"It was an out of body experience" - Portsmouth comedian Daniel Edison on his unflappable Britain's Got Talent audition
Standing on the Britain’s Got Talent stage with two judges having already pressed their buzzer, Daniel Edison thought ‘I just have to plough on’.
It was a “surreal” moment for Daniel whose audition was shown on ITV1 Saturday night (March 7). While the fourth judge, Amanda Holden, voted no, he had done enough to get through to the next round.
Despite having performed in comedy shows since he was 16, the 29-year-old (28 at the time of auditioning) of Anchorage Park felt the nerves as he headed out on stage.
Daniel told The News: “It was like nothing I had done before. I can’t describe it, backstage the audience is so loud, I have never heard anything like it. The atmosphere was electric.
“I was very nervous, I would describe it as an out of body experience. It felt like I was watching telly, it didn’t feel like I was really doing it”
Comedy started out as a hobby for Daniel, writing one liners as a 15-year-old inspired by his heroes Stewart Francis, Milton Jones, Gary Delaney and Bob Monkhouse. It quickly became an obsession with his first break coming at an unlikely moment as he settled down to watch another of his comedy inspirations.
Daniel said: “When I was 16 I went to see Tim Vine in Worthing and I was in the front row with my brother. Tim Vine was going along asking everyone what they did for a living. When he asked me, my brother told him that I wrote jokes.
“Then all of a sudden he said ‘please welcome to the stage Daniel’ and he brought me up and I had never done stand up before. I had just memorised some jokes for fun and suddenly I was on stage with Tim in front of his audience. A month later I had been booked in by the same venue to do my own stand up for my first ever five minute spot.”
From that moment on he set about trying to forge a career in comedy, performing at shows across the south coast, from routines in The Dolphin in Old Portsmouth to appearing at Victorious Festival in 2022 alongside his hero Milton Jones.
Britain’s Got Talent is something he has thought about taking part in for a number of years as he continues to make his way in the comedy circuit. This year he took the plunge, which brings us back to his audition.
Taking to the stage he opened with a joke that fell flat with the audience. The next jokes were followed by a buzzer from Simon Cowell and Alesha Dixon, showing their disapproval.
Daniel did not panic though. He said: “Weirdly in the moment I just thought I have to carry on. At least with one-liners they are so short and snappy if you don’t like the last one hopefully the next one will do it for you.
“I just thought crack on and keep going and I somehow managed to pull through because two buzzers is a little bit scary. As a stand-up you want to appear relaxed and put the audience at ease so when something in the room happens that stops that or causes some tension, all you can do is plough on. So that is what I did and hopefully it came across okay.”
It came across more than okay, with Daniel put through to the next stage which is the judges deliberations. The four judges go through the acts that passed the audition and whittle it down to those that will appear in the semi-final shows live on ITV.
If put through, Daniel has more than enough material to lean on with the document he started as 15-year-old now containing around 8,000 one-liners, all categorised by subject matter.
Despite the shaky start to his audition, he is hopeful that he can still go all the way in the competition with his act providing “light relief” and “nonsense” that people seem to enjoy.
The audition has already garnered Daniel a lot of attention. He said: “It’s been amazing to be honest, I am very grateful for the opportunity and it has brought a lot of attention my way, especially on Instagram. It’s been nice as I have been writing jokes for almost half of my life so it really is a passion of mine and great to be given that platform to showcase it.”
Daniel features his one-liners and stand up act on his social media pages, including Instagram and TikTok.
Britain’s Got Talent continues on ITV1 and stream on ITVX.