Interview: Alan Davies: “Life’s a series of mini campaigns.”

Alan Davies

Sleepy but as deadpan and laid back as ever, ELLA WALKER talks to the stand-up and telly man about a whole load of little victories

Alan Davies sounds absolutely shattered.

He’s already called once to hurriedly but politely rearrange our chat (he got stuck taking his daughter to a birthday party), and now appears to be utterly exhausted, his voice raspy, his tone weary, his sentences tailing off into static.

But then, Davies has quite a few good reasons to be tired. When we speak, it’s just a few days before Jonathan Creek returns, and a few days after the end of a stint presenting Après-Ski – a light-hearted commentary on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Then there’s a new series of QI in the works and an impending solo stand-up tour, which is coming to Cambridge Corn Exchange.

“It’s all on top of me really,” he admits wryly. “I need to get my act organised.”

So you can see why the tiredness is easy to forgive, and to be fair it’s not every day you get to quiz Jonathan Creek, is it?

True to previous form, the Essex born 48-year-old’s latest show, Little Victories, is loaded with brand new autobiographical material. His second tour since 2013’s Life Is Pain, which dealt with the death of his mother when he was 6 and followed a decade long break from stand-up, this time around it’s parenthood and the daily battles that come with it getting a ribbing, and he concedes he’s “pretty nervous” about it.

“I set out to make people laugh from the first minute to the last minute, that’s my task,” says Davies matter of factly. “In the meantime I’m talking a bit about being a parent, having had a parent and how I compare, and my kids, a bit of scatological nonsense and some jokes about Andy Murray. And that’ll be about an hour and a half.”

He regularly swings back to his and wife, writer Katie Maskell’s, children, Susie, 4 and Robert, 2, like the needle on a record player, always curving back towards the core. It’s partly because he loves them, obviously, but also because they make him laugh more than anyone else (fellow professional comedians included), hence why they’ve inspired large chunks of the show.

“Once you have the children and they’re alright, then the little victories come in,” he explains. “Persuading them to get in to a car seat, or get out of a car seat or eat their broccoli. And, when you’re the kid, the little victories come in trying to get your father to let you go somewhere or do something or buy you something.

“Life’s a series of little mini campaigns, trying to get what you want. Some of them last half a minute, some of them last months.”

Davies’ comedy career started in the late 80s after he studied drama at the University of Kent and found himself happily weighed down by the pressure of being named Time Out’s Best Young Comic in 1991. Then along came the role of his career: Jonathan Creek, the ingenious, straggly-haired, cultishly-adored amateur sleuth.

Although the new series has been widely and scathingly criticised (that’s Twitter for you) – first because Creek has ditched the duffel coat, and second, because he’s swapped the windmill for a wife (Sarah Alexander) – it hasn’t lost any of its shine for Davies. “It’s a privilege really for me,” he says humbly. “David Renwick’s scripts are as good as ever; as long as he’s writing the scripts then we’ll make them; that’s the way it works.”

So he hasn’t grown bored, bearing in mind he’s been playing the lateral minded private eye since 1997? “I don’t think so; it’s fun you know? And I don’t do it so much that it irks,” he says, although previous instances of “tramp” like hair extensions have given him cause to waver occasionally. The truth is, he admits: “My own hair is deteriorating.”

While the acting, presenting and stand-up have gone pretty well, at school Davies actually dreamt of being a football reporter, although he’s rather pleased that didn’t work out… “I’ve met quite a few football reporters since and a charmless, miserable bunch they are,” deadpans the die-hard Arsenal fan. “There’s one or two exceptions that I have a good laugh with, but mostly they’re self-regarding, over serious, cynical and I’m quite glad I didn’t go down that route.

“Now I still like football and I can just go as a normal fan and not be all world weary about it.”

Instead he flutters with the odd bit of sports presenting; the occasional radio appearance rubs up against his football podcast, The Tuesday Club, and more recently he got considerably more whipped up than your average curling expert on Channel 4’s snow-capped Après-Ski, reserving his world weariness for the bonafide sports reporters.

