“I was leaving football soon, coming to the end, I had this other job. But I was playing that day for Beasain,” he continues. “Well, I was sitting on the bench. And all I could think about wasn’t the game, but the jokes I would be telling when I got to Lezama, Athletic’s training ground. ‘I wonder if they’ll like it…’ Bloody hell. I was quite tense. I was thinking: I hope the coach doesn’t put me on because my mind’s not on this; I’m thinking more about my monologue. Why? Because I was scared.”
“I thought my stand-up set worked, but it worked with people who weren’t footballers — fans who enjoyed being told stories from inside the game. How could they be interesting to actual primera players? They have thousands of stories like this of their own, and miles better than mine. They were at the Bernabeu yesterday, they’ll be at the Camp Nou tomorrow. They won’t like what I have to say.”
“But I went there and bloody hell, they were the best best audience I’ve had in my life. Do you know why? Because I realised I was their voice. I said the things they can’t say because tomorrow, it’s a headline. People think you’re a machine, but you’re a person. I say what a player really thinks when he scores a goal or misses a penalty, what really happens. I felt that they were laughing because they were saying: ‘bloody hell, this bastard’s telling the stories I wish I could tell’ or at least that I reflected how they feel. Afterwards, Marcelo Bielsa said thanks. They were really motivated for the next day’s match.”
Athletic lost 4-0.
There’s a pause. “Javier Clemente came once, too. I did a show in San Sebastian and when I looked out over the audience I saw him. That was quite hard. I’m nice to him in the set, I talk about him giving me my debut, but there are jokes — and he has his character. I’m there on stage and every joke, I’m thinking: ‘is the next one going to annoy him? Should I change it?’ He comes to the dressing room afterwards. ‘Javi, I didn’t annoy you, did I?’ And he says: ‘Bah, I don’t care. You can make it all up if it works for you.’ Life, eh: if you had told me when I made my debut that 20 years later, my manager would be coming to see me do a stand-up routine in a theatre…”
“That started with the band. Suddenly, for the first time, I felt that comic side of me coming out on a stage — not as a comedian but a singer. I started to risk it, push the boundaries, tell more and more jokes. And one day, I think: ‘bloody hell, Zuhaitz: a singer? I’m not so sure. But a stand up…?’ I had never really thought of it and there wasn’t much of a stand-up culture in Spain, unlike the UK or the US. I didn’t really know how a monologue worked but I gave it a go. I went on a stage to tell stories about my days as a footballer: no script to start with, just stories. People laughed. I thought: ‘blimey, this could be a job’.”
More than a job. There’s a line in the show when Zuhaitz asks: why pay a therapist to listen to me go on, laying myself bare, when I can be paid to have a whole audience listen instead? He’s only half-joking. That old line about tears of a clown? There’s something in it, he says.
“There’s the OCD, the depression. I don’t know if I am a sad person, but I turn things over and over. I’m introspective. Talk to my family and sadly I’m not so funny at home. Comedy is a kind of armour, protection. Humour is a way of surviving, keeping going. It’s survival and it became therapy, treatment, a way of dealing with things.” A way of recovering what he lost.
“Football was my passion, but I started to suffer with it and ended up detesting it,” Zuhaitz says. “I would stop people watching it at home, refuse to go to a bar if it was on. I wound up hating my passion. But with this monologue, I’ve started to make peace with football. I’m falling in love with it again, via comedy, my stories, nostalgia, the connection with the audience. I’ve started to go games again. For me, this has been closing a circle, understanding at last. And that makes me happy.”
“I said I felt I had failed as a footballer, and I play on that in the routine, but looking back now I don’t feel that I failed any more. I failed in only one thing, which was ending up detesting this great passion I had always had as a kid. I hated what I loved. And this stand up set, being a comedian, laughing, has allowed me to love it again.”
