How a British dad made comedy gold imagining two toddlers chatting

BRIGHTON, England – A few years ago, George Lewis was driving back from performing in a comedy club when he realised he had to change his life.

He had played the same club several years earlier, also for just a few minutes and for little more than money for petrol. Both times, he did what he had to do. He showed up. He made the audience laugh.

Now, though, he was a parent. He needed a more stable income and his material felt tired. Yet, the thing that filled his days – looking after his children – was a no-go for stand-up, older comics told him: a sure way to get pigeonholed.

“It was like: ‘Maybe when you have kids, don’t mention that you’ve got kids,’” he said, recalling their earlier advice.

“Obviously,” he continued, “now, I realise it’s quite the opposite.”

In the years since that night, Lewis, now 37, has become a bard of British parenting comedy. He is on his first tour as a headliner, and his shows keep selling out. His route to success began after the Covid-19 pandemic, when he began posting short online videos that gently mocked – and commiserated with – his fellow British millennial parents.

In some sketches, Lewis acts the harried grown-up. In one clip, he is trying to adhere to a nap schedule while driving. There is an unseen toddler in the back who must not be allowed to fall asleep. As they approach home, he gets increasingly desperate.

“Should we sing?” he asks. “Do the actions! Big energy!” he commands. Then, he tries swerving, which is more dangerous than fun.

Launching the series Two Toddlers Chatting

Other times, he pretends to be a kid. In one long-running series, he stages conversations between toddlers who sound a lot like adults but who deadpan the baffling logic of two-year-olds.

The series, Two Toddlers Chatting, is his most popular, he said, with about 60 million views on Instagram alone.

In one sketch, a toddler shares some real concerns. His father keeps covering his face – which makes him disappear. Then, his dad comes back, saying this odd, upsetting word.

“He was behaving so erratically,” the toddler tells his friend. “He just started shouting, ‘Peek-a-boo.’”

“‘Peek-a-boo?’” his friend replies. “Is he okay, like, mentally?”

It is a low-budget effort, run almost entirely off his phone. He films in his kitchen, plays all the characters and edits clips between school pickups and bath time. In video after video, he unspools comedy gold about the gulf between the earnest rituals of modern parenting and the essential, eternal weirdness of a small child’s inner life.

“The more mundane and frustrating, the better the sketch that comes out,” he said. “So, it really is a great way of going about your day.”

He has the timing just right. TikTok and Instagram have become comedy’s biggest stage. And it is not just videos: Several parenting and relationship podcasts took off during the pandemic and now crowd the top of British comedy lists.

“The audience has always been there,” said Sophie McCartney, a Liverpool-born comedienne, who turned her “Tired and Tested” mum persona into a comedy career with a podcast, two books and live stand-up tours.

But the pandemic supercharged demand and supply of parenting comedy online, she said. “We were all trapped inside our houses with our children of varying ages, and the internet was just pure escapism.”

Celebrities come on Parenting Hell With Rob Beckett And Josh Widdicombe – episodes include The Christmas Stress Tornado and Playdate From Hell – to dish about life with kids.

Why parenting comedy works

“The reason it works is it comes from a place of ‘We’re really trying’,” said Widdicombe, a veteran of Britain’s stand-up circuit.

It would be grating to listen to venting, he said. Instead, it is precisely because they actually like being parents that their jokes land. “You can love your kids, but also think, ‘I can’t engage with playing shop for three hours without feeling like my brain is rotting,’” he added.

The increasing success of the genre may also be a function of the technology itself, several British comedy critics and experts said. Online, specificity sells. The algorithm sorts users by interests, so creators who stay on message get more traction. They do one thing, over and over, to delight their followers. Much like playing with a toddler.

For Lewis – whose children are now six, five and almost two – the dad stuff was kind of an accident.

He would post a sketch, then wait anxiously by his phone, as “likes” trickled in. He does cover other subjects – like cringe-watching the surprisingly explicit movie, Saltburn (2023) – but his most successful work is parenting-related.

Of his more than 500,000 followers on Instagram, about 80 per cent are women, he said, and most are between ages 30 and 44.

“Have we got parents in?” he said, opening a show in Brighton, a city on Britain’s south coast. The packed club laughed and cheered. “Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I thought there might be.”

“He kind of makes light the challenging parts of parenthood,” said Ms Hannah Worrell, a mother in her 30s who came to the show. “It makes you feel like it’s, ‘Oh, it’s not just us that go through that.’” NYTIMES