed,
'cause it tooksix or seven
until she finally stopped mooing.
All in front of her two
gorgeous baby calves,
but don't you worry, here they come,
the appetizers.
If you're a vegan and it's personal
to you,this joke's not aimed at you.
Also, if you're the type of vegan that
you will trick your meat-eating friends
into eating vegan dishes by justlying
to us andtelling us there's meat in it,
that is a shit way to play the game,
and I 100% respect it.
It's a real...
it's a real dick move, and I love it,
right?
If you're those types of vegan,
this joke is not aimed at you in any way.
Enjoy the rest of the show.
You're a better person than I am.
Who this joke is specifically aimed at
is the fuckingFacebook vegans.
If you are a Facebook vegan, right,
look into my fucking eyes,
wherever you are.
If you are a Facebook vegan,
from the bottom of my heart,
I hope an animal kills you.
I will not be happy until you
and yourkind die of irony.
And not even a meat-eating animal.
I don't think that's funny enough.
I want you to go on safari.
I want a lion to ignore you,
but then on your way home,
carrying some mangoes,
you just startle a giraffe
and justup-kicks your jaw...
clean through your fucking scalp.
Facebook vegans, you gotta start taking
responsibility for your actions,
because you are the reason idiots like me
think we hate all vegans.
We don't, we just hate you.
But you're bringing the rest
of your people down with your attitude.
Facebook vegans are to veganism
what Isis are to Islam.
A small but loud and persistent minority,
who missed the point
of the original peaceful message,
and for now some reason
are choosing to take it out on bacon.
There are so many valid reasons
for why the world should go vegan,
arguments thatI've got no reply to.
The amount of landmass that ittakes
to raise cattle is astronomical, right?
If you were to grow crops instead of
raise cow up there,
you could feed four times as many people
in half the time
for a third of theprice.
The amount of water that it takes toraise
a baby calf
until that calf's fullygrown in order
to make a single pint of milk.
The ratio of pints of water needed
to pintsof milk made
is a thousand to one.
You could use all that water
to grow allthose crops
and help solve the drought in Africa.
But the thing is...
I've never heard those arguments
come outof a vegan's mouth.
I had to Google those for this joke.
The only argument I have ever
consistently heard
come out of vegans' mouth
is your weakest one and it's this one,
You wouldn't... You wouldn't...
[whimpering]
You wouldn't eat meat
if you had to kill it yourself.
You wouldn't eat meat ifyou had
to kill it yourself.
I wouldn't wear clothes
if I had tomake them myself.
What does my laziness
have to do with anyof this?
You think I'd smoke weed
if I had togrow itmyself? No!
Some kids in Colombia are doing it,
and I'msure they're being paid fairly.
You wouldn't eat meat
if you had to kill it yourself.
You don't know me.
I'd kill you to eat this in peace.
And this hate concerns me,
it does, I'mterrified of it.
'Cause one, I'm wrong.
Two, not only am I wrong.
I know I'm wrong,
yet it's stillmy opinion.That's fucked.
That's an awful way to live your life.
And irrational hate will always
come back to bite you in the ass,
and I'm terrified of how it will manifest
with me, like...
What if one day day, what if, God forbid,
what if one day...
What if I have a vegan kid?
I'm not going to love it.
How could I?
One day I have an 11-year-old son, right.
He's been struggling
with sexualityfor awhile.
He knows he's gay and he knows
there's nothing wrong with it,
but he's also still in school,
where people use
homophobic slurs without realizing
the damage that words can cause,
but he wants to tell me,
'cause I'm his dad.
He loves me. He builds up his courage,
and he comes into my study, and he's like,
"Dad.
Dad.
I'm gay."
I'm like, "Buddy, buddy, Wolverine.
Come here. Hey. Hey.
Mom lost a bet, didn't she?
Yeah, she did.Yeah, she did.
You're small for an 11-year-old. [mumbles]
You'll be fine.
Wolvie, I...
