'I can only express some things in Welsh'

Elis James on doing stand-up in his native tongue

Elis James has shot his first stand-up special… in Welsh.

Rhacs Jibiders will air on Welsh language channel S4C on December 19, with an English subtitled version available on BBC iPlayer the same day.

The bilingual star of Josh and Crims told Chortle that the experience had 'reinvigorated his love of stand-up'.

James grew up in Carmarthen with Welsh as his first language and presented the S4C music show Bandit before becoming a comedian. But he'd only performed about a dozen club sets in his native tongue before the channel approached him.

So he wrote and intensely previewed an hour of new material over a fortnight in September, gigging every night until shooting the special in Cardiff, 'listening back and improvising to myself in the car, which was an odd experience'.

He recalls that: 'It felt like a super-charged Edinburgh, all of the emotions were heightened. Once the show started taking shape, the fact I was talking about my childhood in the language those things had happened in, meant I got this adrenaline rush I hadn't felt from English stand-up in ten years.

'I'd drive back to London or my parents' house, music blaring and banging the roof of my car because I couldn't believe it was working, not be able to sleep, then get up and do it all again. By the end, I was utterly shattered'.

The first warm-up show had not gone well because 'I panicked, thinking I'd bitten off more than I could chew and that I'd have to give the money back. I started wondering if I've lived in London too long - all these questions of identity.

But 'the second gig was all right and by the third, it was as easy as doing it in English. Though I compered the BBC New Comedy Awards at the Bath Komedia halfway through the run and was forgetting basic English on stage.'

Reflecting upon his adolescence and the frustrations of helping his partner, fellow comic Isy Suttie, learn Welsh, as well as raising their baby daughter bilingual, made him feel like a new comic, James said.

'My first Edinburgh show in 2009 was my circuit sets to that point but I was living a sort of double life,' he explains. 'There were things I couldn't discuss in English that I could only express through the medium of Welsh.

'So when I got round to writing this, it was like a second attempt at writing a first show but with ten years worth of live experience to draw from. I was able to talk about Welsh nursery rhymes and the treasure hunts I went on with Sunday school in the early 1990s'

At the same time, he found himself cultivating a more expressive delivery. 'I found that Welsh language audiences really like the big act out with big characters,' he observes. 'So I put in more and more and made Eddie Murphy look like Gary Delaney!'

James is disdainful of S4C's comedy output from his youth, saying: 'It was very, very old-fashioned, men dressing up as women and covering each other in shaving foam' so he said he 'very much approached Welsh language stand-up with English comedy sensibilities'.

He's also eager to shoot further specials for the channel as it embraces contemporary stand-up. Tudur Owen shot the first Welsh language hour for S4C earlier this year and more are being lined up.

Production company Zeitgeist Entertainment are making a third series of of the stand-up showcase Gwerthu Allan (Sold Out) next year, featuring Noel James, Rhodri Rhys, Jenny Collier, Dan Mitchell, Phil Evans, Steffan Alun and Dan Thomas, and plan to shoot three more specials in 2017.

Here's a clip from Rhacs Jibiders: