Derek Mitchell is currently on tour with his stand-up and character show Double Dutch, an  exploration of cultural clashes between his Dutchness, Englishness and Americanness and how he's evolved from being an outsider to a sort-of insider. Here he shares his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

The Maria ​Bamford Show

As most Chortle readers will know, Maria Bamford is your favourite comedian’s favourite comedian, which is a title you can really only acquire off the back of decades of grind and craft-honing and being on the road, and building an audience of people who love the towering inventiveness, honesty and unmatched funny of your work.

My specific Bamford pick is her (completely ahead of its time) web series from the 2000s called The Maria Bamford Show, which was DIY and pre-YouTube in an extremely glorious way. 

She’d do shot-reverse-shot style sketches playing her family members and other characters from her act in conversation with each other, with strange interludes shot mostly on her bed and on the floor around it. It captured the masterfully crafted brilliance of her material in combination with the self-deprecating unwieldiness of her stage persona perfectly. The style of the video production has hugely influenced me as a content creator and editor, too.

To my pubescent brain, it was comedy kryptonite. Set-up-punchline stand-up has never really resonated much with me unless it’s contextualised by characters or a strong persona. So Bamford, who does it ALL, scratched my brain in a way that is probably partially the reason I’m a comedian now – and specifically the kind of comedian that I’ve become (character, storytelley, heartthrob). 

When I discovered The Maria Bamford Show on YouTube years after it initially came out, I ripped the sound from the videos and would listen to the episodes on repeat on my iPod nano and can still recite most of the material by heart. I love her so very much.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic

It’s the summer of 2009. I’m between sophomore and junior years at Downers Grove North High School in the South West Chicago suburbs. I drive my dad’s 1993 Toyota Camry to the gated community on the north side of town where my friend Evan works as a porter. He’s the only one working, there’s nobody around, and we drink ancient Bacardi Breezers from the mini-fridge in the front office. 

A DVD of Sarah Silverman’s first special – the one that made her a comedy superstar in America – is lying next to a small TV. We pop it in and my brain changes for permanent.

There’s something about the way that Silverman balances persona, shrewd commentary, absurdity, hyperbole, pathos and goofiness that makes her one of the GOATs. Truly. And it seems so effortless when she does it. 

There are jokes in that special I still think of every day of my life: ‘My friend has two kids, they’re 9 and 11. And he made them those ages to commemorate 9/11,’ or ‘My great grandma died, she was 96. So we obviously suspect foul play,’ or ‘You can’t smell yourself.’

The truth is, lots of the material in that special has aged like milk (no offence to milk). But as Silverman says, ‘comedy is not evergreen.’ And she lives by example – she has owned and accounted for the stuff she’s done in the past that is very uncool today. Stuff that was insensitive more than it was funny, that was setting out to do one thing but achieving another entirely. She has zero problem saying: ‘Yep, I can see why that was a problem, why it hurt people, I’m sorry and I’m not gonna do it again.’

And (shockingly?) she continues to be the best of the best. Her material has transformed with her and with the times. She proves that it is possible to be funny and empathetic and understanding of others, especially people who are vulnerable in ways you’re not. 

While many of her peers have dug their heels in, claimed ‘wokeness’ is killing comedy and doubled down on lazy, hateful premises that rehash the same stereotypes 1990s sitcoms traded in… Silverman has sublimely run lap upon comedy lap around them. Proving she’s funnier and sharper than ever. And that the genius of her work is in its adaptability and her lifelong commitment to the craft. 

Mrs Doubtfire

I was raised going to church multiple times per week, and I frequently volunteered with my mom at the shelter run out of our church for unhoused people in the area. I liked to hang out with the guests in our church’s TV room, which had a small library of Robin Williams movies on VHS. 

All of the regulars at the shelter – mostly men who seemed ancient to me at five or six years old but were likely closer to my age now – loved anything Robin Williams. And especially Mrs Doubtfire.

The scene where Daniel/Mrs Doubtfire’s breastplate catches on fire, or when she plunges her face into the cake, or the restaurant scene where she gives Pierce Brosnan the Heimlich, were the first comedy things I ever saw that tickled me in a deep, gut level way, convincing me there was nothing better on earth than that feeling. It also delighted these men on the sofas who seemed to be going through a hard time in their lives, and I registered that in an unconscious way I think.

This of course is part of Robin Williams’ legend: as a stand-up and actor he was improvisational, authentic, witty, characterful and energetic in a basically unmatched way that seemed to get to the core of what it is to be human. And virtually everyone was electrified by it. 

Mrs Doubtfire is biblical for me: I can recite the whole film, and though there are scenes in it that haven’t aged well, I really believe that even in his broadest, goofiest work (and let's face it: in less capable hands, Mrs. Doubtfire could have been a disaster) every one of his performances is rooted in a deeply generous humanity.

On this note, I also believe that Williams’ performance in The Birdcage is maybe the greatest example of a straight guy playing a gay character in a funny, sensitive and real way. That is possible! And I also believe that there’s a queerness to Robin’s sensibility (Mrs. Doubtfire is about drag! Harvey Fierstein is a living legend!!) that made me feel safe and seen from an extremely young age.

