DANIEL SLOSS: SOCIO
THE NEW COMEDY SPECIAL FROM THE CREATOR OF NETFLIX DARK and JIGSAW and DANIEL SLOSS: X
Filmed in 2019, Paramount Theatre Austin Texas… and finally released in 2022
[Click on any of the headings below to expand their text.]
Biog continued
By the time he was 21 years old, Daniel had recorded his first DVD (2Entertain) and made television appearances including UK’s Sunday Night at the Palladium, BBC’s Stand Up For Sport Relief (with Tyson Fury) Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Set List, Paul O’Grady Show (Daniel’s TV debut, aged 18), Russell Howard’s Good News as well as had his own BBC show, The Adventures Of Daniel. He also wrote, produced and starred in a six-part internet sitcom M.U.F.F and, in 2012, gave a prestigious TEDx talk on censorship. He has featured on USA UTV’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and appeared a record-breaking ten times on Conan.
In August 2008, aged 17, Daniel became one of the youngest-ever finalists in the UK’s premiere comedy competition So You Think You’re Funny?. In 2009, his first solo show, Teenage Kicks, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, sold out the entire run, and transferred to London, where he made his debut at the prestigious Soho Theatre, becoming the youngest stand-up to perform solo both at the theatre and in the West End. That September, still just 18, he also made his national television debut as the first stand-up to perform on Channel 4’s Paul O’Grady Show.
In 2010, his new solo Fringe show My Generation was a smash-hit, selling out every performance. His 2011 follow-on, The Joker, sold an astonishing 10,000 tickets, subsequently touring for 50 dates across the UK in a tour produced by Live Nation, after they took him on as their youngest solo comedy client. In 2011, he was also hailed as the Best New Comedian at the Scottish Variety Awards.
In March 2012, he recorded his debut live stand-up DVD, Daniel Sloss—Live!, (at Glasgow’s Kings Theatre) which was released on BBC Worldwide’s 2Entertain in the autumn. His 2012 Fringe show, The Show, was a sold-out smash-hit at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), remarkably playing to over 10,000 people.
Similarly, 2013’s Stand-Up repeated the Edinburgh success at EICC, and both the 2012 and 2013 shows each toured the UK, with over 50 dates each.
In December 2013, after being spotted at the Edinburgh Fringe, Daniel made the first of many appearances on US late-night TV show Conan, as well as guesting on cult TV favourite The Pete Holmes Show.
His 2014 show Really…?! had its world premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, with another extended run at the EICC due to demand. Daniel subsequently embarked on a major European autumn tour, performing 20 shows across 15 countries, as well as UK theatre dates including two shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Elgar Room. He ended the year filming the Internet sitcom M.U.F.F which he co-created, co-produced and also starred in.
2014 also saw Daniel offered a talent deal with Conan O’Brien’s production company, Conaco and Warner Brothers Studios. Returning to LA in September, Daniel appeared on Comedy Central’s @Midnight, CBS network’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and back in the UK on ITV’s Sunday Night at the Palladium.
2015 began with Daniel’s return to the Austrian Comedy and Snowboarding “Altitude Festival”, and working in LA for pilot season. In August, his new solo hour DARK was hailed by audiences and press alike for its masterful handling of challenging subject matter and again sold over 10,000 tickets at his eighth season at the Edinburgh fringe (for the fifth consecutive year). He then embarked on his biggest tour to date, performing DARK for over 80 dates across the UK and throughout 16 countries in Europe.
In January 2016, Daniel extended DARK to a 90-minute version for its season in London at the Soho Theatre before taking it to the USA. He appeared on Conan for a fifth time, performed a run of DARK in LA at the Westside Comedy Theater, and made his solo debut in New York with an off-Broadway season of DARK in the Soho Playhouse, to great acclaim, being featured on the front page of the New York Times Arts section.
