Origin Story w/ David McIntosh JrThe Comedian Who Got 1,000 People to Watch Him Fold a Sheet - Dan Boerman
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 1:36
Crypto banter, internet drift, and finding the conversation wormholes
David and Dan open with a playful riff about crypto losses, meme coins, and how modern conversations seem to inevitably drift toward Elon, crypto, and other internet gravity wells. The tone is set: quick tangents, self-aware comedy, and a friendship dynamic that can spiral without a steering wheel.
- •Joking about agents, fees, Bitcoin-only payment, and losing money immediately
- •“Elon drift” as a modern version of misattributed quote drift
- •The temptation to derail into endless online-topic wormholes
- •Setting up the need to rewind to Dan’s actual origin story
- 1:36 – 5:22
Being memorable in comedy: sweets, donuts, and the ‘resume in your belly’ tactic
David recalls meeting Dan at The Stand and noticing he’d brought chocolates to stand out. Dan explains the broader strategy: in crowded scenes, small gestures (donuts, sweets, baking) can make you the person a venue remembers when a spot opens up.
- •First meeting at The Stand and the ‘guy with the sweets’ effect
- •Dan’s inspiration from the donut-resume job application story
- •Using memorable gestures to differentiate in saturated comedy lineups
- •Baking mishaps and the Edinburgh cookie-tray burn anecdote
- 5:22 – 6:18
Rural New Zealand beginnings: Martinborough, dropping out, and recurring ‘comedy epiphanies’
Dan goes back to growing up in a tiny Wairarapa town and describes a restless, creative adolescence—music, public speaking, and struggling to focus in school. He details dropping out at 16, time on benefits, and the pattern of periodically declaring he’d do comedy—then shelving it for years.
- •Martinborough: small town identity and early creative impulses
- •Dropping out at 16; life on benefits and scraping by
- •Hyperactivity and gravitating toward performance-based skills
- •The long-running cycle of ‘I’m going to do comedy’ realizations
- 6:18 – 10:07
First open mic chaos: silence, panic, flipping off the crowd, then recovering
Dan recounts his true ‘start’ in stand-up: an open mic during Comedy Fest with a packed room and a high-stakes first impression. His first joke lands with confusing silence, he panics and flips off the audience, then apologizes—only to win them back and finish strong.
- •First gig in a full, hot room during Comedy Fest
- •Misreading stage etiquette and freezing before going on
- •The first joke failing so hard the audience didn’t know it ended
- •Panic response, apology, crowd support, and a high-energy recovery
- 10:07 – 11:23
Volume as a career strategy: more spots, more buckets, more ‘lottery tickets’
David asks whether volume drives luck in comedy. Dan frames it as probability: not perfect, but directionally useful—do more shows, apply more widely, and increase the surface area for opportunities, even if some gigs are low-value scratch cards.
- •Volume vs quality: a ‘BMI’ style imperfect but useful metric
- •“Lighting more fires” and “putting out buckets” as opportunity metaphors
- •Seeing small gigs as lottery tickets with varying expected value
- •Exponential growth in stage time year-over-year
- 11:23 – 14:26
Barbering as crowd work training (and why barber shops are confessionals)
Dan and David connect barbering to performance: the chair becomes a captive mini-audience and a space where people overshare. Dan notes that thousands of haircuts effectively trained him in conversation, reading people, and playing dumb to mine humor—skills directly transferable to stand-up.
- •Barber shop culture: few conversational rules and lots of honesty
- •Barbers as informal therapists / mental-health touchpoints
- •10–20k haircuts as social reps for crowd work instincts
- •Using ‘play dumb’ tactics to make everyday jobs funny on stage
- 14:26 – 17:31
Jimmy Carr’s ‘Am I The A**hole?’: the thinning-scissors revenge story
Dan explains the show format and shares the story he told on it: subtly sabotaging a ‘toxic’ client’s haircut to suggest balding. The anecdote escalates into the specifics—pickup artist vibes, weaponized thinning scissors—and the surreal validation of Jimmy Carr praising him on TV.
