Circuit Training 96: Mark Watson gets Ripped

It's a lovely image, Mark Watson suddenly emerging from a period of intense under-the-radar gym action with the rippling biceps of, ooh, The Rock, and yes, our chat does begin with a bit about exercise. But the title above actually refers to his new show, I'm Not Here, in which something else gets ripped and leads him to question our relationship with identity and technology, in a typically brilliant Watson-esque way.

Circuit Training was talking to Mark before his Saturday headline slot at the first Hertford Comedy Festival, which will also be the first weekend of Euro 2016, so inevitably we wind up discussing comedy vs football dilemmas too. And I was particularly keen to ask about his debut graphic novel (with illustrator Oliver Harud), Dan and Sam, which came out last year and looks absolutely splendid.

But first, that workout routine.

What are you up to today, Mark?

It's been quite a wet cool day, so what I'll be doing as soon as we finish talking is powering off on a run.

That sounds quite impressive.

Well obviously, I'm in the business of talking myself up, that's the whole game really. I did a fun run at the weekend and that went quite well, so I'm currently in a mood of aggressive confidence where running is concerned. It won't take long for that to fade.

There must be a point in a fun run where it becomes not fun and the name of the event begins to taunt you.

It sort of depends on what your definition of fun is: a lot of people would say that no part of running is fun, and you have to respect that. I quite enjoy it, but even for me, someone who does enjoy it, there's no use pretending that all of it is fun. No, there are some bits where almost anything would be more fun.

A Some-Bits-of-it-are-Fun-Run would be a clunky title I suppose.

Exactly, it's branding.

So you're headlining the first Hertford Comedy Festival soon, which is happening during Euro 2016. Do you ever have football in mind when booking gigs?

I've tried to keep it fairly light in June and July so I can watch as much as possible. It's difficult, not just the Euros but the regular season as well. I'd love to be able to plan my touring so that I could go to [Bristol] City away games, but it rarely does work out that way because the fixture computer doesn't get cranked up until next month, and I'm normally booking nine months ahead.

So it's a matter of luck the way football and my career fit together. It'll be interesting to see what impact it has on comedy during the tournament. Some of it will depend how England do obviously, quite a lot of football fans are only really fans when England are involved in a tournament. And, hard as it is to understand, there are a lot of people who don't really like football.

Have you ever done a gig when a massive game's on, that's in the back of everyone's mind?

Now and again I have, I've certainly clashed with some high-profile matches before: and I've tended to mention it on stage, get it out of the way. Other than sport there are not too many live events that are so important - in days gone by it might have been that the last episode of a TV show, but people don't behave in the same way now. Sport is the only thing you have to watch live.

When there is a match on I try not to reveal any scores, because there's always a chance people are trying to avoid the result. We all know what that feeling's like.

Let's talk about the show itself then - it's had some cracking reviews.

Yeah I'm happy with it at the moment. It's called I'm Not Here, and it was triggered by an episode at an airport last year when my passport was questioned because it was slightly torn on the photo page, so was technically not valid. I was allowed to board the flight but not guaranteed to get into Australia when I landed.

Oof...

It's a very long way to fly, not knowing if it was going to be in vain or not. So that flight becomes the basis of the show really - what interests me about it is how little proof we have of our existence these days, apart from online. The passport is the only thing you've got that you carry about, and if something goes wrong on that, there's almost nothing. So that's the starting point, but generally the show is about the weird way that the digital realm has replaced the 'real' in our lives.

They try to get you to save everything online now - in the 'cloud' - but it's useless on things like flights, when you're working offline for hours.

Even saving things on your phone is one degree abstracted from being able to hold it in your hand, and now they're even encouraging us to go away from our devices. And I can only think that more and more stuff is going to become virtual, further and further from our reach, physically, even conceptually. The internet existing is one thing, we all understand how that has replaced a lot of physical realities, but the cloud is different again, we don't even understand who's doing it.

