Tim Vine interview
Tim Vine has had a wide and varied comedy career, from record-breaking gag merchant, to TV quiz show host, to sitcom star. His latest move is into slightly more straight comic acting, appearing as Beach the Butler in the new series of Blandings (pictured). In this exclusive interview, we talk to him about this move, his career ambitions, and more...
Can we start off by saying how much we enjoyed your Bumper Book Of Silliness? We're still stuck on the 'Where's Wallaby' feature though!
Thank you, glad you like it. I said to the publishers to just source a load of pictures of kangaroos [the joke being it's impossible to spot the wallaby picture], but they said to me afterwards "One of them is a wallaby actually". I don't know which one it is though! How do you tell them apart?
Although you say your publishers sourced those pictures, the charm of the book is you've clearly taken a lot of the photos yourself... one of the 'silly places to play chess' pictures was taken in the middle of a roundabout.
Yeah, it was great fun to do. A lot of afternoons in the summer, just kind of going out and having pictures taken and being silly.
The roundabout was fun. That was in Tring. We had glued the chess pieces to the board and we had to kind of run onto the mini roundabout, plonk the table down and run back off again.
You wear all sorts of costumes, and your stand-up sets are obviously full of props too... is your house full of, er, junk?
There is a place near me that hires panto costumes out at very reasonable prices. It's very good. So I go there and I choose a few things and then end up pointing at things, 'Oh let me have that hat there, and I'll have that there...'
But, yes, my house is a bit like an explosion in a charity shop - it's terrible! It's an absolute mess! The trouble is I buy things before I have got a joke for them actually... I see something and I think 'Oh, I like that' so I will buy it and I will put it in my front room and it's just there, you know. That's my life - terrible business!
So onto the main reason for this interview. You're now Beach the Butler in Blandings. Are we right in saying this is your first acting role where you're not called Tim?
That's interesting. Um... well, not entirely, because in The Sketch Show [ITV, 2001 - 2004] I wasn't always called 'Tim'. There are a couple of short films in which I wasn't called Tim either... but, in terms of television, aside from The Sketch Show, I think you may be right.
What I always found quite handy when playing a character called Tim is that when I'd get the script, it was very easy to find where my lines are. For this [Blandings] I had to do a little equation: Tim = Beach, thus 'Beach' is now what I'm looking for. It was always two steps away from my name...
Does this new role indicate a desire to do more acting, i.e. not appearing as yourself?
I'm not planning on stopping playing chess on a mini roundabout but, yeah, I'd like to do more stuff. Part of the reason I wanted to do Blandings was because of the period costume theme of it. I always wanted to do something where you wear costumes from some bygone era and look into the middle distance and say something very serious.
So maybe a part in Downton Abbey?
Well, I did a spoof of Downton Abbey for Comic Relief with Jennifer Saunders so we did film in the place, but I don't think they are going to be on the phone any time soon!
That was great - that spoof thing that we did - because I remember when we arrived, there was me and Victoria Wood in this little rickety car coming up that drive and I thought "Good grief what am I doing here?", which is a thought I often have actually.
Mark Williams played Beach in Series 1 of Blandings. Was it difficult coming in when he'd already set up the character?
Well, do you know what, I never even thought about it - maybe I should have! To me, it was my first series - I didn't think about Mark's thing to be honest. In fact, I only watched one episode from the previous series - I think I watched that after the read through actually - so maybe that helped, because I wasn't thinking to myself "Now this is how he did it, and how can I do it". I didn't think that at all... perhaps because I am not really an actor I did that - the wrong approach?!
I think, just because of the PG Wodehouse element and 'butler', maybe I immediately thought of Jeeves & Wooster and that sort of atmosphere. I thought I was doing a bad impression of Roger Moore most of the time!
How did you find filming up in Northern Ireland?
Well, it should have been quite cold in the months we filmed it - it was the last week of October and whole of November - but actually we were very lucky with the weather. It was great!
They said 'this place it rains always, so when you come be prepared for rain 24/7' - there were some lovely sunny days - it was never hot because it was November but equally it was beautiful; it's such a lovely part of the world. Everyone kept saying how lucky we were with the weather.
We were in a place called Crom Castle which was kind of a country estate... country manor, or however you would you describe it. What is the definition of a castle by the way? What are the rules? I made up a joke yesterday about a castle: "Do you know that it is possible for a building to get ill. For example I know a castle that has got Tourettes...", and then I look at the audience and go "Oh turrets, oh right". I've now forgotten the question!
Ha ha. What was it like working with the other members of the cast?
Ah, it was exasperating! No, no it was great - everyone was very nice to me. I certainly felt like I was a new boy when I came on set. But I suppose, because it was a second series as opposed to Series 8, they were all reasonably new to the process as well, they had only been there once before, so it still felt as though it was early on in a show. So once I had got past the first couple of days filming and managed to get the lines out, I realised I was going to have a good time.
