Trendy culchies needed for Vittorio Angelone’s comedy tour ‘Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!’

“SOME audiences feel like your mum and some audiences feel like your best mate,” explains stand-up comedian Vittorio Angelone of his experience touring his show, Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!

Inspired by a viral clip of American 10-pin bowler Pete Weber (who uttered the shows titular line) and complete with two huge inflatable bowling pins (which Vittorio tells me were custom made in a bouncy castle factory in China) the Belfast comic uses this backdrop to explore the theme of identity which he admits “sounds a bit mad if you haven’t seen the show”.

“Thank you for picking up that the show’s about identity, some people just think it’s a load of nonsense,” he chuckles over Zoom from his home in London.

“I think you can get your identity from within, but you can also get it from how other people perceive you, like with the Pete Weber clip, and that’s what I wanted to explore with the show.

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“When I first started working on it and trying it out in little venues in London I would pass around a notebook and get the audience to describe me in three words.

“Then I’d read through them on stage to try and figure how people were perceiving me.”

Despite being a self-described “nice, middle-class boy” from south-east Belfast, Vittorio admits this wasn’t amongst the most common traits noted down by his audience.

“Small came up a lot,” he says, almost in disbelief.

“I had a real argument with a woman in the front row about it – I said, ‘I’m six foot tall’, she said, ‘no you’re not, I’m six foot tall’ and I was like ‘well get on the stage’ – and we were the same height, and she was blown away.”

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Half Italian, half Irish and “sometimes Northern Irish”, Vittorio describes his own identity as “quite complicated”, but says discussing it on stage has helped to reassure him that “that’s OK”.

“What’s exciting about stand-up is that if there’s something you’re a little insecure about or feel a bit vulnerable to say, when people laugh it’s almost like this feeling of everyone going, ‘I get it’.

“And then that gives you a feeling of, ‘Oh thank God other people feel like this.’”

Of course a big part of Vittorio’s identity is his comedy, which has been described as “toeing the line between edgy and offensive” particularly when he’s ribbing the English…

“You have to write what you know,” he laughs, “and I love doing jokes about people to their faces.”

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“I honestly think there’s a real kindness and a warmth to making fun of someone properly because to make fun of someone properly you have to pay attention, which is a very affectionate thing to do.

“And I think if you do it in that way then people feel like they’ve been seen.

“I also think with English audiences I’ve learned how to play with them in just the right way that they don’t take it badly.”

Vittorio moved to London when he was 18 to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has lived there ever since.

“I knew I wanted some form of third level education and I was quite good at the music stuff. I got into a place in Manchester and I got into a place in London.

“And I’d visited London a couple of times when I was in the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra and hated it but I go through little periods of my life of going ‘do the scary thing’ and that tends to lead me to good places.”

In fact it was this approach that started Vittorio’s comedy career.

“I was studying to be a classical percussionist,” he recalls.

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“I’d played at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and with the Ulster Orchestra but in the middle of all of that I started to try stand-up. With comedy, thanks to open mic nights, you can just get up (on stage) and do it no matter how terrible you are.”

Try he did and made a success of it — racking up more than 390,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram and preparing to embark on the third leg of his tour with 13 dates across the north and south of Ireland.

“You try certain places as experiments and it’s nice to see what they’re like.

“Although I’ve discovered I sell tickets a lot easier in cities - I struggle a wee bit more in rural spots.

“I just need to find the trendiest culchies available and hopefully they’ll come along.”

Vittorio will also be returning for a third show at the Ulster Hall on November 11.

“Because of the way we’ve set up the Ulster Hall show – no spoilers – every time I do it there’s this incredible atmosphere.

“But I still think it’s bizarre that people are coming out to see me – that’s nuts.”

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Additionally, his gig on November 3 in Vicar Street marked the 100th show of the tour.

“I feel like I’ve found the right things to keep in and take out and it very much flows from beginning to end.

“I say that but I’ll probably change it next week,” he teases.

Vittorio Angelone plays The Braid, Ballymena (November 8), Riverside, Coleraine (November 9), Ulster Hall, Belfast (November 11), Millennium Forum, Derry (November 12), Court House, Bangor (November 15), INEC, Killarney (November 16), Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo (November 17), The Town Hall, Westport (December 7), King’s Head, Galway (December 8), Spirit Store, Dundalk (December 12), Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny (December 14) vittorioangelone.com