Circuit Training 99: The Lost Alfie Brown Tape

So, before we hit Circuit Training 100, a belated bit of housekeeping. Getting on for a year ago I had an excellent chat with Alfie Brown, one of the most underrated comics knocking around right now.

Part of that conversation was for a football feature elsewhere - he's a big Liverpool fan - and we were planning on saving this larger chat for when his new live album came out. Well, it still hasn't arrived, as far as I know, and if this piece waits on the shelf any longer it'll turn into a pumpkin. Then have its insides scraped out and a face carved into it by Halloween-frenzied children. Hideous.

You may not have come across Brown before, because he's hardly ever been on TV. Much of that is his choice, although we did also discuss his Channel 4 News invite, and a non-appearance on The Alternative Comedy Experience.

You'll probably recognise his talented parents though: Spitting Image and Dead Ringers star Jan Ravens, and Spitting Image musical director Steve Brown, who also played Glen Ponder (and Chalet! And Savoir Faire! And Lazarus!) on Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge. Alfie's style has developed rather differently, which we'll come to below.

Before scrolling further I'd heartily recommend that you pop over to Alfie's website - alfiebrown.com - and download his previous live album, Divorced from Reality (And My Wife), which is the best £3 I spent last year. Or the year before. It was a while ago, anyway.

You have a very thoughtful, very honest stand-up style: was that always the plan?

I think I've always tried to do that, but when I was trying to do it as an 18 year-old halfwit, I was trying to get to the depths of what I was thinking, but what I was thinking was 'why is that pop song so bad?' or some other mild, not radical observation. As time moved on, you get to one depth, then you've got to write a new show so you have to dig up what was at the bottom of the last pit you dug, and try to find more, er, minerals. So it was quite natural.

You tried a slightly more commercial direction after recording that last album - was that a conscious decision?

No - I'd just had a baby, and 28 is a bizarre age, you're finally smart enough to realise that you know nothing. It's much happier being 20 years-old and saying 'the system's fucked man.' Then you think 'well I'm going to have to learn if that's actually true.' So I think I just wrote a show from a position of more uncertainty than I've ever done. But I feel like, in elements, I made it a cop-out, and I don't think I'd like to do that again.

Doing stuff that's more commercial only works if it becomes commercially successful...

That's right!

You mention in the Divorce show getting bumped from Stewart Lee's Alternative Comedy Experience TV show - is that true?

Yeah, I went to Edinburgh and recorded it, and didn't make the edit.

Did they give you a reason?

Some of the material was inappropriate. It was too alternative for what they were trying to do. I did ask, but never mind, whatever. I think some of it was not necessarily broadcastable.

Was it maybe because of the format - the way they cut stuff up rather than leave it long-form?

Yeah, it's actually the opposite of what I thought it would be: with [alternative] comedy, you want to engage with it over a longer period of time than they provide you. And that makes Russell Howard's Good News the best place to see stand-up. But I actually thought that show worked alright as a different sort of thing.

Why aren't you on TV more? Are producers worried about you being horribly honest?

No - I don't really want to do any of that. I've spoken to people who've done panel shows, and it doesn't seem like a lot of fun to do, it seems quite competitive - I don't really want to be at war with people I like, for time. The only fun one, apparently, is the Keith Lemon show. And I hate him more than anybody.

It's a shame there aren't more outlets for long-form stand-up. I'm surprised more channels don't record 'specials' the way they do in the States. It can't be hugely expensive?

I would love that. BBC On Demand, I think they might start doing stuff like that. I love the whole 'special' thing - get a stand-up slot on Graham Norton, or Jonathan Ross, or Alan Carr, like they do on Conan [O'Brian], then a half-hour special on Comedy Central, then an hour on Channel 4 - it's a much better system.

Your Divorce show worked really well as an album - although my phone played the last track first, so I thought you were doing some high-concept thing where it started with the end of the previous comic's set.

Ha! Maybe I will do that.

I'd read some press that gave me the wrong impression of your stuff - you don't sound like you're actively trying to shock people.

Well no, this is where I've gotten to the end of my tether: now I want to also be a friendly comedian who talks to the audience, smiles and engages, and doesn't bombard people. But at the same time I don't like comedy that isn't interesting either. It's a balance of the two.

You mention Dapper Laughs in that show, then appeared on Channel 4 news vaguely defending him. Your face was a picture when the woman you were up against said 'clearly you've never experienced sexism...' That's a tricky one to answer.

Well, yeah, but all that was going through my head at that point was 'here's an entirely other argument we could have, that would not fit in.' It's like that Bill Burr bit where he's teaching you how to argue with your girlfriend - "stay in the pocket of the argument, don't let them throw you off". But, yeah, she's coming to see my show I think.

So you ended up on there after saying something about it on Twitter?

Twitter, I scribble down thoughts on the way everybody is feeling about something, and question it. That was some line like 'Dapper Laughs: are we really just getting angry at the monkey and completely ignoring the organ grinder?'

Surely the argument needs to be much more levelled at the channels, the networks. He's just an idiot, his dad was an idiot, he never stood a chance. You can get annoyed at him all you want, but you have to change the culture that surrounds him. It's like that bit in Armageddon - you have to drill to the centre of the asteroid to destroy it, you can't just put a bomb on its surface.

Good analogy. So did you get any calls from news shows when he re-emerged?

Sadly not. I would quite like to be the Dapper Laughs correspondent, the one that actually has to go and defend Dapper Laughs every time - but that is something I do need to be careful of, just being contrary, taking the opposite point of view to everyone else because it amuses me. People being angry and cocksure and adamant about everything: that will always be funny to me. If they're going at it in an angry and not level-headed way, then I just want to make them more angry.

With all the group think on social media, it's refreshing to hear a different point of view. I presume Channel 4 were hoping that you'd really back Dapper Laughs during that debate?

Yeah, absolutely, and they backed her as well. The producer of the news programme was taking her out back and prepping her, going 'don't listen to him, you just say this, you're the dude' - and I was just left there to flounder in wet shit. But, no, it was alright in the end, I quite enjoyed it, and it was a good first experience. I feel less nervous now when I'm actually arguing about something serious.

Your parents have lots of comedy experience - do you ever ask them for advice?

Well, I don't think either of them ever did stand-up as long as I've done it. But they're both excellent comedians and both worked with excellent comedians, and what's been quite helpful is that they've both got very different instincts.

It sounds obvious to say, but I'm very much a construct of part of each of them. When I first started, I wanted to harness the anger of my father and speak up against what was shit. But as I've gotten older, I've wanted more and more what she is so brilliant at, the diversity, different performance elements in the mimicry, the caricatures, making satire from caricature. I think that helps - now mad angry guy can back himself up with some funny characters. And it breaks it up a little bit.

But yeah, I do talk to them a lot.

What's the longer-term plan now?

I'd like to do a gig and get some good video, get that up, utilise the internet as much as I can to broadcast myself as a stand-up, without having to fucking tweet or do anything like that.

A lot of my friends are in bands, and they have to 'break' by releasing a song, getting it posted to blogs, hoping the blogger will write about it and 'oh my god, the blogger wrote about it' - but I want to try to do that, rather than the TV way. Any bits of TV I've done, I've done for the Dapper Laughs [debate] reason, of wanting to be... er...

...making a point rather than making crap jokes on a panel show?

Exactly.