Presumably you'd be up for a third series?
Yes, absolutely! Part of the reason is - half way through filming this series we had this snooker tournament, I think there were 16 people - it was a proper tournament - we went to this snooker hall and I was out in the first round, it was terrible - but anyway several of us have said, 'if there is a third series....'
Changing the subject, sorry to bring this up, but we want to ask you about...
Not Going Out...?
Yup, ha ha. We're big fans of the show, so disappointed you left. We know you decided to move on because you wanted to do other things, but might you return one day?
No, I don't think so. I think that is it. Otherwise you would go backwards and forwards on something, and that wouldn't quite make sense. I don't think the way has been left open so much anyway...
Well, at the start of the last series it was explained that your character was in Germany, which sounds like the door is left open for you to come back?
I think Lee was thinking of a way - we had the same thing when Miranda left too - to exit the character without much fuss. It's not like a soap where everything has to be properly explained, but equally when it's a main character you want to say something about them - you can't just not mention them in the next series. But if you say "Wasn't it a shame how Tim died?" and then try and move on - the whole audience want to say "What do you mean, he died?", so you have kind of got to make it slightly bland.
It's hard for Lee I know. It's not an easy thing to find this magic census that somehow says it, but that doesn't make everyone go "Oh that's part of the plot, what's going on...?" Apparently the magic census in my case was "He's in Germany". Perhaps I should come back with a frankfurter and talk in a German accent!
Ah, fans would love that. Even just a cameo. The show hasn't been quite the same since you left!
It would change in that way, but - who knows - it might evolve into something totally different anyway now because I don't know how long the 'will they/won't they' thing between Lee and Lucy will go on for.
Lee is great at writing - the situations and stuff that he writes. He's brilliant I think. Some of it is so well written, I thought that was the main strength of it.
So although you're saying you're not returning to Not Going Out, could you see yourself in a different audience sitcom?
Yes, I would love to. I would love to play someone called, I don't know, 'Tim' maybe! Ha ha. A Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em type thing maybe...
I do like studio sitcom as a genre - you are not looking at it and thinking it's anything other than in a studio. I like that, we've got a great tradition of that in this country, and I think a lot of the time in recent years we used to say "Well Americans could do that much better than us", and we were quite sort of down on ourselves about sitcoms, but there is something very English about the way we do sitcoms in this country. Where you do feel like you are going to see the wall wobble when the door closes - but I like all that, I think it's really nice, very charming.
Did you find it hard when doing Blandings, not having any audience giving you the feedback of laughs?
Well I got a bit of that with Not Going Out. We used to do maybe 10 days' location filming in the series, and there was no one there for that. Often with a crew you have got quite a few people there anyway, so I do like to sort of try and make people laugh between takes if I possibly can.
Are you a terror on set then, Tim?
No, I wouldn't say I am a terror. I wasn't really aware I was saying this on a regular basis but it was flagged up to me by Mandie, the director, but quite often I do a take or something and then she will say "Tim can you do it like this" or "When you do that, I want to see you thinking about this..." and I used to go "Watch this ...." like I am about to throw darts or something! So that became a sort of catchphrase - she thought that was quite funny: "Watch this!"
Focusing on your live comedy work, your Edinburgh chat show was the highlight of our Edinburgh Fringe last year. Brilliant from start to finish.
Do you know what, this is my favourite interview... you like my book, you like the chat show... but, yes, the chat show is something I would have loved to have done on telly actually. It feels like it is just there.
I think often with telly, they see an idea and they like it and then they always want to change it, otherwise they are not doing anything. So it is almost the case that if you have something which is, you feel, a finished product, that's not always a good thing.
I am doing it in Australia soon actually - I am doing the Melbourne Comedy Festival [end of March] - I might even see if anyone in Australian telly might want it whilst I'm out there.
As you know, before we start a show, a guy asks the audience to fill in forms with their details on, and then he brings these things back to me - sometimes we don't get that many handed in and so sometimes it'd be "oh not another management consultant" - there are some quite bland jobs sometimes! We were joking that, if we were doing it in Australia, we would try and think what would keep coming up, and it'd be "not another flipping shark attack", ha ha. So I am looking forward to that.
What about Edinburgh - will you do it again there?
I conceivably might do, but I am trying to get a new hour together. I might possibly do it [the new stand-up show] first in Edinburgh, and then go on from that. Because the thing about doing a chat show for the last 3 years is that the first 10 minutes of stand-up at the top of it - that stand-up has never gone into a stand-up show, as it were - so I could put all that together, learn it and write another half hour, some silly songs, come up at the beginning wear cardboard trousers or whatever...
Could you not do both at the festival - the chat show and stand-up show?
