Nick Hancock's Second Half

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Saturday 4th February 2023

You've probably noticed a good few old formats re-emerging recently: Fantasy Football League, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and - just announced - the radio version of Room 101. Nick Hancock isn't hosting the latter this time, but as we'll learn, he may benefit from it anyway.

The Stoke City-supporting stand-up/presenter compares his career to a sportsman's ("we were both finished by the time we were 36!") and certainly had a glittering 1990s. He took the Room 101 radio show to TV in '94 before hosting another long-running hit, They Think It's All Over, then dabbled with several new game show formats (Hancock's half hours?) and has now belatedly returned to sport.

The Famous Sloping Pitch is his podcast with old pal Chris England, who co-wrote another of his 90s hits, the much-loved play An Evening with Gary Lineker. It's pleasingly different from regular rambly football podcasts: proper gags and a novel array of interviewees, from old comedy mates to journalists, ex-pros, and even a linesman, film director, and footballer's wife.

Hancock's impressive 90s CV also includes huge hits The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Mr Bean, one of which helped smooth a run-in with the Iranian FA. We'll definitely get to that - but first, the sloping pitch.

Your footy podcast feels quite distinct as it has proper scripted jokes - like a nice irreverent round-up for fans who don't fancy TalkSport?

I don't want to give the impression it had any real thought behind it - Chris and I are a bit long in the tooth for all this stuff - the only thing was that we'd like it to be casual like two blokes chatting, but also we wanted to put proper research in, and try and do it properly. Not just off the top of our heads.

One of the things was to debunk this almost worshipful coverage of football, 'the next match you're going to watch is the greatest match ever', and all that stuff about how the world began when the Premier League began. Irreverence is what it has to be under those circumstances.

You're surprisingly positive too - I thought it might be grumpier about modern football.

It's more the media circus that surrounds it, and bad administration: FIFA are so fantastic at making really crass decisions all the time, they just give you new stuff. And UEFA too. The other thing that's been really big recently is the politicising of football, there's a lot of that going on. A lot of room for humour.

So what made you start it - and carry on with it? A lot of podcasts fizzle out early on...

Well yes, that's always very tempting, because there's no money in it! I think we were just out chatting with friends, and - as everybody says - 'this could be a podcast', so we thought we'd have a go at it. Serendipity has stepped in because Chris is an Oldham supporter and they've been relegated out of the league. So that was a source of a lot of bile.

We had a similar thing at Leyton Orient - a club you have a big connection with, theatrically?

In a tiny, tiny way, yes, I have played an Orient manager.

Which must be rare - how many people have done that?

Well, with that particular play, I think about four.

Right, that's true. It carried on a theme though, you were one of the first comics to go big on football.

The strange thing is, the twin worlds of comedy and football have pushed themselves into the mainstream... not hand in hand together but in parallel, let's put it that way. From 1990, when I was starting, the idea of doing comedy because it could be a job was a ridiculous idea, whereas now people do courses in it.

You were in The Mary Whitehouse Experience, which started a lot of that - Baddiel and Newman doing Wembley Arena was a big turning point.

Then of course there was Fantasy Football [League]...

And They Think It's All Over - how long did you host it for?

I did 18 series. I packed up Room 101 to do They Think It's All Over, but Room 101 has been my better friend, because it was partly my idea, so even after I finished it... Room 101 was on for 30 years!

They changed your original format after a while.

You know how television works, there's a successful panel show and everything has to be a panel show. Or there's a successful gritty, no-laughter-track sitcom, so every sitcom does that - it's very imitative.

Is it a bit like Alex Horne then, various versions of Taskmaster around the world and he presumably gets a royalty, did you get a bit of that with Room 101?

Yeah, years ago that used to happen for actors too, but they don't get repeat fees anymore. Whereas actually format people do.

They should do comedy courses on that - coming up with formats.

Definitely, formats, and then you need to do pitching: the format's no good unless it goes on to be something. But yes, radio is a fantastic place to start. I did it with Lissa Evans, who was later the producer of Father Ted.

Before that, you were a PE teacher?

Very, very briefly. I trained as a teacher and PE was part of it. We had [doctor turned comedian] Simon Brodkin on the podcast the other week, talking about that. When I first started doing stand-up we had a lot of ex-teachers - it's very similar to teaching in that you have to stand in front of a group of people who don't want to listen to you. But now it's ex-doctors, which shows there's more money in it.

When I read about the PE teacher thing, it fitted well with your subsequent career...

Kind of, I suppose people just knew that I like sports, so that helped, when sports stuff started happening.

