Interview: Alex Horne

The six-headed comedy band The Horne Section embark on their first-ever national tour in spring 2019 with their latest show That’s How I Like My Tour, bringing their raucous comedy shindig across the UK on a 36-date tour. The tour includes two shows at Bristol Old Vic on May 5: a family-friendly matinee at 3pm and a second show at 7.30pm.

Unruly, ridiculous and surprisingly satisfying, The Horne Section combine music and comedy in a typically unpredictable way, blending stupid songs with a carnival atmosphere and plenty of puns. Expect a mixture of toe-tapping tunes, exceptional musicality, and 5 talented musicians being made to do silly things by stand-up comic and creator/star of Taskmaster, Alex Horne.

Here’s Alex to tell us more.

When did you put the Horne Section together?
It was about ten years ago when my wife was pregnant with our first child. I did a lot of things that year – that’s when Taskmaster started as well. I think I was panicking, really.
I was really old friends with two of the band, Joe and Ben, the trumpeter and the drummer: we were born in the same hospital and we went to the same primary school.
They became jazz musicians and we always hung out and watched each other’s stuff but it never occurred to us to do anything together until Mark, the saxophonist, booked me to do a gig at the jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s. It was just really fun, combining comedy and jazz. Straight away we all thought, ‘We should do more of this’. They hooked in two more musicians and we booked eight nights at Edinburgh Festival and that was it.

How musical were you before that point?
I had zero music ability before then and I have zero music ability now. I have more confidence now.
No, I suppose I like to think I’m not completely tone deaf. I played the French horn when I was a kid and I went to Chichester Youth Orchestra for one week when I was about eleven but I really wasn’t any good. I got to grade three. I only played it because my surname is Horne.
But no, the band are very keen to tell me that I am not musical at all. I was very nervous the first year. I hated it, I hated singing. Now I love it. I don’t think I’m any better but I just go for it now.
I think most comedians have a natural sense of rhythm and jazz has a natural sense of improvisation, so the two do go hand in hand. Hopefully they can figure out what I’m doing and I can figure out what they’re doing.

Musical comedy has a rich history from Victoria Wood up to Tim Minchin, but it goes in and out of fashion. Is it back in fashion now?
I don’t think there’s a musical comedy circuit as such but there are plenty of comedians who use music – like Bill Bailey, who was one of my heroes from when I was at school.
Tim Minchin absolutely brought it back to the centre of popularity but I don’t think it’s ever gone away. Tim actually performed with us a lot at the very beginning and gave us some credibility I suppose. He is cool: he doesn’t wear shoes and socks! We are not as cool as him.

How do you describe the act to anyone who doesn’t know you?
It’s nonsense, it’s silly and fun. If I wanted to compare it to anyone I’d say it’s a bit like Harry Hill’s live shows. I wouldn’t dream of saying we’re as good as Harry, but we’re in his style of shows which are fun and ‘anything goes’.

How much of the show is rehearsed and how much is improvised?
Half the show is very rehearsed, and the other half isn’t. There are five people on the stage all the time with me who the audience can see and if they look bored, the audience will be bored. And the band aren’t very good at acting: if they’re not enjoying it, they will show that they’re not enjoying it. So I have to keep them amused. So half the show is different every night and that keeps us all happy.

And you’ve done lots of TV, too. Is that something that’s grown quite organically on the back of the podcast?
It has, yes. We’d love to do more. I think people don’t quite know what to do with us because we’re a band and so we did Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Countdown and Last Leg. We’re enjoying that. Hopefully one day we’ll do our own thing.

You’ve already had a two-hour special on Dave…
Yes, which was brilliant. It was quite emotional because all of our mums came along. Joe the trumpeter had had a baby three days before so he was all over the place. It was at the London Palladium which is an amazing venue. It was Ken Dodd’s second home. It felt like the right kind of venue for our stuff.

What’s the most requested song on your show?
Weirdly it’s a song called Chinese Five Spice which we’re not actually playing anymore. We can’t, because it went round our heads every night after playing and drove us all mad. There’s a song called Seasons which is quite a tender song. If people ask for them, we’ll play them.

You must have had a lot of feedback about your duet of the Girls Aloud song Promises with Nadine Coyle, which was on the Dave show.
I did. I went to a wedding and the mother of the bride made me dance to it with her. I used to think I danced really well until I watched that clip back. I don’t think Strictly Come Dancing are going to come calling, put it that way.

My kids love Strictly and they want me to go on it and – not that I’ve been asked – but I genuinely don’t think I could because people on that show are really good. And I see myself dancing awkwardly with Nadine Coyle and think, ‘Oh no’.

You often have guests on your shows. Is it quite common for comedians to be musical?
It is, yes. Katherine Ryan is a brilliant singer, and so is Sara Pascoe. They’re annoyingly talented, some of these people. It’s not always the case: Tim Key is an awful singer. He can’t come in at the right time or get anywhere near the right note.
But generally I think comedians have a good sense of rhythm and I really enjoy stand-up with comedy. I think one will always lift the other, even if it’s just music in the background to comedy.

Can you introduce us to the band?
Sure. So Joe Auckland plays the trumpet and banjo. He is one of my old friends from when I grew up, and he just had a baby. He plays the trumpet with Madness and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. One of the reasons we don’t do that many gigs is that he’s off with them for half the year.
Mark Brown plays the saxophone for Robbie Williams. Mark and Joe write for Girls Aloud and they play for other people: I think Mark’s on a George Ezra song. Being friends with them does mean you get to see some good gigs. We had a good night out in Paris with Madness which was amazing. And I went to Wembley to watch Robbie. Although I left before Angels came on so I could get home early.
Ben Reynolds is the other friend from school, he just had a baby a few weeks ago. He’s a brilliant jazz musician who has very ambitious ideas for the show which we can never quite do.
Will Collier is the bass player and he has his own Will Collier Septet. They’re a very good band but often there are more of them in the band than in the audience so he keeps it real that way.
Ed Sheldrake, whose name I always forget, he’s our temporary pianist. He doesn’t have kids, he doesn’t do an awful lot. He’s a quiet genius. He mainly stays at home and plays computer games.

How does the dynamic between you all work? Does it help that you are such good friends?
I think so. I trust them and they trust me. I really like it when they interrupt the show. If someone plays something unexpected then the rest of us can pick it up. So for example if someone in the front row takes their jacket off and one of them starts playing some stripper music, I’m happy for them to do that. They can butt in whenever they want.
If one of them makes a mistake I will absolutely stop the show and talk to them about what just happened. And I know they won’t take offence. It’s all part of the fun. We know each other very well and we know what makes each other laugh.

Where do your song ideas come from?
They just tend to pop into my head when I’m doing something else. We have a WhatsApp group and we send each other messages and voice messages and we all nervously wait for the reaction from the rest of the band. If someone hacked into our WhatsApp group they would find some dreadful, dreadful ideas being bandied about. Things that just aren’t funny.
We’ve done songs about bleeding a radiator, cooking an egg in under a minute. No subject is too pedestrian for us.

How important is audience participation for your shows?
Very important. As an audience member I always dread audience participation but I think it’s so important. If you go to a gig, the whole thing is audience participation with people singing along or clapping along or moshing. You don’t go to a gig without participating.
So we do make sure people treat it as a music gig as well as comedy gig and that does mean they will have to do stuff. But not in an awkward way. In a fun way. I hope.

The Horne Section play Bristol Old Vic on May 5 (3pm family-friendly matinee / 7.30pm evening performance). For more info and to book tickets, visit bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/the-horne-section-2019 and thehornesection.com