Rufus Hound - One Man, Two Guvnors interview

Rufus Hound has the shock factor. He has been a panellist on controversial panel show Celebrity Juice, toured a stand-up show that was appropriately titled Being Rude, and has a mouth dirtier than a sailor on leave. The most shocking thing he has done so far though has been to shave off his trademark handlebar moustache and take to the stage as the lead role in One Man, Two Guvnors.

Hound is one of the most interesting people I have ever interviewed. Not just for his assorted CV or sharp anecdotes, but because he has an opinion on everything - and a firm one at that. It was a novelty to not have to edit out hundreds of 'errs' and 'ahs' when typing up this interview, but to instead spend an inordinate amount of time inserting stars between the letters 'f' and 'k'.

It seems strange that someone with such a large persona should leave stand-up and take to the stage, but it turns out that he has just enough character to fill a theatre hall. Is this a one-off project or can we say goodbye to the 'tache forever?

Enter stage right... Rufus Hound.

What made you audition for this role in the first place?

I had seen the play when James Corden was in it and thought it was fantastic and thought that, if they ever did it again, they should get a comedian playing Francis Henshall. There's a lot of talking to the audience and there was so much stuff there that fitted into a comedian's wheelhouse.

I never presumed that it should be me but then my agent phoned me one day and said the National Theatre would like you to audition for Francis Henshall - so it wasn't something I had to think long and hard about.

Honestly, if they'd asked me to do it straight after James though I would have said "Not in a million years!" There's not enough money in the world that would have made me take it on after Corden.

Why was it more appealing to take over from Owain Arthur?

Owain proved that the show could still be successful and creative without it having to be 'The James Corden Show'. That's not to say there's anything wrong with that, but I think everyone felt that was what the show was... and when you haven't got James Corden in 'The James Corden Show' you haven't got much, have you?

But the reviews came in for Owain and people were still enjoying it. It just made me feel that it was viable, that somebody else could do this without needing to be James Corden.

It's a testament to how good the show is that it has been able to carry on and on.

The fact that One Man has been going for 2 and a half years and people are still excited about going to see it is great. And it is that good. When people come and see it they leave and want to tell 10 of their friends to go and see it.

My mum's husband has never been to the theatre in his life - he's a concrete engineer from Halifax. He's not into the theatre because he thinks it's 'namby pamby' and would rather go to the pub! My mum press-ganged him into coming to see the show (because she's the proudest woman in the world) and he came up to me afterwards - with tears in his eyes - and said it was one of the best nights out he'd ever had in his life.

Do you find it difficult to stay motivated for eight shows a week?

I remember one night on tour, I was on stage and I had just got the impression that the audience wasn't really coming with us. I turned to one of my cast mates and said: "You know something? F**k 'em! We're really trying our hardest here and they're not coming with us, so f**k 'em!"

And he said: "You're absolutely right, f**k all of them... however, there is a 16 year old boy in the upper circle who has never been to the theatre before and he's a huge fan of yours and he's never seen this show before. Don't get me wrong - f**k 'em - but it's only for him, ey?"

I thought 'you prick, you're right!'. You can't pick and choose; you have to give it 100% all of the time.

Have you experienced that cliché actor moment where you think, "F**k! I'm the lead actor in a West End play!"

Yes! On the opening two nights I had that realisation that I was on the stage at the Haymarket Theatre, where Lauren Bacall, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have all performed. You're treading the same boards!

The only trick I've got - which is something I feel I can never offer as a life philosophy and yet I find myself increasingly having to live by - is that I have to think less about everything. I can analyse anything to the point of nihilism and it basically becomes utterly retarding, in that you feel you can never put yourself out there to do anything at all.

Have you found a difference between a theatre and stand-up audience?

They're sensitivities are definitely greater. I'm used to being in a room full of people whose feelings and thoughts about the world are fairly robust. Sometimes I've made jokes on stage as Francis and you can actually sense a lot of people in the audience recoiling. It would have been a fairly mild joke at the Comedy Café on a Wednesday night! Here that's viewed as being racy material, however.

You had to shave off your famous moustache for this role. Are you surprised at the notoriety your facial hair had gained?

Ha! It was never a conscious decision. I had the moustache a long time before I was on the telly but people come to know you as that. If you're 'that bloke with the moustache' and you don't have The Moustache... then who are you?

If you've done the Cheryl Cole dance in a full on Hulk Hogan 'tache then that is pretty much burned into the imaginings of people. If you weren't prepared to shave it off to be Cheryl Cole, but you are prepared to shave it off for this, then people think: "F**k, this guy must be really serious about this!"

Do you have plans to go back onto panel shows?

I don't have any plans to do any of those things because I'm signed up to do this show until September - by which point, I would imagine, they will have to scrape me off the floor with the thing they use to scrape chewing off the tiles in McDonalds and put me back into some kind of human form at a clinic somewhere in Switzerland.

So, you have no plans to return to Celebrity Juice (pictured)?

It's not that I feel I'm above shows like this, I just felt like I'd reached the end of the road with Celebrity Juice and - to an extent - anything I was going to do with that show, I had already done. When I spoke to the people making it, it just felt to me like nothing involving me was really going to change.

Can we expect any more stand-up from you? Is there a 'Being Ruder' DVD planned for the future?

Ha! I write a column now for Shortlist magazine and that's become a place I can pour out a lot of the things that would have probably ended up being routines. I feel like the muscle, even though it's not being fully exercised, has not totally seized up. There's still a time every week for me to sit down and churn out something that is relatively entertaining.

So the mic has - metaphorically - been put back on the stand for your comedy work?

For my last gig at the Comedy Store I was compering and when I went on to introduce the second act I knew it was the end because - as a compere - that's really the last great bit you have to do. When I got to the end of my bit, I walked off stage and as I put the mic in the stand there was a real sense of internal monologue where I was thinking: 'That's me and stand-up done. Well goodbye old chum, you've been very good to me!'

I walked into the dressing room and in the time I'd been on stage, Eddie Izzard had walked in. He was just hanging out backstage and we got talking and I told him how it was funny that he was one of the people for me that, as a kid, really inspired me.

I told him that to have him there in the room on the last night that I was doing stand-up was really powerful. To which he said to me, "Oh, you can't quit. You don't quit. I've spoken with Phil Jupitus, Paul Merton, Alan Davies... all people who have had time away and they have all said that once you're a stand-up there isn't anything you can do where you don't feel like you should be back on stage. By all means, go off and do other things but never think that you're not a stand-up. That's who you are - you're just a stand-up who is doing other things."

So I had literally about 6 minutes in my life where I was allowed to think that I was done with stand-up before one of my comedy heroes tells me not to be so f**king stupid!

You can see Rufus Hound in 'One Man, Two Guvnors' at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London. For more information and tickets visit www.onemantwoguvnors.com