Circuit Training 80: Alex Horne's Career Ladder

80 editions of Circuit Training done, and this - strike me down if I'm wrong - is the first where I've actually taken part in the interviewee's Edinburgh show. And what a bloody show. Alex Horne's Monsieur Butterfly is a live-action version of the bewilderingly elaborate board game Mousetrap, his version incorporating genuine moments of peril, genuine ladders from Wickes, and assistance from random punters, including, mercifully briefly, me. More on that below.

Horne is famously hot with words, but his knack for new formats is now getting due recognition too. That wonderfully put-together Monsieur Butterfly won a well-deserved Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination last summer; one of his older Edinburgh shows [Taskmaster] is about to hit our screens as a Greg Davies-fronted game show (with Horne doing a Richard Osman, as both glamorous assistant and deviser/producer) and even his comedy band, The Horne Section, will take a new direction at this year's Fringe.

Before all that, though, he brings Monsieur Butterfly to the Soho Theatre, for just over a week, just under a fortnight. Somewhere in between. Although when I catch him he's a bit further east, and thinking further ahead.

Hello Alex, where are you?

I'm at Walthamstow! About to do a rehearsal. It's for The Horne Section, we're vaguely gearing up for Edinburgh, but because we're all mates we'll have breakfast first.

Sounds very agreeable. Let's start with Edinburgh then: are you doing a solo Fringe show too?

I'm cheating this year - well, no, I am doing a new show with The Horne Section, that's valid: we're jumping on the quiz bandwagon. The title is The Horne Section's Questions Session - it's a hard title to pronounce. It's vaguely Shooting Stars-y, but with music.

But I'm cheating by doing Monsieur Butterfly again this year, because it went well and was a lot of fun. I'm just doing it for two weeks, because I feel like there could be more to it. I'm still growing it. I do feel bad when there are fellow comics struggling to get their new hour up and running, whereas I'm just recycling the old one. But I really love the show, so I think it's justified.

The amount of effort that must go into that show, I reckon you're justified in doing it as long as you like - maybe as long as the West End's Mousetrap?

Yeah, and also it takes up a lot of room in the house, and I had to buy a van for it, so yes, I'd feel that I need to use the stuff again and again. Otherwise, my wife will make me sell it.

So I was actually in the Edinburgh version...

Ah! What role did you have?

I was holding a spool while you fired something through a suspended loo seat?

Yeah, I fired an arrow with a fishing wire attached.

I was supposed to cheer when it went through, but you made me put my glasses on top of my head, so I couldn't actually see it. Which went down quite well.

It got an extra laugh - ah, well I appreciate that. I apologise for making you blind for a bit!

So how did this show come about?

Well, the slightly unfortunate story is that I nicked the idea. The show that I loved most of all in 2013 was a circus show called Slightly Fat Features, a knockabout family show, really stupid and fun, and in it was this minute-long sketch where somebody called John - who's since become a friend - made this tiny little catapult, a lovingly constructed catapult where a ball rolled down it, hit a hammer, which flicked an elephant and he caught it in his hand.

It was just one moment but I really loved it and spoke to him afterwards and said 'I'd really love to do that idea, but over an hour, with a story.' So hopefully it's 'inspired by' rather than 'stole' - I was so drawn into watching this little machine being built, and the audience cheering on these inanimate objects.

Your stage set-up, it's an amazing thing to see come together.

Yeah, I'm hoping it transfers to a tour. It's a very 'Edinburgh' show and I haven't really done it outside Edinburgh yet, so I'm slightly wary of whether people are expecting an hour of jokes, whereas all I do is stick some ladders up.

Surely everyone there ends up dying to know what happens?

That's true. I do say in the show that you wouldn't want to walk out, even if you didn't like the show, you'll hang around until the end.

Did you think about trying to get some Wickes sponsorship? They get lots of mentions.

I don't even know if you can. It did cross my mind because during the building stage I was there every week, the people in there did start to know me, and were wondering what sort of extension I was building. There were all these proper men in there buying stuff, and there I was buying a bit of drainpipe one day, some string the next. I've got a very strange set of receipts for the tax man.

Back to The Horne Section - how many Radio 4 series have you done now?

We did three radio series, and that might be it for now, we're sort of changing direction. It's quite labour intensive, The Horne Section, in terms of a radio series, because you're coming up with three hours of material for every series, which is a lot of music.

