Homepage News Reviews - Acts - Shows - Screen - Radio - Books - Clubs Interviews Awards 2006 Edinburgh 2005 - Reviews - Blog - Previews Features Archive Awards 2005 Edinburgh 2004: - Previews - Shows - Diary Guestbook Forum © Emporium Of Mirth 2004 Editor: Lauren Murphy Reporters: Fiona Wilkie Natalie Joanne	Emporium of Mirth Robin Ince Robin is ten minutes late meeting us at the BBC on Oxford Road, Manchester. No more. And yet, as soon as he sees us, he apologises roughly twenty times before taking us to the Cornerhouse and insisting on buying us drinks. It’s obvious within 30 seconds of meeting this man that he is-if the term isn’t too patronising- genuinely nice. Perhaps a rare thing in a comedian; after all, the first requirement of being efficient at stand-up comedy is possession of an ego, surely? We sit down and Robin apologises once more before the interview even starts. “Sorry, I’ve only had about two hours sleep because I had to be up quite early. So, it’ll be a mixture of kind of manic and a little bit snoozy, probably.” Sounds good to us. We have met him after rehearsals for the third series of The In Crowd, the Radio 4 sketch show that Robin works on with writers Carl Cooper and Susan Vale (amongst others), and performers Smug Roberts, Helen Moon and Kate Ward. I ask him if there are any new characters in the third series, which has now been brought forward to the 6:30 slot. “There’s a zoo keeper who finds things like animals getting their heads stuck in bottles hilarious and considers that to be the wonder of nature. That’s a new one for Smug. I’m doing a character that I did in the first series, who’s called…well, we never say his name because it’s very seaside, really, it’s Dick Splodge, who is yet again another of my kind of gay psychotics.” Robin says this as if he has quite a repertoire of such characters. “He’s based on Christopher Biggins, but only slightly. Just the fact that Biggins spent all his time just laughing, so he’s one of these characters who drags people round, talks nonsense, and they never get a word in edgeways. He’s not actually gay, either, he’s just tremendously camp. He has a wife, and a friend who makes electric shoes for him, which unfortunately in one episode go off…” He stops suddenly as he becomes aware of our confusion. “This makes no sense, by the way.” Always the best sort of comedy, I’ve found. Robin seems to have a (so far well-hidden) penchant for random, context-less comedy, which he is gradually filtering in to his writing. “I’m trying to get in as much stupidity.” Robin’s banter easily drifts on to his stand-up work, and his disdain for the clientele of Jongleurs. “A friend of mine who has to play Jongleurs a lot was talking the other day about someone whispering really quietly in the corner of the room, and the act on stage using that awful phrase, ‘alright, where did you learn to whisper mate, in a helicopter?’ and it gets a huge laugh and a round of applause. The other classic one is, when people are having a conversation, ‘yeah, isn’t it annoying when you’re having a nice quiet conversation and they suddenly build a comedy club around you?’” Robin goes on to compare this appreciation of all things hacked to some Radio 4 comedy audiences. Far from being pleased at The In Crowd being pushed forward to the earlier slot, he feels a strange pressure to compromise the material to be suitable for broadcast just before The Archers. He says he would rather have a more specific audience to aim at rather than simply larger listening figures. “We naturally have quite a dark sense of humour and I think the 6:30 slot is too early. Last series, unfairly, I felt, we got compared to The League of Gentlemen. I can see why, we’re both Northern shows with predominantly Northern casts. I think that’s it.” The dilemma, however, will dissipate after this third series, as The In Crowd will be no more. “It’s the final series, six parts. I will probably work with Carl Cooper and Sue Vale on something else, but I think it got to the point where we felt we didn’t want to invent loads of new characters, we just wanted to take the characters we had to the end. At the end of this series, we will kind of reveal the truth. It’s like Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill, ah, tremendously exciting. Not quite as misogynistic as Brian De Palma’s work actually.” So, we want to know, what has influenced Robin’s comedy writing? “I love John Walters’ work, and I think it probably has influenced my stand-up. If anything’s influenced it, it’s probably more John Walters than a stand-up.” He explains the difficulty of writing and performing material that’s funny and shocking. “I think bad-taste humour is quite difficult. It’s very easy to go out there and say, ‘right, yeah, fucking hell, imagine Holly and Jessica, yeah, imagine fucking them?’ I’ve seen people do that, and you go, ‘well, that’s not funny’. That’s shock, but it’s not shock-humour.” What reaction does Robin get from his material, then? “There’s nothing better than people laughing then going, ‘ooh!’ [in a gaspy “I’m shocked” type way]. You know, you’re not allowed to laugh and go ‘ooh’, once you’ve had the gut reaction to laugh, you’re only oohing at yourself and not the comic.” Robin admits that there are times when he expects he may have crossed that fine line. “There are points when I might have gone too far. I don’t think I have for a while, I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve written or performed recently that I think is unacceptable in my own moral sphere.” We ask him if he distinguishes between joking about a controversial topic and concentrating his humour into a piss-take of individuals. “I think you’ve got to be careful who you make jokes about. Recently I’ve been doing a joke about Leslie Ash, which does get an odd reaction. I don’t think plastic surgery mistakes are funny…” he looks pointedly at our Dictaphone. “That’s a bit of a lie, actually. I think they can be quite funny. But I did feel sorry for her until she said the thing about, ‘people are making fun of me, but I’ve just had an accident. It’s just like Paul McCartney’s wife Heather Mills.’ And I go, ‘well, I don’t think it’s like that very much at all, because I don’t think Heather Mills went to a doctor and said, ‘I’d like a bit of a leg tuck please.’ Fucking hell, not that much’!” For one bizarre reason or another, the conversation drifts onto The Archers, and Adam and Ian’s by now infamous gay kiss. “My only excitement about the gay kiss was about the BBC sound effects. Did someone have to find something to do the gay kiss with? If heterosexual kisses are with sand and Vaseline, rub that together, how do they do a gay kiss? Is it the same, do they use Vaseline and Vaseline, do they use sand and sand? I’m not exactly sure.” Dragging us helplessly back on topic, we ask Robin about Mitch Benn’s Crimes Against Music, and how he became involved. “I think Mitch was quite underrated for a long time because he doesn’t just write parodies, he does write comedy songs. I’ve known Mitch for a while and gigged with him a lot, and he asked me if I wanted to be the, kind of, sidekick. Quite a lot of it was just improvised and made up on the spot, which I think does come across. We did a pilot, which wasn’t quite right. After about a year, we got commissioned for a series, and that’s when we developed the relationship where Mitch plays the really arrogant pompous bloke, and then all I seem to do is at the end of each song I would go, ‘well, that was rubbish! That’s useless, what, that’s meant to be comedy?!’” We point out that that wasn’t Robin’s only role, as he did get to use his John Peel impression. “Yeah, terrible, isn’t it? Fucking hell, I kept that away for a while and now I’ve dug it back up again. One of the reasons I like the John Peel voice is that it’s very easy to use as a vehicle, I didn’t write it in advance. At the moment I’m doing a pilot for Radio 4 about Peel’s involvement in certain big historical things. And, you can just talk for two hours with no real sense at the end of it. And that to me is just more interesting.” We ask him if this pilot is the little-known collaboration with Ross Noble. Robin looks decidedly guilty. “No, actually… oh God, I haven’t told Ross yet! The reason I’m not doing it with Ross was because we talked about it over a year ago, and then he was in Australia for six months, when he came back, I was in Australia for six months, and it was all…” Robin executes some wonderful hand movements, presumably implying that the situation was up in the air. “We weren’t originally going to do it for Radio 4, we were just going to make CDs and sell them on the Internet. It would be us as the two Peels just going round, for example, to the Tate Modern.” Robin launches into his only John Peel impression of the night. “It reminds me very much of a time that, er, Fergal Sharkey collected some sand from an old lady’s shoe, she was absolutely furious, she’d been collecting it for over a year…” The similarity to Home Truths is uncanny. “I