The Herald - The Herald Magazine
I’ll always be posh. I still have a man-child streak. But I am edging into a new life phase
JACK WHITEHALL ON STAND-UP, GROWING UP, MIXING WITH THE STARS IN HOLLYWOOD ... AND WHY BAREBACK MUGS MAKE HIM ANXIOUS
AT the age of 34, Jack Whitehall, comedian, actor, TV star, Nigel Havers’s godson, former boarding school boy, upper class boy (when he did Desert Island Discs, then presenter Kirsty Young suggested that “even his hair looks posh”) and now Hollywood movie star, says he has grown up a bit.
Or at least he is trying to.
“I still have this streak that is a bit of a man-child stuck in arrested development,” he admits on a Zoom call last thing on a Thursday afternoon in April. “But I am also trying to live up to the high standards set by other family members, peers and friends and people in my life who have maybe arrived at their more mature period of their lives a little more hastily than I have.”
It’s the end of a day of press for Whitehall in support of his latest stand-up tour, which is currently travelling around the country and which comes to Glasgow next month. Yesterday he flew in from America just in time to watch his team Arsenal get thumped by Manchester City. “Sporting torture,” he says. (The Spurs fan in me doesn’t rub it in. Well, not too much.)
He is on close-up on Zoom, “posh hair” and all. Whatever posh hair might be. It’s certainly Timotei lush and floppy of fringe. And the accompanying beard is well maintained.
He’s well lit too, certainly in comparison with the Soviet-style lighting I seem to get on Zoom.
“You need a ring light,” he tells me. Professional tip.
His new stand-up show, Settle Down, offers exactly what it says on the label. “A lot has happened in the four years since I toured last,” he points out. “I’ve met my life partner and we’ve moved in together and we’ve got the house, the mortgage and the dog. Very grown up things and I feel like I’m edging into a new phase in my life.
“And it’s all about my sometimes reluctant acceptance of that and my growing old disgracefully.”
Whitehall lives with his life partner Roxy Horner and Coco the cavapoo in west London in a house worth, depending on which tabloid you believe, either £12 million or £17.5m. A substantial mortgage in either case. He has also recently announced he and Horner are expecting their first baby.
All of which does sound very grown up. But what does that mean to him? Jack, I ask,
what is your definition of adulthood?
He looks around and thinks about the question before replying.
“Just because I can see it in front of me off camera, I’ll get anxious when I see glasses or mugs on tables that don’t have coasters underneath them. It genuinely gives me a little bit of anxiety when I see a mug connecting with a table bareback. I think that’s a sign that you’ve reached a stage in your life where you’re thinking about stuff like that.”
There are other signs too, he says. He’s into napping these days, much to his partner’s annoyance. “My girlfriend is an insomniac. We’re totally mismatched on that level and she finds it infuriating that I can sleep anywhere and at any time and that I’m constantly looking for opportunities. That is a constant bugbear of hers.”
Oh, and he reckons he’s a bit more adult in his attitude to alcohol too.
“I think I’m a more grown-up drinker now. I used to be a binge drinker. Now I have one glass of wine during the week to take the edge off. Which I think is quite grown up. I still binge-drink at the weekend. I basically have a run-up to it. You usually need to prepare at my age.”
Let’s just remind ourselves that Whitehall is a massively ancient 34. His bus pass is a way off yet. But perhaps his edging towards middle age is such a surprise – to us and maybe to him too – because youth, and a particular brand of loud, show-offy, even bratty and certainly entitled youth at that, was the currency he traded in for so long, whether on stage or on screen (though he’s always been at pains to point out that he is nowhere near as much of an arse as JP, his character in Channel 4’s comedy Fresh Meat).
“When I first started doing stand-up, because I started so young, all my shtick was all about how young I was. That was my gimmick and I remember being very aware that that was going to run out very quickly. It would be a well that would run dry before I knew it.
“And it was around that time that I had been adopting a mockney accent when I was onstage as well because I was so embarrassed that I was posh and didn’t think that would be a good thing to reveal to an audience. And then I came to this realisation that the ‘being young’ thing wasn’t the angle to mine and I should just own being a toff and use that as my comic persona … And then spent about 10 years flogging that dead horse.”