In fact, Davies is quite difficult to get a happy-go-lucky response out of. Presumably part of his self-deprecating charm, ask him which comedians do make him laugh and he umms and aahs, plumping for “the Graham Norton show, we get a laugh out of on a Friday night.” Changing tack (which comedians aren’t funny?) does earn a trademark wheeze of a laugh though, and a diplomatic answer: “There are loads that don’t , haha. I’m not going to tell you who doesn’t make me laugh, a bit uncharitable isn’t it? Haha. It’s such a personal thing isn’t it, comedy? One person wants John Hegley and the next person wants Micky Flanagan.”

He does point out that as long as his shows are full, he’s not too fussed either way, but that makes him sound a tad cold. Get him onto the subject of the researchers and writers he works with though, and he’s genuinely impressed, putting the popularity of QI in particular down to the team behind the scenes.

“Well I think, much like Jonathan Creek, there’s a lot of work goes into it. Renwick does all the work on Creek, and on QI there’s a whole team of researchers and producers beavering away,” he muses, plunging into an admiring spiel about the picture team who research thousands of images per series. “Never mind all the questions and the facts, for every fact that gets used, another load get rejected.”

He adds drolly: “The comedians come in at the end, lark about, and that’s it!”

Is Stephen Fry as intimidatingly amazing as he seems?

“No, he’s not as amazing,” Davies chuckles. “QI is quite a trick you know, he’s made to look like the cleverest man in the world, haha, but he is amazing. You wouldn’t want to have an argument with Stephen.”

And does he learn much sitting on the panel season after season?

“No, it totally goes in one ear and out the other,” he laughs. “I can’t remember any of it, I’m so busy trying to think of something funny to say.”

First published by Cambridge News.

Review: Russell Brand, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Tuesday, April 1

Russell Brand

My head is still throbbing from trying to make sense of the manic bundle of leather clad energy that is Russell Brand.

The man is a vortex, sucking you into a world of heroes (Ghandi, Malcolm X, Jesus and Che Guevara), and villains (McDonald’s, Gillette, the Daily Mail), all the while trying to convince you, in his meandering, wayward style, that he’s more like the former than the latter, despite being a celebrity.

It’s a lean frame to hang the show – Messiah Complex – on, but it suits the wild eyed comic’s scattergun storytelling; he’s like a dog on a lead, being yanked back to how he really is more like Ghandi than you’d think.

He stalked on stage in a “sexy” pair of boots (his words), with huge loops of beads swinging from his neck, before demanding the lights to blaze. Then he hopped off stage and took an anxiety inducing tour of the Corn Exchange. It was terrifying, despite an anecdote about him screaming at Simba in the Lion King musical to steady our nerves. It was also absolutely hilarious. He grabbed at crutches, embarrassed some twins and then went and sat on the lap of a punter in a wheelchair and had him drive him round the auditorium. It was incredible – particularly seeing as Jamie, the guy in the wheelchair, was funny enough to give Brand a run for his money.

The rest of the set went by in a blur.

He slinked and sashayed, gyrated and screeched his way around the stage, dissolving the boundaries between highbrow ideas – wordily railing against corporations, governments and consumerism – and the crude stuff, suddenly switching tack to explain what he used to get up to with his mum’s Henry Hoover…

He’s much more self-deprecating than you’d expect, honest about his “acting”, throwing up photos of himself looking borderline insane on the big screen, and whipping out some of his most embarrassing moments (considering Brand has spent large chunks of his life off his face on drugs and doing anything for attention, you can imagine these tales are pretty magic).

Although a master at showing off (“I beat Paxman in an argument!”), irritatingly so at times, he’s got a knack for brainwashing you with his point of view (and to be honest, the majority of his ideas make a lot of sense, even if in practical reality they might flounder), the next you’re thinking, how does he sustain that level of mania on stage for a solid 90 minutes? He’s brilliantly, wondrously exhausting, meaning we left the venue close to mental collapse, nervous system agog, throats aching from laughter.

