Greg Davies (I)

Interview: Mike Wozniak

Mike Wozniak is currently touring the UK with his 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated show, Take The Hit. Radio Teesdale's Peter Dixon caught up with our favourite stache-modeller to talk about the show, character comedy, the demise of BBC Three, working with Greg Davies on C4 sitcom Man Down and more.

Greg Davies: How to deal with heightism

We turn to the towering talent of Greg Davies who gives his thoughts on what not to say to the more "vertically gifted".

This Is Jinsy is one of those weird British comedies, like The League of Gentleman and The Mighty Boosh, whereupon a first viewing, it seems inaccessibly strange but, given time, you come to embrace its eccentricities.

It's a learning experience. Here, Stephen Fry joined the cast as a coiffured professor obsessed with fine hair, whose arrival bagan a string of events that culminate in an ancient wig coming to life and terrorising the residents. Of course.

There's a lot to be said for unadulterated, often creepy silliness. Jinsy's best moments are its tiny asides: someone holding a newspaper with the headline "COW DIES"; a TV show (hosted by Greg Davies in drag) called Punishment Roundup; something named The Singing Obituaries. It's very silly, but very worth it.

Featuring a talent competition judged by a dog, a truly hair-raising chase sequence and guest turns from Stephen Fry as a luxuriantly locked hair doctor and Ben Miller as a busty accountant's daughter (and her dad), life in Jinsy is as wonderfully bizarre as it was first time around. So it's a warm welcome back for Justin Chubb and Chris Bran's inspired mix of crackers characters, singing obituaries and catchy tunes. Top of the Jinsy Hit Parade in this opening double bill are the skiffle-tastic Was It You? and torch song Vegetable Tricks - and you also get to see what Greg Davies looks like in a skirt, in case you'd been wondering.

Another debut sitcom that was awarded a Christmas Special is Channel 4's Man Down. Having not been a fan of the series I approached Man Down with trepidation and mainly watched it as I couldn't find the remote control after Alan Carr had finished.

Man Down can best be described as a surreal sitcom which gets laughs from the absurd situations its characters find themselves in. Greg Davies is perfectly cast as the hapless hero while Rik Mayall provides incredibly absurd support as he revels in dressing up in a number of costumes to surprise his son. Best of all though is Mike Wozniak as Dan's only sensible friend Brian and gets to deliver a brilliant speech about this year's must-have toys for kids.

I have to say Man Down was the biggest surprise of the Christmas season as I was expecting not to laugh at all while watching. It may well have been I'd had too much to eat and drink at this point, but I still found Man Down to be a comically surreal slice of festive fun.

The more it went on, the more we came to love Greg Davies's beautifully tasteless sitcom. His character Dan may be a towering oaf of a teacher who swears at pupils, insults his own parents and exploits his friends, but we still want things to go right for him. And as it's a sitcom, they never do. Tonight, Dan tries to impress head teacher Amy by putting on a Christmas play. But his practical joker of a dad (Rik Mayall) has inaugurated the "12 Scares of Christmas", one of which is properly nasty: Hitchcock would be proud.

A certain Christmas spirit was in abundance on Man Down here thanks to Rik Mayall's demented turn as a father whose festive regimen focused solely on terrorising his son, including shoving Greg Davies's Dan headfirst into a Christmas tree and rigging his car with a rowdy seagull. That's my kind of Christmas spirit, right there. And any show which can come up with a kids' school nativity called Scrooge 3000 (sample lyric: "Look at the tasty futuristic geese/ you can't afford a goose to eat") is all right in my book.

Channel 4's sitcom Man Down has settled into a pleasingly puerile groove, and joined BBC One's hit Mrs Brown's Boys in representing slapstick comedy. Here, teacher Greg Davies gave the nativity play a contemporary twist with the nightmare robotic future of Scrooge 3,000, but it was Rik Mayall as his dad, working his way through the increasingly unpleasant "12 scares of Christmas", who stole the show - and, potentially, planted ideas for potentially fatal practical jokes in the minds of cooped-up families everywhere.

Radio Times review

At first, Greg Davies' debut sitcom, about a teacher called Dan who is much less mature than any of his pupils, seemed like it would merely be very funny: Davies the disgusting, massively overgrown clown, larking about amid a cast of oddballs including Rik Mayall as Dan's bonkers dad. As the series went on, though, we began to see that the storylines, characters and relationships had been carefully constructed, so that at the point where most sitcoms start flagging, Man Down just got funnier and funnier. Davies says it took him six months' full-time work to write series one - the hard work paid off.

Greg Davies: I stil feel a ludicrously tall, fat man

Man Down star Greg Davies talks self-humiliation, telling people off and delivers a message for Michael Gove.