I love you unconditionally,
and even if I didn't
love you unconditionally,
this wouldn't be one ofthe conditions.
Like, I'm not going to pretend to know
what you're going through.
I absolutely don't. As you know,
Dad-Dad loves puss-puss.
But that's fine.
But there's nothing wrong with you.
Like, that's the thing,
there's really no such thing as normal.
Everyone on this planet is different
in a thousand different ways,
and there'sreally
no right or wrong way to be.
Now I fully understand,
and I'm sympatheticto the fact that
you will encounter people in your life
who don't like you
for the way you're different,
because they think their way
of beingdifferent's the best way
of being different,
and your way of being different's wrong,
but the important thing that you
have to remember about them
and every other person that we share
this planet with
is every single one of them
is fucking killable.
And if any of them fuck with you,
I willgut their parents, okay?
Stop crying, I didn't raise a bitch.
Now...
I love you so much,
now go get some dick.Yeah."
My 14-year-old son, he's outside.
He's like, "Oh, Dad's in a good mood.
Can't wait to tell him the news.
Dad. I'm vegan."
Get the fuck out of this house.
That is disgusting.
That is a unnatural.
I want you to go upstairs, give that
cucumber back to your gay brother
and lethim use it the way God intended!
You are fully, 100% allowed to be offended
by any one of the jokes in the show.
That is your right. All I ask is that
if you are offended by one joke,
could you just have
the common fuckingdecency
to be offended by the rest of them?
Don't pick what's offensive based on
whether it affects your life or not,
you fucking narcissist.
But that's how people get offended,
isn't it?
I love that joke, that was hilarious,
'cause I've never experienced that,
but my unclehad that disease,
so you're a dick.
Daniel, I love the fat jokes.
I thought the fat jokes were hilarious
because I'm not fat,so they were
obviously fucking hysterical.
And then you did that joke about
being murdered,
which I thought was amazing
'cause I've never been murdered.
Which is weird, 'cause you've met me.
I'm fucking unbearable.
I'm very aware why people get offended
by comedy.
People take jokes literally.
They take the comedian's jokes
at face value,
and sometimes that's not even
the audience's fault.
Sometimes it's down to the comedian.
Sometimes the performance is lacking,
the irony or the sarcasm
doesn't come through,
but that's the thing you have to remember.
This is all a performance.
It's all a performance.
I'm not like this in real life.
I'd get the shit kicked out of me.
And the whole time it was happening,
I'd be like, "Yeah, this is fair."
But that's the thing about art.
Art issubjective,
and art is open to interpretation.
But just because you interpret
an artist's art in one way
does not necessarily mean that was the way
they intended it to be interpreted.
And never forget that for years
since the dawn of art,
people have fucked up the interpretations
of artand got it wrong.
Back in the 1930's,
there was a very famous painter
called Jackson Pollock.
Jackson Pollock was fucking shit
at art, right?
Oh, couldn't paint for shit.
He was really bad at it, so he went
to modern art, where that's acceptable.
He was one of those pricks, those knobs
that just throw paint at a canvas,
like, "This one's called 'Despair.'"
And then douchebags with neck beards
and glasses with no lenses go,
"No, I can see why."
Jackson Pollock had this exhibition
about 1935,can't remember the date fully,
but he had this big white canvas, right?
And this was the whole bit,
this was the main exhibit,
he just got a big bucket of black paint,
threw it at the canvas, smeared it around
and then put in two little splashes
of red paint.
That was it. Then he fucked off.
So they do this exhibition, there was
an art critic there, which by the way...
lowest form of occupation...
that has ever existed.
If all you've done in your life
is get fired
from McDonald's for spitting
on your first burger, congratulations.
You have done more for society
than someone whose job is,
"Sometimes I like things
and then write itdown."
So they asked this art critic,
this wasteof space.
They go,
"What do you think of this piece?"
And he goes, "Hmm, hmm. Interesting.
I believe that this is a self-portrait
of Jackson."
All right, two points.
One, he's white.