DARK transferred to Australia and New Zealand for sold-out seasons (winning the 2016 Sydney Comedy Festival Best of the Fest Award [International]), Perth, Auckland, and, for Daniel’s long-awaited debut at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The four-week MICF season of DARK sold out. Extra shows sold out as fast as they could be added and he featured on Australian TV galas, including the MICF Oxfam Gala, NZ Comedy Fest’s Best Bits gala and on Sydney Comedy Festival’s Cracker Night.
After a brief trip to the US for seasons in San Francisco and Madison, and making a record-breaking sixth appearance on Conan, Daniel returned to the UK in order to appear at the Glastonbury and Latitude Festivals, before returning to Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival for TV galas and to perform a season of DARK prior to the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe, where he unveiled his next new show Daniel Sloss—So?.
The August 2016 premiere of Daniel Sloss—So? at the EICC was another huge hit, exceeding previous audience figures and receiving universal press acclaim. Daniel toured So? extensively (over 120 dates) throughout the UK and Europe in the autumn of 2016, finishing up with a week-long pre-Christmas season at London’s Soho Theatre.
January 2017 saw Daniel make his seventh appearance on Conan in January 2017, followed by a second off-Broadway season at the Soho Playhouse with Daniel Sloss—So?, as well as a week of late-night sets at the Comedy Cellar and Gotham comedy clubs. This was followed by a three-month tour of Australia and New Zealand, where his sold-out festival seasons and TV appearances received arve reviews and culminated in Daniel Sloss—So? being filmed before a packed house at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.
Returning to the UK, he featured on Comedy Central’s Drunk History re-telling the story of William Wallace (hilariously portrayed by Keith Allen), and on Dave Channel’s competitive gaming show, Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit. He returned to Glastonbury and premiered his new show, Daniel Sloss—Now, at 2017’s Edinburgh Fringe (EICC), making his tenth appearance at the world’s biggest arts festival.
His hilariously no-holds-barred performance on Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, pitted against comedian Desiree Birch, was the most watched episode of the show’s inaugural season.
This was followed by the 2017 autumn tour of Daniel Sloss—NOW—his biggest to date, with over 150 shows spanning the UK and stretching across 25 European countries, followed by three months touring America, as well as all around Australia. He also made his solo debut at the New York Comedy Festival, a guest of Conaco, and performed NOW.
In February 2018, Daniel taped DARK in Los Angeles at the Belasco Theater. Part of a two-specials deal with Netflix; it was announced in May that DARK, along with sequel show So? (now retitled Jigsaw) was to stream worldwide on the platform in the summer of 2018.
2018 also saw Daniel performing his eighth set on Conan and opening for Dave Chappelle’s two shows in San Francisco, as well as performing at that city’s Sketchfest Comedy Festival, touring NOW to Cleveland, Madison, Denver and more. He returned to New York for a second season of DARK, again at the Soho Playhouse, prior to its being filmed.
From April to June, Daniel toured NOW across Australia and, upon his return to the UK, battled comedian Phil Wang in Comedy Central’s Roast Battle Series 2, the only two comedians to make a return appearance.
In August 2018, Daniel premiered his tenth solo full-length show, Daniel Sloss: X. This was his his 11th season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this time in an expanded venue capacity, playing to his biggest houses yet, to great press and audience acclaim and tackling his most challenging material to date.
On 11th Septemeber 2018, his 28th birthday, Netflix released both two-hour-long specials, Daniel Sloss: Live Shows (DARK and Jigsaw) in 190 countries and in 26 languages.
The specials each received critical acclaim but the “Jigsaw-effect” has sparked debate across the globe, becoming something of a cultural phenomenon, with a rising tally of breakups referenced on the Daniel Sloss Twitter page. As of January 2021, the tally stands at 120,000 breakups, 300 divorces and 350 cancelled engagements.
The live tour of Daniel Sloss: X sold out every show across 25 European countries as well as throughout the UK, with extra shows (in increasingly large venues) selling out as fast as they were added and with the tour being extended to run through 2019.
