Mark Smith - The most astonishing name in comedy interview

Mark Smith may not have the most memorable name for a stand-up comedian, but as we discover below it got him involved in an innovative advertising campaign. First though, we delve into how he started out in comedy...

Hi Mark. How did you discover stand-up was your thing?

So, I did a tour of universities... as in I went to uni, failed... went to another uni, failed... I kept doing this on repeat. My best mate Jonny went off to Cambridge and in the first week I went to visit him. He was writing comedy with Simon Bird and Joe Thomas who would go on to star in The Inbetweeners, and I was like 'what is this?'.

They asked 'do you want to write a sketch with us?'. So I wrote something, it was performed that night. I thought 'maybe I could try this myself one day'. It took a year to actually do it - I did my first gig at Leeds Uni and it went terribly.

Um, so why did you carry on after that?

It went badly, but it is rare you have someone who starts and is instantly brilliant. I thought 'I quite enjoyed that', I'll do it again. I should clarify, I enjoyed the process of it. It was a competition - that's a good way in I think, I still recommend that. The competition element makes it really scary, which is probably a good thing.

I thought 'I'll keep doing this now until I get found out'... and that's what I'm still doing! I'm still waiting for someone to say 'you must stop doing this, what makes you think you can do this?' But I think all comedians have that in the back of their head. That's what drives us on maybe. As soon as you lose that then you become Ricky Gervais or someone like that maybe, over-inflated.

When did you go full time?

When I could afford it, basically. I probably did stand-up for three years before being able to contemplate going full time, and then another year before actually doing it. So maybe it was three and a half or four years before I was financially able to stop working part time, full time, or anything.

Two months in my first six months of going full time, I had to borrow money for rent, that was enough to make me think 'I've done this too early', but then luckily I had a bit of a break so I could pay the rent... That's a really big deal, to be able to pay for life.

The first time I got paid for a gig, I think I got £20 - it was a Beverley gig up North - I was like 'wow!'... it didn't even pay for my travel home or anything, but I thought 'this is incredible'. So to be able to pay rent in London through comedy... I thought I'd never be able to do that when I started, but now I can do that, plus actually go out a pint every now and again.

Talking of London, there's been much discussion over the last year about the state of the circuit in the capital. Do you have a take on that?

If I had started down here I don't think I would have hacked it. I think the bottom line of it is that there's just too many bad nights.

There's loads of great open mic nights, but - just statistically speaking - that has meant there's lots of bad nights too... venues where there's no crowd, no PA systems or nobody running it properly.

I think that, as an audience member, you might go to one of those as the first ever live experience of comedy and go 'oh the acts weren't very good, the PA system didn't work, the drinks were too expensive, it was five quid to get in - I won't go to comedy again'. That has detrimental effects on the rest of the open mic community, where there's some really great stuff happening. But for everyone one really good night there's probably there that shouldn't be running.

I get why they happen, people want stage time... I did it myself, I put on my own night in Leeds just to get stage time and experience and things like that, but I booked a pro bill, which would be difficult in London. Why would you go see that gig when you can see John Bishop or Russell Howard around the corner?

London is great though. When you get to a certain point, you can gig as many nights as you want a week. I tend to do between 3 and 5 a week, but you could rock up to an open mic night and do 5 minutes of new material any time. I do that sometimes. I live in Camden and there's loads of stuff like that happening around me... so there is that. Up North you don't get that... in Leeds, maybe two a week?

It's not just stand-up you do. You're also in a double-act?

Yeah, Dregs is a double-act I do with another comic called Max Dickins. We used to do live shows, but now we generally just do a weekly podcast which you can find on iTunes, SoundCloud and all those kinds of modern places. It's a comedy podcast - I couldn't tell you what we talk about. Actually I could, but it wouldn't make much sense. Listen to it, it's funny.

We've done the double-act for about three years now, but it tends to be more podcast stuff now. We stopped performing live so we could focus on stand-up. The double-act was taking up a lot of time: we were spending a lot of days in the week writing together, and three nights a week gigging... leaving very little time to do stand-up.

I think it was helpful towards my stand-up, I think it made me a better stand-up but stand-up has gone well since stopping doing Dregs live. I don't know if it's a direct correlation or not, but I'm not going to stop now.

You're a performer, but your name... it's, er, not very memorable for a performer. Have you ever considered changing it?

At one point I had a different name. I started off as Mark Smith, but I changed it for about a year to Winston Smith. I thought I was being smart. In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four the protagonist is called Winston Smith - that's one of my favourite novels, plus it's the year of my birth, so I thought 'oh, I'm onto an absolute classic here' - ha ha - but it just didn't work. I'm not a Winston, I don't look like a Winston.

It was great to do though, because that was quite early on in my career... so any bad reviews I got, or any videos that went up, they're under Winston Smith so I don't have to worry about that. No one is searching for that name... although they will be now, oops.

So you're back to being called Mark Smith. Is it ever an issue?

I dunno, because you see people like Doctor Who actor Matt Smith - 'Matt Smith' is not a particularly interesting name is it? But it's not a problem for him.

I can see sometimes a flicker of the eyes when I say my name, someone thinking 'oh, you're doing the wrong job'... but, generally speaking, it's fine.

My Edinburgh show was called Mark Smith: The Most Astonishing Name in Comedy, and a large section of it was about my name and how I've learnt to live with it.

Your name did get you a gig working with the computer chip manufacturer Intel...

Yeah. I have been working with Intel on a campaign which focusses on the importance of what's inside that counts, which pairs up nicely with my name. It's just a name... it's what you're like that matters. What my comedy is like, that's what defines me. Once people see if you're a good comic or not, they don't really care what your name is... well, as long as it's not Fred West or something like that. Ha ha.

You were involved in a really fun marketing stunt with them, involving people with odd names (e.g. Hazel Nut). Could you tell us more about that?

We staged a couple of events in Leicester Square called The Intel Comedy Club. The audience would come along and sit in this room made to look like a proper comedy club - it was amazing - brick wall background, New York style, and it just looked great - it's just a white space normally!

The audience all sat down in cabaret style seating, and they each had a tablet to watch a slightly edited version of my Edinburgh show on. Why this was happening, unbeknown to them, I was in a back room with a mock up wall to look like my Edinburgh show. At some point during the show they switched from the pre-recorded Edinburgh show to a live stream from the backroom. I then picked out someone in the audience, and there was this big reveal.

What's weird was I was in the back room and could hear the audience laughing and I was thinking 'oh, I've got to follow that guy'... but it was me, I followed myself!

It was a different way of watching comedy. Stuff's so easy now, people can stream anything. You can watch comedy in so many different ways, but combining streaming with the live experience. It was a different and interesting way of doing it, and everyone that went to those live gigs will remember it for a long time.

Great stuff. What's next for you Mark?

I'm currently writing on a six part BBC Three show, plus another show, a pilot for Channel 4. Oh, plug gigging of course - keeping it going!

Visit the Intel Comedy website to see students sharing their funny name-related stories. Intel is currently running the 12 Days of Christmas where the student with the most views each day wins a prize, so do check out the website and help them win some tech prizes.