Two, fucking what, cunt?
Well, I believe the blank canvas
initially represented the Earth,
pre-humanity, vast, pure, clean,
loads of potential, but the black paint
itself, that represents humanity.
Random, chaotic, often overlapping,
no start or end in sight,
just constantly moving,
no idea where it'sgonna go
and no idea whenever it's gonna stop.
All we can tell is that
it's constantly repeating its history
and often over-riding it.
And we can deduce that one day it will
eventually consume all of the Earth.
But the two red dots,
these are Jackson.
Small, insignificant,
yet, they stand out
against the rest of humanity.
Now I know it's wrong to judge people
based off two sentences,
but I am willing to bet my house. Vegan.
Never been more certain
of anything in mylife.
Twenty minutes later, Jackson Pollock,
the fucking artist, turns up
"Mr. Pollack, thank you so much
for thiswonderful, wonderful exhibit.
Just a quick question in regards
to themain piece.
Can we just ask you,
what do the two red dots represent?"
And Jackson Pollock on record said...
"What?
Ha!
Huh.
I must have splashed it
when I was painting that one."
Just because you can find meaning
in the art, doesn't necessarily mean
that was the meaning the artist
necessarily intended to be there.
Take into consideration that you might
just be a pretentious fucking cunt, okay?
But I understand though when I say,
like, life is meaningless.
I do not mean that
your life is meaningless.
Your life can have a thousand different
meanings or even just one.
I'd recommendmore thanone
in case you got it wrong.
But to have this core value,
this core belief,
this core meaning to your life
and have it forever
is a stupid way tolive
and really challenging,
especially if it's a belief that
you picked when you were young.
You have to remember, when you're young,
your brain is so maleable, but so...
Just stubborn, that it takes things on
for the rest of your life,
and you're not even aware it's there.
It's your subconscious,
and I say thisfrom experience.
When I was seven years old,
my dad said something to me that to
this day is the reason I will die alone.
Very happily, I may add.
But I was seven years old,
I didn't know what life was.
I didn't know what existence was,
how the fuck would I know?
So I thought I'd ask my dad 'cause
he can fix a computer, so he must know.
So I was like, "Dad, what do we all do?
What's the meaning of life?
Why are we all here?
What... what the fuck?"
And my dad loves his kids, so he wants
to explain to his son in a way
that he'll understand,
but unfortunately, his son's a fuckhead.
So he has to explain it in a way
that a fuckhead will understand,
and he accidentallydid it perfectly,
and it's stuck with me since then.
This is what he said, right?
I'm seven years old.
He goes, "All right, buddy.
Just imagine that your life, my life.
Everyone else's individual life.
Imagine all of our lives are like
our own individual jigsaw puzzles.
As we're going through life, we're just
slowly piecing it together, bit by bit,
based on experiences and lessons
that we've learned,
until we get the bestpicture,
but the thing is
everyone has also lost the box
for their jigsaw.
So none of us know what the image
we're trying to make is,
we're just confidently fucking guessing.
So the best way to do a jigsaw, when you
don't have the image to work off,
is to start from the outside,
the sides and the four corners.
Family.
Friends.
Hobbies/interests.
Job.
Now obviously, as you go through life,
some of these bits are subject to change.
Sometimes you'll make new friends,
and you'll lose contact with old
so you gotta move
this corner around a bit.
Sometimes you'll get a job. That means
you can't have a certain hobbies.
You gotta decide then, "Do I want more
me time or do I want more work time?"
You gotta move the stuff around.
Sometimes you'll have
a family member that dies,
and they'll leave a big hole in your life.
In that moment you'll have to find a way
to fill that void,
otherwise you'll be incomplete forever."
Now, that made perfect sense to me,
because I was seven years old.
I fucking loved jigsaws.
So I was like, "All right, okay.
So once you've got the stuff
on the outside,
what's the main bit of the image?
What we are all working towards?"
And he goes, "Well, that's...
That's the partner piece.
