Tell Us About:

Your latest stand up show:

The show is usually different every day.  At the moment, I seem to be obsessed with robot cats that have lasers in their bottoms so every time they go to the toilet, they accidentally destroy the toilet.  The thing is with robot cats is that because they have a robot voice, they never sound very sincere so when they apologise, no one really believes them.  And why would they be using the toilet anyway?  Cats don’t use toilets.  Robots don’t need toilets.  What’s coming out – nuts and bolts?

Your favourite joke you have created: 

I try to avoid jokes.  Every now and again I come up with an actual joke and then I forget to use it.  I also have a stick blender for blending soups.  I forget to use that as well.  Why are my soups so lumpy?  Oh yes – I have a stick blender.

Your favourite venue to perform at:

The Royal Festival Hall was nice.  I also like the Albert Hall.  And there was that theatre I played on Broadway.  Oh – the Criterion was lovely.  But that was a long time ago.  Actually, I think my favourite venue was the library on the island of Iona – which is off the west coast of Scotland.  I was booked there in 1997 to do a storytelling thing.  Half the island turned up and I ended up improvising a two hour comedy show.  It was around that time that I worked out that I was a comedian.

The joke  that was the longest to write and why?

I am still trying to avoid jokes.  The problem with jokes is that people can easily steal them.  And also, often they are not that funny.  I like to think of my stuff as actually funny material.  So in terms of material, I very rarely write anything before a show.  The material evolves through the show.  I’ve got a piece I’ve been doing for about twenty years now that I have recently started deconstructing and putting back together again in different ways.  Sometimes the bits set each other up and sometimes I do them backwards so the call-backs are a bit like time travel. It’s not nearly as funny this way but I think it does give a lingering sense to the audience that they are missing something they maybe weren’t clever enough to catch, even though that is not the case.  It’s just me messing with the order of things to see what happens.  And this kind of uncertainty will maybe provoke some people’s imaginations into the possibility that maybe time and causality are not what they thought they were.  Maybe things don’t happen because of other things at all.  Maybe some things are just stuck to each other like my flippers.

Comedy hero:

Dave Allen

Les Dawson

Peter Sellers

Victoria Wood

Jonathan Swift

Rabelais

Dream venue to play at:

Well I have this recurring anxiety-dream in which I’m in the wings about to go on stage and then the stage manager says to me, “So.  Hamlet.  That’s a big deal.  I hope you know what you’re doing.”  And then I realise that I’m not doing my Comedy 4 Kids show, I’m doing Hamlet.  All of it.  On my own.  Like – doing all the parts myself.  And I haven’t learned it.  I then grab a copy of the script and try to memorise the whole thing between FOH clearance and the curtain going up.  The dream has never made it to the actual show but maybe one day it will and I’ll discover that I do actually know the whole of Hamlet but only in dreams – despite never having read it all or seen a production of it.  I’ve never even been to Denmark.  But anyway – I’m not sure which theatre it is.  It’s got a proscenium arch and quite deep wings.  And I think there’s quite a slope to the stage.  So it might be the Theatre Royal in Bath.  Or Bury St Edmunds.  It’s definitely Regency.  But it’s not real – so who cares?

I would also really love to do a show in the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich.  Mainly because despite having lived in the area for the last fifteen years, they have never booked me.  I literally drive past it about three times a week.  I could do a show there on my way back from picking up cat-food from B&Q.

Describe the feeling you get when you walk on stage to do a show:

Comfortable.

It’s probably the same feeling that most people get when they walk OFF stage.

I am completely comfortable on stage.  It’s where I’m supposed to be.

I get the same feeling when I am writing, or in a primary school talking to children.

People say that we should go with the flow and follow the river.  Don’t fight the river, just let it carry you along.  And I do that with most of my life.  

When I am on stage, however, I AM the river.

Essential items you always take on tour with you?

My stick blender.

I don’t use it but I always make sure I have it.  

My girlfriend bought it for me for Christmas.

I also have a bracelet that I bought for my daughter.  She’s got loads so I wear this one to keep me in touch with her when I’m not with her.  It’s made out of amethysts which apparently are her birth stone or something.   At least that’s what it says on a teatowel so it must be true.

I always take my laptop on tour with me.

I find that the half hour before I go on stage is a great time to write something completely unrelated to the show.  I’m currently writing a trilogy of books that are set on the council estate where I grew up.  It’s regular life but then dragons and magic turn up.  The trilogy isn’t a particular order.  The three stories take place at the same time in the same place, with mainly different characters but with lots of connections and overlap.  I’m currently on the third one but when that’s finished I’ll have to re-write all three so that they all meet and rhyme in the right places.

Describe your fans in three words:

Children. Children.  Children.

What we can look forward to from you this year: 

I’m considering creating an alter-ego called Monsieur Two-Sausage – a French turtle with particularly sticky flippers.  He gets into trouble because he is always getting stuck to everything he touches.  With a terrible accent.  He will be available for children’s birthday parties, some barbecues and all funerals.

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