Joe Wells rattles off his artfully constructed ironic jokes and wry observations on life as an autistic person so fast it’s hard sometimes to keep up.
His mind is fizzing with comic ideas and as each is chucked into the mix and morphs into the next one it can be a challenge for the average neurotypical punter to take it all in. Such is life for the non-autistic among us.
Wearing an unbuttoned red leopard print short-sleeve shirt over a black T-shirt and black jeans and staring gleefully into the middle distance beneath a mop of appropriately Christ-like curly hair, he riffs on the pressures of being king of the autistics. They were so great, he says, that he stepped down from the role.
He’s been on BBC Two, BBC Three, Dave and Channel 4, but he says he doesn’t think he’s got what “TV people” want. “They want edgy comedy that pushes the boundaries but there’s also pressure to be a role model that’s suitable for children and family-friendly. So I’m not coping with the pressures of fame.”
Serious stuff. Wells’s skill, as a comic alchemist, is to convert casual encounters that touch on inbuilt societal prejudice about autism into comedy gold. Such as the brief goodbye speech from an autistic boy at a barbecue party he went to. “He’s not severe,” the boy’s mother had said by way of an apology.
“I really don’t like that. She spoke English, but she was French. Not severely. To be honest, she said she was French, but she looked normal to me. Even so, there’s a lot of it about these days. When I was growing up they had to be kept in patisseries, but nowadays there’s a lot who self-diagnose as French and are coming out.”
In a self-mocking gag poking fun at the difference between drunk neurotypical people and autistics, Wells, 34, from Portsmouth, posits that the former would phone their ex-partner if they were making a call in the small hours. Simple. “Me, I’d phone up a supermarket at two in the morning and say I don’t like your layout.” Cue, a graphic relayed on a screen showing the transparent failure of Tesco to comprehend the most efficient traffic flow of escalators in the offending store.
He also introduces his wife, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to explain how the two are complementary neurotypes before launching into a joke about her wanting to go into a sheep field in Wales whereas he knows they shouldn’t.
His final angry riff on the “really diverse” Twitter – “it’s like the UN conference of pricks” – descends into a wild swearfest, with Wells railing against e-scooter riders with such a fervour that he realises he’s overrunning, cleverly parodying his obsessiveness, before neatly bringing his packed-out show to a close.
PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room), until 27 Aug
