Circuit Training 16: Rob Rouse

It's a good job Rob Rouse is one of the better-adjusted comics on the circuit, as he's endured enough career near-misses over the years to descend into full-on Brendan Burns-style nuttiness. A painful departure from The Friday Night Project would have scarred lesser characters, for example, but he stuck to the gigging and bounced back with a varied array of telly projects; some good, some less good, some involving a duck.

Rouse's affability is particularly relevant to yours truly as he was actually the first (vaguely) famous person I ever interviewed, way back in my student paper days, and had he been a miserable bastard I may well have given up the writing lark, concentrated on my degree, ended up with a proper job and be doing something useful for society now. But no, ten years on I've reached the heady heights of, er, interviewing Rob Rouse again...

You've thrown yourself back into live work over the last year or so - is it quite cathartic after years of telly?

Yeah, I'm doing a national tour which I'm really excited about. Everything you do comes from live stuff, and it's a very healthy way to work. I did feel frustrated when certain things stopped on the box because it wasn't my decision, someone else was in charge of my destiny.

How do you look at the way TV comedy's going now?

If you look at it objectively, it's a business in crisis. They don't really know what they want to do, they're terrified of the internet, the bosses are trying to work out how to control the internet and the fact is, they can't. They seem to be chasing this demographic of 18-whatever year-olds who are watching the internet, but the reality is that it's the bums on seats watching the telly, people of my age with kids tucked up in bed, who want to watch something decent.

You look at The Office, which was a work of remarkable craftsmanship, but that's 10 years ago at least. 10 years ago people weren't able to watch YouTube. The format of the industry has changed drastically since then.

You must have built a decent profile through TV though, if you're doing a headline tour?

It's different for the top flight of guys, touring massive venues. I don't know about anyone else's trajectories, but I've done lots of different things, and perhaps some TV people don't know where to put me. I had a script with the BBC recently which I think they really liked but they felt at this point in my career my profile isn't high enough to make it. I mean, you'd think if it's good then its good, but they get thousands of scripts every day. So it's very difficult.

Do people forget you were ever on The Friday Night Project?

It's fair enough if they do, because they've made another, what, seven or eight series of it?

I remember the first series being seen as quite a bold new idea. Were you guinea pigs, and was it hard to see a new cast take over for series two?

The honest answer would be yes. It was a strange thing to watch grow in your absence, having been switched or removed or however you choose to look at it. We were all told 'right we're gonna redo it' and, yeah, to watch something like that, you couldn't help but think 'that's a big boat sailing off over the horizon.' That would be me set for life, me doing thousand-seater venues. It's so easy to put bums on seats if you're on the telly regularly, because it's a small country we live in and a small industry.

Was it difficult, being recognised on the street for a show you weren't on anymore?

It was really quite bizarre, but once I'd worked out what was going on, the reality was that I filmed other stuff afterwards. And all the time I'd been doing gigs, which kind of preserved my professional sanity, because I knew what I was doing when I did stand-up.

You've done a fair bit of acting too - how did you find that transition?

When you're acting in something there's a shedload of waiting around, and when you first do it it's terrifying, because you're in a new environment and with all the waiting you burn up nervous energy. So when you do your one line you're totally exhausted.

You've done some high-profile stuff since then though - Spoons, Grownups. Anything else in the pipeline?

I wrote a character script for ITV2 last year which got really close, they were about to commission it, we did the pilot then the financial crash happened and they've not been able to make anything new since, but from that I've started doing some other character material. And I did a lot of stuff with [Steve Coogan's production company] Baby Cow, where I did ten movie trailers with the duck (Watch).

Speaking of which, you're probably the only comedian whose partner has been eaten by a fox. Did that - excuse the pun - get you down?

I was devastated at the time, without a doubt, I remember that night I was supposed to be doing a warm-up for 8 Out of 10 Cats, and I rang them and said 'this has just happened' and she said "shit, oh Rob, I totally understand, take the day off and we'll see you next week." And at the time I was working with Henry Normal, who I made the duck things with at Baby Cow, and when he found out he rang me and was devastated and went "listen, if it was anyone else, another animal, there would have been an element of glibness that would've been impossible to cover up. But I knew what that duck meant to you..."

The duck era over then, you've thrown yourself into the characters again...

Just before Christmas I started doing Sir Steven Redgrave. It's not really him. I came up with this idea about how much he's achieved and the sacrifices he's made to do it, gold medals in five consecutive Olympics, and he's such a dignified, respectable man, and I thought, if I'd have done that I'd be fucking insufferable. How would my ego cope with that level of achievement? So I came up with this character who's a bad part of me, and it's really fun, because onstage I'm very genial, but the character is just an unmitigated shitbag. He may well pop up in my Edinburgh show actually.

If Sir Steve doesn't sue you first...

Yeah, I'll try to keep him off the radar.

For details of Rob's tour, visit www.robrouse.com