Circuit Training 13: We Received Answers

It's been said many times but Mark Watson must be the hardest-working man in showbusiness (comedy branch); not that he'd be brazen enough to ever call it work. The self-effacing Bristolian has his fingers in more pies than a bad gastropub waiter, with a show on the telly and a tour in the works, a new novel in the offing and a TV writing career going rather well.

The telly show is BBC4's We Need Answers, his first as host (alongside Tim Key and Alex Horne). The book and tour will be upon us this autumn, and you may well have caught the one-off comedy drama A Child's Christmas in Wales over the festive season, starring Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones, which Watson wrote. He also does a daily football blog, with his brother, and is creating a baby, with his wife.

Then again, it hasn't all gone swimmingly this past year. The comic caused a curious rumpus by starring in a pear cider ad last summer, and some consternation among his fanbase with a few worryingly downbeat Tweets when that same novel was rejected by his old publishers. So where's his head at now? We need answers, my dear Watson.

How did We Need Answers come about? Were you aiming to ape a particular style of show?

It began as a chance for me, Key and Horne to do a 'side project' in Edinburgh, as a bit of light relief from our regular shows. We did it as a midnight show with other comedians as the contestants. Key and I were routinely very drunk and we kept score on an old cricket scoreboard, and fairly often it descended into chaos or egg-throwing. There was foul language and uproar. We weren't trying to ape any other show, other than a vague, general homage to the complicated game-shows of the '80s that we grew up with.

We Need Answers has also spawned a spin-off game, No More Women. Will it eventually overshadow its parent, like The Simpsons emerging from Tracy Ullman?

We certainly see it as the natural successor to The Simpsons, and in time we hope to overtake more established names like chess and bridge to become the world's number one game. It's a big ambition, but you have to think big. Chess itself started out as a Twitter trend.

I remember you telling me a few years back that you hardly got a word in during your first Mock the Week appearance - is there an art to doing panel shows?

The art is probably being able to steel yourself for a battle; being prepared to treat it like a competitive sport. Which is not to say that you have to trample on everyone else, but you certainly have to lose any trace of self-effacement and go as high-status as you can. And you also have to be lightning-quick and pithy with your punchlines. All this suits some people better than others, it's fair to say. For someone who's been on a lot of panel shows, I'm not really cut out for them. But it's a useful discipline to develop.

You've got a big tour coming up later in the year - do you worry about ticket sales between now and then, or have years of Edinburgh shows inured you against it?

Yes, I commenced worrying about ticket sales in about October last year and I'm confident of sustaining the anxiety till the tour ends in early 2011. This is obviously a big commitment to fretting, but it's what I'm good at. I don't think you are ever inured to paranoia about sales figures, because it always seems so unlikely that anyone would pay to see you. Sometimes I look at punters filing in to a big theatre and think - in the nicest, most grateful way - "why have you come!?"

Are you fairly happy with your level of recognition right now? Or would a McIntyre-type show suit you? Michael, that is, not Donal.

I'd say I'm fairly happy with it, yes - although it would be disingenuous to deny that I'd like a bigger fan base, as pretty much any comic would. All in all I feel I've been fortunate to reach the level where I can tour and, for instance, release a DVD, when there are plenty of equally good or better comics who just aren't as widely known, because they've not been on the telly. I'm not sure how well I'd fare as a mainstream BBC1 star like Michael, though, or for that matter as a hard-hitting journalist like Donal. I think my current position somewhere just outside the mainstream is probably about right.

Your Tweets are more interesting and honest than most - is there anything you've regretted tweeting?

I've occasionally regretted being frank about my grim states of mind - Twitter makes it very easy to confide in 15,000 people instantly, and then repent at leisure. But on the whole I think if you're going to bother with sites like that, you might as well try to be either entertaining, or interesting, now and again rather than just using it as yet another sales opportunity. I know some people find Twitter a bit freaky because of the intimacy between famous people and fans, but I find that's what makes it fun. I might feel differently if I were actually famous.

There was a bit of hoo-ha over your cider ad last year. Would you do anything differently if another ad came along?

I think I'd still do the advert, but I'd be more prepared for the criticism that might come along. It didn't really occur to me that anyone would give a shit either way last time. I'd obviously research the company and make sure I knew what I was advertising, but then, I did that with Magners too. So I guess I'd act much the same, but be more steeled for some sort of backlash.

Along with the novel and tour, what else do you have planned for 2010 and beyond?

I'm just editing the novel now and it'll be out in autumn. So will a DVD, at last, and as you rightly say, a tour. The tour is enormous - it goes on until well into the second half of the century - so I'll be limiting the amount of live work I do until then. I'm going to become a dad in a few weeks and that's the main item on the agenda. We'll see how things look when, or rather if, I come out the other side.

Please go to www.markwatsonthecomedian.com for Mark's 2010 UK tour details.