Circuit Training 33: Paraffin, Puffins and Paul Foot

You don't see much of Paul Foot on the telly, which is (a) a terrible shame and (b) kind of understandable, if you've ever experienced one of his more wilfully obtuse live shows.

The devilishly-mulletted but marvellously dandyish comic - who I once described as the mutant offspring of Dudley Moore and Roxy Music-era Brian Eno (and by jingo I stand by it) - pays no heed to hackneyed old stand-up tricks like set-ups, punchlines or taking some vague note of how the audience are responding. If he wants to spend half his set working out the probability of seeing a van that day, to the bewilderment of several hundred punters, he will.

Hence Foot is much marvelled at by fellow comics - he was a big influence on Russell Brand, early on - and by a dedicated army of followers called the Paul Foot Guild of Connoisseurs, who fill up his Edinburgh shows every year. He was also, slightly oddly, chosen as one of '12 Funniest Comedy Acts in the World' by a big American reality show, Last Comic Standing, a few years back. So let's ask him about all that, but let's not expect any serious answers...

You studied maths at Oxford: do you actively try to work stats into your live shows?

Mathematics is still a recurring theme in my comedy, albeit quite passive. 'The Price of a Chinese Takeaway', 'Sudoku Puzzles' and 'Men Don't Like Beer' are all parts of my life's work that touch upon maths. Also, I have an equation to determine my Twitter followers in relation to those of my comedy wife Fearne Cotton, it goes @paulfoot³² + 2(500x8000) = @fearnecotton - 1,820,000.

Can you give us a taster of this year's Edinburgh show, Still Life? Any dramatic new directions?

The show took a dramatic new direction whilst writing it. It started off all happy, and about the timelessness of art and pleasure, but has ended up being about the painstakingly arduous continuity of life. Somebody will probably expire each night, from their own arousal.

Edinburgh can drive lesser comics mad - do you get up to much debauchery when not performing?

During the week I'll behave myself, do jigsaw puzzles, listen to classical music and cook for friends in my stolen apartment, that sort of thing. But over the weekends I become ravenous for watermelons. Live by the slots, die by the slots - that's my motto.

Last year's show was directed by Noel Fielding. What did he bring to the party - literally and metaphorically?

You mean that man I met in a Moroccan brothel? He says he directed it, I just thought we were meeting for lunch a few times. He brought home the ashes, usually in an Ottoman pot but occasionally just in a Tupperware box, and we'd sit on the balcony discussing mutual friends who are now dead mostly. Sometimes he'd bring a recorder to play futuristic hymns on, and I would clap and weep in time to the music.

Does one need to meet stringent criteria before being accepted as a connoisseur?

To become a connoisseur of The Guild of Paul Foot Connoisseurs you just have to copy and paste your email address into a box on my website. But the true connoisseurs know who they are. Oh yes. They'll never forget.

What do you think were the particular qualities that made Last Comic Standing select you as one of the '12 Funniest Comedy Acts in the World'?

It's very dangerous to start analysing what Americans find funny. The unlucky 13th was a roboticised waxwork of Angela Lansbury. Her teary-eyed manager is still waiting by the luggage carousel to this day.

How did that show pan out for you?

It was a riot. It was basically fifty comedians on a plane. I met my comedy wife Fearne Cotton through doing that show too [she co-hosted it]. The first time I saw her she radiated such exponential levels of beauty that for a split second I thought I might turn heterosexual. Then I remembered.

You don't pop up on UK TV too often. Do you spend much time pitching, attending high-powered meetings, and the like?

I've never pitched anything to anyone. People know when a show needs me and the phone will ring. Quite often I'm in the bath though, or smashing specially-purchased greenhouses with a golf club in the garden. The most high-powered meeting I ever attended was powered by paraffin wax. Considerable progress actually, as when I started in this industry they used to be powered by puffins.

What would be the perfect Paul Foot TV vehicle?

I'd like to do a show in which I enter an unsuspecting family's house at dinner time, violently upturn tables, hurl all of the crockery and food at the walls and scream "OH HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED!", and then leave without explanation. Oh, also, I'd like to do a show in which I retrace the life of Ella Fitzgerald, on foot.

Are there any other entertainment avenues you'd like to try out? Acting? Singing? Erotic filmmaking?

I'd like to run my own hawk sanctuary extravaganza in which everything is ever so slightly disappointing, from the broken turnstiles to the dog-eared information brochures.

[i]Visit www.paulfoot.tv to find out more about Paul.