Interview: Andy Hamilton talks comedy with Victoria Nangle

Handy Andy

You’ve been in the comedy world for like, forever…
“Yeah, well… Why? Where’s this going? You’remaking me feel old!”

No, no not at all. You’ve just got so many different comedy hats. What was the first onethat you put on?
“Well, I suppose if someone held a gun to my head and said you can only do one well that would bewriting. In the days where you had your occupation on your passport, that’s what it said, writer. That is essentially what I am. I’m a writer who likes to perform sometimes. So that’s probably how I see myself.”

How did you get into it?
“Um… I drifted into it really. I was leaving university, I hadn’t really worked out what I was going to do, but I’d been writing some sketches and stuff for stage shows, and a BBC producer saw one of them and said ‘are you sort of writing for a living?’ And I said ‘not really’, so he encouraged me to go along to BBC radio and submit material, and gradually I started to get stuff on and from there I began. It wasn’t a grand plan.”

Is there a grand plan now?
“No!”

Because you are a bit of a comic Svengali…
“Am I?”

Well, you have done an awful lot of comedy shows. I was re-watching Chelmsford 123 the other day…
“Crikey! When I was a druid! Yes, that was written by my friends Jimmy [Mulville] and Rory [McGrath] and I used to produce them in a show called Who Dare’s Wins, so I was forever making them get up at five in the morning to put on, you know, extravagant make-up and stuff – and I think that was their revenge. Put me in a very itchy sort of costume, and made me disembowel animals and stuff!”

One of my favourite shows was Drop The Dead Donkey, which stopped at its height. At what point do you decide to stop making a show, despite demand?
“That’s a really interesting question actually, which I don’t often get asked! That show I wrote with Guy Jenkins, and I suppose we do it by a kind of instinct really, you know? I mean, what we wanted to do with Drop The Dead Donkey – we did a lot of shows, we did getting on 70 shows, that was nine years I think, and we just thought, we wanna be in a position where we end it rather than one day a broadcaster turns around andsays, you know, actually we don’t want any more. So we wanted to do a series where we sent all the characters off into the sunset and actually did it properly. So you just do it by instinct, and you ust feel when the moment is right…”

Very brave…
“Well, it’s not that brave because what you’re doing is you’re trying to head off the point. You’re trying to avoid the moment where people have got a bitbored with you. So it’s no braver than leaving a party before peoples eyes glaze over.”

So what’s happening with Outnumbered now?
“Outnumbered? We are doing a Christmas special. We’re filming that in November, which will be… cold! And hopefully doing another lot next year.”

There was a rumour last year, that there was going to be a TV show of your Radio 4 series Old Harry’s Game. Is that likely to happen?
“No. Well, I can imagine how the rumour got out. We did a little sample for Sky, of an animated plasticine version, you know, like a claymation, and that sort of leaked out of someone’s press department prematurely so it was only ever a sample I was writing for them and they passed on it, which was fair enough. We were very pleased with it but I think that’s probably not going to happen now. It’s quite problematic, animation. It’squite hard to place it with a broadcaster so, at the moment I haven’t got any plans to try and televise it, no. ”

Will there be another series of it?
“Yeah, we’re doing an Olympic special. A two-parter, recording that in July. Although I’m not sure if we can mention the word ‘Olympics’, as that’s owned by the Olympics. but basicallySatan gets involved with the Olympics, yeah

Old Harry’s Game and last year’s Searching for Satan have got a strong ideological and philosophical sense. It feels like you’re using Shakespeare’s tool of pointing out the truthwith laughter…
“Well, certainly, it irritates me when sometimes people say or talk about something like: ‘Oh it’s just a comedy!’. Comedy is always been used to convey big ideas and in many ways it’s a better medium for conveying big ideas because people are more welcoming. They don’t resist it. Whereas if they think you’re trying to give them a lecture, they will resist it. So yeah, I think probably, on a personal level, if I didn’t invent all these ideas in comedy, I’d probably be a serial killer or something, I’d probably go on a killing spree. I think it’s a kind of a safety valve.

I’d better ask you about the show! What is the Hat of Doom?
“The Hat Of Doom? The hat is a hat with lots of bits of paper in it, and on the bits of paper are various topics on stuff, so it’s largely dictated by what the audience draws out of the hat. I go around with the hat and then the audience picks stuff out. And in the second half – in the interval I ask the audience for the questions on the stage, written on bits of paper for me – so, most of the second half is built around things that the audience ask me. So it’s always different each night, you never find two nights the same. And there’s stories and jokes and me larking around, bits of audience participation and singing and all sorts. Bit of everything!”

What’s the last thing that made you laugh aridiculous amount?
“Ooh, well the North Korean missile made melaugh quite a lot. You know, the missile thatthey sent up that fell apart? Well, it just fell over basically. It just fell over. That did make me laugh. I mean, I know I shouldn’t, because it’s a terrifying prospect that you’ve got a mad nuclear superpower, a mad nuclear power that’s been humiliated, but it did make me laugh.”

Andy Hamilton – Hat Of Doom,
Pavilion Theatre, Worthing,
£17.50/16

****** NB: THIS SHOW HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED AND NOW TAKES PLACE SATURDAY 6 OCTOBER 2012 (previously Thursday 17 May)*****