MASTER OF LAUGHTER We chat to Rob Brydon about his upcoming tour
HIS QUICK WIT AND IMPECCABLE IMPERSONATIONS HAVE EARNED ROB BRYDON A SPECIAL PLACE IN THE NATION’S HEART. WITH A NEW TOURING SHOW ON THE HORIZON, HE TELLS ELLA DOVE ABOUT HIS UNCONVENTIONAL PATH TO SUCCESS
As Gavin & Stacey’s Nessa would say, I’m not gonna to lie to you, Rob Brydon is a very funny man. Best known as the much-loved BBC One show’s eternally positive Uncle Bryn, and as cuckolded cab driver Keith Barret in the BBC Two cult comedy Marion And Geoff, the actor, comedian and impressionist is warm, quick-witted, and laughs delightfully easily.
As we speak via video call, he’s lounging in an office chair in the attic study of the Teddington home he shares with his wife, TV producer Clare Holland, and two of his five children, Tom, 12, and George, nine. ‘This is where I come to hide,’ he tells me, arms folded, a confident smile playing across his familiar face. ‘I’m trying to fill all this downtime we have. I’ve become like Stevens the butler in The Remains Of The Day [a Kazuo Ishiguro novel]. I’m constantly going around the house doing things, such as clearing the fireplace and building a new fire for the evening.’ To demonstrate, he raises his hands in a subservient, butler-like gesture.
Unsurprisingly, his impersonation is spot-on, and I’m treated to many of these throughout the course of our chat. There’s his frightfully posh drama teacher, a low and gruff Al Pacino, even a spookily accurate impression of Steve Coogan, his pal and co-star of BBC Two’s The Trip, which saw the pair tour restaurants playing hammed-up versions of themselves, and sadly came to an end after a decade-long run last year. It’s clear that Brydon is a gifted storyteller; he has a knack for bringing every anecdote to life in vivid detail.
‘I’ve always been able to do voices,’ he explains. ‘They say everybody has a talent, don’t they? There are some kids who are naturally good at cricket or football or drawing. I was always able to sing, and I can hear the music of a voice and see what it is. I’m lucky because our society values that quite highly. It shouldn’t really, because it’s a silly thing, isn’t it?’
A silly thing, I remark, upon which he has built an astonishingly successful career. He grins. ‘I think I just wanted to do a bit of everything,’ he says. His latest projects are certainly testament to that. His recently launched Youtube series, Brydon &, sees him in the role of interviewer, speaking with ease to fellow celebrities including Dawn French, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Michael Sheen. ‘I’ve really enjoyed it,’ he smiles. ‘It’s interesting because there was a funny meme going round at the start of lockdown saying, “Middle-aged men, please don’t start a podcast.” I admit there was a certain predictability about it, but it’s given me something to do!’
Pandemic permitting, Brydon will also soon be engaging audiences with his new touring show, Rob Brydon: A Night Of Songs & Laughter, in which he’ll recount his personal musical journey from South Wales to the West End. Think funny anecdotes, a live band, and Brydon singing for the first time ever on a solo tour. ‘I think when someone off the telly says he’s now going to sing, a lot of people reach for the exit,’ he smiles. ‘And, understandably, it can seem like an indulgence. But I’ve sung in various things over the years, right from when I was at school where I met Ruth Jones and we were in a production of Guys And Dolls together.’
In fact, music, he tells me, is his first love. ‘You do meet people, don’t you, who say, “Oh no, I don’t really listen to music,”’ he muses, brow furrowed. ‘When I hear that, I just think, “Wow. Gosh.” I don’t understand it.’ At the moment, he says, his genre of choice is jazz. ‘There’s
something about the complexity of it; it’s really pleasing. I search out rare vinyl in my spare time.’ He pauses, before letting out a melodic chuckle. ‘Yes, I’m a typical middle-aged, middle-class dad! But I’ve always had music on in the house, ever since I can remember.’
Brydon grew up in South Wales with his car-dealer father, his mother, a teacher, and younger brother, Peter. He describes himself as an ‘easy’ child who was ‘happy to please people’, explaining that when he wasn’t listening to music, he was imitating comedians he saw on TV, including Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and the Two Ronnies. Outside of Nativity plays, his first memory of performing was when he and some friends wrote their own version of Star Wars and performed it in the school gymnasium. ‘I was Luke Skywalker,’ he recalls.
While his early years were spent studying at Swansea’s Dumbarton House private school alongside fellow pupil Catherine Zeta-jones, it wasn’t until his family moved to Port Talbot and he swapped schools to Porthcawl Comprehensive that he truly set his sights on acting as a career. ‘I did terribly at exams, but I loved being in all the shows with Ruth [Jones],’ he says. ‘That was the start of our lifelong friendship, and also when acting became my “thing”.’
With ‘tonnes of friends’ and a string of leading roles, you’d have thought young Brydon would be all tenacity and self-assuredness. Not so, I learn, because at the same time, he was also struggling with severe acne. ‘I think it made me doubtful,’ he muses. ‘Particularly with girls. It hit my confidence talking to them, but I also didn’t drink, so I never had that Dutch courage all my friends had.’ He pauses, the most reflective I’ve seen him so far. ‘There aren’t that many acne-scarred people in the public eye, actually, are there?’