- •Explaining the TV format based on the Am I The A**hole subreddit
- •The ‘make him look like he’s going bald’ barber shop sabotage
- •The pickup-artist client as the moral trigger
- •Jimmy Carr’s reaction and Dan’s plan to use the quotes for Fringe promo
- 17:31 – 23:40
How he got cast: last-minute Instagram ad, jetlag auditions, and chasing ‘what if’
Dan details the recruitment process: seeing an ad after deadlines, recording frantic takes while jetlagged in a hotel room, and pushing through technical hurdles to submit. He reflects that the anticipation—the ‘what if’—often delivers more dopamine than the achievement itself, which can be motivating but also risky.
- •Submitting late under jetlag, insomnia, and deadline pressure
- •Rapid casting pipeline: email → phone → video → contract in days
- •Anticipation vs accomplishment as a recurring psychological driver
- •The danger of fantasizing without taking action
- 23:40 – 29:30
All-in on comedy: post-Fringe silence, quitting a stable job, and the dinosaur-bed reality check
After the Fringe, returning to quiet Wellington feels unbearable—Dan interprets it as a sign to go back to the UK and commit. He resigns from a solid government role and returns to Edinburgh, only to confront the gritty reality: long commutes for stage time and a precarious living situation in a child’s dinosaur-themed bed under glow-in-the-dark stars.
- •The ‘deafening silence’ after Fringe as the push to leave NZ again
- •Quitting a stable job and moving countries quickly
- •Edinburgh off-season: fewer gigs, commuting to Glasgow for spots
- •The ‘kid’s room’ accommodation and existential self-audit moment
- 29:30 – 32:31
Why London changes the odds: opportunity density, coincidence, and catching fire
Dan and David compare Scotland’s scenes with London’s ecosystem: you can create luck anywhere, but London’s density makes it easier to stumble into it. Dan extends the metaphor—London is dry kindling where small sparks can catch—especially after TV exposure highlighted where the industry’s pipelines live.
- •London as a place where you can ‘bump into opportunity’
- •Contrast with Glasgow/Edinburgh where you must manufacture more chances
- •Dan’s shift from resisting London to embracing its upside
- •Television/industry infrastructure as a key pull factor
- 32:31 – 36:36
The fitted-sheet phenomenon: ambiguity marketing that pulled 1,000 people to a hill
Dan explains his show title and the viral stunt behind it: stickers with an intriguing call-to-action, a trackable QR code, and a public ‘fitted sheet folding’ event. The tactic snowballs into global media pickups, award nominations, and brand deals—proof that opportunistic experiments can redefine your public identity.
- •Show concept: relationships, singledom, and doing domestic life ‘on your own’
- •Guerrilla stickers + QR tracking + social ambiguity for FOMO
- •Viral scale: scans, followers, meme-page circulation, press/radio coverage
- •Repeat success in Edinburgh: 1,000-person crowd, award nomination, brand deal
- 36:36 – 38:46
Being remembered (again): from sweets to sheets, plus the weirdness of micro-fame
David ties Dan’s sweets strategy to the sheet stunt: the underlying skill is engineered memorability. Dan describes the surreal aftermath—autographs, photo lines, someone wanting a tattoo—and the emotional whiplash between performing ‘godlike’ moments and mundane reality.
- •A consistent throughline: doing something distinctive people recall
- •Claims about it being one of the biggest Fringe crowds (informal/unverified)
- •Autographs, tattoo requests, and the strangeness of public recognition
- •A reminder that stunts can overshadow the original plan (stand-up)
- 38:46 – 51:03
What’s next: engineered public events, social illusion inspiration, and ‘don’t die wondering’
Dan previews his evolving direction: more flash-mob-style public events with ambiguous marketing, inspired by creators who ‘game systems’ to create spectacle. The conversation ends on a shared philosophy—find the thing you care about, resist empty nonchalance, and pursue it so you don’t ‘die wondering.’
- •Interest in ‘social illusion’ stunts and reverse-engineering systems
- •Future strategy: big public events → delayed media pickup → show ticket conversion
- •Discussion of passion, idiosyncratic hobbies, and giving a damn as antidotes to emptiness
- •Dan’s next-show theme: “Don’t die wondering” and acting on childhood interests