The 2018 live tour of Daniel Sloss: X sold out and, with the release of the Neflix shows, extended throughout all of 2019, becoming a global juggernaut that spanned 300 performances across 40 countries, including shows at the London Palladium, Japan, Hong Kong (during the riots), Singapore, and even playing a 3,500 seat arena in Moscow (Russia’s biggest ever English-language comedy show that was also simultaneously translated over headsets). In August he brought the show back to where it all began with three encore shows to packed houses in Edinburgh’s 3,200 seat Playhouse Theatre.
2019 also saw Daniel make a guest appearance on the Ricky Gervais is Deadly Sirius Podcast, made a return appearance on Bert Kreisher’s Bertcast podcast, curated a season of films at Edinburgh’s prestigious Filmhouse, the home of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and in something that, in his wildest dreams, he never thought would happen, was turned into an official Marvel superhero by their graphic artists.
He performed two separate (and sold out) off-Broadway encore seasons of Daniel Sloss: X (February, three weeks performing two shows a day) and of Daniel Sloss: NOW (June, two weeks). These were in fact warm-ups for Daniel to get ready to tape two new comedy specials. X was filmed in Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on 27th April, premiering on HBO in the USA and Canada on 2nd November, to great acclaim and subsequently making history with its UK release, becoming the first comedy special to make its national debut on the big screen, at Vue cinemas across the country in February 2020.
The taping of NOW was co-produced by MZA and Live Nation Productions, the latter’s first non-music production since the multi award-winning A Star Is Born. Retitled SOCIO for release, the second show at the Austin taping of SOCIO at the Paramount Theatre featured an extraordinary interaction with a far-right heckler in an electrifying and hilarious live comedy experience that was all caught on camera.
Whilst in New York with is 2019 X tour, Daniel was offered a major book deal with prestigious Penguin Random House imprint Knopf. Originally due to be published in the autumn of 2020, the book’s release was delayed as a result of the global pandemic and Everyone You Hate is Going to Die will be now be simultaneously published by Knopf in the USA and Canada, and in UK and Australasia by William Heinemann, on 12th October 2021.
2020 started with great promise with the premiere of his 11th new show—Daniel Sloss: HUBRIS, which ran for a month in an off-Broadway theatre in New York and for a week-long season in Los Angeles. Phillip DeFranco, the YouTuber with over one billion views to his name, invited Daniel to be a guest on his A Conversation With… podcast, which was released in March.
Then, just as the Australian tour was about to start, the global pandemic hit and shut down the world’s live entertainment industry. The UK went into a four-month total lockdown, during which Daniel took part in the first Saturday Night Live at the Stand, a live-streamed weekly comedy show based at the (empty) Edinburgh Comedy Club, which ran for most of 2020, and also the USA’s comedy marathon livestream Comedy Gives Back fundraiser (alongside Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Jimmy Fallon, Gilbert Gottfried, Ken Jeong, Bert Kreischer, Howie Mandel, Patton Oswalt, Ray Romano, Bob Saget, Adam Sandler and more…)
On the first weekend in July, at the opening weekend of the UK’s first legal outdoor venue since Covid-19 hit, Daniel became the world’s first stand-up comedian to tour again, initially performing three full-length shows at the Drive-In Club in London’s Brent Cross. 600 people a night, safely bubbled in their cars, had the show broadcast via their radios honking and flashing their appreciation of what were Daniel’s only drive in shows but which led the way for other sites to open across the country.
August 2020 saw the unimaginable happen, with none of the annual festivals in Edinburgh able to take place for the first time since the inception of the International and the Fringe in 1947.
Thanks to the resilience and imagination and of course extraordinary skills of people working in both the arts as well as the television industries, Daniel was invited to take part in some extraordinary mid-pandemic programming—the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s innovative four-episode weekly Fringe on Friday streamed shows, as well as The Edinburgh International Festival’s My Light Shines On special programme. BBC’s Edinburgh Nights filmed a special show covering all the Covid-cancelled August festivals, and Daniel was interviewed as an alumnus of the Edinburgh Fringe.
