UK comic Russell Howard gave us the cliff notes of his schedule—200 gigs in the UK, 30 gigs in the US—with a bucket load of sold-out Aussie shows to come. And the show has changed a lot, he says, with various iterations, which intrigued this live music fan. Adding to your material throughout a tour? How novel.
“It’s the great thing about stand-up,” he enthuses. “You can have an idea; that night, you can try it, and the audience will help you mould it. You can kick it around, and it either solidifies or doesn’t become anything.
“It’s like a sculpture,” he continues. “You’re constantly slinging clay into it. The audience helps you make a bit of pottery. It’s so different to music. Music is created irrevocably in a dark room; you sit there, create, and mix it. But it’s your thing, and you present it to the world.
“Stand-up is created with the audience, not for them. And if you were to do old stuff at a stand-up gig, your audience would be mortified, whereas if you do new stuff at a music gig, the audience is mortified. But it has to change for me; otherwise, it feels like Groundhog Day.”
A world-renowned comic, Russell is also a savvy interviewer. However, whilst thoroughly enjoying this aspect of his show [The Russell Howard Hour], he admits it was a learning curve.
“Remarkably, I prepare very little,” he reveals. “For the telly show, I’ll generally have five bullet points that I’ll hit, and with my new project, my podcast called Wonderbox – which, summed up, I chat to people about the things in their lives that they adore. I jump in and riff off my guests.
“It’s a different skill set,” Russell continues. “It took me ages to understand the art of interviewing and listening to people. It’s so tricky as a comic because your brain is like, Say this! Say that! It’s a constant battle with this demon in my head, and I gradually learned to turn him off.
“If you’re doing a panel show, it’s all about getting your word in and getting the timing right, whereas an interview – is all about listening and asking a question based on what they’ve just said.”
Would you believe Russell declined media training? “I think it’s better when it’s warts and all,” he affirms.
Russell had no aspirations of transitioning to the ‘telly’. From a young lad growing up in Bath, he wanted to be a stand-up comic; an “insane dream”, as he describes. Once it became a reality, it just snowballed.
“When I started at 18, everything was exciting,” he recalls. “The idea of being a circuit comedian when I was 21 was so cool. I was this child on the circuit in the UK and was always the young kid. I was really, genuinely happy just bombing around doing that, and it gradually just got out of control, and various offers came my way.
“Honestly, telly is not my thing – I love writing jokes and performing. It’s the perfect job for me.”
How does Russell find the funny when approaching a topic, let alone lacing it with multiple layers of commentary?
“You’ve got to listen to yourself to find the jokes, then you’ve got to listen to the audience to find the funny. And just be honest – if it isn’t working, it isn’t working. It’s such a live thing, right – nothing is real. You can do all the writing you want, all the prep you want, but only until the audience agrees does it step into the world of ‘this is a bit now’.
What aren’t people laughing enough about?
“People laugh at everything, don’t they?” Russell asserts. “I remember having this conversation with Tim Minchin. If you’ve been doing stand-up for long enough, you can make anything funny; you learn to manoeuvre around it.
“Recently, I was chatting about knife crime in the UK, which has gone up to, like, 75% in kids aged nine. Really brutal and upsetting.
“I recall when I was nine years old – me and my brother once put cello tape over our arseholes to see if we could fart out our mouths… THAT’S what you should be doing when you’re nine.
“So it’s taking something unfortunate and illuminating what kids should be doing at age nine. The job is to convey your feelings with jokes rather than stating the obvious: ‘Isn’t it a disgrace?’ Well…yeah. Of course. The skill of a comic should be to make you laugh and make you think.
“I think, particularly with the speed world and the heaviness of the world, there is something really beautiful about going to a comedy show and laughing your arse off about stupid things, just getting lost in the societal orgasm of having a laugh with a room full of strangers.
“There’s a lot to be said about taking people away for a couple of hours and just being a dick.”
And so we end this happy chat by posing the most important of all the questions… CAN you fart out of your mouth?
“You can’t.”
Russell Howard hits the Royal Theatre on Tuesday, 20 February. Doors 8pm, tix $91.90 via Ticketek.