Belfast-born comedic virtuoso Vittorio Angelone has certainly hit the right note after starting his career in 2018. Since then, he has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, created a popular podcast and is now preparing to go on the road with his brand-new tour.
However, performing stand-up was not always the plan. Prior to embarking on a career in comedy Angelone (27) was a classically trained musician.
“I moved over to London when I was 18 to study as a classical percussionist. I performed at the Proms a couple of times and the Royal Albert Hall which was very exciting and I’ve also played with the Ulster Orchestra.
“But after a while I realised that I wasn’t going to see very many classical music concerts - that wasn’t what I was spending my money or time on, but I was going to quite a lot of stand-up comedy shows.
“So, I had this strange experience of being onstage performing with an orchestra and looking out into the audience and not really understanding why any of them were there because I wouldn’t pay to see it which felt quite strange,” he explains.
“I thought, if I wanted to be a performer, I should be doing something that I want to consume which is what ultimately led to me doing stand-up comedy.”
Angelone started his career as a comic whilst at university. His first gig was compering a comedy night during freshers’ week in his students’ union in front of 300 peers. With no jokes prepared he launched his unique style of comedy onto an unwitting audience - a rather reckless strategy which seems to have paid off.
“I kind of just made it all up on the spot, which is incredibly stupid in hindsight, but I think I benefited from that kind of naivety because it allowed me to take the risk.”
After several more stints at the students’ union and some open mic nights in clubs across London he decided to start running his own comedy shows as an easier way to get stage time.
“I used to run an open mic night in the basement of a kebab shop which was actually a fun room to perform in and it really helped me find my feet on stage and work out how to do it all,” he says.
In 2022 he took his first solo show, Translations, to the Edinburgh Fringe and after a successful run was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.
“It’s a very helpful nod, I think a lot of people try to claim that they don’t care about awards or reviews or any kind of critical acclaim but at that point I’d been putting stuff out on the internet for quite a long time.
“I had a podcast that wasn’t going very well, and I had stand up clips and sketches that weren’t doing great and just felt slightly like I was banging my head against the wall so just to have that nod of approval from the industry was very heartening.”
Although he didn’t win the award, the nomination was enough to spark his desire to make comedy his full-time career. Now, two years later, he is one of comedy’s fastest rising stars, preparing to play various sold-out venues across Ireland and Britain on his upcoming tour Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!
“The name comes from a professional 10-pin bowler in America called Pete Weber and I don’t want to give too much of the show away but essentially Pete Weber is my hero, and he also is the star of one of my favourite viral videos where he says the phrase ‘Who do you think you are? I am!’.
“More broadly the show is also called that because it’s a show about identity and figuring out what makes me me and what makes everybody else everybody else.”
Throughout his career Angelone’s material has been described as towing the line between edgy and offensive. However, unlike many comedians who enjoy getting a rise out of their audiences he shows a great degree of maturity and self-awareness when telling his jokes.
“It’s just about kindness, isn’t it? I think that there’s this odd thing that a lot of comedians do where they talk about groups of people as a bit of an abstract concept, but any time I speak about any kind of group in society it’s always from my own personal experience of interacting with those people.
“I don’t agree with comedians who say that someone like me shouldn’t talk about race at all, but I think it has to come from a place of personal experience.”
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He credits his natural ability to discuss sensitive topics on stage in an inoffensive way to growing up in Belfast.
“In Belfast there’s a fairly obvious division in society that bubbles under the surface and growing up, our solution to that was to make jokes about it - that kind of sectarian banter of pointing at the thing bubbling under the surface and acknowledging that it’s there in a humorous way.
“There is a new wave of comedians from Northern Ireland coming through that are not quite so hell-bent on talking about the Troubles and sectarianism, but I think talking about those things was an extremely valuable and necessary thing to do,” he continues.
“I work really hard on my jokes to make sure that they aren’t nasty or mean - what I want to do is take the audience to a place in their mind where they might not feel comfortable and then get a laugh out of them which will hopefully make them less afraid of thinking about that thing.”
In addition to his success on the circuit, Angelone has also built up a huge online following by posting clips from his weekly podcast with fellow Irish comedian Mike Rice, entitled Mike and Vittorio’s Guide to Parenting.
“I had my own podcast for a few years and more often than not it was me interviewing somebody else.
“But it just never really picked up, but I’d done a couple of episodes with Mike and thought it was really easy and we bounced off each other very well and it just seemed to be quite a naturally funny dynamic.
“So, I convinced Mike to come round to my flat once a week and record our grubby little podcast from the sofa, with I think the stupidest name in the podcast game and it’s gone very well. People are actually listening to this one and it’s very exciting.”
Angelone also confirmed that the podcast will not take a break whilst he is on tour.
“There will be no break,” he declares.
“There will be an episode out every single week. We’re both going on tour in the next few months so we’ve basically agreed to keep Mondays and Tuesdays free so we can get a few pre recorded and ready to go.
“No rest for the wicked,” he laughs.
The tour runs from January 30 until May 3. When asked how he plans to spend the rest of 2024 after four months of touring Angelone says: “I’ll probably go to the Edinburgh Fringe again, I think it’s a wonderful place to do stand-up comedy in a creative way.
“In the next few months, I’ll have vinyl of my first show coming out which is exciting and I’m working on a YouTube show called Fin vs The Internet with comedian Fin Taylor and director Horatio Gould which has been really fun.
“I have a few other bits and bobs going on - I’m very bad for saying no to things, but hopefully I’ll just keep making fun and interesting stuff.”