You and this perfect person
who you've never met before
to come out of nowhere,
fit your life perfectly, complete you
and make you whole
for the first time in your life,
much like your mother did for me."
Seven.
Seven years old.
I wish you just said, "Ice cream!"
And wecould have fucked off.
And even though what he said sounds sweet
and whatever,
what it manifested
in my seven-year-old brain was this,
"If you arenot with someone,
you are broken.
If you are not with someone,
you are incomplete.
If you are not with someone,
you are not whole."
And that's not just something my dad
made me feel, that's something that
we as a society have made every single
child bornin the last 40 years feel.
Every Disney princess has a prince,
every prince has aprincess,
every television show or movie
always has a character in it that
doesn't want to be in a relationship.
They're happy with who they are.
But then by the end of the series,
guess what. They were wrong!
They were wrong for wanting to be alone,
what a fucking idiot.
Everyone needs someone, yeah.
They were just a toasty little
marshmallow, weren't they?
It's all to do with love.
Divorce, an entirely common thing
that there is nothing wrongwith.
When you're growing up
and your friends' parents get divorced,
you're told to not talk about it
or mention it to them because it's taboo,
and it is taboo is because every
relationship on the outside is perfect,
because none of us are willing to admit
that none of us know
what the fuck we're doing.
And when you raise children in that world,
where everything points towards love
and everything's perfect on the outside,
when you've raised them
for 18 fucking years,
when we become an adult for the first time
in our late teens and our early 20s,
we're so terrified.
We're so trying to be an adult
that some of us will take the wrong
person, the wrong jigsaw piece
and just fucking jamthem
into our jigsaws anyway,
denying that they clearly don't fit.
Oh, we'll move pieces out the way,
I don't need this hobby,
I don't need this opinion. Mom who?
The bitch with the tits.
What's she done for me recently?
I'm gonna force this fucking person
into our lives
because we'd much rather
have something than nothing.
Then five years later,
you're stood looking at a jigsaw
you don't recognize, being like,
"Ah! There's a fucking cunt
in the middle of this."
Maybe you do meet the perfect person.
Maybe you meet them, you go out.
They make you laugh.
You make them laugh.
They've got a stupid laugh,
but you fucking love it.
They like what you like. They like your
idiosyncrasies. It's great. It's perfect.
Oh, my God, they've completed you.
For three months.
Every relationship is perfect
for three months.
And here's why.
'Cause after three months,
that's when you realize that nobody else
is a jigsaw piece.
Everyone else on this planet is as deep
and as complex and individual as you are,
which means they too have spent
the last20 or so years of their life
working on their own jigsaw puzzle,
in the same way that you've been working
on yours.
You can't suddenly expect them
to give up everything
they've come to achieve tosuddenly
fit into yours in the same way
that you'd be pissed off if they asked you
to sacrifice everything you've done,
suddenly come fit into theirs, but now,
because you like each other
and because you're interested
in each other,
now you have to make a jigsaw together.
And we all know how
fucking annoyingthat is.
But you do it 'cause you're in love
and you're interested,
and maybe for the firstcouple years,
it's great.
It's like, "Oh, my God, you love this bit
of me. I love this bit of you.
Oh, my God, we got the same thing, yeah!"
But time does not equal success.
You can spend five or more years
with someone,
and only then, after all the fun you had,
be looking at the jigsaw and realize
you're both working towards
very different images.
Only then realize that
you want different things.
And in that moment, you have a very,
very difficult question to ask yourself.
One.
Do I admit the last five years
of my lifehave been a waste?
Two.
Do I waste the rest of my life?
55% of marriages end in divorce.
90. Nine Zero. Percent of relationships
that started before they are 30 end.
If those were the stats for surgery,
none of us would fucking risk it.
But because it's love and we're stupid,
we justlie on the operating table like,
"Maybe this time I won't die inside."
My generation has become so obsessed
with starting the rest of their lives
that they're willing to give up the one
they are currently living.
We have romanticized the idea of romance,
and it is cancerous.
