Let the funny Twenty years ago, he was a ranting rhymer, opening for Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and The Who. Since then, Porky The Poet has reinvented himself as Phill Jupitus, star attraction at this year’s NZ International Comedy Festival. reports.

Grant Smithies

Comedy. What is it really? Just an excuse for funny-looking people to become the centre of attention. ‘‘Fortunately, comedy is about what you’re saying, not what you look like,’’ concedes English comedian Phill Jupitus, who just got off the train in Yorkshire after travelling down from his ‘‘second home’’ in Edinburgh.

‘‘It’s not about beauty or fashion; it’s about ideas. That’s why you get such a diverse range of physical freak shows like me doing stand-up.’’

Jupitus is, admittedly, a mountain of a man. A very funny mountain, however.

‘‘Like, I was a fat bloke, so I talked about being a fat bloke. It’s a forum where you talk about your own truth. It was the same with punk. Some people just liked the trousers and the haircuts, but what was at the heart of punk was a bunch of bold new ideas. Same with stand-up. Very rarely is it haircut-andtrousers based.’’

Jupitus is heading this way for an Auckland show in May. He will, thank God, be wearing trousers. But he will be letting it all hang out when it comes to ideas.

His new Juplicity show promises ‘‘adult themes, childishly delivered’’. Like a long line of confessional comics before him, he will ransack his personal life for our amusement.

‘‘There’s some stuff about my daughters in there, and a lot about how I was raised, because I was kind of a quirky kid. I talk about my mum, too, because she was a pretty unconventional woman. It’s largely about my world, and how that world has shifted in the last year or two. Believe me, there’s never any shortage of stuff to talk about.’’

Indeed. Jupitus, who was born Phillip Swann, is a professional blatherer. On stage and screen, on radio, via podcast, in musicals and plays, his voice has been ringing out now since the mid 80s. Back then, he called himself Porky The Poet.

Inspired by ranting punk rhymers Attila The Stockbroker and John Cooper Clarke, Jupitus left a deadly dull career staffing a London Job Centre to go on tour, opening shows for The Housemartins, Style Council, Billy Bragg, Madness and The Who.

‘‘Really, they hired me because I was cheap and portable. It’s such an easy support act, because there’s no sound check, no instruments, and a poet’s unlikely to drink all your rider, unless he’s particularly problematic. And we don’t need a van. With Billy Bragg, I travelled in the same car, as another passenger!’’

Jupitus got steady work, but after one gig in 1986, James Brown, the former editor of Loaded magazine, hit him with a hard but useful truth.

‘‘We were sitting around drinking cider, and he told me that the bits I said between my poems were a lot funnier than the poems themselves. My poems were s…, in other words, but bless him for saying it in such a delicate way. So I started phasing out Porky The Poet, and by 1988, I was doing pure stand-up.’’

Jupitus has since carved out a lucrative multimedia niche for himself, presenting breakfast radio for the BBC, acting in stage plays and pantos, leading teams on high-rating TV talk shows such as QI and Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

A rough-and-ready sort of a singer, he can sometimes be found bashing out cockney-funk classics Reasons To Be Cheerful, Sex And Drugs And Rock’n’Roll, and Hit Me With Your