An orchestrated tangle of a show, you can’t help believing Brand has a touch of hysterical genius to him. He’s certainly entertaining.

First published by the Cambridge News.

REVIEW: A rather funny punting trip in Cambridge

You couldn’t get a much more “Cambridge” evening to be honest.

Run by Hannah Dunleavy, comic and former Cambridge News columnist, the premise of Funny Punts is this: you jump aboard for a guided river tour while Hannah melds facts and figures with a smattering of witty asides and off-the-cuff observations.

Your host is bawdy and fully prepared to spew a wedge of Cambridge related knowledge from her brain – and the setting is obviously pretty magical, especially at dusk.

Once lazily scooting down the river from the Granta, we learnt about ridiculous kings and queens, the great, the famous and the utterly mental that have studied at Cambridge University (Isaac Newton’s lack of sexual prowess and Prince Charles having actually been to university both get a ribbing), and politicos will definitely enjoy nods to Cambridge’s bubble beliefs.

Although some of the pop culture references did slightly whoosh over my head (luckily you’re free to ask questions and chip in), you get the feeling each tour is tailored to the audience. And, while it isn’t always highly glossed and polished, thankfully the routines don’t feel rigidly rehearsed – which is good because, on the water, anything can happen…

Hannah is the first to admit she’s up against some tough competition when it comes to river based distractions. She’s used to powering through when a cute flock of ducklings paddles over mid joke, (“awws” from the audience ruining the punch line), and happily digresses when fellow boaters provide too exceptional a lure for further comedy/sniggers.

In our case it was a troupe of foreign students doing widths instead of lengths, and a velvet clad guy splayed out with his feet up, attempting to look all-too nonchalant and Byron-esque while his poor girlfriend did the hard graft – spectacular.

Then there’s the distraction of the lad doing the actual punting (no, Hannah doesn’t punt and joke simultaneously, that would most likely end in a splash). We were lucky enough to have bagged an Eddie Redmayne look-a-like (swoon) who, when Hannah declined (“I was just about to do a joke about Sylvia Plath killing herself!”), obliged us by bridge jumping – this should definitely become a staple part of the gig. Seriously.

Pithy, clever and light, Cambridge will definitely look different when you hop back out of the boat. And, just so you know, health and safety-wise, no-one’s toppled in yet…

:: Tours leave Granta Punts on Newnham Road at 6.30pm and 7.45pm every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tickets cost £15 per person and are available on the night or can be booked in advance at http://www.wegottickets.com/cambridgecomedytours. For more details contact cambridgecomedytours@gmail.com.

:: You can also follow @funnypunts on Twitter or visit http://www.facebook.com/funnypunts.

First published by the Cambridge News.

Cambridge Comedy Festival: The brilliant Dylan Moran

Dylan Moran

The rather wonderful, super shambolic Black Books legend Dylan Moran is headlining the ‘Best of’ gala show at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. It’s definitely set to be the highlight of the Cambridge Comedy Festival. Oh yes. The Irish comic, armed with his signature rambling style and cigarette ravaged voice, will tackle the nightmares of kids, relationships, growing old and religion.

Currently touring with his latest show Yeah, Yeah in the US, we caught up with the scruffy haired comedian for a slightly bizarre email chat:

Who or what makes you laugh and why?

Children make me laugh; telling the truth as though it weren’t considered terribly poor taste. Politicians make me laugh when they second guess the entity they call ‘the public’. Writers make me laugh enjoying the play of their gifts – Kevin Barry is a terrific Irish short story writer and novelist. And, of course, people you dislike falling down the stairs.

… and who or what do you not find funny?

What is not funny is what is not truly alive. The inert, the ersatz, the kitsch offered up as diversion, it is everywhere, yet easily avoided – do something else, start a new conversation elsewhere.

How would you describe Yeah, Yeah? TimeOut Chicago called it “finely tuned and intoxicatingly slapdash” – is that accurate?

I would say it is what I’m doing now – no idea what that may be.

Do you find touring a challenge?