All through September, October and into November, right up until the UK locked down again, Daniel toured the UK nonstop, playing indoor venues, including comedy clubs, theatres and music venues (and indeed reopening many of them) with socially distanced audiences and with COVID-secure protocols in place. In some cities, he did as many as six performances, as dates sold out as fast as they could be added, and he ended the run with two performances at The London Palladium, who were able to accommodate over 1000 people with their strict COVID-19 protocols and having been the government pilot shows, which enabled them to become the first indoor venue to re-open in the country. The audiences wore masks, and safely being with so many other people all laughing together at a live show reduced many to tears at the end, as the first “normal” shared entertainment experience since March. The Palladium shows were followed by another five London shows at The Clapham Grand, with the last performance becoming the last live event anywhere in the UK before the third major lockdown came into effect on 5th November.
Early December also saw Daniel perform two shows in Inverness on the first weekend that indoor comedy shows were permitted in Scotland (however still only in the Highlands) since March. These were his last live events of the year and he subsequently increased his presence on Twitch, regularly playing online games and chatting with fans.
On 15 January 2021 Daniel made his first appearance on BBC’s The Graham Norton Show, guesting alongside Rebel Wilson, Keeley Hawes, M. Night Shyamalan, Noel Clarke and more, and, because of the COVID-19 need for a virtual audience, getting to sit in the red chair as celebrity stand-in for the members of the public that Graham chatted to. The hilarious book cover for Everyone You Hate Is Going To Die was revealed on the show, and Daniel shared stories of touring in places like Russia—and drive-in car parks. Daniel also recorded his second A Conversation With podcast with Philip DeFranco.
With no UK live shows being permitted in January and February, April 2021 sees Daniel’s rescheduled Australian tour on track to still take place with that country’s quarantine procedures having successfully controlled the virus to the extent that live indoor entertainment is possible to stage safely and is happening. It is hoped that Daniel’s UK shows can go ahead in the summer, and this will be followed by Europe-wide touring, and then the book release on 12th October, which will be supported by a substantial USA tour in October-November.
Daniel’s comedy specials can be seen in 190 countries (in 26 languages) and his online stand-up clips have garnered well over 100 million views.
Press Quotes
At 27, Scotland’s Daniel Sloss has, incredibly, now racked up his tenth Fringe outing. Tackling taboos (death, grooming) has become his forte and this latest continues the trend. “X” is a stunner of a show.
✶✶✶✶✶ Mail On Sunday
Dirty, sweet and clever
– New York Times
Simply world class… hilarious… An endearingly unabashed blend of arrogance, awkwardness and self-effacing anecdotes delivered with precision timing, perfectly-placed silence and (the) unfettered confidence… Nothing is off limits… Sloss skilfully weaves sensitive subject matter into a hilarious tapestry of politically incorrect and sexually inappropriate zingers… his humour intelligently and ironically calling out the hypocrisy of human nature.
✶✶✶✶ Herald Sun, Australia
Hilarious…There is something effortlessly charming about Daniel Sloss… Devastatingly intelligent… he makes you think about yourself and your relationships, and then side-swipes you with a brilliant gag. While you will come away thinking about your life choices, you will also come away with sore ribs from laughing… Sloss is a festival highlight. See him.
✶✶✶✶✶ The Age, Australia
Charming, self-deprecating and genuinely funny
– Time Out, London
Brilliant… a master craftsman… Sloss works best by creating moments of near unbearable tension and then puncturing them with a welcome but unexpectedly sharp barb. To be this good at 27 is a rare thing, and if Sloss can continue to evolve his material in intriguing and novel ways, he could become one of the greats.
