Tokyo-Based British Comedian BJ Fox Has His Own TV Sitcom But Says His 30-Sec Terrace House Cameo Gave Him More Publicity

BJ FOX: We’re currently not on lockdown whatsoever, even though they’ve announced emergency measures across the country — it started off in just the major cities and a few areas surrounding Tokyo, but it’s now gone nationwide. But nothing is enforced; they’re just asking people to show self-restraint or jishuku.

Is that effective?

Well, if you look at the numbers, every day it seems to be going up. My wife’s quite pregnant — she’s due to give birth in July — so we’re trying to exercise. We get up in the early morning and try to do 10,000 steps a day. And you feel the sense that when you’re walking around, people give you that social distance.

But if you look along the tracks of Tokyo, sometimes we look down at the trains going past and every seat is taken, and people are still having to stand. That doesn’t strike to me as the right level of social distancing. There are still people going to work every day. Obviously, that can’t be helped with essential workers. But I do wonder, when I look at the train, I’m like, how can that be safe at this time?

Do you have enough face masks and hand sanitisers? We saw videos of people scrambling for supplies…

Yeah. We had the early scare when Diamond Princess cruise ship docked at Yokohama, and that kind of kicked everyone off and people were buying toilet paper and masks. We actually had a little bit of masks, believe it or not, which I had bought for a comedy sketch years ago (laughs). We needed, like, five masks for a sketch about dentists in Japan.

Then [the panic] kind of died down. It was like first a China or Asia issue, then it became a European issue with Italy, then the United States really taking the lead, and the UK, and now it feels like it’s come back round. So during that period when it was calm, we actually bought a little bit of things. So we’re fine in that sense.

But I would say there’s even more to it. No offence, it wasn’t good. After he finished, I did a couple of jokes on stage, and it was not good to the degree that I felt I had to address the situation because the audience had really shrunk back.

It was a very busy, surreal night because we had six cameras around, and it’s quite a small club anyway. Lots of people came not because of Kai, but he brought some of the girls from the house, so there were maybe 40 people in a small room with these big cameras. Everyone was wondering what the cameras were doing, so we had to talk about that at the beginning just so that anyone who didn’t want to be on screen could sit at the back.

Then he went up, and it was so awkward. Usually, I’d say the emcee’s job is such that if someone hasn’t done well, you do a quick joke and raise the energy up. You reset the palette for the next comedian. And equally, if someone’s done really well and they laugh too hard, you bring the energy down because you don’t want everyone exhausted. I remember there’s a guy called Fakkah Fuzz from Singapore. You didn’t want to go after him! Because he would kill so hard that everyone would be exhausted.

So the emcee’s job is to bring that energy back down. And one of the first rules of emceeing is that you never attack the performers or make fun of the performers. I felt a bit bad because I did it a little bit. But something needed to be said because the audience had got so awkward.

The reason was, I would say, was the suicide stuff which alienated the audience. Suicide is a very [sensitive] issue in Tokyo. People don’t want to laugh at suicide. Maybe you could write jokes about coronavirus, without making jokes about people dying of coronavirus. These are sensitive topics and you could see the audience shrink back.

I think one of the comedians in the actual Terrace House commentary box mentioned that if Kai was a salaryman talking about the struggles of salarymen, people could accept that. But for a young dude on TV to be making fun of people in terrible situations, it really made the audience feel awkward.

And can I say another thing? That wasn’t his debut. He did it the night before at another venue. He did the same set there and it worked. I think what happened was that in the front row, there were salarymen. They laughed at that first joke and they put their beers up. And so because they laughed, everyone else got, like, the ‘permission’ to laugh. And it kind of worked, and the whole thing did alright.

So I think that was another thing that was happening with Kai: he did it the first night and it worked, so he, like, I’ve got this, I’ve got the confidence. But when he didn't get the reaction he was expecting, it just sent him into a bit of a tumble.

So everything was unscripted as advertised, then?

The only thing of ‘staginess’ was that they said they wanted [Kai’s house-mates] to come up afterwards. I didn’t know it was flowers or anything, I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but they asked, “Could you give us a minute or so to do this?” Because the way the emcee usually works is I’m like, “Okay, great job! Next!” but I was told if I could just buffer it out. That was it!

I’ve seen a few episodes since, I’m not sure how scripted it is, but in that sense, it was literally the night. That was very brave of him because I know I would not want my first-ever stand-up comedy gig filmed. It takes you a few gigs to get your rhythm. The only issue we had with [the producers] was that we had to turn all the music off in the whole club, because the way the club works is that we’re actually on the third floor and there’s a bar on the second floor, and you go up to the stage area. Essentially there’s a bar going on downstairs and they had to turn the music off because of licensing.

