Most people aren’t exactly delighted when their precious offspring pour scorn on their parenting, but the moment David Cross’s daughter told him he was “the worst daddy in the world”, he felt nothing but gratitude. The comedian had been struggling to come up with a title for his latest show, until his six-year-old landed on the perfect distillation of her father’s standup vibe: a darkly comic melange of goofiness, pugilism and needling contrarianism. “I was like: ‘Oh, there you go, a name for the tour! Very good.’”
Said show, which he brings to the UK later this month, is not exclusively parenting-themed, explains Cross over Zoom from New York, facial hair fulsome but trimmed back from the wild, grey Garibaldi beard he has been sporting in recent years. Having become a father in his 50s (his wife is Amber Tamblyn, the actor and founding member of anti sexual harassment movement Time’s Up), child-rearing has been a relatively late addition to his usual comic odyssey through “religion, people being fools, pop culture, politics and all that kind of stuff”. For the purposes of the show, Cross has recontextualised the titular insult from a stroppy outburst to a commentary on the culture wars. “The idea is that a lot of people who hear my opinions on certain topics – especially in America – would think that I’m a terrible father because I believe in diversity. I’m woke, or whatever the fuck you want to say.”
