When Jeremy Hotz talks about his childhood, it starts with a snowbank.
“When I was about three and I was out with my mom,” he says. “It was the winter and we were outside. My mom said, don’t go that way; I did anyway. I walked face-first into a snowbank. That’s how I knew I was in Canada.”
Hotz was born in Cape Town and moved to Ottawa at the age of one. He does not remember the move, but he remembers the impact. Literally. That collision with frozen Canada feels like the right origin story for a comic who built a career out of discomfort, confusion, and the sense that the world is slightly off.
“Beautiful country, stupid place to put it,” he jokes about Canada’s geography. The line lands like one of his stage asides, tossed off but precise.
Their first house in Ottawa had an unfinished basement, and it came with roommates: house centipedes, the kind with way too many legs and a talent for appearing at the exact wrong time.
“That’s why I moved from Canada,” he says still repulsed. “I cannot stand that bug! The legs keep running away from you after you kill it because there are so many!”
It is the kind of detail that never makes a biography, but you can feel it in his comedy. Some things just bug him, and the fun is watching him point them out before the rest of us even notice.
The Roxy and the Smell of Show Business
Hotz did not ease into stand-up. One night, he’s just a guy in Ottawa. Next, he’s onstage in a comedy contest.
“The first time I went on stage, I was in a contest in this dirty bar in Ottawa,” he says. The venue was the Roxy, a bar that sounds exactly like what it was.
He showed up dressed for destiny. “I was wearing light blue corduroy overalls with patches on the knees because that was my first time on stage and I figured that would be my comedy outfit.”
Midway through his set, reality hit.
“I remember halfway through my show, I smelled pee…and it wasn’t me.”
That detail matters to him. “Was not me. The whole bar smelled like that.”
For some performers, that might have been the end. For Hotz, it was a beginning. “I thought, wow, this is show business, huh?”
The smell did not keep him away, yet, that smell never quite left him. “I’ll never forget that. That smell, you know. So whenever I’m doing really badly on stage, I smell that piss smell.”
For Hotz, comedy has a scent.
The Hand in Front of His Face
The persona that would define him slipped out by accident.
At a Montreal performance early in his career, someone pointed out that he kept putting his hand in front of his face. Other comics said, “You know you put your hand in front of your face the whole time, you idiot. You’re not going anywhere on television with that crap.”
He had not even noticed. “It’s anxiety. And that’s how it started.”
Instead of sanding it down, he grew into it. “I just got a little more comfortable on stage and then, not by choice, it became visually less like I was nervous and more like it was my act.”
He laughs at the mythology around it. “It wasn’t like some stroke of genius to put my hand in front of my face or turn my back on the audience or do a whole bunch of things that you’re not supposed to do in a row. When you do them, it all adds up to being okay. I had no idea that was going to happen, man.”
That hand over his eye, the fist covering his mouth became a signature. “They don’t forget, I know,” he says.
Walk past him in an airport and you might not say his name. You might just mime the gesture.
Shackleton, the Leafs, and the neighbourhood
Offstage, the misery softens.
He travels with his dog, Shackleton, an eight-year-old with long hair and strong opinions about deli meat. “He loves Montreal smoked meat, because I do, and I give it to him.”
The dog has become part of the act. “That’s how I get off the stage. He comes running out and goes: ‘Come, get off. We got to go!”
Shackleton also understands things the audience does not. “When I’m screaming at the television, it’s not at him. It’s just the Toronto Maple Leafs.”
Hotz lives in West Hollywood now. When the Leafs are on, the neighbourhood knows. “You hear windows slamming and doors shutting outside my neighbours’. I’m that guy, man. I’m the guy in the neighbourhood that everybody says, ‘Nice guy. But he’s insane.’ That’s me!”
There is something comforting about that. The man who built a career on existential dread still loses it over a hockey game like any other Canadian ex-pat.
He recently dodged another kind of disaster. During the California wildfires, his area was nearly evacuated. “We got the notification, pack your bags, blah, blah, blah. The next notification you’re going to get will be to evacuate and it never came. We just sat there waiting. We were the last place not to be forced out. Whoa, how lucky was that?”
You can hear the disbelief.
