A Jerk Abroad - Sam Simmons

Late last year a man in his late-30s with a deep brown caterpillar asleep on his top lip, speech oscillating between a mumble and sustained guffaw, dry-humped an unsuspecting audience member on Conan O'Brian's show. That man was Sam Simmons, and that was his introduction to America.
Home again, he's working for the first time alongside Charlie Garber on the finishing touches for his new show, Death Of A Sails-Man.
“What I was going to do was put a photocopier on stage with all this magical shit coming out the side of it. And then I got together with Charlie and he said, 'Well, nah, it'll be no good for your stage, it will block all the space and be this big cumbersome thing on stage,' so I explained my initial idea to him.”
Heeding Garber's advice that having something big and cumbersome on stage was a silly idea, he scrapped the photocopier, replacing it with a sail from a windsurfing rig.
“The show is a little bit of a show about death: I'm an arsehole windsurfer and I get blown out into the ocean and it's me having to face my own mortality and go through all this weird internal shit. It's awesome – I love it. I mean I always talk up shows, because I'm in them, but I think this one's going to be a fucking cracker!
“Windsurfing looks jerky; what a jerky bloody thing to do. But that's why I was mucking around with it – what a ridiculous thing to have on stage, and what a ridiculous thing to be doing with your life.”
While Simmons has at least had the sense not to pursue the water sport offstage, he's not saved from a similar existential crisis.
“I mean, I look at myself and I say: what's going on with you? I mean, I'm about to turn 37 and I'm a clown; it's a very fickle pursuit, it's a weird job. It's not real. I don't really have any life skills if the world goes to shit. I dress like a fucking adult toddler. So, I dunno, I'm not freaking out too much but there's always big questions, especially when you're involved in the arts.”