like working with Ross as well, because…” he seems to be struggling to think of a reason. We helpfully suggest, “more randomness?” Robin nods enthusiastically. “Well, it is, because when you have someone else throwing up the ideas, it’s a serious challenge. I mean, you’ve just talked about the fact that stunt men always hated Jackie Gleason because he was so peckish he’d eat all the sugar glass, and then you get something about what used to be trapped in Willie Nelson’s beard, when he once caught a blubber in it… then Ross will always try to raise the stakes with something about a forest made from the hair of Hattie Jacques’ grandfather which eventually came to life and then started to spew its own dandruff…it’s so much fun. I would love to do just a half an hour improv radio show with no editing, but I don’t think they’d allow it.” Robin nips out to the loo, making sure to apologise once more for the interruption. When he returns, we greet him by asking about his strangest stand-up experience. “Erm… two, actually, can I say two?” We agree. “One was in Belfast many years ago. It was Christmas week, and I think there were about 600 in there who had been drinking all day. I got introduced by Paddy Kielty as a ‘now from London’, and I got booed off. They continued to boo and throw things throughout, and for that reason, I deliberately stayed on 10 minutes beyond my time, because I like to be contrary I suppose. That was quite peculiar because when I came off, I got beers bought for me the rest of the night.” Robin explains that with certain audiences, the heckling and jeering is not about hatred of the act, but a game. “They didn’t hate me as an individual, they hated where I was from, and it was like, ‘see how quickly we can get the Englishman offstage’.” What about the other weird gig? “It was Glastonbury, about five years ago, where a lot of the acts had come off stage very early, because when it gets to Saturday, no-one can be bothered. And I went on, and it went fine, I went into, kind of, real overdrive. Then, I made a joke involving the word ‘gypsy’. It was actually a joke that falls back on me, it’s not a joke that goes, ‘ooh, aren’t they thieving?’ or whatever. But, because everyone there had had a mixture of mushrooms, coke, amyl nitrate and hot cider, and they all smelt of yeast, because of that, someone started shouting out from the back, ‘there’s nothing wrong with gypsies.’ And that kind of built to a crescendo where the audience were really angry. They were shouting, they were purple-faced. Because of that, my reaction is to become more relaxed and happier. So I just stayed on for far too long. But it was exciting because people were just running on stage and being hurled off by security!” Robin speaks of this experience almost fondly, certainly proudly. “At the end, although I felt a weird sensation about it, I felt quite happy, that I had done the right thing and I hadn’t died.” We ask him if that’s always his reaction when a gig goes badly, and he tells us about one gig in which the audience were so moronic that he just couldn’t be bothered, did his set and ended up kicking things in the dressing room afterwards. He hastens to point out that this was very much a one-off incident. “Overall, I think you can get a perverse kick from anger of the audience, because that keeps you in control. You can think, ‘I have wasted half an hour of your life, and you are now very cross.’ That’s one of my missions.” Robin’s affection for “dark”, strange material comes across once more when we ask him about the difficulty of performing warm-up acts for television and radio. “I can’t be exactly the same as a warm-up as I am as a stand-up. I can’t be as dark, peculiar or just downright strange. And I can never make people do a Mexican wave, I would never do that. I suppose what I did learn from it is that you don’t have to be an alternative comedian to do warm-up, it’s acceptable to do old pub jokes. Unfortunately, I only realised just as I stopped doing it. I was doing a warm-up with an audience of very old people, and I felt that my sister’s cock material was probably not the right thing to warm them up for Carol Vordeman’s shiny face.” He rambles some more about his love of randomness. “I just have this thing where I don’t think the comedian should live in entirely the same world as the audience. I don’t think an audience should be able to guess the punchline. But, of course, audiences like that because it makes them feel as important, I suppose.” We ask Robin about his