Improv comedian Aaron Weight graduates to stand-up
Aaron said his anxiety "stretches back to around 2010 - that's when I first started noticing it". "I used to have really bad social anxiety which meant in some of my old jobs I would never go out and socialise and I would turn down invites," he said."Since I've got older I've gotten over that a bit; it's still bad these days but better than it used to be."Aaron is still yet to be given an official diagnosis but he has been "through the wellbeing pathways" a number of times.Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome and the NHS website says it is common to have it alongside panic disorder and phobias.Has it held Aaron back in his comedy career?"Yeah, unfortunately it has. Just the other day I had to cancel going to a spot because my mental health was so bad," he said."It was run by people who I have come to see as good friends and that's what led me to make the decision so late, because I really did not want to let them down, but it got to a point on that day where I felt like I just really could not do it."It would have made me even more erratic on stage. I felt it would have let everyone else down and made my mental health worse."Even just taking the plunge and putting myself forward for things takes a bit of getting over because the anxiety is also a bit of a barrier there."
'Aggressive industry'
Insert Laughter Here, the comedy company that Weight runs, has enjoyed success with its Spin-A-Play shows that are built on the actors' ability to improvise on a theme determined by the spin of a wheel.Aaron is committed to gaining more experience and exposure on the stand-up scene.He said: "Everyone has been so supportive and wonderful."I've been fighting that anxiety, because with improv I don't have to worry - there is no script and whatever I say is right, whereas stand-up is a bit more crafted and you have to be more considerate with what you say."Comedy seems like such an aggressive industry and, don't get me wrong, it can be, but the people I have met in the few shows that I have done have shown me that it doesn't have to be that way."
There is a wealth of comedic competition across the East of England and Aaron said it was really easy to throw his hat in the ring for opportunities, but much harder to be considered for them because of the volume of people vying to do it. "This is like my second side quest," he said."I have a boring day job; my improv is like my first side quest and the comedy is my superhero identity. "At the weekends I can be silly, I can mess around and I can be colourful."
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Stamp always looked magnificent on screen – 'bone structure…my father had it too', he once explained, in a suitably offhand fashion – but what he does here is to turn Hardy's superficially seductive but weak and vacuous rake-sergeant into a figure of such gravitational draw that it's impossible not to imagine the entire cast, male and female alike, signing up to enlist if he'll be their officer in charge. 3. Superman II (1980) 'Kneel before Zod!' Whichever version of the Superman sequel you watch – the campier, Richard Lester-directed one or the reconstructed, statelier Richard Donner incarnation – there can be little doubt that Stamp's return to mainstream cinema proved to be well worth it. It was, of course, a payday gig, but the actor needed the work, remarking that, when he received the offer of the part, 'I remember opening the envelope, and there was a tremor in my hand. I think I knew that my life was about to change.' What Stamp does so well is to underplay the character of General Zod (in stark contrast to Michael Shannon in Man of Steel), giving him a curiously detached attitude to humanity that makes the comic-book villain seem just as inimitable a Stamp character as anyone else that he played before or afterwards. He acts everyone else – even Gene Hackman – off the screen. 4. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) Stamp expressed a certain degree of hesitation over playing the trans character Bernadette in the camp, outrageous comedy Priscilla, not because of any latent homophobia but because, touchingly, he was unsure that he was the right actor for a role that was miles away from anything that he had ever done before. The director Stephan Elliott's belief that the English thespian would do a magnificent job in the central part of Bernadette was swiftly vindicated. While his co-stars Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving camp it up to high heaven – as the picture demands – as a pair of drag queens, Stamp's still, often very affecting performance counts as one of this fine actor's very best. It was once hoped that he would reprise the role in a sequel, but alas events have terminally intervened on that score. 5. The Limey (1999) Stamp appeared in two outstanding gangster pictures as a mature actor, this and Stephen Frears' masterly, enigmatic The Hit. Either could have appeared on this brief list, but while The Hit perhaps belongs ultimately to John Hurt, there is no doubt that in Soderbergh's full-throated homage to Sixties crime cinema, Stamp is the USP throughout. There were undeniably times in the Eighties and Nineties – and beyond – where it felt as if the actor was simply bestowing off-the-peg gravitas to projects that barely deserved him. But here, he was allowed to channel far more profound emotions, and his performance as a scrappy avenging angel, by times tender, feral and primal, has to rank as one of his very greatest.
