Thank goodness I’m not a method actor ...Imagine being The Pub Landlord all the time
MARION McMULLEN chats to Al Murray about politics and podcasts
The Pub Landord is embarking on a 43-date tour. How difficult is it to step back into his shoes? IT’S really, really easy to get into character, but I stop being The Pub Landord as soon as I come off the stage.
I just walk off and I’m not him. I’m not a method actor, thank goodness. Imagine being him all the time?
Do you get recognised a lot?
I GET people doing a double take and going ‘hang on’ and then asking for autographs and selfies.
A few years ago I grew hair and a beard, but people still looked at me twice.
They just were puzzled trying to figure out how they knew me.
So is the Pub Landlord ready for Brexit?
I DON’T know if you’d noticed, but the thing the Pub Landlord said he always wanted might be about to happen.
He’s been talking about it for ages and it’s never really gone away.
I’ve been following all the politics and have been previewing the show and trying to remember it all.
It was like March 29 – the date we were supposed to leave the EU – and you think ‘what if the date comes and we don’t leave the EU?’
But at some point you’ve got to write the show and address everything.
I think I should be covered for the tour.
Can you be outrageous in Pub Landlord guise?
YOU don’t necessarily have to take it all seriously the way we would. We can be him and say how it is all being ridiculous.
It’s hard to keep up sometimes, it’s all changing, but his mood is staying the same. This is what he said he always wanted.
You also briefly showed your Bottom a few years ago. What was it like appearing with Dame Judi Dench in the Midsummer Night’s Dream scene for a Shakespeare Live television special? THAT was quite an experience. I felt I really was in a dream the whole time on stage. I was thinking ‘What on earth is going on here? How did this happen?’ It was three or four minutes on a special, one time thing, just long enough to hold myself up and stop thinking ‘Bl**dy hell that’s Judi Dench doing poetry to me’.
It was one of those things when you wake up the next morning thinking ‘What the hell happened there?’
The final curtain call was Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Rory Kinnear, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch. Completely ridiculous.
I had proper imposter syndrome, but I’d love to do more Shakespeare ... if I had the time.
So what’s it like also being the drummer in the Fat Cops band? IT’S gratifying to be honest.
I was a little nervous that people would say it’s just a bunch of middle-aged blokes and there’s a comedian in it so it’s not serious or that we’re trying to trade on the fact that I’m a little bit famous.
But that’s not really what we do and people seem to be into the band.
The record is pretty good and that has really helped. I never thought it would ever actually happen.
I’ve played in other bands a bit and we’ve recorded something and put it out and it’s gone nowhere.
We did this in a proper recording studio and took the time to make it work.
We’ll get some gigs in the summer and we’ll see which way the wind blows. Dame Judi Dench
What is your new podcast about? I’M an enthusiast of history and I sit down with historian James Holland.
He is a proper expert on the Second World War and I talk to him and say ‘James is that right?’
I did modern history at university, but I thought then I’d go to university to put off making a decision about the future.
My eldest is at university now and
we went around all these university fairs explaining what job opportunities there were if you studied there. It’s very different.
You can be heard on BBC Radio 4 next month narrating Vanity Fair. What was it like reading the work of your great-great-great grandfather, writer William Makepeace Thackeray?
IT’S nepotism that I got the job 300 years after he wrote the book. The gig finally came through. Mind you my mum was as stoked as could be.
I wrote a little bit of the adaptation and play the Narrator. The interesting thing about the book is that the Narrator does speak to the reader quite directly. I recorded that a few weeks ago and it was really good fun to do. Very different to telly.
How do you find the time to do everything?
I EXPECT any time now to run out of energy and keel over.
I do make sure I have lots of good stuff to read on tour though.
You spend so much time on the road and there’s so much hanging around.
I always have a pair of drumsticks and a practice pad and I have everything on Kindle as well.
It makes such a difference driving around if I can take a whole library with me.
I can sit in the car and happily read while driving to the next town after the show.
■ Al Murray’s Landlord Of Hope And Glory tour runs until the end of November.
Go to thepublandlord.com for tour dates.