Vittorio Angelone: "My problem was I was fucking up socially, upsetting people, and not even realising"

When asked what stands out about being raised half-Italian, Vittorio Angelone points upwards.

“My nonno and nonna’s house in West Belfast is like being teleported to Italy,” he says, settling himself in the Hot Press office between two sold-out Vicar Street shows. “Like, they have a ceiling fan.”

A ceiling fan in Belfast is, of course, about as much use as an air conditioner in Antarctica. Still, it’s a reminder that we carry parts of our identities wherever we go, a sentiment that informs much of Angelone’s comedy.

He was born in 1996 to an Irish mother and Italian father, whose family left Italy during World War II to get away from all the bombs and violence. So they moved to Belfast. “Out of the frying pan and into the IRA,” is how Angelone puts it during his comedy shows. For those wondering, he supports ‘whoever is winning’ when Ireland play Italy in football and rugby, which might as well be neither at this rate.

Angelone left at 18 to study classical percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. When Covid hit, he moved back to Belfast and started running a socially distanced comedy club in his back garden. By 2022, he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for his debut show Translations.

These days, when he’s not touring as one of the more compelling young voices in comedy, he’s back in London, co-hosting the hit podcast Mike & Vittorio’s Guide To Parenting with fellow Irish comic Mike Rice.

“I guess you sort of identify with what makes you different,” Angelone says. “Most people in Belfast would know me as the Italian guy, whereas in London, the more identifiable thing is that I’m an Irishman, because that’s the point of difference. You can’t be the Irish guy in Ireland, so I think it’s whatever makes you different or sets you apart from people – it’s almost that the identity is forced upon you rather than that you choose it.

“I think in a weird way, while they might not relate to the specifics of being Italian and from Belfast, people will relate to the emotion of wanting to belong.”

And many do. His current show, You Can’t Say Nothing Anymore, is selling out across the UK and Ireland. Its title does several things at once.

There’s an obvious Nordie reference to Troubles-induced omertà. There’s also a wry dig at comedians who use multi-million dollar Netflix specials as a platform to bemoan cancel culture.

Then there’s the question underneath all of it: should comedians speak on the social and political issues of the day?

“There’s a lot of people that demand all art has to be politically engaged and politically active, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” he says. “But at the same time, I think this is quite an engaging show politically. I would like to avoid the moniker ‘political comedian,’ but it’s also natural. It’s a lot to read the news at the minute. How do you feel not completely hopeless and useless in the face of it all, but also, how do you give yourself space to feel it’s okay to live your life sometimes as well?

“I just write material without any thought of the bigger show. And then at some point, I zoom out and look at all of it and go, ‘Oh, there’s a couple of themes emerging here.’

“I like to think that nobody who comes to my show is entirely comfortable the whole time. You should be challenged at certain points, and you should hopefully go away with maybe a bit of thinking to do, as well as having had a really fun time.”

When Angelone got to the Edinburgh Fringe last August, he assumed he wouldn’t be alone in taking material about Palestine. He was wrong.

“I got there and it felt like I was the only person talking about it, and that was a very weird feeling,” he admits. “And I get it’s not an easy topic to talk about in a comedy show, and it’s difficult to make an audience laugh in that headspace, but I was surprised that I felt like I was one of the only people doing that.”

Irish artists and their activism have been well documented at this stage, from Sally Rooney to Angelone’s fellow Belfast heads Kneecap. Vittorio recently had his own viral moment after a witty exchange with former Conservative MP Penny Mordaunt on Channel 4, during which he called out her involvement in a Saudi weapons expo.

“I talk in the show about wanting to feel like I’m part of the wave of Irish artists,” he says. “I don’t think comedians are often included in that wave of Irish artists, and that’s certainly part of that. I poke fun at other Irish artists in and amongst that as well. It’s hard to do activism without it being a little bit cringe sometimes, but then it’s like, ‘Is this still worth doing? Maybe.’ I don’t really answer any questions in the show, I just go, ‘Oh, what about this?’”

Before the comedy clubs there was the Guildhall, and years spent as a classical percussionist. Angelone gets animated when the subject comes up.

“I’m sick of people saying they listen to classical music because it’s relaxing,” he says. “Some of it’s not relaxing and it shouldn’t be. It’s about war and it’s about death. Lots of it is really funny too, even the people in the ‘classical music world’ don’t make enough of how fun and funny it can be.”

Though it seems at times Angelone didn’t find it that entertaining himself. He once fell asleep on stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

“Didn’t miss a note though,” he says. “That’s the benefit of being a percussionist, you can nod off for a few minutes and then get woken up by the penultimate movement of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird Suite’, and manage to figure out where you are in the piece and come back in on the cymbal when you’re needed.”

The training left something useful behind for his comedy.

“I would say there’s an interesting musicality to inflection with comedy,” Angelone says. “If there’s something that isn’t working about a joke, I have a language to be able to internally figure out why that is, and maybe know how to fix it quicker than somebody who doesn’t have that language.”

It’s a useful skill for someone who, by his own account, spent years struggling to read situations offstage. A few years ago, Angelone received a diagnosis of autism and ADHD. He’s spoken about it publicly but carefully, not wanting it to become the headline.

“My problem was I was fucking up socially, upsetting people, and not even realising,” he shares. “I feel much more empowered to ask ‘Was that rude?’ with the help of the diagnosis.”

It’s impressive that a man with social processing difficulties built a career that revolves around connecting with audiences.

“It’s so difficult to feel the vibe of a room,” he says. “I’m not looking at people’s faces in the room really. It’s more of an undercurrent of energy or something, that’s very different to talking to a person face-to-face.”

In a way, being misread is something Angelone has made his peace with. Old people on Facebook call him a left-wing snowflake. Young people on Instagram call him a right-wing edgelord.

“I think you can joke about something and take it very seriously and care about it deeply all at the same time,” he says. “And I think the confluence of those two things leads some people to think I’m preaching, but then leads some people to think that I’m not taking a topic seriously enough. But then I think there’s quite a big chunk of people in the middle that get what I’m trying to do, and that seems to be going okay for me.”

A headline showing at the legendary Apollo in London in March proved as much.

“It felt like the audience understood that it’s exciting for you as well,” Angelone says. “So they’re as excited as you are. It felt like a big celebration of like, look what we all did together, we built this crazy thing.”

• Vittorio Angelone’s You Can’t Say Nothing Anymore tour comes to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on October 22 & 23. For more information check out vittorioangelone.com