No. There’s a talented tour manager, a thing that flies or drives, peanuts – then a stage. It’s not warfare, or being a nurse on the NHS.

How have you found American and British audiences differ?

Americans and the British are funhouse reflections of each other; US positivity is a religion, just as scepticism is sacred in Britain.

What do you love about being on stage?

New stuff. The feel of my fabulous gowns clinging to my hips.

What do you think you’d be doing now if you hadn’t become a comedian?

I’d be doing more questionnaires.

What are you most proud of?

My firm breasts, dance moves and the respect I get from snakes.

Do you ever get sick of being asked to revive Black Books?

I don’t mind.

Do you have any fond memories of visiting Cambridge?

I once spent a good part of an evening on a bouncy castle drinking champagne. It seemed wise at the time. Every limb and sinew disagreed for a long time afterwards.

Glenn Wool and Jo Caulfield will be the support acts at the gala night at the Cambridge Comedy Festival. Have you come across them before?

Mr. Wool I don’t know. Jo, I remember as being kind, quick and very good onstage.

What have you got planned next?

I’m about to release my own range of male lingerie and root vegetable based perfumes for the Autumn Season.

First published by the Cambridge News.

Cambridge Comedy Festival: A rather spiky interview with comedian David Trent

David Trent

If you research comedian David Trent, it’s pretty tricky. There’s the odd garbled review, an official website heavy with CAPITAL LETTERS. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. Happily there are quite a lot of YouTube videos, but interviews? Not so much.

I had hoped that, being a Cambridge based teacher, David might want to meet, but as tech heavy as he is in his comedy (he uses projectors, video clips and PowerPoint to maximum, cheek wobbling effect), it’s no wonder he preferred to chat over email instead.

Here are the rather spiky results:

What is This Is All I Have about? What should people expect?

THIS IS ALL I HAVE is about making an audience of people laugh. People should be expecting a work in progress show that currently has eleven high quality routines which play out over an average running time of fifty four minutes and twenty eight seconds.

I’ve Googled you; you seem to like talking about yourself in the third person: why is that?

David Trent has no idea what you’re talking about. He just Googled himself and saw absolutely zero evidence to support this assertion. He wrote this himself.

What did you do before PowerPoint? Do you think you could have become a comedian without it?

Impossible. Before Powerpoint I just sat around wishing that someone would invent it. That’s why I didn’t even consider comedy until Windows had been invented. What did you do before Word? Could you have become a journalist without it?

Your website says that last year you went to Edinburgh and “smashed the living s*** out of it”. Are you planning to do the same again this year?

My website does say that. You neglect to point out that it also states how I played nightly in a venue which held fifty six people. Context is everything.

What/who makes you laugh and why?

Yesterday I laughed for about an hour at Richard Dawkins’ “Mutation of the Mind” on YouTube. I am laughing now thinking about it. I also laugh at Parks and Recreation. It is a TV show about the Parks and Recreation department of a town called Pawnee and concerns mainly humour based around the everyday situations of running a Parks and Recreation government department which may be where Parks and Recreation gets the name Parks and Recreation from.

Who is your comic idol?

Chris Morris.

What are you most proud of?

I make the most delicious Mung Dal with Green Chilli that you have ever tasted.

What do you think of the Cambridge comedy scene?

There are two comedy scenes in Cambridge, there’s the University scene and then there’s nothing else.

What have you got lined up next?

Upon completion of this interview I am going directly to John Lewis to buy my daughter some Wellington Boots.

:: David Trent: This Is All I Have, Cambridge Comedy Festival, Cambridge Junction, Thursday, July 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets £10.50 from (01223) 511 511 / http://www.junction.co.uk

The hilariously surreal world of the Cambridge Improv Factory

Top, from left: Vaughan, Kevin and Heather, bottom: Clare, Alex, Vorno

It’s surprising what you can do with a pet shop, a spiritualist and a snow globe. Ella Walker discovers the hilariously surreal world of unscripted theatre courtesy of the Cambridge Improv Factory

A suitcase of hamsters writhes on the floor while a couple with confused West Country accents and a badly thought out three step plan for saving the world confront a spiritualist and the queen of New Zealand, who is dancing around gleefully at the thought of possessing humanity after becoming one with her guard snake.