Seinfeld

Seinfeld was the sitcom in my household and wider community that the grown-ups would quote, and the kids would watch so we could keep up with the references. And by keeping up with it (I’ve seen every episode at least a dozen times and there are 180 of them) I absorbed a love and enthusiasm for the show’s hallmark tight plotting and genius for weaving together three discrete, larger-than-life (but somehow still grounded and quotidian) storylines into a satisfying third act that brings it all home, and in which not a single character manages to learn a lesson or do something good.

I believe, for example, that the Seth Macfarlane multiverse owes everything to Seinfeld. And the show’s commitment to exploring avenues of funny using its cast of four characters, who perfectly balance one another in sensibility, style, flaws, wants and performer backgrounds, is what makes it as much a show for comedy writing nerds, as for those who love great comedic performances.

For me personally, it’s all about Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She was the only woman in the main cast, and with a few exceptions (Robin Williams, Fred Armisen, David Sedaris) most of my favourite funny people are women. It’s not a conscious choice – it’s a gut-level thing I think.

It goes back to watching Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer and Cheri Oteri be radically wild and free in their huge character choices on 90s SNL. They chose to make themselves grotesque and sexual and through that they tapped into a freedom that made me feel freer too as a young gay kid who felt so caged in and worried about what the world would do to me (I’m aging myself, but gay representation in my childhood amounted to the film Philadelphia).

And Julia Louis-Dreyfus – one of the best comic actors ever! – fully embodies this freedom to me. She can make anything funny. She makes unlikeable characters likeable in a deliciously self-deprecating, comedically musical and utterly joyful way. And she’s decorated for it. Of everyone from Seinfeld, only Larry David comes close to matching her prolific success since the show ended in 1998. Watching her on Seinfeld made me want to be a performer.

Amy Sedaris’ David Letterman interviews

The first time I ever realised I could be funny was with my friends Claire and Ben during the summer before 8th grade, when I was 13. Up until then I was a self-serious and pretentious kid who told the teacher when other kids were breaking the rules (in my defence, I don’t think this was because I cared about the rules so much as I wanted to endear myself to the teacher in order to befriend her). But in a single moment I said something the way my dad – who was very funny – would say it, and Claire and Ben laughed. And that moment changed my life.

I’ve been finding my own funny ever since then. And I really started to get to the bottom of it when my dad died about six years later. Everything fell apart for a while when that happened, and that chaos partially contributed (I know now) to me leaving for Europe. But in those months of deep depression and searching I found Amy Sedaris.

I love all her work. Strangers with Candy. At Home with Amy Sedaris (featuring Cole Escola whose early sketch work should also be on this list… I did not manage to see them in Oh Mary! and I’ll likely regret this for the rest of my life). Sedaris’s books Simple Times and I Like You are masterpieces.

But it’s her Letterman interviews, of which there are close to two dozen on YouTube, spanning the early 2000s to the late 2010s, in which her genius as an improviser is on full, radiant display. She’s a miner of darkness and trauma who polishes these things and turns them into light. They’d often call her when a bigger celebrity would cancel at the last minute, and she’d gladly fill in and undoubtedly prove more entertaining than any A-lister could ever dream of being.

I’d never seen someone say such horrifying, disturbing things with such a disarming, breezy charm. In my own grief and the years of trauma that led up to it, I felt freed and seen by Sedaris, and I wanted to be able to do what she did. She is an artist through and through and she’s one of the most inspiring people in the world to me.

Dear Joan and Jericha

My sketch partner Kathy Maniura and I made friends with another sketch duo at the Fringe in 2018 – we were both doing shows at Just the Tonic and trauma-bonded over abysmal ticket sales and a shared love of Julia Davis (I’d just discovered Nighty Night). They recommended we check out Dear Joan and Jericha.

The first five minutes of the first series of the podcast are I think the funniest five minutes of improv I’ve ever heard. And among their many achievements, I think Davis and Vicki Pepperdine prove that improv is a vital comedy genre that can rise above the corporate American zip-zap-zoppiness for which it has unfortunately come to be known.

Again, I’m not sure there has ever been as violently sexual, dark, disturbing and offensive (and of course absolutely tears-shooting-out-of-my-eyes hilarious) a thing ever recorded – and yet, it somehow also manages to be feminist and have so much to say about hateful, internalised stuff that we direct out at the world around us.

The fictional world they create within the podcast is absurd yet familiar, heightened yet completely banal. It’s a delicious space to exist in with two of the UK’s most original comedic minds for three series (to date). 

And the premise is simple: they’re middle-class agony aunts of a certain age giving people advice about sex and relationships. The simplicity of the setup allows them to journey to the comedic stratosphere and back in mere minutes. It’s a masterclass. And I’m counting down the days until they release a fourth series. Or make a TV show. And maybe also please let me play a tree or dog in it or something? I’ll do anything.

• Derek Mitchell is touring the UK and Ireland with Double Dutch until June 13. Dates.