STILL A CLASS ACT
Russell Kane brings his The Fast And The Curious tour to Nottingham on Sunday. JAMES KETTLE finds out more
RRUSSELL Kane is more than just a stand-up. He’s like a comedy David Attenborough who, instead of the animal kingdom, focuses his attention on the way blokes from the south-east behave. Raised in Essex, he was a bookish wallflower in a world of geezers. “I was a weedy boy at school and my dad was a rugby player,” he says.
Now the star of TV shows like Stupid Man, Smart Phone and Live At The Electric, he dissects blokeish behaviour onstage.
“I find it easy to pick apart a certain kind of masculinity. The way they talk, the way they behave in public, the ways they compete with each other and the ways they try to interact with women.”
Even though he was a bit of an oddity growing up, there is a part of Kane’s psyche that is classic Essex.
“Books are my thing, but the second I saw Ibiza Rocks are having a comedian in residence this summer, I was like, ‘I’d love to get out there and have it in Ibiza.’ And my wife’s like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
It’s all part of the Russell Kane contradiction.
“I love curries, I love pints with the lads, I like BMWs – I’m a weird mess.”
That feeds into his fascination with class – not in a ranty political way, but on a more anthropological level.
“People just don’t want to analyse the prejudice that’s out there,” he says. “And the weird thing is it’s the number one predictor. Doesn’t matter what gender you are or how able-bodied you are. The socio-economic background of your parents is the number one predictor of where you’ll end up in life.”
Essex is part of Kane’s comedy, even though he’s now living in leafy Cheshire.
He says: “Now that I’m up in Cheshire, I realise how fast-paced and chaotic and anonymous we can be down south. I’ve been performing a bit about the difference between ordering a coffee in London or Essex, or ordering a coffee up north. In the north there’s someone asking about ‘Barbara’ and, ‘How are the grandkids?’, and down south you’re saying “Just throw an espresso in my face, now when’s my train? Move! Move! Move!”
That’s part of the story behind Kane’s new show – though he’s keen to point out that the main focus of the evening will not be expounding some grand philosophical theory.
“I know I can do shows with a clever theme and all that, but I just want to do a beltingly funny night in the theatre. So at 10.30, you can’t move for the pain of laughing. That’s my only objective.”
It’s easy for experienced comedians to get blasé about the experience of going onstage, but Kane reckons he’s still got all his original love of stand-up.
“I absolutely live for stand-up,” he says. “
■ Russell Kane’s The Fast And The Curious comes to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal on Sunday, November 10. Tickets: trch.co.uk, 0115 989 5555. £20.