So that's partly why we're going down the quiz line, it's a refreshing change. We'll sort if it works. At the moment I'm very confident, but that's because we haven't done it yet.

It worked well on Buzzcocks and Cats Does Countdown, and does seem a natural fit... well, if you can actually fit everyone into the studio.

We're doing lots of previews at [London venue] The Invisible Dot. It's so small, and we love it there, but there's six of us onstage and we've got some quite big props... it'll be worth watching.

So you do all that, then your solo show is loads of effort to set up too.

I guess it keeps me fit, gets me out of the house - I have children, and I look forward to getting in my van and driving away from them. I like driving home as well, but the fact that I have to be at the venue three hours early, there are some perks to that.

Driving the van, do you feel like a proper tradesman?

Yes! I do, I love it, I drop my son off to school in the van and he absolutely loves it, he gets a lot of street cred I think. I'm toying with having something written on the back, a sort of 'no tools left in this van' message, or a nebulous job title, like Owl Caterer or something, and maybe put Tim Key's phone number on there, see what happens.

I heard a tremendous story on a podcast recently about how you and a chap from Hot Chip kickstarted Key's career.

Yes, Al Doyle, he's a very old friend of mine, he's a frustratingly talented person, he could easily be a comedian, he's very, very funny. So my first ever show in Edinburgh, he was going to be my assistant, then unfortunately he landed this job in Hot Chip - or Hot Chip became Hot Chip - and I dragged Tim into it.

But my agent at the time was very anti-Tim, and was very pro-Al. 'Tim's never going to make it, you need to keep Al.' Ha ha! But yeah, it's nice, we're all still friends, it's a funny little link. Hot Chip are a funny band, because they're quite big, but not a band that your parents have heard of.

So your other bits and bobs - sorry, 'bits and bobs' sounds terribly dismissive...

Bits and bobs is fine!

You did the podcast, Alex Horne Breaks The News, for Dave, was it?

I've actually just finished a TV programme for Dave, the first one that I've come up with, an old Edinburgh idea called Taskmaster. In Edinburgh I set 20 comedians these tasks over the course of a year, and six years later it's finally a TV show, where myself and Greg Davies have set five comedians a load of tasks over three months, and it's all filmed and it'll be out in July.

So for the first three months of the year I've just kind of been sort of doing a nine to five job - I'm in it but I'm producing it as well, which is great, I come home at a reasonable hour. I think it might be really good. I don't want to jinx it, but it's a really good line up: Frank Skinner, Tim did it, Romesh Ranganathan, Josh Widdicombe, Roisin Conaty, and they threw themselves at it.

So how does it work exactly?

Greg is the Taskmaster, I am his assistant, and together we set all the same tasks to the five comedians, they do them independently, then in a live theatre setting they find out how they did, and one of them wins. That's kind of it. Hopefully that makes sense. It plays on the general competitiveness of comedians, and they really were very competitive, they really wanted to win. We're all very childish.

How did you find the producer's hat?

It was really fun actually, and I think it was quite nice for the comics to have a comic the other side of the camera. You're generally quite wary of TV producers making you do things that they think are funny but you know better, so yes, it was a good feeling.

You did a very nice BBC Four documentary about old sports a while back - would you like to do more of those?

I did want to. I was very keen. They were less keen, unfortunately. You never know, it might happen again - but the same director who did that has just done this Taskmaster programme, so hopefully there's some continuity there. But, yes, I loved doing that, and I do see documentaries as something I'd want to do more of. I think it suits my personality.

How about books? In Monsieur Butterfly you use some unsold copies of your birdwatching book as, er, bricks was it?

That was the first thing I wrote, and I haven't read it back. The second book I wrote [Wordwatching], I'm very proud of, but Birdwatchingwatching I'm slightly embarrassed about. I've a feeling it's an incredibly naïve book, like a child writing, 'then I did this, then I did that...'

Well, I enjoyed it. In your previous Edinburgh show, in 2013, you said that you hated stand-up now - was there some truth in that?

I think I did sometimes get bored with stand-up, but I haven't really done it for quite a while, I'm sure I've got a taste for it again. There's definitely part of me that would just like to talk, to have the confidence to just be able to talk for an hour, and not have all these ladders.

'Monsieur Butterfly' is at the Soho Theatre 4th - 16th May 2015. For tickets visit www.sohotheatre.co.uk