There are two schools of thought - part of me says "well I want to do something else just so I am not looking like I have run out of ideas entirely", but it has been said to me "You could just bring it up every year couldn't you?". There is a bit of effort - I am not sure whether I am a two shows a day person - you see people who are doing several shows in Edinburgh and they all look an absolute state.
It would be great to do it for TV though because you just do it exactly as you do it in Edinburgh. You film five interviews and then you just edit it to a half hour, taking your favourite three guests out of the five.
So no TV channels want it? Have you tried Sky, they've been letting a lot of people just make what they want?
Have they? Well I've heard these conversations my whole life. But it's always things you don't quite expect to happen that work, and things you think that should...
You have moments where you feel like people want you. There is this sort of sense then where, just for a split second, everyone goes "Yes we want him" and at that point you show them all your great ideas that you have, and they always go "Yes, yes, yes" then.
The chat show is improvised, which demonstrates you must have great memory recall. How do you remember all the jokes?
I am not sure I have that much recall actually - I just make it seem like I have - I probably go down some of the same routes. You know when you have got 3,000 songs on your iPod and you stick it on shuffle and you think "wow it's randomly picking these" - and then the next time you do it, you realise some of the same ones come up again and you think "oh it's not that random is it". I think I go down some of the same paths actually.
But my brain works mainly through association, so if you tell me a subject it will then simply be a bit like if I said to you "Can you remember any situation where you did something with a dinghy?" And you would then think to yourself the last time you were in the presence of a dinghy...
Name an obscure subject and I will see if it reminds me of a joke that I have written!
Er... Ponies
I went to the hairdressers... er, yes, what was it... I was in the hairdressers and I said "Can you give me a pony tail" and he said "Once upon a time, when I was at the seaside..."
Ha ha. Er... let's try another: Rubbish trucks.
Er... No. Sorry. I can't think of anything for that.
No worries, so...
I tried marry a dustman, but he said "I refuse"... something like that!
Ha ha, very good! So the last time we spoke, you told us you were working on a music album, but we've not seen it appear yet...
Was it music tracks, and I was talking over them and then at the end someone plays a flute? Well, I had taken the picture for the front of the CD and I have got all 12 songs recorded - I just haven't done anything about it! But now I have moved onto another album of high voice disco songs. That is the next one that I am doing.
Then I want to do... I tend to flit about a bit as you can perhaps tell. What I tend to do is record these things and then move on to the next thing before doing anything about it. I am cutting out the middle man - an audience!
I want to do one on country songs. I like the idea of doing themed albums like that. I'd like to do one with a sort of old Elvis rock and roll type of thing. The other one I want to do is 12 songs on the Tuba and Harp - because I am not aware of those two instruments ever having been combined to great effect in the past. So I wanted to have a tuba player and a harp player and find out what sort of things they do, and then write 12 songs around the noise that they can make and then bring them in and do it.
Oh, did I ever give you my film, Library Altitude Zero? I made this film - it was an hour and 20 minutes long - with me as an airline pilot, and that again has never seen the light of day.
Why not, in this modern day and age of YouTube is it not easy to release it?
Well yes, I suppose - I don't know how to do all that - but no, you are right, I should do something about that. When I made that I hired the Curzon Cinema in Soho and invited about 80 of my friends to sit there and watch this bloody film... it was ridiculous!
After that I moved on to the next thing, partly because the enjoyment is the creating part.
I am not very thorough - some people are real perfectionists and I am not actually that much of a perfectionist - I just love going on to the next thing and doing that. So a lot of my songs and things are kind of, well, I take them up to a certain stage.
I think I am reasonably good at writing songs actually - I have written loads in the past but done nothing with them - but, producing wise, I just get them up to a point, and then move on to the next thing. There is an argument, isn't there, that you should put everything out there - is that a good argument or not? I'm not sure.
Before I was doing comedy I wanted to be a pop star, in my 20s. I have got literally 500 songs... now, a lot of them are along the lines of "She doesn't love me...", so they are kind of whiney things - but I like a lot of them, but whether or not other people would...
I did have this CD called Pretend Pop Star, which is available on iTunes - it hasn't got my name on it though. If it said 'Tim Vine', then someone might buy it and go "well that's not very funny is it".
Oh, we'll have to check that out now!
Also, another thing I did: I hired a crew and we filmed some sketches... so I have got a whole load of sketches as well. About 47 sketches. We ought to do something about that this year, because then we could say to some telly people "Do you want The Tim Vine Sketch Show? Have a look at this - this is something showing a little taster of it"... because I would like to do a sketch show - I would be up for that!
That'd be great. It's frustrating to learn of all these things you've done that we can't see and hear, but we'll keep our fingers crossed they come out one day.
Well the book - that exists! And Blandings!
Blandings is on BBC One on Sundays at 6:30pm.