People are more in love with the idea
of love than the person they are with.
I am very aware that this is not
a particularly funny bit of the show.
Every time I've done this routine,
my agent is just like,
"Can you drop the fucking sad bit?"
And my answer is "no" for three reasons.
One, my show. Fuck you.
Two, I think it's one of the very few
smart routines I've done. Three...
I know I'm right.
I've had this analogy in my head
since I was seven years old,
but it's always spoken to me because
I'm perpetually single person,
so before I did it on stage,
I wanted to talk tomy friends,
the ones who are alwaysin relationships
to see if it resonated with them
in the same way that it resonated with me.
So I was like, "I've got this analogy.
I learned it when I was young.
It might just sound stupid.
But does this make sense to you
in the same way it does to me?"
Within five months, four of them
had broken up with their partners.
Yeah!
I am not saying it's impossible
to findlove.
All I'm saying is that statistically...
you have not.
All I'm saying is if you're finding it
hard to laugh at this routine,
it's because deep down you don't love
the person you're with.
So either start laughing or enjoy
the awkward car ride home.
From the bottom of my heart,
I believe that 80% of relationships
in the world, and therefore this room,
are horseshit.
A bunch of people who never took time
to learn how to be alone,
therefore neverlearned how
to love themselves,
so you employedsomeone else to do it.
Prove me wrong.
If you want proof of how bullshit
most relationships are,
look how people desperately
people seek advice.
"What's the secret
to a happy relationship?
What's the secret
to a long and successful relationship?"
Here it is, gather around, come on.
Fucking nothing.
It should be as easy as breathing.
You should be nothing without them
and everything with them.
If it gets difficult at any point,
get out,
'cause there's 7.5 billion people
on the planet.You'll find a new one.
That just compromises
the single dumbest thing
I've ever heard of
in my entire life, 'cause I've done it.
I've done it so many times,every time
I'm in arelationship, of course I do it.
Everyone in my family,
extended family tree, met,
married, had kids by the time
they were 25.
Zero divorces anywhere in my family tree.
I'm 26.
I've fucked more people
than my entire family combined.
Thats not good.
I'm not proud of that.
Hey.
So whenever I'm in a relationship,
I'm sodesperate to emulate my elders
to have this successful relationship,
that I'll do what they say.
And I'll compromise
and then I change who I am.
And then for some reason, I hate myself.
Why do I have myself? 'Cause I'm not me.
I'm whoever this fucking person
manufactured. I'm done with it.
Now I'm of the opinion that
if you do not love 100% of who I am,
off you fucking fuck.
All right? Thank you. That's not
arrogance. That's not narcissism.
That's the way every single person
in this room should feel about themselves
because if you do not love100%
of who I am, you do not love me.
You love an idea of me, which you have
falsely fabricated in your head,
and it's not my fault if I do not live up
to those expectations.
You have to love the good with the shit,
mainly because I'm 90% shit.
You have to love 100% of me,
because that's what makes me, me.
If you don't love 100% of who I am,
there's 7.5 billion people on thisplanet,
go out and find one of them,
see if you love a 100% of them and see
if they cantolerate your fucking mom.
Because I'll love 100% of you,
I will.
Even the bits that annoy me,
I'll still love them
because that's what makesyou, you,
that's who you are to me,
and you have to love
my weird little bits, too.
For example, if we're going out
and you don't love the fact that
once a month I shave my asshole
'cause I find it easier to wipe and...
then you don't love me.
I feel I've lost some of you.
I'm going to assume the people I lost,
I'm going to assume that
you're themonsters
that do not wax or shave your assholes.
If you do not wax or shave yourasshole,
sort your fucking life out immediately.
And allow me to clarify,
I don't care where you have body hair.
I really don't. Have as much,
have as little as you like.
It's your body, but be a decent
human being, would you?
It's disgusting not to.
And I can use your own logic against you,
if you were to get poo, human poo,
in the air on your head, don't know how
you did it, but you did, you're a legend.
