I do stand-up sometimes. Here I am winning an award for being the funniest person (relatively speaking, that night, according to 7-9 people temporarily allocated taste-making powers).
Solo Shows
Cancel Anti Wokeflake Snow Culture 2021-
Featured in Guardian, Evening Standard and The Week’s Pick of the Fringe 2022
A show about disconnection. Half multimedia satire of the culture-wars, half plain-spoken examination of personal identity. Frogs feature heavily.
UFO 2019-2021
“Space travelling ping-pong balls, water bottle astronaut suits and smuggled voice recordings of a drug dealer’s holiday plans; you are unlikely to forget Sam Nicoresti’s debut solo show UFO in a hurry.”
James McColl, The Skinny
A theatrical stand-up show about the 8 dimensions, making contact, and my great-great uncle. UFO transferred to Soho Theatre in September 2021 for a two-night run.
They make a poster for you, but I like to make my own.
“Nicoresti is an auteur.”
Si Hawkins, Fest
I did some promo for it, including a Perfect Playlist and a First Gig, Worst Gig.
The original Edinburgh Fringe 2019 poster was designed by Lise Richardson.
BEDTIME 2017-2018
A hypnopompic comedy show about night terrors, oranges and maroon men.
Credit to the mighty zine illustrator of alternative weirdness, Lise Richardson.
“All praise to the pilot, then, who is pulling off something so undeniably phantastic, & so thoroughly enjoyable.”
The Mumble
Wilbur Bilb 2016
Half an hour of very fresh character comedy about a child gumshoe. Can’t remember anything else about it as I’ve since deleted the word doc. But I’d take a punt and say it had its moments.
SAM & TOM
Sam & Tom are a comedy dyad of gums and chums. Sketch Off! Finalists 2018.
The Interview 2018
Kafka office nightmare sophomore show.
2017 – Unrectifiable
Body-swapping mind-melting horromedy debut.
Mumble Comedy Interview – August 2017 – An Interview with Sam & Tom
Broadway Baby Q&A – August 2017 – #EdFringe17 Comedy Q&A: Sam & Tom
2015 – Sam & Tom!
WIP at Just The Tonic. It involved one raw egg and a minor spinal injury.
Tom-approved edition.
Poster First Draft.
The Skinny – March 2015 – Sam & Tom: Comedy Spotlight
Boondoggle – 2018
Boondoggle was a post-apocolyptic teletext-themed comedy night I co-produced with Siân Docksey, Zoë Tomalin, Tom Burgess and Jon Bailey.
We made these intro videos to kick off the night. We made them every single month. We went mad.
Filmed: Aniruddh Ojha | Directed: Sam Nicoresti
Filmed: Andrew Routledge | Directed: Jon Bailey
Filmed & Directed: Jon Bailey
Filmed: Andrew Routledge | Directed: Jon Bailey | Outside Sequence: Sam Nicoresti
Directed & Theme Tune: Jon Bailey | Filmed: Sam Nicoresti
Directed by: Jon Bailey | Filmed by: Andy Routledge
I mean… c’mon. Imagine what we could’ve done with a crew and budget! *Nudge nudge wink wink*.
Not pictured but should be. Jake Wood: the lungs of the night, the bellows. Charlie Sanders: The doors, the filtration. Aniruddh Ojha: the mechanical eyes, the whirring perceptors. Andy Routledge: the steady hand, the focused lens.
Boondoggle originally started (in name alone) as a new material night at Dada Bar in Sheffield. Didn’t last long as Dada closed down. I found out whilst buying a salad in town from the guy doing the croutons. Gutted.
Gigglebeats – October 2014 – A New Breed of Comedy Night
Staple/face
From 2012-2014 I was in sketch-comedy disaster Staple/face. As I consider this to be in the distant past I have presented this era as a potted history for the interests of total creeps only.
Friends with Benefit Fraud – 2012
Formed. Did some incredibly divisive early shows, including our debut hour at the Camden Fringe.
Broadway Baby gave it one star, but RemoteGoat gave it the full five! RemoteGoat have since deleted that review and removed the offending reviewer from their staff. Quite right too.
Chest of Things – 2013
Set up a monthly night. With high production values and clear branded identity from the offset it would only be a matter of time before we broke into the industry and landed a Radio 4 pilot.
Bathtime With Tom’s Dad – 2013
This photoshoot was horrible.
On bad* advice we decided to jump straight into our first full hour at the Edinburgh Fringe, thereby scuppering all hope of getting more industry attention** with better word-of-mouth a year later.
* No one’s.
** Never would’ve happened anyway.
On even worse* advice we called the show Bathtime with Tom’s Dad and took a mid-afternoon slot in a venue with an 18+ bar, meaning we exclusively attracted families who we then had to turn away to the ninja magic show upstairs.
*our own.
Sounds fine.
Despite that, the show was good fashioned fun and even though no one came to review it (probably because of the dark ninja magic permeating the venue) I did put a lot of effort into making a bath that could be safely classed as ‘carry-on’ under the draconian Megabus maximum luggage weight guidelines.
Undeterred by poor-to-bad industry attention during this nascent period we managed to win the inaugural ‘So You Think That’s Funny?’ competition, sketch arm of the prestigious and fame-breaking ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’ at the Gilded Balloon.
It turned out Fosters weren’t actually sponsoring it so we couldn’t legally use the logo, and the website now seems to have relaunched itself as a regular night with no mention of this event ever having happened, but it was definitely real. Mark Dolan compered it and I have photo evidence of us winning the award (since lost in a house move*).
*Now found, circa 2019.
The Dolans.
Buoyed by this, and using our industry accreditation as a blunt rudder, we began to perform a succession of increasingly self-indulgent and well-attended shows back in Sheffield to people who didn’t matter because they weren’t in London.
Encouraged by our new material we set off to Edinburgh to absolutely storm it.
Going Down Fighting – 2014
Going Down Fighting featured some of Staple/face’s most iconic sketches (Slinky X-Treme, Scotland Yard, Laptop Boys!) and some of its worst skits (Tiramisu).
Luckily for us, the prize for being the Best Sketch Act in the country during the month of 2013 meant that this year we got to go back and do an entire run at the Gilded Balloon for free!
After a more thorough reading of the terms and conditions and a lot of confusingly worded emails it transpired that actually the run was only free until we had to pay for it at the end.
“Ahoy!”
But by that point we’d paid the brochure entry, so we went and had a strange time, made £6000, saw £900 of it (split that three ways) and then broke up. Ahoy!
Sam Nicoresti 