Comedy festival news and reviews
Comedian Andy Parsons is bringing his show, Healing the Nation to, several venues in the East Midlands. The former Mock The Week Star talks to PAUL FRY about his writing, his politics and his journey
ANDY was preparing to go on the road with the second half of his tour, and the Weymouth-born comedian was ready to take his brand of political and observation humour to the nation.
PF: Your Twitter feed is tagged: ‘Initially upbeat, often disappointed. I guess, given we are now out of the EU despite your best efforts as a leading People’s Vote campaigner, you are felling less of the former and more the latter? Andy Parsons: Well, still both. After all the ‘Get Brexit Done’ stuff, it remains to be seen how things play out, certainly in the next year. There are a lot of big decisions to make and we will just have to see how many if any of the promises are kept to. But I toured this show I the autumn and I got around to a lot of places and the mood was pretty split. We have since had the General Election and the government have a big majority and have to prove they are not just about slogans but delivering. The people have spoken and we have to get on with it. Do you think we will ever rejoin the EU in your lifetime?
Who can say? It is hard to predict what will happen from week to week. I still think we are poorer for it as a nation but that is yesterday’s battle and we have to move on now. Your tour is called Healing the Nation and you started it last year. Did it just not work – or are your healing powers needed more than ever?
Ha! Yes, there is a lot of healing to do but I think some divisions will continue to rumble on. With touring you do get a strong sense of what the country is feeling. The widespread feeling of joy of the London Olympics seems a long way off and yet it is only eight years ago. Perhaps we need another Olympics! It will be interesting as I start this second half of the tour, which runs until July, to see how the mood has changed. I suspect it will have done. People in different places are looking at themselves in a different way and that was evident to me even before the election. The result was not at all a surprise. I think it surprised a few of the old MPs who lost their seats, mind. They kind of deselected themselves in some respects. If you look at some of the politicians no longer in Westminster, you could form a pretty decent Cabinet out of that lot. Healing the Nation was a title you pick out for the tour and was a bit tongue in cheek. But there is a certain irony to it, too. It is astonishing that people have chosen to vote for change by placing their faith in the same party. Sure we have a different leader and change of direction, and people clearly think Boris Johnson will change the party. He may well do – but not necessarily for the best for most people in the country. With Downing Street clearly doing its best to avoid public scrutiny and almost turning on some sections of the media it seems to be unsympathetic, do comedians have an important role in that regard?
Yes indeed – I think comedy is useful for cutting through some of the bluster and showing up some of our politicians when they are ridiculous. We will point out the lies that are told, in a way that makes people look at them in a different way. People don’t like to admit they have been played or taken for granted or for a ride. In the end they will turn. It might take five years, but if all the promises are reneged on, they will soon boot them out. So if Boris fails to deliver his 40 new hospitals and to protect our farmers and fisherman, he will have to answer for that. The move to
exclude journalists from a
Downing Street briefing shows the battle has moved on from Parliament to No.10. It is good that the lobby journalists united to resist that as a step to far. It is a pity that the media didn’t take the same stand with Trump in America. But we do seem to be following his lead in so many worrying ways. What is life like for you on the road? Is it just one succession of what passes for food at motorway service station or kebab shops in small provincial towns?
Well, I have been doing this for a good few years now. This is my seventh tour. There is a bit of the food thing, but I do enjoy it. I have a good road manager and we will be playing a lot of venues I like. I know a good many of them – a mix of lovely ond 19th-century places and some really nice modern ones. The old ones are different in that you can
almost feel them having hosted Shakespeare, Chaplin and Stan Laurel. You feel that sense of history... then of course you turn to business. But my management also keep me on my toes by throwing in a few new places and that keeps it interesting. It is like with the material. It changes as the tour goes on. If you saw me starting off last autumn and again when I finish up in Keswick, un in the Lakes, at the Theatre by the Lake, which I have not played but looks really nice, I think it will be a largely different show. There was a big rewrite after the election and the new material comes out in this half of the tour. You were born in Weymouth but went to school and so presumably lived at a number of places on the south coast. So what is a home gig for you?
I suppose anywhere out west. My dad still lives in Torbay and I did a lot of my schooling in Cornwall, so I guess that is my spiritual home. But I feel at home soon after I step out on stage anywhere really. Your first job as a legal clerk on a case in the shipyards at Greenock. Were you sorting Billy Connolly out or what?
Not quite. I’d studied the law at university and hated it really. I had this lengthy case up there but all the while I was writing one-liners and scripts and submitting them to all sorts of places, hoping to break into writing for telly and radio. It wasn’t happening to the degree I wanted so I had to keep on with the day job. But they could tell my heart wasn’t in it and I would skip work for meetings and stuff. I think they wanted to get rid of me but I knew enough of the law that they couldn’t just fire me! In the end they gave me three months’ redundancy money and that gave me the push to move into writing. I never really looked back. You were a key writer on Spitting Image, a hugely influential satirical puppet show in the 1980s. How much fun was that? Did the characters almost write of their own stuff?
It was great. The characters were strong but you just kind of reacted to the events of the time. People still ask me about them. I was the lead writer and we had such a limited budget so we had to use a lot of generic puppets, like pigs, to fill the frames. They’d be dressed in different outfits. But the budget would only stretch to seven new characters each series and we’d have to do clever things with filming angles to make there seem more, like with the No.10 Cabinet table. People still say they are haunted by that Norman Tebbit puppet! So I didn’t really have any favourites as such. What about the process of writing. Do you write on your own? Because it must be tough to sit at a keyboard and say ‘now be funny’.
I suppose it is like any job, really. I sit down with a cup of coffee and a snack and just get into it. You draw on experience and confidence and just reflect on the world. Goodness knows, there is plenty to reflect on! You mentioned Spitting Image earlier and there would certainly be no shortage of material if I were writing for it today. Trump for a start. Things change so fast with him you’d be forever ripping up the script. He has polarised America so much and it is hard to see a way back for some time. What are your memories of playing in the East Midlands?
I’ve not played the Leicester Comedy Festival for a few years now, so it will be good to go there and see how the place has changed. It is the premier English festival and it is good to see it gain more prominence each year. You never know – if Scotland goes independent after another referendum there, perhaps Leicester will take on even more significance!
■Andy Parsons, Healing the Nation, plays at Leicester,s Sue Townsend Theatre on February 13; Buxton Arts Theatre on March 20, Stafford Gatehouse Theatre on April 16, Loughborough Town Hall on April 18 and Derby Theatre on April 21.