Dan Antopolski Interview

British Comedy Guide chats to stand-up comedian Dan Antopolski...

Hi Dan. Thanks for talking to us. You're currently touring the country with your latest show 'Turn Of The Century' - does the title have any particular significance?

No, it's a throwaway title. It's just one of those titles, like all my titles in recent years. I suppose if it has any sort of reference at all, it was to all the inordinate amount of fuss made about that stupid Hedgehog one-liner that won me that competition. So I thought if I overstate my status on the poster, it would somehow resonate with the overdose of attention that was paid to that joke. So, yeah, it's just a silly title.

As you mentioned in passing there, you won the Dave's 'Funniest Joke Of The Fringe' award in 2009 [for "Hedgehogs. Why can't they just share the hedge?"]. Has this had any noticeable impact on your audiences?

Well, I suppose so. Any bit of self-promotion or award is something that brings you to the attention of people who don't know you yet - it can't hurt. My audience numbers this summer were up on my previous show, so I suppose it must have had something to do with that.

You've been doing Edinburgh for a fair few years now. Do you find it gets easier each time?

It gets easier in some ways, yes. The emotional journey - getting a show together - used to exhaust me completely. It was so intense and I could not be sure I'd get together a decent hour - I burnt the midnight oil quite a lot. But now I have faith I'll be able to put a show together, so it's less stressful in that way.

But that was like my seventh solo Edinburgh show I think, and I've done a bunch of other group stuff as well... so, of course, with experience it gets easier each side of the festival. But it some ways, it doesn't get easier at all... you've still got to come up with an hour. When you're trying out new material to a middle-aged Tory audience in the Home Counties in July, with seven people in the room, it's still uphill.

When I start to create new stuff, I allow myself to become sort of disgusted by very old material. Some comedians do perfectly good material but they cart it around for 10 years - the nature of my material means I get bored of it, so I'm not so pre-occupied with the effect on the audience of firing mixed jokes and scoring direct hits like battle ships, I'm quite interested in the next thing - if I can create a new hour of stuff each year then I've got a relationship with my material where I like it and its still fresh, even to me.

As the years go on you get better at guessing what an audience is going to find funny, especially if you're doing something quite abstract like a poem or something. I used to get it wrong quite drastically, but over time you become aware much quicker if something has got legs or if you need to move on from it.

You mention some people keep the same material for many years. We guess the reason some comics don't produce an hour every year is it is a lot of work to come up with an hour, particularly when a show features one-liners...

I don't do completely one-liners. That would be impossible to do a show that long. I mean, I know Tim Vine can do it, and Jimmy Carr does a show every year too. That's the funny thing about the hedgehog joke, it makes people think that I'm a one-liner comic, which I'm not really. I chuck routines in there too.

But, certainly coming up with new material is hard. It's supposed to be hard, isn't it, otherwise what are we doing, you know? When I was a new comedian the environment of open spots was for nutters certainly, but also there was a lot of risk taking because there was nothing to lose. But as people move from open spots to become professional I think a lot of them become risk-averse and, I don't know, I think if you're going to be risk-averse, why don't you just do something else because there's a lot of jobs where you're not sitting at 3am in a service station on the M6, and jobs where you can make money that doesn't involve creative risk.

Well said. Talking about service stations at 3am, you're now a few dates into your tour. How's it going?

It's going fine so far, yes, thanks. It's been good. This is the other side of the coin: where you get to perform a show in its honed state. Every show has a life-cycle... in the preview stage you're not really sure, it's kind of like a young gazelle getting up on its feet, and then in Edinburgh you do twenty seven dates in a row and by the end of that you know where all the rhythms are. It can go really differently on different nights - on some nights a certain line might get a big laugh but on another nights, with a different crowd, different lines. It's then a pleasure to take it out in the autumn and show it to people, yes... and then it's time to put it to bed and start again!

You've got a young family. How are you finding going away for periods of time?

It was impossible for a short time. I had three years off Edinburgh when my children were tiny, but now they're aged six and nearly four so, yes, its ok. It's not ideal to be away but this is just part of the job. It's just come to be expected that I'm going to be in a hotel sometimes.

You tell some jokes about your kids... are they too young to be aware of them?

They're not really aware, no. I've got DVDs of my shows so they will probably see them in later life. But at the moment it's defintiely not a show for kids to hear. There's adult themes and I think an adult mindset is needed too - sometimes I'll say things which are ostensibly dodgy in the expectation that the audience will know that I'm kidding.

I do student gigs every once in a while and it's a bit of a problem now because I'm now so much older than them and can't assume I know what their own values are. So if I say something plainly evil, they maybe sitting there thinking "oh, maybe he's really evil."

Your YouTube video of the sandwich rap was obviously a bit hit online. Have you got any plans to do more online videos of that ilk?

Yes, yes. I've been talking to people about producing a couple of new ones. If I can't get any videos together in an organised way, I'll do something myself.

I started developing that sandwich rap with a production company but then they had their budgets cut, so I just went and did it myself, and I'm really glad I did it because it was lots of fun. It's a nice thing to show people too, because everyone's online now.

So, yeah, I probably will do some more. I love the fact that you don't need a major distributor to make a little thing that's full of fun. When I was organising the sandwich thing I set up a Facebook group and to my amazement loads of people wanted to be there, so we had tens of people who wanted to - just for fun - be in the video. So I discovered you can actually do things that, in terms of the people involved, are quite big scale. So I'd definitely like to make some more stuff in that kind of homemade way.

You've also done TV, radio, and have even been Jesus on the big screen [in The Da Vinci Code]. Is there any medium you prefer? If you had to choose a medium, would you stick with stand-up?

I don't think I should have to choose. When I do this tour I'm kind of aware that, like in Edinburgh, I'm on tour because I'm not on telly in a sustained way. I just sort of pop up here and there. My profile is decidedly minimal, whereas if you're on Mock the Week, then suddenly you sell out huge venues and so on. It helps for the stand-up, if you've got a profile that's raised by radio and telly... but in terms of my involvement with things, I've been in stand-up now for 12 years - that's ages - so that's definitely the thing I've put the most effort into developing a skill set in. I can do a bit of acting, but I don't consider myself an actor. So really I'm a stand-up I think - that's my job - so it would be crazy not to make that the main thing.

Great. Well, there's lots of great chances for people to see you on tour doing what you do best. Cheers Dan.

Dan Antopolski is currently on tour with his brand new show Turn Of The Century, which ends in April 2011. For more info see: www.danantopolski.com