Comedy / Interviews
Interview: Simon Munnery
For an Edinburgh Fringe show you have to write your blurb in February, long before the show itself exists, so I use it as an opportunity to set myself challenges – and spend the rest of the year trying to complete them. Then when doing the show for a month, a second process occurs: more stuff gets added, and other bits get dropped.
So, for example The Absurdity of Houses section got longer and longer, but so did the rest of the show, and became in danger of over-running or, worse still, being rushed. Two weeks in I made an executive decision to cut it completely, let it lay fallow and come back to it later. That remains my considered opinion.
So, tell us about The Absurdity of Houses, then.
There are many absurdities within the average house (eg. the waste pipe from the sink next to the toilet could fill the cistern; we needn‘t waste clean water to flush, the poo won‘t mind; 240 volts! WHY? That‘s lethal), as well as the overall absurdity of houses – their shapes, endlessly repeated across the land; two stories, four walls: it’s as though we discovered geometry and got as far as the square. Or stacking and got as far as two. But for now, at least, it’s on the back burner.
The Joy of Washing Up is this: You got plates, you lucky bastard. Likewise, on the back burner.
New sections that have condensed from the ether are: Phrases that irk me somewhat, Openings, Enniskillen, Canada, and Why my ex-next door neighbour should pay tax for an education system she doesn‘t use. I love doing all of it.
Is this show straighter stand-up than some of your other recent outings?
It’s just me and a mic. And one prop. Or maybe two….Oh lord, it’s starting again. For the last four years I’ve been doing this camera-based initiative Fylmschool, which involves considerable setting up, which makes the simplicity of stand-up a relief. Anyway, it’s all theatre.
Language – how we use and misuse it – is an ongoing fascination of yours. Is that still present in the new show?
Yes! Phrases that irk me somewhat, like what I done mention before, including a painfully long dissection of the phrase “hard working decent people”.
is needed now More than ever
Who have been your chief influences? I sometimes hear bits of Spike Milligan, the Pythons…
I’d say John Hegley, Arnold Brown, Jerry Sadowitz, Malcolm Hardee. They all played with what’s possible.
Spike and the Pythons were before my time but yes, you may be right. Was it Newton who said “if we do seem but pale in comparison is it not because we have stood so long in the shadows of giants?” No, it was me, just then.
What would you be doing with your life if not comedy?
Maths teacher, cabbie, computer programmer, carpenter, beggar, thief, vicar, gigolo. Or perhaps all of the above if it carries on like this. Corbyn in! Things have changed since having children: I’m a bread winner so the comedy’s got to work.
Which probably means it won’t. Life’s like that – tricky.
I’m sure I saw you on TV channel Dave recently. Tell us more…
One of the jokes in my show was chosen by Dave as the eighth equal joke of the Fringe. To my mind, it being eighth equal devalues the whole Dave system – if you can rank jokes, and say this is the best, this is the second best and so on, but when you get to eight you go “Naaaah, this is too hard”, it severely undermines your validity as a judge. Anyway, the joke is: Clowns divorce: Custardy battle. I shall also be performing my Bristol joke and Chippenham routine.
Simon Munnery plays the Factory Theatre on Sunday, October 4.
For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/simon_munnery_and_nothing_but
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