Richard Gadd interview

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Wednesday 4th January 2017
Updated: Tuesday 21st March 2017

It was a week or two into the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe that Richard Gadd suddenly became the name on everyone's lips. The talk of that festival was his show Waiting for Gaddot, a high-concept affair in which the Scottish comic only appeared for the last few minutes - and that was the point. Impressively bold, it paid off handsomely, with sell-out shows and several award nods.

But what do you do for the follow up? Well, you win the Edinburgh Comedy Award, with a staggeringly candid hour that gradually unravels dark secrets while Gadd pounds away on a treadmill in preparation for the mythical Man's Man competition. Again: bold and brilliant.

I saw a preview of Monkey See Monkey Do at the Latitude Festival last July, a performance that Gadd found pretty excruciating, according to the interview below. He's exaggerating about the audience - a lot of us loved it.

The subsequent Edinburgh Fringe went well though, to say the least, as did his recent run at the Soho Theatre. He won a Chortle award this week, and has just added an extra date in Bristol, on Wednesday night, to accompany the one on Thursday. The tour then finishes in Reading, before he heads off to perform it in Melbourne for a month, then he's planning to retire it back at the Edinburgh Fringe. Given the dark subject matter, it's perhaps unlikely that he'll ever stage it again, after that, so it's worth catching this current run. And 'run' is the word.

Were you a comedy fan as a kid? Stand-ups or sitcoms?

I was never really influenced by stand-ups. The form never appealed to me. Sitcoms very much so. The Office is an obvious one - I think that is pretty much perfect as far as writing and character goes. Others were Black Books, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers, Alan Partridge, Laurel & Hardy, the list is endless. I was really obsessed with sitcom when I was younger.

What sort of material were you doing when you started, and how did those first shows go?

The early gigs were hit and miss. For my first gig I did a bit of stand-up at my Student Union and packed my mates in so it couldn't have possibly gone badly. The next few gigs when I was out there on my own were when I really started to struggle.

I think I did about five gigs - just me standing on stage with a microphone in hand, talking about break-ups and STI's and all that ground that has been trodden a thousand times over - [before] I started to change things up.

It wasn't until I got drunk and went on stage and read off some 'work-in-progress jokes' in the style of a desperate, nervous comedian that I started to realise that I found a certain delight in going against the grain of what people expect comedy to be.

How would you describe the stuff you now do on stage, if you were talking to, say, an elderly relative?

If I was talking to an elderly relative I would tell them "my comedy is the sort of comedy you probably wouldn't enjoy." I don't think I have ever managed to make an elderly person laugh. If I was to boil it down I would describe it as experimental comedy; and still then I am not sure. I quite like the fact it escapes definition. Oh wait, no it doesn't. "Pretentious shit" - that should just about do it...

A lot of people became aware of you with Waiting for Gaddot - how did that idea come about, and how difficult was it to stage?

The name came first with Waiting for Gaddot. I just liked the pun and thought it would be funny to stage a show where I don't turn up until the last five minutes. I initially thought it would be impossible to pull off but the more I thought about it, the more I became enamoured with the idea, and the more I realised that it might just about be doable. I decided to roll the dice and give it a shot. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I saw Monkey See Monkey Do at Latitude - did you have any reservations about performing this type of show at a summer festival?

Yes, I just about survived it, but it was a nightmare. What a terrible idea to present a work-in-progress show as personal as this in the middle of a field on a hot summer's afternoon at a music festival.

I just about got through it due to the fact a lot of comedian mates came down to see me. If it wasn't for them I would have been performing to a passed out 60 year-old man and a drunk woman dressed as an Avatar.

The treadmill is a unique angle - at what point did that become part of the show?

Virtually from the top. My brain is pretty relentless and I knew I needed to do something physically relentless to get the point across to the audience. The running angle came from the very real running I used to do to deal with depression and anxiety. I was quite obsessed and I would run up to ten miles a night, just to ensure I could sleep. I flicked between treadmill, cross-trainer, and rowing machine during the development process. But the treadmill eventually won.

Masculinity is a major theme, which seems particularly relevant in the Trump aftermath - are we all in one big Man's Man competition now? Has he legitimised being an arrogant misogynist?

The Trump stuff is mind-boggling and certainly doesn't bode well for this new wave in understanding and redefining masculinity. It is just shocking some of the stuff he has come out with but he doesn't speak for everyone and it would be simplistic to say that just because he is misogynist then the world will follow suit. He has enough detractors and even some of his own party think he is ridiculous. So no, I wouldn't say the world is a Man's Man competition now because of Trump. But his presence certainly doesn't help.

Could you give us a hint about what you'll do next - how do you possibly follow these two shows?

That would be telling...

For Richard Gadd's tour dates see showandtelluk.com