Comedy / Joz Norris
Joz Norris embarks on first UK tour with award-winning Fringe smash ‘You Wait. Time Passes.’
Comedian, actor, writer and prolific ‘maker of stuff’ Joz Norris is known for his joyfully experimental and playful solo work, as well as a host of collaborations on stage, film and radio.
Over recent years, he has worked on worked on a dizzying array of projects with fellow comedians including Sam Nicoresti, Lucy Pearman, Ed Aczel, Stevie Martin, Huge Davies, Phil Ellis and Alison Thea-Skot.
2019’s Joz Norris is Dead. Long Live Mr Fruit Salad was to be his most successful solo standup show to date, earning him the Comedian’s Choice Award for Best Show at the Edinburgh Fringe that year, along with two further award nominations and successive sellout runs at London’s Soho Theatre.
Yet despite long being a cult favourite amongst comics and comedy fans alike, Norris has yet to embark on a full-scale UK tour.
That is set to change in the first half of 2026, as he takes his most-recent Edinburgh show You Wait. Time Passes. around the country following a five-star, sellout festival run.
In it, Norris appears as a man who has finally achieved his lifelong goals and is coming before an audience “ready to unveil it to the world in all its glory for the first time EVER – no matter what the consequences”. He spoke to Bristol24/7 ahead of an upcoming date at the Alma Tavern and Theatre on March 13.
Joz Norris – You Wait, Time Passes. tour – photo: Oliver Holms
How did the seed for You Wait. Time Passes. begin to take root?
“I had this idea that really made me laugh about a guy who was giving a TED Talk about his favourite subject, and he was so excited about giving a TED Talk that he forgot to give it. At the same time, I was personally preoccupied with the fact that I’d recently had a dream come true (I’d written and starred in my own sitcom on BBC Radio 4) and it changed precisely nothing about my life – life just carried on.
“I was getting really stuck on this feeling that when you finally do something you’ve always wanted to do, something about the shape of your life should shift to accommodate it, but actually your life is just a thing that continues, and unfurls at its own pace. So those two ideas started speaking to each other, I think, and this central idea of ‘I’m here to complete my life’s work, and I’m going to do it any minute now’ came together.”
Has the hugely positive reception to the show – from audiences, critics and peers alike – taken you by surprise?
“A little bit! You always hope a show will do well, but I tried to put all expectations for it out of my head this year, and make it from a place of pure enjoyment rather than striving to make something that might become ‘successful’. I’d made the show specifically in order to purge the idea of expecting too much from a creative project from my head, as that was the feeling I’d previously got stuck on.
“The entire show was an active reminder to myself that I had to create from that healthier place, because if you don’t then there really is no point. So for it to resonate with so many people and generate such amazing responses is a bit of a surprise. It’s also kind of ironic of course, to make a show that says ‘You can’t create stuff expecting to be rewarded for it; it only leads to disaster’ and then be told ‘Congratulations for expressing this thought, here is your reward’.
“Presumably all the positive reactions will slowly drive me insane again over the next two years and I’ll then have to make another show reminding myself how to be a normal human being again. The endless cycle.”
Joz Norris – photo: Oliver Holms
Your work often tends towards playfulness and absurdism, while also allowing plenty of space for emotional depth. How would you characterise your comedy persona?
“I think I continue to learn more about him every time I make something! People always talk about ‘finding your voice’ as though it’s a quest and when you’ve found it, you have it, but I do think that even after you’ve found it, it continues to grow and change with you. The core of my persona is of an idiot who takes stupid things too seriously – my work was initially about finding the profound in the ridiculous, and then it came to be about how ridiculous it is to try and find the profound in the ridiculous, and now it’s about how profound it is to try and find the ridiculous in the profound in the ridiculous.
“As the nature of the work has developed, my persona has become more heightened, I think – I used to try to be a loveable buffoon onstage, but eventually realised my favourite comedy beats to play involve allowing myself to be more of a monster, and lean into the bits of myself I don’t like as much. So now I’m more of a high-status, deluded idiot whose ego inevitably destroys himself. I think it’s easier to explore more of that emotional depth if the character onstage is fundamentally a moron, because it gives the audience permission to feel things without it becoming overly sincere or self-conscious.”
Do you enjoy the process of touring? To what extent is it instructive, in terms of showing your work to different audiences around the country?
“I’m loving it so far! This is my first ‘proper’ tour, so I’m excited to learn so much about bringing the show to audiences around the country in proper theatres as opposed to shonky Fringe venues. But of course every show I’ve made has been built up in front of audiences around the country at various Fringe festivals and preview seasons, and it’s so important to find the pockets around the country where you can reliably build up that audience of comedy fans and people who like the strange sort of things I make.
“In previous years, I’ve usually retired a show not long after its Edinburgh Fringe run, as though it’s been seen by everyone who might possibly enjoy it, but of course the Edinburgh audience is such a small fraction of the people across the UK who love weird, unusual, imaginative comedy, and I can’t wait to meet more of those audiences all over the place.”
Joz Norris on stage at the Pleasance, Edinburgh, 2025 – photo: Miranda Holms
While you’re touring this show, are you also developing ideas for what comes next? What are your current artistic preoccupations?
“I’m doing some early work-in-progress shows of a new thing called Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera, which emerged as an idea because You Wait. Time Passes. felt like the culmination of a series of shows exploring art and creativity and what it means to make stuff in that way.
“I wanted the next thing I made to move in a different direction and be less meta and less meaningful and instead just be big, bold, dumb and silly, so naturally a show about Hugh Jackman trying to erase half of his filmography in order to get cast as the Phantom is the logical next step.
“The other thing I’m really excited about at the moment is a comedy murder mystery I’ve been working on called The Last One You’d Expect, which emerged from a deliberate effort to write the kind of thing I most like to watch. I’m a big whodunnit nut, and I think there aren’t enough comedy whodunnits that are genuinely funny and genuinely work as whodunnits. They usually either sacrifice the plot and the mystery to focus on silliness, or they deliver a satisfying mystery but are more gently funny than they are laugh-out-loud. I’d love to try and make something that really delivers on both fronts. We’re still working out what format it takes and where to go with it, but it might be the most I’ve ever enjoyed working on a script. I hope you all get to see it someday!”
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Joz Norris: You Wait. Time Passes is at The Alma Tavern and Theatre on March 13 at 7.30pm. Tickets are available at www.tickettailor.com or via www.chucklebusters.com.
Visit www.joznorris.co.uk or follow @joznorris for updates.
Main photo: Oliver Holms
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