Oh, and did I mention the hamsters are being led by a renegade man from inside a snow globe who thinks he’s a pirate?

It’s not always this surreal, but then, anything can happen at one of the Cambridge Improv Factory’s shows.

Otherwise known as the ‘home of improvised comedy in Cambridge’, Cambridge Improv Factory (CIF) run fortnightly shows in the basement of CB2, putting on completely unscripted performances for audiences that get to directly shape the evening’s storyline.

Made up of founder members Kevin Wright, Heather Yeadon, Vaughan Allanson, and newer additions Clare Kerrison, Vorno Hancock and Alex Wilbur, the group have been whirring along together since 2008 in various forms, but have only recently been getting fully into their wig-wearing, prop-toting stride.

Starting out self taught, the group decided to take improv more seriously after trying a few classes and getting tips from Clare who runs improv courses through Cambridge based script writing group WriteOn.

They swatted up on their improv history – their kind of improv kicked off in Chicago and Toronto in the 1960s – and by 2010, says Kevin, “had some skills and people seemed to like what we did.” CIF was born.

I got to experience one of their Underground Improv three act plays, and I’ll admit, I was sceptical at first.

The thought of a play cobbled together and hung entirely on a few suggestions from the audience: surely it would just descend into chaotic giggling and not much else?   Well, there was definitely some giggling but fortunately for all the right reasons.

After hyping the audience up Kevin, Heather, Vaughan, Clare and Vorno trooped on stage and requested that we come up with a location, an occupation and an object you’d find in a gift shop. After some haggling and a few vetoed suggestions, the players plumped for a pet shop, a spiritualist and a snow globe.

Jumping to the sides of the stage (the players are always visible and dip in and out of the scene as they come up with ideas or need to rescue a fellow player from a dead end plot line), the first act opened with Vaughan scanning hamsters in the imaginary pet shop and, as the hour went on, things got more and more bizarre…

They hopped between the world of the pet shop, the office of the spiritualist (Kevin had Vorno perched on top of a chair as he worked through his childhood traumas) and the miniature world of the snow globe (cue all five players huddled together and cooing at the ‘hand’ like the aliens in Toy Story worshipping “The Claw”).

It was magnificent really, and so much fun. With each act the storylines became more and more entwined, coming to a satisfying conclusion, but the risks involved with so few props (a suitcase, a scarf, a few comedy wigs) and just their imaginations and reactions to rely on was truly impressive.

Aside from the three act play, CIF do several types of show including genre plays (taking a random theme chosen by the audience and just running with it), game shows (mini improvised sketches a bit like Whose Line is it Anyway? ) and The Director’s Cut where the players compete to direct the best improvised scene with the audience voting for the winner at the end.

It all sounds like a lot of hard work, and they have more planned says Kevin: “There is so much you can do with improv; we’ve only scratched the surface of ideas so far.”

During the show I saw there was definitely no dearth of ideas, but during their debrief the group admit to being annoyed they’d missed out a potential scene (the pirate from the snow dome, leading the hamsters to victory from inside the suitcase). “There are always all the things you could have done,” Clare says wistfully.

This is the nature of improv: things happen in the moment, there are no revisions and no chances to start over and get it exactly perfect.

However, there is still a lot of confusion over what improv is and is not. Clare describes it as ‘disposable theatre’ and explains it is entirely unscripted, unlike quiz shows on TV that simply pretend to be unscripted (looking at you, Jimmy Carr).

“The beauty of improv is that you never see the same show twice,” she buzzes, with Heather adding: “It’s there and then it’s gone.”

Another misconception – one that had me dragging my feet at the thought of attending the show – was the fear of being made to stand up and join in.  But apparently you’re more likely to get terrorised by a comedian at a scripted stand up gig than in the much friendlier world of improv.

“People worry that they might get picked on but that is not the case at all,” Kevin promises. “We won’t single people out – we’re the ones up there messing around making strange characters.”