comedic preferences. Which is better, stand-up, radio or TV? “I like all of them. I don’t do as much stand-up as I used to, which is probably why I like it more than I used to. I only do it once or twice a week generally, now.” He considers. “I quite like doing telly, although I get worried about doing clip shows, talking heads stuff, because they edit you. You go on and say something which you consider to be pertinent, and they edit you down. There was one that I did before Christmas. I was talking about a documentary about what might have been a half-man half-ape hybrid, and my opening sentence was, ‘I love documentaries like that because they keep you watching for two hours, and you go, ‘so is it a man, is it an ape?’ and at the end they go, ‘oh, it’s just an ape’.’ But they just cut it down to me going ‘I love documentaries like that!’ Great, now I look like an idiot! Everyone watching is going to think, ‘well why pay someone to say, ‘oh, I love stuff!’?’” Robin explains how he has to be careful and actually prepare for television interviews. “I love live telly, live telly’s great because you have total control. They can’t edit and change what you’re saying. If you come across as an idiot, well… you’re a bloody idiot, it’s your own fault!” He points out that he hasn’t really had much of a chance to do a lot creatively with television. “I love radio as well. It’s brilliant, I get paid for mucking around. Overall, it’s a great way of making a living, and I think if I did stand-up all the time I would find it a job. I know a lot of stand-ups who are broken and angry, and they spend three nights a week in Jongleurs and that’s their life.” We resist the urge to ask him their names. “I don’t have that, I’m quite lucky. One moment I’m doing stand-up, the next moment I’m talking rubbish on some show about J-Lo’s new perfume or whatever, and then I go off and do something on the radio. And that’s great.” Robin’s enthusiasm for his work is obvious, and his positive attitude is one all comedians should learn to possess (if they don’t already). We pick up on his comment about lack of television experience by asking whether he was annoyed that after knowing Ricky Gervais since college, he wasn’t offered a bigger part in The Office (Robin plays the applicant for David Brent’s secretary in series one). “No, I thought it was gonna be rubbish!” he laughs at his own friendly jibe. “Looking back, furious. I thought it was very nice just to have a part, actually. The thing is, Ricky and had me spent years mucking around together and coming up with ideas, and we came up with hundreds of sketches, but we’d never write them down. They were just things that sort of drifted away into the ether, and what Steve Merchant brought to Ricky was making him work, making him focus. And they are an incredible team.” Robin speaks with pride and affection about his friend. “Watching the inexorable rise of The Office was an incredible thing, and watching his level of fame was very peculiar. It was very odd, because now, wandering around with your mate who you just got drunk with and talked rubbish, and now everywhere he goes people are shouting at him, wanting photos with him. But I’m glad that he’s got fame, because he’s a very good person to have it.” Either Robin feels a genuine lack of jealousy for Ricky’s success, or he is hiding it well. We ask him if fame has changed Ricky. “I don’t think so, he was always a bit of a perfectionist and he always wanted things right. So what now people would view as a hissy fit, would ten years ago merely have been him saying, ‘no, this isn’t right, this isn’t what I asked for.’ So, no he hasn’t changed. He’s always bullied me, and he still bullies me now! A couple of years ago it might have been an embarrassment that his girlfriend made a picture of me in a dress that hangs on his office wall, but now, Britain’s number one TV face has a picture of me as a purported transvestite! Surely, at the very least, I’ll make money when I write the hacked biography!” Since we seem to be on the subject of other comedians, albeit more famous than Robin, we ask him if there is one act he has introduced on Spanking New on BBC7 who stood out from the others. “No one in particular. I am a big fan of Howard Read, because Howard broke my arm in Edinburgh five years ago, thus ruining my Edinburgh and committing me to an enormous number of pain-killers that made me go wonky in the head. I thought Sarah Kendall is great… especially in the first series, what pleased me is that there were