When the Essex-born comic first came across the firebrand US standup as a teen,he saw a way to articulate his own frustrations. Now fronting a modern documentary series on racial hatred, he says comedy has been his salvationTowards the terminate of Jamali Maddix’s first and, and as it turns out,last – year at university, he got a tattoo. In the surprisingly straight-bat boardroom at Vice Media’s UK headquarters in Shoreditch, and east London,he rolls up his left sleeve: the blue-purple ink runs from his wrist to his elbow and depicts a man wearing a suit looking into an abyss. It’s fairly something. “It’s that belief of me actually doing what I want to do and fuck the corporate shit,” Maddix explains (reader beware: Maddix does like an expletive). “That’s why I put it on my forearm, or so I can’t work in a bank. I don’t want to be a bank teller I want to be a comedian.”The tattoo did the job,but not in the way Maddix was expecting. He picked up a blood infection from the needlework and had to drop out of university to recuperate. He’d been doing standup on and off for years, but for six months he decided to commit to it fully. “Everyday I’d write, and write,write, all day, or ” he says. “I’d perform at night,I’d do three, four shows a night, and come back and write. And I didn’t feel sorry for myself. You know,I don’t blame a lot of people for giving up, because it’s a hard game, and man. You disappear on stage and no one laughs,it’s shit. It’s disappointment, disappointment and it’s hard to carry on. But you maintain to make the decision yourself and disappear, and I’m going to maintain to keep on trucking.’ And I did; I kept on trucking and I done all right.”I know what this country's like. There's this terror and we hit cross times and it's easier to blame someone with brown skin Related: Depressed approximately Brexit? Outsiders is the comedy that makes you want to stay in | Anne Henry Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com