When I ask what he’d tell his younger self now, the armour of humour returns. ‘Don’t pick your spots,’ he shoots back with a grin, once more in his comfort zone. ‘Seriously. Don’t. Anyway, I ploughed on regardless, didn’t I?’
He definitely did. He went on to attend Cardiff’s Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, but dropped out after two years when a job came up on BBC Radio Wales, where he’d been sitting in on shifts, doing voiceovers when needed. It wasn’t a decision he agonised over. ‘I didn’t have much money at college and it was a job,’ he says. ‘In hindsight, it wasn’t particularly well paid, but I was able to buy a little house and I got a lot of experience. At the time, I felt like I was Elvis…’ he trails off, eyes twinkling. ‘Actually, let’s try to find a more contemporary reference there, shall we? Who’s the big person now? Justin Timberlake.’ He cackles. ‘Oh, I don’t know…’
During his time there, Brydon continued auditioning for acting roles, but faced repeated rejection. ‘Of course, I wasn’t considered because I was a disc jockey,’ he says. ‘After a while, I did wonder if I’d made a mistake because actor friends of mine from college, such as Dougray
Scott, were starting to do well, and I was stuck.’ His next move, as a presenter for a shopping channel, isn’t one Brydon is keen to shout about either. ‘I learned how to look at a camera and read an autocue, but I’m embarrassed about that job,’ he says. ‘There’s a dreadful clip on Youtube of me selling a lawnmower. I wish I could wave a magic wand and it would disappear.’ And yet, still, Brydon persevered. Alongside voiceover work and ad campaigns for the likes of Sainsbury’s and Mcdonald’s, Brydon put together a show reel of different character ideas he had, and it wasn’t long before one of these, Keith Barret, caught the eye of Steve Coogan. The result? The comedy classic Marion And Geoff. At last, Brydon got his big break. ‘With hindsight, you realise that you have tenacity and resilience to succeed,’ he reflects now. ‘I genuinely didn’t realise how much of a struggle it had been until I read my autobiography back, because I think when you’re in the centre of something, you don’t see it from that perspective. You’re always thinking that your break is just around the corner. I often think the thing that separates people who succeed and people who don’t is partly luck, but also not giving up.’
The dark BBC Two comedy Human Remains, which Brydon co-wrote with Julia Davies, followed soon after, before Gavin & Stacey came knocking, a role that I’m surprised to learn he didn’t immediately jump at. ‘I wanted to do something different. I was still in my “I want to be Al Pacino” phase back then. But I also think in life, you have to ride the horse in the direction it’s going.’
In the end, he reveals, it was writer and co-star James Corden telling him about a scene where Bryn gets a digital camera that swung it. ‘I came up with this line’ – he switches into Uncle Bryn Mode – ‘It’s got all these settings. Sepia… I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think it’s working. It just turns the pictures brown.’ He laughs. ‘So that was it. I was in.’
He describes reuniting for 2019’s Christmas special as ‘a love-in’. ‘We were all staying in the same hotel, and it was just great. There were literally hundreds of people in the streets watching us all the time. As Bryn would say: “It was like being one of the Backstreet Boys.”’ As for whether there’ll be more in future, he’s doubtful. ‘I think it’s very unlikely there’ll be another series,’ he says. ‘They did leave the Christmas special on a cliff-hanger, so I could see them following that up. But there are no plans I’m aware of.’
Given the show’s success, I wonder whether he was ever tempted to follow Corden’s lead and pursue fame in the States himself. ‘When I was younger, I would have loved to,’ he admits. ‘But I don’t have the ambition of some of my friends. James sort of set up camp there with astonishing success. I’ve made a few appearances on different things over the years, so I’ve sort of scratched that itch. I have five children ranging from 26 to nine who I want to be around for. Maybe once they’ve flown the nest, I could have some sort of late-life career thing, but family is far more important than work for me.’ He explains that he tries not to work at all over summer so that he can be with his wife, Clare, and his children during the school holidays. He also maintains an ‘amicable’ relationship with his ex-wife, Martina Fitchie, who is mother to his eldest three children, Katie, 26, Harry, 24, and Amy, 21. Has that been challenging? ‘We like each other,’ he says simply. ‘I have no marvellous secret for making things work other than there’s no grievance or animosity. I want my kids to be happy, and that comes from having happy parents, I think.’
When I ask what he has learned about relationships, he stumbles. ‘Oh, Lord. That’s a bit profound, isn’t it?’ He’s visibly stumped. ‘Maybe in a second marriage, you’re more pragmatic. You’re certainly more wary of the pain of divorce because even in an amicable one it’s very painful. I also think that familiarity means our partners don’t get the best of us, so it’s good to remind yourself of the effort you make with a stranger to bring that back.’
And humour? ‘Well, yes, in that it’s sort of inherently in me, but I’m probably less humorous at home than you might think. People often say to my wife, ‘It must be a laugh a minute in your house,’ and she’ll say, ‘Well, not every minute…’ He shakes his head and shoots me a grin. ‘What have I learned about relationships… honestly, I think I’m better on acne!’
‘FAMILY IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN WORK FOR ME’