Would your one and only reaction be to get
a bit of toilet paper folded over and go?
That's clean forever.
I don't need to wash this.
I don't need to cut this out.
I don't need to burn this
with a fucking lighter.
Nah, the magical toilet paper got rid
of all the stuff.
No, you wouldn't.
How's your ass any different?
Shave your fucking assholes.
Just do it.
- [man whistles]
- [Daniel scoffs]
That was one of them farting.
[audience laughing]
I can see a lot of doubters, right.
I'm not done with this bit, by the way,
not even close.
Because some of you won't do it.
Some of you will go home and be like,
"He was wrong." I'm not fucking wrong,
shave your ass. I swear...
Right.
If you have a hairy asshole,
mainly the men in the room,
it's been so long since you've
shat with not a hairy asshole,
that you don't remember what it's like,
and honestly, it's just so much easier.
'Cause if you've shat
with a hairy asshole,
when you wipe, it's kind of like trying...
Brush crunchy peanut butter out of a rug.
Like, you can't...
Listen to the fucking truth.
You're getting some of it, but you're just
moving bulks of it around.
You're clumping bits of the rug together,
this bit isalways going to
smell like peanut butter.
But once you shaved the...
Oh, my God! The first time I shaved
my butthole, I went for a poo.
Afterwards, when I wiped,
I checked the toilet paper.
It was so clean, I thought I'd missed.
It saves time. It saves effort.
It saves paper.
Vegans, you should be on this.
My ex-girlfriend was without a doubt
the single worst human being I've ever met
in mylife.
Her hobbies were manipulation
and general cunt-ering.
Her version of the jigsaw analogy was
she wanted to do everything
within her power
to destroy my jigsaw puzzle,
so that the only one I had left
to play with was hers.
She was a vindictively intelligent woman
and spiteful to the core.
She created this perfect person.
This act that she acted out in public
who everyone fell in love with,
my friends fell in love with,
my family fell in love with,
who I fell in love with.
She was flawless,
and then behind closed doors,
she was entirely different because
she knew I wouldn't have an argument
if I then went out into the real world.
I'd be like, "She's being a bitch."
They're like, "She's fucking perfect.
How are you ruining this, Daniel?"
She knew I wasn't like this on stage.
She knew how insecure I was.
She would find my insecurities and
then she would then use them against me
to make me doubt myself.
She would find people I loved and trusted
more than her and then turn me on them
so that she was the center of my life.
She was jealous of the most insane things.
She was jealous of my relationship
with my father.
I've not fucked my dad in years.
And even then, that wasn't love,
that was just raw sexual chemistry.
[Giggling like a school girl]
Jeez.
My best friend in the whole wide world
is a woman called Jean.
We've been best friends
for about eight or nine years.
We've lived together for five.
She's like a sister to me, she really is.
A lot of people don'tbelieve
it's platonic, but it is,
the ideaof each other naked
makes us both very sad.
But we love each other, we do,we've just
been together through most things.
Two months into my relationship
with my ex-girlfriend,
she was like, "Sometimes I feel like
you love Jean more than me."
And I was like, "Baby, no!
All the time!"
Every hour of every day I love her
more than I love you.
Because she's put the ground work in.
You don't get to suck a dick
and go number one, you sociopath."
Except I didn't say that, did I?
What I actually said was, "No, baby.
You're right. I'm sorry.
If that's how you feel, I'll...
I'll talk to Jean less ifthat's case,
'cause I should be focusing onyou.
If you don't want me talking to my dad
as much, I'll just talk to you.
'Cause you're right,
it should be about you."
And of course, everyone else,
my family and society agreed.
Sacrifice. If someone doesn't love
100% of who youare,
change who you are until they do.
So I changed myself.
My friends didn't like me as much,
because of course they fucking didn't,
but they wouldn't interrupt and stop it,
because I was happy on the outside,
because I was keeping up
the fucking illusion.
And I was so sad.
I was so miserable.