Which begs the question, isn’t it terrifying going up on stage, in front of a roomful of people without a script, or even a plan? “It is quite scary,” Kevin admits. “You have to be on your game but we practice how to develop characters and how to weave storylines”

Although, “we hardly ever do what we practice” Clare reveals, laughing.

On stage what it comes down to is chemistry and maintaining a good flow.  “Sometimes it’s easy but sometimes it is like ‘how are we going to put that together?” says Vaughan, with Kevin adding: “There are moments when you see the fear in each others’ eyes.”

But the group work fantastically as a team, working through any moments of panicked quiet with a quick scene change or by niftily flicking the lights off. Largely though, these moments just add to the irreverent, free-falling style of the show.

Whatever happens in the moment, they are clearly all addicted to the buzz of improv. “It’s the most brilliant, liberating, exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Vorno enthuses, describing it as “crazy surreal madness” that is “good for your brain”.

Kevin agrees: “I’ve never tried super crack, if it even exists, but I think it’s what super crack must feel like.”

“It’s scary and exciting and you get to be different people every week, you can be anyone you want to be,” adds Heather and: “It’s much better than having a script,” says Vaughan.

And if they fail to keep us wholly entertained? “We sometimes have forfeits if it hasn’t been amazing, so you can watch us suffer on stage if we haven’t done a good job.

“We just want to make you laugh and put a smile on your face.”

The Cambridge Improv Factory’s Christmas show is on Dec 13. Find out more at www.cambridgeimprov.com and follow them on Twitter @CambridgeImprov. For details about Clare’s improv classes (starting in January) visit www.writeon.org.uk/courses/improv.html.

First published by the Cambridge News.

Simon Amstell. Cambridge Corn Exchange, May 24

There’s belly laughter and stomach-squirming in equal measure at the loveably-awkward comedian’s new style of ‘therapy gig’, as Ella Walker discovers.

Simon Amstell

 
It was like tumbling into a much too funny, much too private therapy session.  We were the unqualified and unprepared therapists, much like Amstell’s unwitting celebrity victims on Popworld and Nevermind the Buzzcocks, (looking at you, Preston), and Simon was, well Simon. But a really lonely, clingy version.

As he loped on stage with his signature mop of tousled black curls and an ungainly curtsey, my hopes were high and my tummy muscles were clenched, ready for an onslaught of giggles. The gawky Grandma’s House star has always been skin-crawlingly awkward – in the best possible way – batting down celeb egos with acerbic wit and causing severe face-ache with his 2009 tour, Do Nothing, but his current show Numb embarks on a whole new level of soul searching.

The most painful bits of the 32-year-old’s life, from the distant relationship with his dad (they bond over a broken washing machine) to being dumped (he can only squeeze out one, solitary tear despite the heartbreak), are laid out on the slab of the stage, to be hacked away at in the sticky air of the Corn Exchange.

“This is the only way I can really talk to people,” he claimed. “Raised and lit.” Magic, sex, drugs, spa treatments and ridiculous indie kids in comedy glasses all get a good going over too, but the pointlessness of life, of relationships, of finding meaning in anything at all, noxiously filters in as well. That, and possibly too many womb analogies.

My abdominals weren’t disappointed, but it was definitely a different kind of funny to his usual fare. Mostly the results were hilarious, but sometimes, just sometimes, a bit of uncomfortable squirming sneaked in. Notably, a very dodgy, very long anecdote about a spiritual trip to the Peruvian rainforest (complete with cat and Michael Jackson hallucinations) had us waiting, and then waiting, and then waiting some more for a fairly weak punchline.

But the thing about Simon Amstell is that he is utterly lovable in his vulnerable, questioning, checked-shirted state. “I have abandonment issues!” he yelled, after a woman who ran down the aisle either to the bar, or to cry in the toilets, only to launch into another “painfully funny” tale.

He might have bared the most damaged recesses of his soul, but I was just left wanting a little bit more.

First published by the Cambridge News.