Circuit Training 35: Ian Stone, Staying at Home

As most of Britain's stand-up scene starts suffering the serious pre-Fringe why-do-I-put-myself-through-this nerves, one North London-based act is feeling oddly relaxed, partly because it's the close season and Arsenal aren't playing.

Rather than take on the full August-long run in Edinburgh, Ian Stone is doing one hour-long show on London's South Bank, then going straight back home again. Very civilised. The long-serving comic has done his fair share of Fringes but is now finding different ways of getting his name out there. Already a regular on 5live's popular sporting panel show Fighting Talk and the Comedy Store's weekly newsfest The Cutting Edge, he's enjoyed a useful popularity surge over the last year - and had a new catchphrase bestowed upon him - via the unlikely route of an Arsenal podcast. Well, it does get 60,000 downloads every week, with Alan Davies at the helm.

Said 'pod' has led directly to some useful radio work, but behind the scenes Stone is also gnashing his teeth at a near-miss sitcom-wise. It's a painful business. But let's start with his tiny Fringe.

You're doing one night at the Udderbelly on the 14th. Is it an Edinburgh-type show?

It's an hour-long, one man show and it's called Stoney Baloney. Essentially, it's just me talking shit for an hour but it's a sort of reworking of a show I did in Edinburgh about three/four years ago. It's completely new material, but the idea of the show was about how hard it is out there, not just in this country but overseas as well.

Do you try and give it a positive message at the end?

No. There is no positive message. At the end of it all you die. There's no resolutions. Get on with it and enjoy the moment. That's not part of the show particularly, but that's my feeling. Enjoy the bits that are good because they won't last very long and there's more shit coming along, but that's okay because that won't last forever either. I don't go into this...

It sounds a bit more chilled than Edinburgh, a nice evening on the South Bank...

I've been to Edinburgh six times and I've spent a fortune in that time, so I don't have any left, so I'm not going. The truth is, in terms of the comedy world, I think people know who I am. In Edinburgh, if you've got a real telly profile and you can sell hundreds of tickets, then go, and if you're young and you want to make a name for yourself, then go, but in my position where I work regularly, I do my radio and bits of telly, and I do my gigs all over the place, there's no real need for me to go and present myself in Edinburgh with, you know, 'here's another show.' I thought I'd stay closer to home.

Have you had more work because of the Arsenal podcast?

That's certainly made a difference. I mean you don't make any money out of podcasts directly. We're looking at ways you possibly can, but you don't. You make money indirectly, like we got a radio show last summer on Radio 5 for the World Cup, myself, Alan [Davies] and [DJ] Tayo, and we're probably going to do another one in Euro 2012, and maybe one at the start of the season for the Premiership, and then off the back of that I ended up working with Ian Wright on Absolute [Radio]. We've got 60,000-plus downloads, which is a big number. It's for Arsenal fans, but I think the beauty of doing a podcast like that for one of the bigger teams is that even if you're not an Arsenal fan you know most of the characters you're talking about. I think the characters involved in the pod - myself, Alan, Keith [Dover], [DJ] Tayo - are recognisable as proper fans who care deeply about their club. I think that's the bottom line. That's why fans of other teams seem to like listening to us.

You see a different side to Alan on there. More aggressive...

We've all been friends for a long time, and, yes, you do see a different side to Alan, and I think Keith is a comedy genius - it's just nobody knows it.

Your regular matchday shout at Theo Walcott has become a bit of a catchphrase hasn't it? Don't you get people shouting 'Unlucky Theo' at the Comedy Store now?

I got it at Glastonbury. Saturday, 2pm in the tent, I walk in. "Unlucky Theo!"

Do you get lots of Spurs fans downloading the podcast when Arsenal lose?

Yeah. The worst we played the funnier we got. If we were West Ham fans we would have won comedy awards.

West Ham should go to Edinburgh this year, they'd probably win Best Newcomer.

Ha! Yeah, they probably would...

Do you think you'll ever go back up there again?

To do a stand-up show? Never say never, but I'd rather be doing a show in London where I can go home to bed afterwards and know it's not costing me money. Edinburgh, there's so much noise. Have you seen the programme this year? I'm looking at it now and it's massive, and the comedy section is more than half of it. I'm looking at the comedy section and it goes from page 10 to page 160.

I think the reason half the comics go is that you don't want to be not going, especially if you're newer.

I think the main reason people go is because they haven't got much else going on. I mean not all of them, but it fills six months of the year and you feel you're being useful. It does make people write material. I don't have that problem because I do The Cutting Edge every week. I have to write, so after a year I'll have an hour of new material.

But it's difficult to know if I would have been in this position if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh and done all those years. I remember one year when Harry Hill got a bit angry. Now Harry Hill is the nicest person I've ever met and he was a bit jumpy. I thought 'if this can do this to Harry then this is wrong.'

Fighting Talk: is it quite competitive?

I've done a tonne of radio so I feel comfortable in that environment. You need a broad knowledge of sport and so they're quite choosy about the comedians they take. I rarely use Wikipedia for Fighting Talk, only the odd question, that's two/three questions in all the times I've done it, which is 30/40 times. But essentially I do it from my own head. It's a little bit sad that I know all that about things that really don't matter, but there you go. I do remember my children's birthdays as well.

Did you see the Mark Watson TV version of it?

I only saw the one and I can't really make a judgement. I mean I thought it looked a bit cheap for what it was in terms of the look of it, but Mark's funny. I've got to say that he was very funny on the one I saw.

The sitcom you wrote with Tom Craine, The Sharp End, got to the pilot stage on Radio 2... what happened then?

Unfortunately, they didn't take it on as a series which was a shame, but there you go. We had Alistair McGowan and Michelle Gomez, so it was disappointing that it didn't get taken up, but these things, you just can't tell.

You did well get to get the pilot made I suppose...

We were a bit gutted that we didn't get the series. Have you heard it? It was really good and they just didn't like the idea. They felt it was too 'in'. We got commissioned just before the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand debacle, there were a lot of changes and suddenly there's a new person who comes in. I honestly feel it was a completely wasted opportunity on their part. There's so much luck involved in this stuff and it's a shame because I thought Alistair and Michelle were absolutely brilliant.

Making The Sharp End was the most fun I've had doing stuff like that, and in the end it is about that. It's about trying to have fun and doing stuff that you want to do, and if you're lucky enough to have a career where you can just do stuff that you like doing and get paid for it, you know, you've won.

Ian Stone plays the Udderbelly at London's Southbank Centre on July 14. Visit www.underbelly.co.uk for details.