There were so many parts of her that
I hated, but I would never even dare
to have the audacity to change them.
In hindsight, I know what they are.
She was vegan.
Yeah, now the first 20 minutes
of the show make sense, don't they? Yeah!
Uh...
For the first time in my life,
I was fucking sad.
For the first time in a very, very...
I hated my... I remember just one day
standing in the shower...
just being like, "Is this it?"
Like, "Is this my life?
Am I vegan?"
That's what I came up with a joke about
patiently waiting for her to die.
That's how desperate I was.
And she's not gonna. She's vegan.
That cunt's gonna live forever.
Then one day, I finally broke up with her.
I finally snapped. I couldn't do it.
Oh, my God, the relief and the joy
and the happiness felt on that day.
I strongly recommend you break up with
your partners right now
just to feel even a bit
of what I felt that day.
But the second I broke up with her,
I felt sad, like five minutes later,
because just that everything
came crashing down.
Why am I happier when I'm alone?
Why am I happier when I'm not
with someone?
Dad says the center of your jigsaw
should be about this partner piece.
Why am I happier
when there's not one there?
That's when I realized the bit
my dad got wrong but right
in his own adorable little way.
He said the center of the jigsaw is about
partner piece, and he's right and wrong.
It's happiness, find something
that makes you happy.
Make it the center of your life.
And then everything else will
naturally fit in around it.
Is just so happens that for my dad
his happiness piece and his partner piece
are the same piece.
They're my mother.
My mom and dad have been married
for about 30years now and to this day,
disgustingly in love with each other.
Like, it's really sickening.
My dad is adorably smitten by my mom.
Like, every morning he wakes up in bed,
he rolls over and he looks at her,
and he just can't believe his luck.
And she's the same every morning.
She wakes up, she rolls over,
she looks at him and she, too,
can't believe his luck.
He's not perfect.He's loud.
He's obnoxious,
but he's a good man
with a massive cock and...
And she knows what she wants,
good on her.
You get that dick, Mom,
you earned it. Yeah!
Get it, son, yeah!
[laughing]
But that's the truth for some people
and not for everyone.
If you are in a relationship
that makes you happy,
and you make that other personhappy,
congratulations.
Keep that up. That's amazing.
But to all the single people in the room,
the perpetually single people,
the people inrelationshipsthey would
rather not be in,
but it's just too easy to stay in.
I mean this.
You have to learn to love yourself
before you can allow someone else
to do it as well.
That's it. There's nothing wrong
with being single.
There's nothing wrong with being alone.
There's nothing wrong with taking time
for yourself to work out who you are
before you go out there
into the dating world,
because how can you offer who youare
if you don't know who you are?
There's nothing wrong with being selfish
for a bit
because you've got the rest of your life
to be selfless.
If you only love yourself at 20%,
that means somebody can come along
and love you 30%.
You're like, "Wow, that's somuch."
It's literally less than half.
Whereas if you love yourself 100%,
a person that falls in love with you
has to go above and beyond
the call of duty to make you feel special.
That's something every one of us deserves,
and that doesn't mean you're nothappy.
You can get your happiness
from hundreds of different people
and not even in a slutty way.
Now don't get me wrong,
the slutty wayis fucking fun.
Right? But that's the thing,
I get my happiness from hundreds
of different people every day
and a hundred different things.
Like, this is my job.
I never in my wildest fucking dreams
ever thoughtI would get to this stage
of my fucking career.
I was used to just telling fucking
wank jokes in the bottom of pubs, right?
I never thought I'd get to do this.
Every single one of you,
it adds a bit to the happiness.
All my friends from all over the world
adds a little bit,
so instead of one main bit in the middle
of the jigsaw, it loads little pieces.
If one of them goes away,
that's a bit sad, but I can replace it.
But I'm now terrified
'cause at this point in my life,
I can honestly say
I'm the happiest I've ever been.
My jigsaw is complete. That's not good,
'cause it's not forever.
I'm 26. I've peaked far too soon.