Where did you and Chris England meet? You had a lot of success in his play, An Evening with Gary Lineker.

I've known Chris since 1982, a very, very long time, obviously doing An Evening with Gary Lineker, then we worked together on [sitcom] Bostock's Cup.

It's been interesting hearing the different guests you've had on - a lot of the other podcasts I listen to, I feel like I've heard already, as they all appear on each others'.

There's a quid pro quo thing going on, 'I'll do yours, you do mine.' We've had Lineker on and people like that, chums from years ago, but we've also tried occasionally to go really leftfield. So [ex Stoke player] Rory Delap's wife came on, because, one, she was a physio at Derby County, two, married to Rory Delap, and her three sons are professional footballers. It was just quite an interesting thing to have, the football family.

And old comedy mates you went to games with - I've just heard the ones with Jack Docherty and Gordon Kennedy from Absolutely - comedians who are football fans have a lot of great road stories.

Certainly when I was younger, away games were the ones, that's where all the stories came from. Because home games you just turn up and you watch the game and you go home. Away games, the next thing you know, you're in a second-hand ambulance on the way to Hull, and these become the stuff of tiny legend.

The World Cup draw must have been interesting for you, particularly England and the USA playing Iran - you made a film about them in 1998.

I've been to the World Cup with Iran, with [comedian/sports presenter] Andy Smart, which we both still think of as one of the greatest times we had together, because it was just bizarre.

We were with them for all the friendlies, then the World Cup itself, we went to the first game together, then Andy watched the USA game in Tehran. We were with the team the whole time, on the bus and all that sort of thing. The lad Estili who scored the winner against the USA, we gave him a lift to the airport.

Really?

It's like, can you imagine the FA allowing two Iranian comedians to take David Beckham to the airport in 1998? And not only to the airport, he was on the back of an open bedded truck, like The Beverly Hillbillies.

How on earth did you get all that access?

What we did was, we had to get in touch with the Iranian FA. So we flew to Tehran, and the head of the Iranian FA was from the oil ministry. In fact, I think he was the oil minister, but we're sitting there and it's not going particularly well. He's saying he needs a bit more 'energy' - I think we all know what that means.

And then suddenly, he just looks at me and he goes 'you were in Mr Bean!' And we had to recreate the scene from Mr Bean - he was Mr Bean - and then the next thing we know, we have it.

It's amazing what comedy can do.

I think more than anything it tells you about the incredible impact Rowan has had across the world, because the thing about Mr Bean, it doesn't really have any speech in it, so it works everywhere.

I remember someone in the Dominican Republic telling me that, when they think of the British, it's Bean before The Beatles. So being in it must be the comedy equivalent of being on Sgt Pepper?

Er, yeah! If you want. I don't think I would say that.

I must dig out that film - any favourite moments?

They did this brilliant thing where the Americans gave each of the Iranian players a little pendant. And then the Iranian players went along the American side and gave them a bunch of flowers. And then they came back around again. And they gave them something else. And they went round again...

If you can remember the programme Crackerjack, the American players, their arms absolutely full of stuff. And then the referee blows the whistle to go do your warm-up, and they have to stagger off the pitch to put all this stuff down. Killed with kindness.

I remember hearing you on a radio show, saying you regret giving up stand-up, years ago.

Oh yeah, the two things I regret giving up are playing football, and stand-up. It's something impossible to recreate: one, getting a laugh, or two, something wonderful happening in a game of football. And if it happens again, it's in a completely different way, so each time it's almost like the first time, if you know what I mean. You don't get that in many other things, the intense but throwaway edge of them.

So why did you give up? Just too busy with TV?

It was more because of doing An Evening with Gary Lineker. So that's six months off [stand-up]. And then I finished that and we were sort of straight into Room 101, then They Think It's All Over, and I just didn't have the impetus to go back. And I'd done it for a long time, it was quite nice to take a break. Unfortunately, the break became permanent.

I suppose it's like football, you can't just start where you left off, you'd need to get match fit again.

I think that's true. But I also feel a little bit like, now, I don't know whether I have anything to say to this audience.

Do you have any career advice then, for new comedy writer/performers?

Yes - Fuck off! There's too many of us.

But no, I think it's absolutely that, to just keep going. There isn't a comic or a comedy writer that hasn't had failure in their lives; or very few if there are any. We've all had things that we cherish, lines that we cherish, scripts that we cherish, that people just don't like. You have to get used to that, I'm afraid.

The Famous Sloping Pitch is available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple