Dru Cripps talks about winning Dabbers Bingo Comedy Caller Contest

Clowning comic Dru Cripps recently won the Dabbers Bingo Comedy Caller Contest. We caught up with him to find out more about his backstory.

Hi Dru. How did you get started in comedy?

I was thrown out of secondary school for two weeks, on a final warning for 'disruptive behaviour' (being a bit of a d*ckhead). Whilst the school considered whether I should be allowed back or not, my dad (against all expectations and much to the dismay of the school and my mother) signed us both up for a two-week subsidised masterclass in improv theatre.

We had just discovered improv the year before in Edinburgh whilst attending the fringe as breakdancing street performers, living in a van on the coast and watching shows in the evening.

We wanted to give improv a go as we had fallen out of love with the stand-up comedy. I was disappointed to find out stand-ups weren't just 'making it up as they went along'; this revelation came about from seeing the same comic twice in one night deliver his comedy with the same jaunty cadence that had fooled me into thinking it was off the cuff. It was like finding out Santa wasn't real. This heartbreak at the start of my journey as a comic is why I've spent a lot of my career making sure that I'm never that revelation for any audiences that see me. If they see me twice, they know it's totally live - even at the risk of inconsistent quality.

Whilst at that two-week workshop, the teacher, Remy Bertrand, said "you two are clowns" due to our love for getting each other in trouble in our scenes and for our physicality. It was the first, but not the last time, a French man encouraged me to be a clown. The rest is history.

So what was it like performing with your dad? It's not a common double-act arrangement!

I love my dad. I owe a lot to him, he is a natural performer. He too was thrown out of school and shunned from London as a child. He went from b-boying in the city to learning how to make cups of tea in the Shropshire countryside. Here he met my mum and they had me.

My mum always said: "your dad never had any friends, so he made you" and we've been best mates and creative partners ever since.

Performing with my dad has meant that I have a massive backlog of experience (or 'traumas') as a young performer.

We were regularly breaking into quite sizable opportunities around Wales and the West Midlands that we really didn't have the credentials or know how to be deserving of being there. But my dad didn't have many opportunities growing up, he was just a plucky cockney having a go, but now he was dragging his son along with him. That attitude has rubbed off on me - I'm still just saying yes to everything and doing things with total disregard to how ready I am 'career/experience wise'.

I can't perform much with my dad anymore, due to distance. My dream is to make it to "the big time", so I can put on an awful show with him that audiences will just show up to. A show that he doesn't have to rehearse or think about... just show up and be his natural entertaining self.

He's doing alright on his own though - a video of us together on his TikTok account amassed a couple million views and I think he's up to 100k followers... Mostly American women watching him "shake his pum-pum" as he would say. (My dad was raised by a Jamaican man and still speaks in Jamaican patwas because of this.)

You mentioned earlier being encouraged into clowning by Frenchmen. The other was renown tutor Philippe Gaulier? We've heard mad stories of his classes. What was your experience in the school like?

Don't believe the hype! Gaulier is a lovely old man. I attended his school when I was 19 years-old and the breakthroughs I made (after lots of failures) were imperative to my life as a clown.

I've only just wrapped up on my West End debut as a clown, for Sophie's Surprise 29th at Underbelly Boulevard. His teachings like: "Save the show!" and "You have to find the pleasure" would sometimes come to me before I leapt out from behind the curtain and onto the stage. Like that scene from Star Wars, when Obi-wan visited Luke Skywalker as a ghost.

I believe that school gave me the unspoken permission to attempt to orchestrate a game of bingo with no plan or prior knowledge.

It's wonderful, I think. If you can scrape the cash together to go, then go.

So what made you decide to enter the Dabbers competition?

Sound technician and all-round gentleman of the clown/alternative comedy community: Dave Nattriss. Dave told me I should do it, and I trust Dave with my life.

I was offered the bingo stage time in the lead up to my scary West End clown debut, which was great! It meant I could use this opportunity presented by Dabbers to work out this new character idea of a 90s raver (the West End circus show was a 90s themed surprised birthday party).

I didn't, and still don't know, the first thing about bingo but the premise of entering a bingo caller competition whilst not understanding a thing about bingo really made me giggle on the inside and I think that's important.

How did you find that first heat? You ended up being knocked out.

First heat was chaos! I failed to prepare anything more than a few ideas due to the approaching West End show stressing my melon. What small preparation I did make (bringing my loop station) also failed, when it died unexpectedly on stage.

I think I remember riffing about the ball numbers, being satisfied with what few laughs I could get and then promptly leaving.

The judges feedback was really lovely though and I enjoyed being encouraged to stay in touch with them regarding their own opportunities for me to perform. They mentioned wanting to wildcard me then, but I just assumed they were all being polite after the tech-disaster I had 'handled really well'.

The wildcard offer came true, as finalist Lil Wenker couldn't make the show due to a medical issue. How did you get the final invite?

I found out the early hours of that same day that I was going to be performing. I got a panicked phone call and email about the wildcard situation and knew I had to jump in to try and help.

The people at Dabbers were very welcoming and I was excited to see my friends do their thing in the final, so I thought nothing more of it than a nice afternoon helping out the good folk that had helped me to prepare for my West End debut.

How did your performance in the final differ compared to the heat?

I wasn't even thinking about the competition, my focus was just on making sure that the event could go ahead and that the audience had a good time.

I didn't prepare anything again (how could I) but I did make sure that my loop station was charged this time...

I wonder if liberating myself from even considering that I could win was perhaps why I won? Life's funny like that sometimes.

How did it feel to be crowned the winner?

It kind of happened a bit fast, so there was a mix of emotions: I was super tired on the day due to waking up earlier-than-usual for a 24 year-old comic who's just received a West End pay check and didn't know what to do with it.

I'd been going to bed super late and just spending my days doing proper-bugger-all; walking around the house in my underpants, eating bowls of cereal, playing my Xbox, that sort of thing.

I remember feeling a sense of amusement that I won, but this feeling was quickly followed by guilt. Just showing up and winning made me feel a bit like I had stolen something. The other acts had put in a great deal of hard work and consideration to all of their great bits. I was fully entertained all afternoon by their clever sound queues, games, pre-recorded material and songs... and, as a thank you for a lovely afternoon, I walked away with the prize money.

Offering some of the money to the other acts I hope will elevate me of some of this guilt.

Nice. Aside from more Dabbers shows, what's next for you?

A handful of some of my favourite gigs in and around London, which I'll post about on @Dru_Cripps, then I'm off to the Edinburgh Fringe with my new show Druniversal Credit: 2nd - 12th, 7:55pm, Hootenannies Wee Yurt, Potters Row Underpass.

I'm also at the Salisbury Playhouse working on new piece of theatre this week that will be touring the end of this year.