Interview: Political Animal – Chris Addison

Chris Addison is a regular on Mock The Week, the award-winning political satire The Thick Of It, teen sensation Skins, those insurance adverts – and now he’s back to his day job of stand up. Victoria Nangle finds out more

Your show, ‘The Time Is Now Again’, is it a political call to arms referencing your success with ‘In The?Loop’, or a rally that you’re performing stand-up perhaps?
“You know what I like about that title, everyone tends to have their own interpretation and it means precisely nothing. Nothing. Here’s what you need to know about the title. The perfect title is: ‘Michael Mcintyre Live And Laughing’. It’s perfect for a number of reasons. Firstly, it would get more people in. Secondly, it’s live and laughing. That’s all you need. That’s actually all you need in a title. And it’s allowed him to write whatever show he wants to write and it will all make sense. He has to differentiate between his shows otherwise it becomes immensely confusing, so you need a title. And you need a title at the point, which is roughly, at least six months ahead of when you sit down to write the show. So you need something generic, which is, you know, memorable. And it’s quite a hard thing to come up with. Anyway the phrase, ‘The Time Is Now, Again’, slipped into my head and really made me laugh, on the day that I had to select a title. And that is why that is the title of the show.”

[laughs] Well, what’s your show about then?
“Just a bunch of stand up. Yeah, yeah, it’s just a bunch of stand up. So many people have started to ask what the show’s about! The thing is, it’s stand-up comedy. Some politics, some true life stuff, er quite a bit of complaining, some lies, some whimsy – lots of jokes and stories. That’s really what it is.”

Do you think that you would do a satirical show about what’s been happening in the global financial arena, just because you wrote an actual column [on finance for The Guardian 2003–2005], having an understanding of finance more than most people?
“I don’t have any understanding of finance.”

[laughs] Then how did you write a financial column for ages?
“I don’t know, I try to be funny. Yeah, so I didn’t, if you look back over that financial column, you’ll
find practically nothing that is actually anything realistically to do with money, you know, beyond a regular person’s point of view.
I don’t imagine there’s an audience for the humour behind the nitty gritty of, you know, credit false swaps or something. I don’t know, they just wanted something on the back of the jobs and money section of The Guardian for a while [laughs].
Well, the first part of the show, the first split, before the interval, I sort of am my own support act really, it’s kind of current affairs and politics and then it isn’t in the second half. So I do sort of cover that. In a way it’s odd. I get my audience from all sorts of places. It’s a really interesting audience, if you come and hang about, see who’s going into my gigs. They’re all from all different places. I get people from Mock The Week, I get people from The Thick Of It, I get people who have been with me for years and fans of the Radio 4 shows that I used to do, and quite a few people who have followed me from really, really early on. I get people from Skins. Erm, it’s just all over the place. It’s really weird that I’ve found something that will kind of unite all of them. So, in the first bit, you know because of the Mock The Week people and the The Thick Of It people, and because I’m genuinely interested in that sort of thing, I do sort of do a bit of current affairs type stuff and we talk more generally in the second half.”

When will we see more of The Thick of it?
“There’s another series coming this year.”

Can you say any more than that? Have you filmed it yet?
“No. No, no, no. [Armando Iannucci] Hasn’t even written it.”

What really makes you laugh?
“What really makes me laugh? Erm, most of what really makes me laugh these days comes off of Twitter I think (laughs). There’s an astonishing amount of wit flowing about on that thing. A lot of that really makes me laugh.”

Who do you follow?
“I think Caitlin Moran is quite the funniest person in Britain. Grace Dent – absolutely hilarious. David Arnold, the composer, did loads of Bond stuff and Sherlock and things like that. He’s hilarious. There’s just loads of them. Loads of people knocking about on Twitter who are just fantastically funny and post funny things. I absolutely love sitting and watching the X Factor and tweeting through it and watching those people tweet [laughs]. It’s like being in the pub with your mates. It’s hilarious.”

Looking through your CV, you’ve done so many things: author, stand up, actor, TV host, sitcom writer, newspaper writer…
“It’s really weird when you list them off like that. Really weird, [laughs] because I have technically done all of those things.”

Is it a creative adventure?
“Well, it is that. You know, a lot of it is about handstands and luck and timing and you know, weird things like that.
“I hadn’t gone, ‘right this is brilliant’ – what I do is position myself further, or I need to get into acting. I just fell into stand-up comedy, I fell into acting on the back of stand-up comedy and everything has been led from stand up. And for somebody who never had a kind of specific goal or ambition, it’s meant that when people ask me interesting questions like, ‘Would you fancy having a go at this? I can go, ‘Ooh yeah, alright then. I’ve got nothing else on. Alright, lovely, I’ll do that’. And there’s something quite…after years and years on the stand up circuit, something really appealing about somebody going; ‘here – here’s a job that’s going to last six weeks’. ‘Oh, what? Like one thing? [Laughs] So I don’t need to worry about…brilliant. Yep. Brilliant, brilliant. I’ll do that. Whatever it is. That is fantastic. Oh what, a supply teacher? Should have been more specific!’ [Laughs]
“You know, none of it has ever been planned. I’ve pitched things like the radio shows that I wrote and the sitcoms that I’ve made and all those sorts of things but lots of that – TV host stuff, the acting, it’s all accidental.”

You do look incredibly young, every time I see you, you don’t age…
“I know, isn’t it annoying?! Although I do feel as though I have got older. I remember thinking;
‘I think I might be having a mid life crisis’, but it’s pretty mild. It’s only a very mild one. It hasn’t manifested itself in any way. I haven’t bought anything. Or had an affair. I do find myself thinking – someone told me a brilliant thing, my friend Rachel told me a fantastic thing that…well just from somebody who hadn’t quite thought it through, in her 40th birthday card to me was put: ‘Have a great 2nd half’ [laughs]. It was a great moment because I simultaneously laughed very, very hard and my blood ran incredibly cold at that point. So yeah, I’m definitely getting older.”

Well, enjoy the second third…
“Perfect – perfect.”

Chris Addison – The Time Is Now, Again, Theatre Royal Brighton, Sunday 5 February 2012,8pm, £22, www.atgtickets.com