✶✶✶✶ Time Out, Australia
Brilliantly dark
– Sunday Times, UK
Nothing short of hysterical… Stunning
– Sunday Express, UK
Dazzling wit
– Telegraph, UK
Irreverent wit and devastating… an intelligent, razor sharp performer who looks like Macaulay Culkin on speed and readily goes where other comedians fear to tread
– Adelaide Advertiser, Australia
Stunningly poignant… finely honed skill… deeply dark comedic style… more than a little bit evil… Sloss proves you don’t need a university education to know how to do your research and construct an intelligent argument. In fact, he is brilliantly skilled at doing just that and making it achingly funny at the same time.
✶✶✶✶½ Theatre People
Daniel Sloss is a born comedian… he’s a master at rewinding to the original thread without missing a beat… remarkable… rapid-fire delivery… It’s incredible to watch
✶✶✶✶½ The West Australian
Dark AF stand-up; snowflakes beware, this is no safe space…comedy provocateur… Sloss is clever, studious and even philosophical
✶✶✶✶✶ TheMusic.com.au
I’ve never seen a comedian I’ve wanted to kiss and punch in equal measures. The handsome young Scotsman revels in the nihilistic and politically incorrect—here’s one who eats outrage for breakfast… Sloss was hailed as one of the highlights of last year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival, and it’s easy to see why. Provocative, punchy and smirking with black humour, Sloss rails against a slew of hefty topics: religion, disability, death, politics, and reserves a particularly fervent hatred for vegans. He is astute in so many ways: his cynical self-awareness of his middle class white man status, his description of the dogged tunnel vision of the easily offended, and his bemusement at his fellow left-wingers for their apathy and in-fighting… Brilliant
– Australian Stage, UK
It’s a testament to Sloss’ skill that the audience follow him through each set up, across the expertly wound tension and into the cutting punchlines… He has tight, near-perfect control of his pacing and delivery, knowing how to read reactions and pop the pressure at the last possible second. The observational aspects of the show provide an excellent foil to the narrative beats Sloss hits… Now is 70 minutes of traditional stand up brought near the peak of its form. Intelligent and incisive, Sloss’ stand up leaves the audience wondering about their own relationship to logic and emotion. His talent comes in being able to combine the two into genuinely hilarious comedy.
– Popculture-y.com
Sloss is on red-hot form this year… not only do the jokes pour out, he slyly and unexpectedly introduces serious ideas into the debate… A stand-up veteran at 24, his handling of provocative topics is maturing fast so that, even as circumstances pile up in his sex stories and the laughter rises to hysteria, he’s totally in control of the shifts in tone
– Sunday Herald, UK
Meteoric… Has them rolling in the aisles… Sloss is blessed with a sharp mind and a potent stage persona.
✶✶✶✶ The Scotsman
A genuine twinkle in his eye and a sharp line in observational humour… Sloss demonstrated a genuine affection for the crowd… The humour is funny, intelligent and charming. As is Sloss.
✶✶✶✶ Edinburgh Evening News
Unstoppable… The road to playing a venue like a conference centre for a full month should take comedians at least half a career to achieve. The Fifer Viking [Daniel Sloss] has got there in about half an hour. And he’s even stuck on some extra shows for his drooling masses.
– The List
Makes Inglorious Bastards seem like Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
– Bruce Dessau on Daniel’s six-part Internet sitcom M.U.F.F.
He has a confidence and talent that’s shocking for a 19-year-old
– Michael Mcintyre, Radio Times, September 2010
✶ Winner 2016 Sydney Comedy Festival Best of the Fest Award [International]
✶ Winner 2011 Scottish Variety Awards Best New Scottish Comedian
Images
Video
Links
Official 
Website
@Daniel_Sloss on 
Daniel Sloss on 
Daniel Sloss on 
Daniel Sloss on 
Sloss and Humphries On The Road 
podcast
Daniel Sloss on 
Daniel Sloss on 
Daniel Sloss on Spotlight 
GETSLOSSED 
channel
News
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022
Daniel Sloss: New Work In Progress