Calling something a 'cloud' doesn't inspire confidence that it's solid and secure does it?

It's not the most concrete of storage options, a cloud. So yeah, all these things interest me. I'm not at all technophobic. Generally I think there's huge advantages to the digital age, but I do think it requires us to rethink our relationship with, well, nearly everything, and we're quite early in that process.

Obviously not much of this can be tackled in the show. Largely it's just jokes, as usual.

You used to do a great routine about your crap old phone - did you have to bring it with you for that bit, even after you'd actually upgraded?

I think I dropped the joke when it got to the point where everyone had an identical iPhone: I very occasionally wheel it out in a corporate set or something where people don't really mind about the topicality of it. But generally, the golden age for making jokes about smartphones was when people like me still had a crappy Nokia.

That is generally my relationship with technology, I complain and take the piss out it then eventually just surrender. Then accept afterwards that I should have done it a long time before.

It's an interesting subject. That Louis CK bit about us bitching about flying is like a mantra for me now, I try to keep that in mind at all times.

Absolutely yeah, I'd had similar conversations with people before I'd even heard that bit - it's very true, we live in an age of pretty much endless miracles. I do talk about this a little bit in the show, what starts off as a miracle very quickly becomes another entitlement that you think you have.

Like 'contactless', it's an even more amazing innovation than the PIN, you literally just wave your card in the general direction of something, but if the contactless machine isn't working everyone gets really angry. We very quickly move from being amazed about what we can do to being frustrated, if it doesn't work for three seconds.

You've usually got a lot of projects on the go - anything else coming up?

I finished another novel recently that comes out in July, it's a murder mystery set in Dubai. It draws on some of the same themes as the show: an odd environment that in some ways is quite divorced from our reality.

I've just bought your graphic novel, which looks really lovely. How did it come about?

It was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to do a graphic novel, and it fought its way to the front because I met this illustrator, Oliver, online. On MySpace: that's how long ago it was, 2007/8.

Which continues the theme of tech stuff moving on...

It's still there, my MySpace profile, I suppose - I hope no-one's tried to contact me urgently that way. So as a result of that online meeting we started this project and did it back and forth by email, for years really, only meeting very occasionally to chat through it, then eventually it did come to fruition, and came out last year. It's very rewarding to write a story and see it brought to life in that way.

It must be nice to see a published novel, but this is a real 'wow' moment, opening this up.

Yeah, it's still quite an unusual feeling to hold a finished book in your hands, with pictures and everything, its rewarding in a way that's slightly different to any other book. It's obviously quite a niche project than other novels, because a lot of people don't read graphic novels, or they're not even on their radar. For a select group I think it's quite an enjoyable read and I'm certainly proud of the way it looks.

Presumably it's actually introduced some of your audience to graphic novels?

I hope so. In general graphic novels as a genre are a lot more reputable among the literary crowd than they used to be, some fairly high profile ones. I never came from a particularly comic book background, my way into graphic novels was via slightly more high-end ones, so I'd love it if it opened people up to the idea of them.

Will you do more of them?

I hope so - obviously the problems are that there's not really any money to be made from it, and it takes about five years to do! Which is not a problem for me, but because he's an illustrator who works commercially doing storyboarding and things, it's perhaps never going to be his first priority - perhaps as a side project. I have a sort of idea as well, but its very time consuming to draw, so we'll see.

I haven't read it yet - am I right in thinking that it's quite sad, in places?

It's sort of bittersweet. Tragi-comic. I generally aim for tragi-comic, because then there's something for everyone.

Do you approach your gigs that way too, just in case?

I almost approach life that way to be honest. Life is basically a mix of tragedy and comedy, so anything worth watching or reading probably takes in a bit of both.

I'm Not Here is at the Hertford Comedy Fest is on June 18th, book tickets here - hertfordcomedyfestival.com - and for Mark's myriad other gigs, books, DVDs and what-have-you, visit markwatsonthecomedian.com