When the girls presented a bouquet of flowers to Kai, you joked that they were for his funeral. That was funny.

Yeah, it was a good line (laughs). But I felt bad about that. One of the big issues that we have in Tokyo is that we don’t have enough comedians. We’re trying to get new people to do it all the time, because people come and go. We’re always trying to present Stand-up Tokyo, our group, as a friendly place that’ll support you and all my friends were like, “Well, that image is gone now.” Now we look like a place where you could debut but if you don’t do well, the emcee will make jokes about you. Overall, it was a very fun night.

Are you a Terrace House fan?

It’s not a show I follow much. I would say that that episode did a great bit of publicity for the Tokyo stand-up comedy scene. Lots of people came to see us perform after that, we are very grateful to Kai and Terrace House for coming.

Is your wife a fan?

No, but what is interesting is that when that episode came out in Japan, all my wife’s friends were writing to her, like, ‘Look, it’s your husband!” What really shocked me was, that 30 seconds on Terrace House got me more publicity than three seasons [of Home Sweet Tokyo] on NHK!”

Yes, that’s true. We pretty much stopped doing any shows since early March. There were a couple of reasons for doing that. One, as an organiser, I felt a little bit responsible to the comedians and patrons. Two, slowly but surely, the comedians didn’t want to come in. We did a couple of shows without much audience, and people were worried. It just didn’t seem like a good solution. I did actually feel bad for our venues because they rely on such events.

With the last show we did, they did everything they could to make it safe — they spaced out the seats, they had alcohol disinfectant, and bearing in mind, there was no kind of any guidance from the government about not doing events at this stage. It was purely us being worried. Maybe being a foreigner, I was getting the news from Singapore or the BBC, I had a higher state of awareness of what was going on.

I’m actually sad to say that since then we haven’t done a show. One venue has closed down for good. That shows you the economic damage [caused by the pandemic]. Rents are high in Tokyo and the clubs do rely on people coming in and buying drinks. [The comedy shows] are a hook to get patrons through the door. We’d love to give a farewell show, but literally, the [venue operators] decided that it wasn’t going to work for them. They couldn’t afford the rent for another month without any kind of shows. I have two concerns: one, how long is this [pandemic] going to continue? And two, even when businesses return to normal, are people necessarily going to cram into a small comedy club?

The thing I’m worried about is that so much of our audience is from tourism. Tokyo in the last few years or so, certainly building up to the Olympics, has turned it from an exotic destination to pretty much a city that is accessible for most young people. The Rugby World Cup, for example, was an incredible period [Sep-Nov 2019] for comedy clubs in Tokyo because we had all these tourists and performers coming in. Generally, because of this virus that kind of expendable way to jump on a plane and have a life-changing trip to Tokyo isn’t going to be so accessible anymore.

By the way, the venue you saw in that Terrace House episode? That’s the venue that closed, which is kind of ironic. The biggest bit of publicity they’ve ever received, and yet three months later, they had to close doors.

How does it feel to do virtual stand-up?

We’ve done a couple, and they haven’t been particularly fulfilling in terms of performances. We did do some online open mics, but that’s very much within the community, and that’s just a place where we can all have a beer together and a place where we can run some jokes or keep the writing going.

The couple of attempts we tried online really didn’t attract enough of an audience, and when we finished, the performers didn’t really enjoy doing it. It was just too strange performing to a TV screen. And if you want to put audience feedback on, and you need to turn the mics on, then it all just goes to craziness with people popping up.

I think there’s probably a way to it if you have an external producer to manage it. But if you’re performing and trying to manage who’s on mute and who’s appearing onscreen, it’s just not [feasible]. It didn’t scratch the itch.

What else are you doing with your downtime besides writing material and getting ready to be a father?

Since we last spoke, I’ve actually got a very successful podcast Gaishikei Urawaza Eigo, a half-Japanese, half-English podcast about teaching Japanese people the real meaning of English. In English, it means ‘English Hacks for Surviving in Foreign Companies’. Basically, we try to teach how to be more effective in communicating in English. It’s kind of a comedy podcast too.

To give an example, on the first episode, we talked about how if you’re giving a presentation at work and you are asked a question you don’t know the answer to, instead of saying “I don’t know,” you just say, “Oh, that’s a really good question.”

That podcast has really grown, and I’m really thankful that even though I’m not performing, I still got that and the TV show that I can work on. It makes you really think about the nature of what comedy is, and the nature of a business which relies on having crowds come together. I’m very lucky that in the last couple of years, I’ve got ways to channel that creativity remotely.

Catch up on all episodes of Home Sweet Tokyo here. NHK World is on Singtel TV Ch 157 and StarHub Ch 812. Terrace House is now streaming on Netflix.

Photos: BJ Fox, Netflix