‘I thought you might have come to kill me,” says Oscar Jenkyn-Jones, sipping tea in the sun-dappled garden of an east London cafe. His wariness is forgivable. After all, it must be disconcerting to be contacted by a journalist who saw you perform a dazzling half-hour of absurdist character comedy in 2014 and has been searching for you ever since. In his black felt hat, pine-green jacket and trousers, and with a blue kerchief knotted around his neck, the tall, bearded 33-year-old resembles a hipster Robin Hood. Ask why he vanished from the scene and a smile plays on his lips. “The real question isn’t ‘Why did I quit comedy?’” he says. “It’s ‘How did I get as far as I did?’”
The disappearance from public life of a comic who was compared favourably to Chris Morris seems more mysterious when set beside the fortunes of his friends. Jenkyn-Jones made his fringe debut in 2010 as part of Bristol university’s Revunions sketch group, described by the Telegraph that year as “wow-funny”. Among his cohort were Jamie Demetriou (Bafta-winning star and creator of Stath Lets Flats), Charlotte Ritchie (Fresh Meat, Feel Good) and Ellie White (another Stath regular, soon to be seen with Timothée Chalamet in Wonka).