a lot of very good new acts. Andy Zaltsman’s a great act… I like most of them.” He goes on to talk about the experience of recording that show. “I found the second series difficult, because we were recording three in a week, and the other thing was we didn’t have an audience for the first three shows. We had almost no-one there. And they were also not a radio audience, they didn’t know things you were not meant to do. You know, someone chucking a glass, shouting something out then farting or burping may be hilarious to the assembled 27 people, but won’t necessarily transfer to be part of the golden age of radio. I think there’s one more series before the end of the year.” Robin starts to talk about his future projects. “We’re doing a pilot for Radio 1, which I don’t know is a good idea or not, which is just each week, Brian Blessed reading from a book that he’s forgotten to take back to the library.” He affects a brilliant Blessed voice before continuing. “This week, I’m reading from a book called freezer recipes. This one’s for a meringue pizza…” Has he got anything else planned? “The tour with Ricky, and then we do West End. And I’ve got three different pilots that are going on, two with Howard [Read] and then this Peel thing. Go to Australia, where I’m writing a film at the moment. About wrestling.” Of course. He goes on to list about a thousand more projects, including a series of Celbdaq and writing columns for film magazines. “And lots of other things but I can’t remember what they are. I know it’s all getting a little bit frantic.” We ask how on earth he manages to fit everything in. “You know, I have a mixture of blind panic and excitement. And I know that one day I’ll get too old for blind panic and excitement, and that’s when it all falls around you. I really hope I don’t lose the excitement of doing stuff. This last week, I got a motorbike from the Garrick after doing a sport thing, to BBC3 to do a TV show, then the next morning had to go and see a film screening, then had to go and film something for Celebdaq, then the stand-up thing in the evening, then went on a radio show, and you just go, ‘Fucking hell, this is brilliant!’” The sound of Robin talking about having the opportunity to do what he clearly loves doing is heartening. He mentions sitting in a film for free and writing about it. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And, hopefully, the first volume of my book, Robin Ince’s Top 30, 000 Films of All Time will come out. I’ve only got down as far as 29, 964. And I’ve realised that I’ll be dead before I get to number 27, 000. But that takes a lot of pressure off, to be honest. Do you ever do that thing- this is gonna sound really depressing- where you look at a book shelf and think, ‘reading all these books from cover to cover, that will be my life. I will die before I get to the last book.’” We reluctantly admit that I do do that, and mention timing ourselves to fit in the optimum number of books possible before she dies. Robin agrees. “Yeah, why am I reading this really stupid article about Sadie Frost? Throw it away, here’s a really good thing!” Suddenly, he practically shouts at our Dictaphone. “Oh, Edinburgh show! I’d better plug that!” Robin will be doing a show at 2004’s Edinburgh Festival at the Underbelly (in the Belly Button) called The Award-Winning Robin Ince, Star of Series 1 Episode 5 of The Office. Never has there been a more apt title. If you’re planning a trip to Edinburgh this year, don’t miss it. To finish, we ask him what would win his vote for Best British Sitcom. “Fuck. What do I watch? It’s definitely nothing by Carla Lane.” After much consideration in which 15 Storeys High, Spaced, Black Books, Steptoe and Son and Dad’s Army are all mentioned, Robin finally settles on Reggie Perrin. “The first series of Reggie Perrin still makes me laugh out loud, has so many brilliant jokes and a brilliant idea which is still true about the collapse of your dreams and the possible poverty of existence.” Robin finishes by apologising, unsurprisingly, this time for running one side of our tape out and talking for over an hour. We reassure him that this is a good thing. Then he apologises once more for being late. His last word? “Right, well, I’d better go and write The In Crowd I suppose.” The In Crowd will be on Radio 4 each Tuesday starting from June 1st, 2004, 6:30pm. Robin will be opening Ricky Gervais’ tour. Dates can be found HERE Reviewed by Nat and Fee, Spring 2004 RSS  Printable version	Visit our Siamese Twin Sister Site!