The next couple shows after this
are gonna be pretty fucking brutal.
But I'm terrified having this perfect
jigsaw at the moment
because it's gonna make me more selfish.
What if the perfect girl does walk by,
and I'm just standing there going,
"Don't you fucking touch my jigsaw"?
[hisses]
I'll glue this down. I'll varnish this.
You'll fucking see.
Even if I were to get into a relationship,
find that "perfect" person...
I don't know if I'd ever be happy
or secure.
Being with one person,
trusting that person because as I know
and as you know,
it is impossible to tell whether
the person you are with
loves you from thebottom
of their heart...
or whether they're just patiently waiting
for you to die.
This is not the happiest ending to a show,
but with this show, this very one,
I've created true happiness.
Because in August last year,
I ended a 13-year marriage.
Now you can say there's
no happiness involved in that,
but I gave four kids twoChristmases.
I'm a fucking god!
If in the next couple of weeks or months,
you and your partner...
if you end up breaking up,
and it's because of anything I said
during the show,
like, if that jigsaw analogy just plays
over and over and over again in your head,
which it should because
it's fucking excellent.
And the thing about doubt,
doubt isn't a flower. Doubt's a wheat.
I don't need to water it.
It'll just slowly spread through
your brainover the next couple months.
One day your partner will be all nice.
They'll bring you breakfast in bed.
And they'll be like, "I got you some
orange juice," and it'll have pulp in it.
And you'll be like,
"Fuck, Sloss was right."
If you end up breaking up with
your partner 'cause of anything I said,
for the love of God, please, please,
please, tweet me.
Because I'd love to know.
Since August 2016,
I've been doing this show.
I've traveled around the world.
I have been notified by Facebook,Twitter
and Instagram that I have successfully
and officially ended 72 relationships.
144 lives saved.
Where's my Nobel Peace Prize?
To any people watching at home,
'cause that's just been on a live tour.
When this goes out live,
I'm fucking saving this place.
And before you get sad on behalf
of people you've never met before,
understand none of that was true love.
I'm not hereto break up true love.
I never would want to,
and I don't think I possibly could.
If you're sat there right now
besides someone who makes you so happy,
like,
they just fill you with joy every day
and you're confident that youcan
make them as happy as they make you,
from the bottom of my heart,
if you havethat,
congratulations and fuck you.
All I'm saying is
question fucking everything.
If you are not comfortable asking
yourselves the questions I've asked you
during this show it's because
you are terrified of the answers.
The worst thing you can do with your life
is spend it with the wrong human being.
There are 7.5 billion people
on this planet,
and you found yoursoul mate 20 miles
from where you live.
Seems like a bit of a cowinkydink to me.
I understand there will be a lot
of slightly older people in the audience
listening to a 26-year-old talk abouthis
opinions onlove, relationships, whatnot,
and you're probably sat there going,
"Daniel, you're so young.
You're so naive, you are.
You're so cynical.
I know that, darling,
because I used to be like you.
I used to believe the same things
when I was your age. I totally did.
I used to be like, 'There's no such thing
as love, ' and then I met this one.
And we've been together ever since,
and it has been a journey.
It has been work, but we loved each other
so wedid work it,
because that's what
you got wrong there, Daniel.
It is about work. It is about graft,
but it's worth it in the end,
because it's us together now.
We got these two beautiful children
that have grown up,
and they're going through it, too.
And I understand, Daniel.
I know why you feel that way,
but one day you will find it.
You will find true love, and I can't wait
for you to get it for yourself."
If that's you, if that's how you feel...
I hope you're right.
I really do. I want to be a husband.
I want to be a dad
more than anything in the world.
Because I guess if you're not right...
I guess if you're wrong,
the only other alternative is
that when you were my age,
you were so terrified of being alone
that you forced yourself to love someone.
I've been Daniel Sloss.
Have a wonderful life.
[applauding and cheering]
Oh, God.Thank you. Thank you. Fuck yes.
Yeah!