“You know, the weather is nice, so when it all burns down, all you have is the sun. We’d love to have more buildings put up. It’d be nice to have somewhere to go!”
Even in survival, there is a punchline.
Montreal: The Breakout
For all the miles and years, Montreal remains sacred ground.
“Montreal is my favourite city because they made me a star before anybody.”
That matters. He is an English-speaking comic who broke big in a bilingual city. “I broke out of Montreal. You know why that’s so impressive? I’m an English-speaking Canadian, and they got right behind me right away. I’ll never forget that.”
The Just for Laughs Festival has changed. After four decades as the comedy world’s go-to showcase, the festival’s parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024 and even cancelled that year’s edition amid financial turmoil and restructuring. It has reemerged under new ownership and is back on the calendar, a leaner but still beloved part of Montreal’s summer.
His loyalty has not shifted. “As far as I’m concerned, with or without, I’ll always go back to Montreal. I don’t forget where I come from. What… are you crazy? No way.”
He talks about the old days of Just for Laughs with a mix of nostalgia and pragmatism. “That was just a business thing, more than anything else.”
What hasn’t changed is the audience. He is not worried about filling the Beanfield Theatre. “I’m not worried about that at all. Montreal has been great for me.”
Tres Misérables
Now he is heading back with the Très Misérables tour, a title that both nods to and mocks the grandiosity of musical theatre.
The story of Les Misérables is all about redemption. If Jean Valjean had to redeem himself with comedy, according to Jeremy, it would be visual.
“He would be walking down the street singing and he would be arrested by two policemen for singing in public.”
He is not a fan of musicals. “Musicals are so stupid, like the guy sings and then everybody pretends that that’s okay. Nobody makes a big deal. It’s so stupid. Come on. I can’t stand musicals. Who makes the words rhyme? Get out of here. It’s not a song. It’s a movie.”
Still, he understands the comparison. In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean carries a yellow passport marking him as a former prisoner, something that defines him before he can redefine himself. Hotz has his own passport: the anxious face, the turned back, the muttered frustration.
Does he ever want a different one?
“No,” he says. “The good thing about that is when people see me in public, they go: ‘Gee, that’s that comedian. Maybe I should say hi? Nooo.’”
It gives him distance, a buffer. “Yeah, they leave me alone, you know, and they just stare at me. Then I look up and they look away real fast. So, then I stare at them and make them feel real uncomfortable.”
Mr. Dressup Nightmares
Jeremy grew up in the gentle, cardigan-wearing world of Mr. Dressup. But even there, something bothered him. When asked if he still has nightmares about Casey from Mr. Dressup chasing him, he lights up.
Casey, with those famously tiny arms. “The poor kid was half man, half Tyrannosaurus,” he says cracking himself up.
“All those old shows I watched when I was a kid. That’s my stand-up.”
His stand-up is not built on abstract cleverness. “My stand-up is very clever jokes about an incredibly juvenile topic. I’m like this grown-up child.”
Jeremy’s gift is bringing us all together through misery. “Even though I’m miserable, in some weird way I manage to stitch it and pull everybody together.”
“Here is what happened with my act. The world got really miserable for real, so I became in fashion,” he jokes.
Miserableness aside, the laughter is what helps take some of that pain away.
“Other guys (comedians) really lean on the way the world is and blah, blah. I don’t at all. I lean on what is specifically pissing me off and it pisses you off too. You just haven’t thought about it yet.”
That is the Hotz formula. Take the irritation you did not know you had. Expose it. Sit in it. Make it funny.
From a snowbank in Ottawa to a dirty bar that smelled like pee, from a nervous hand in front of his face to sold-out shows in Montreal, Jeremy Hotz has turned misery into muscle memory.
This weekend, when Shackleton runs out to pull him offstage, Montreal will once again be the city that laughs first.
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Writer: Randal Wark is a Professional Speaker and MasterMind Facilitator with a passion for live music. You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. His Podcast RockStar Today helps musicians quit their day jobs with out-of-the-box advice from Ted Talk Speakers, Best Selling Authors and other interesting Entrepreneurs and Creatives. He created the Rock Star Today Music Business Jam Session for musicians. Randal is a collector of signed vinyl, cassettes and CDs.
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