When I interviewed Daniel Sloss a couple of years ago he explained to me that as he was getting older his touring routine was becoming frighteningly sensible. He would be more likely to be spending time in the hotel gym than out on the lash with his best friend and regular tour support, comedian Kai Humphries.
But if you want an insight into what life on the road was like when he was younger, Humphries has now spilt the beans in a new ebook, Inside Daniel Sloss: Psychoanalysis of Daniel Sloss: Tour Journal 2014. It turns out that when Humphries took on the role of support act for the tour of Europe, this was in reality a secret mission to psychoanalyse the mind of Daniel Sloss.
Humphries finally breaks cover in the blurb: "My name is Kai Humphries, I am a respected scientist*, I have thrown my life at my work In order to study the behaviour of Scottish stand-up comedian Daniel Sloss. I went deep undercover, joining him on his tour masquerading as his support act, fooling the world I was also a stand up comedian in order to get close enough to my subject to write this field report. A true break through in modern behavioural scientific research. I hope you can learn something from my sacrifice."
However, maybe you can get a more accurate flavour of the book, which covers a tour of 17 European Cities over 20 days, by these words written at the start of chapter two when they were in Prague. 'Deep undercover' also seems to mean 'heavy drinking': "This morning's hangover is a result of the wine, gin and tequila that we shared with the locals of Vienna amidst some jovial shenanigans in order to stimulate some responses from my test subject, Daniel Sloss."
The study takes in trips to Iceland's famous Blue Lagoon, eating horse steak and curry sandwiches, playing video games and a fair smattering of inebriation. Oh, and some storming gigs. Humphries concludes by saying that he needs to go off to recover and assess his findings, but there is one last part of the mission: "Before I close this file I consider it is best practice, for continuity, if we have a drink with some Croatians in Zagreb first. In the interest of science."
Sloss has provided some insightful words of his own which are on the Amazon page: "This book is full of lies. Absolute slander, if you publish this I'm suing you for defamation...stop asking me for a f***ing quote, I hate you".
The book is lavishly illustrated with pictures of the book's subject in various states of slumber and disarray and it also includes a forward by Daniel Sloss' mother Lesley, who says that she has somehow raised a monster: "I'm not quite sure where it went wrong...I accept no blame. Everyone else in the family is a decent, social human being with a healthy diet."
Buy the book here.
Kai Humphries is selling his shows here with discount code COVID19
Picture of Humphries/Sloss backstage by Jill Furmanovsky
Sloss has his own book out later this year. Details here.
*This may not be true
