Interview: Simon Munnery

Multi award-winning comedian Simon Munnery returns this spring with his brand new stand-up show. Looking in at the Comedy Box on Thursday, April 26, Renegade Plumber features tales of plumbing woes, attempts at under-tent heating, jokes, songs, poems – and the ridicule of capitalism.

A Chortle Award winner, British Comedy Award nominee and Perrier Award nominee, Munnery’s extensive stand-up career has seen him regularly perform all over the world and star in several of his own major television and radio projects such as BBC2’s Attention, Scum!, Radio 1′s League Against Tedium, Radio 4’s Where Did It All Go Wrong? and various Radio 1 series as Alan Parker: Urban Warrior.

His uniquely varied comedy shows have included La Concepta, a genre-bending interactive conceptual restaurant show; Fylm-Makker, Fylm and Fylm School, stabbing at the void between dead film and live theatre; and Trilogy, not a show at all, in fact, but three different shows in rotation: The True Confessions of Sherlock Holmes, Onward and Upward, and Buckethead: Way Of The Bucket.

“A genuine innovator in the land of the samey, and an annual must-see for any comedy connoisseur” The Guardian
“Convention-defying, innovative stuff. Simon Munnery is a brilliant comedian” The Times

For anyone who hasn’t seen you perform before, what can they expect?
Expect the unexpected: you’ll be disappointed most of the time. The unexpected rarely happens. You’d be better off trying to unexpect the expected, and that’s easy: just wear a blindfold. In this show there are jokes, poems, a song, and stories related to plumbing.

What sets Renegade Plumber apart from previous tours?
There’s a long section on a heating project I’ve been undertaking for the last year and half, and more improvising than previous years.

You’ve been performing comedy for over 30 years. What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
I’d finished my show at The Stand and was having my customary pint at The Lord Bodo over the road, catching the last rays when comedian Scott Agnew comes up the road. There was an all-day benefit for Waverley Care going on down at The Newtown Bar, an act had dropped out and could I fill in? Of course I could. The only thing I resented slightly was having to go downhill: that’s my trick for surviving Edinburgh – maintain your height whenever possible.
The bar was jammed, the audience were standing and had been drinking all day – usually a recipe for a disastrously low attention span. But no, they were amazing, the most beautiful beautiful audience, subtle of ear and warm of laugh. I’d stormed it and was about to finish when I decided since it was a benefit for Waverley Care I should end with my Waverley Care joke. So I did:
“Do give as much as you can to Waverley Care, because it’s a very good cause – they raise money for people living in Scotland with AIDS: And it’s bad enough having AIDS… Presumably they spend the money on anti-retrovirals and plane tickets”. And in unison, as one, correctly, perfectly: they booed me off. I can always turn a crowd.

What are your plans after your 2018 tour?
I shall be working on my next show for Edinburgh: The Wreath. It’s the story of a joke, how it became a painting and what happened next. Also I shall endeavour to finish my second book.

Simon Munnery performs Renegade Plumber at the Comedy Box on Thursday, April 26. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.thecomedybox.co.uk
Pic: Edward Moore

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