Interview: Jeremy Hardy

Darling of BBC Radio 4, unashamedly left-wing, and celebrated off-key singer, Jeremy Hardy is back on the road. Victoria Nangle talks to the comic about The News Quiz, David Cameron and podcasts

Hardy Boy

How would you describe your show?
“It’s a man of 52 talking at length… with an interval.

“It is me we’re talking about, by the way, it’s not someone else. All sorts of bits and bobs. Not really talking about myself all that much. Partly because I’m not very interesting and partly because it just seems a bit self-absorbed. So I talk about all sorts of stuff, from Shakespeare to hip hop, but only a few minutes on each thing, ‘cos I can’t focus very long on one thing.”

You say you don’t talk about yourself but your daughter seems to come up quite regularly when you’re on The News Quiz. How does she feel about that?
“She likes it, she’s quite proud. She’s coming along now to recordings. There are precious few 23 year olds in our audience. But yeah, she likes to feature.”

You’ve been on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue quite some years now. A lot has been made of your singing. Did that surprise you?
“Well, yeah. It’s kind of an annoyance really, because I’ve always been embarrassed by what a horrible singing voice I have, but I don’t think it’s as bad as people say it is. You know, I’d quite like to sing nicely and be able to hold a tune, and be asked to stand up in pubs and sing old folk songs with my finger in my ear. But that doesn’t happen. I mean, obviously I never thought I’d make any money out of it, and the very first time I did Clue, it was in Harrogate, and it was when Willie Rushton was still alive, and he’d got me on the show. I had to do ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ to the tune of ‘Scarborough Fair’. And the whole audience fell silent, and there was a very shocking sort of stunned pause. And then one or two people started bravely clapping, and then it spread like in a film. And then eventually the whole audience was wildly clapping. And I sat down and Willie Rushton said ‘I smell points’. And then it all just carried on. But people get annoyed when I sing properly now. Very occasionally I go into tune… but I can’t really control when that might or might not happen. It’s like, a stopped clock is right twice a day… occasionally.”

I hasten to add that I’ve enjoyed your singing… but I really enjoy it when you go off on a complete tangent on The News Quiz…
“Thank you. I’m sure that’s probably more important, yeah. Yeah, I tend to ramble on The News Quiz. I used to have more prepared one-liners about stuff, and then recently I can’t be bothered to do that. Because they have very good writers on the show, for Sandy, and so there’s plenty of good one-liners already. And I just try and ramble and see what happens.”

You do good almighty rants…
“Good, good. That’s good.”

If you could bring back one politician from the past and install them in the current government, who would that be and why?
“To install somebody in the current government, it’d have to be someone with a communicable disease. I don’t think the current government can really be redeemed. I think that would be a waste of time. And anyone with any kind of decency is leaving, so… like poor little Sarah Teather. She’s bitten off more than she could chew there. But no, I think it would be a waste to put anyone of any decency into the current government.”

You could put in someone like Michael Foot, to shake everybody up?
“[laughs] What difference would he make? Everyone would just go ‘oh, bless’. He was a fine orator and a very good man, Michael Foot, and people respected him for that, but he wouldn’t be able to turn around… braying public schoolboys who are hell-bent on destroying the welfare state. I don’t think he’d be able to stop that. If little Sarah Teather can’t stop them from destroying the welfare state, no one can.”

Maybe we should put Supernanny in there?
“Yes, that would scare the living s*** out of them. But no, I think it’s just horrible. I actually find it almost too depressing to talk about, because they’re just not grounded in anything like ordinary life. They just don’t have any sort of break on their whims and fancies. They’re like a bunch of kids who’ve been given the government to play with, and they’re all really enjoying it. And that’s a horrible thing, that they really enjoy it. At least Gordon Brown, one redeeming thing about Gordon Brown, is that you could tell he absolutely hated being Prime Minister. He’d waited so long for it and when he got it he was just so disappointed. And he hated every living moment of it. Whereas Cameron, he likes to make apologies on behalf of the country ‘cos he gets to speak for the country, and it enables him to be a statesman. He absolutely loves every second of it. And that shows enormous vanity and self-importance, I think. But they are a very ‘born to rule’ clique, the people who are running the country now. They’ve all got that… mafia sense of entitlement.”

You are a thorn in their side, though…
“Oh, they don’t mind. They probably enjoy it… the thing is with the left, is that we’re so weak. People don’t mind us, I think they just see us as being like amusing court jesters.”

There’s that whole objection to The News Quiz as being too left-orientated, and the BBC in general. What do you think of that?
“Well, if it is it’s not going to have any impact, is it? I mean we do try and get more… different voices on the programme. I mean, I’m not really involved in that, but I do sort of say, ‘well, yeah. Let’s have people say some different things, just to make it more interesting.’ ‘Cos there’s no point if we’re all saying the same stuff, and all agreeing on everything. But it’s a question of people being actually funny. I mean, Bob Mills, who’s a Tory, is actually a good comic. So he comes on because he’s a good comic. If he wasn’t a good comic it would become pointless, because he’d never say anything funny. But, you know, The News Quiz is probably more left-wing than the public as a whole. But then, people in the arts usually tend to have middle-to-left-wing views, I think. Because right-wing people are sort of… generally fairly uncreative. They’re not really interested in those things that enrich humanity, or make us special. They’re interested in the bottom line, in profit. I suppose once people get to a certain level of wealth, like Tracey Emin, or The Rolling Stones, they become Tories.”

Do you think you’re reaching more people these days because of the rise of podcasts?
“Apparently more people listen to The News Quiz than died in both world wars…”

Woah!
“No, that’s made up. I think it’s about four million now, which is fairly respectable. And it’s more than a lot of TV programmes get. I mean, obviously GCHQ would be able to tell exactly who listens to The News Quiz and what they had for breakfast, but I think the way the BBC calculates these things is they interview four people and work it out on that basis. Multiply that by the number of people in the country or something.”

Will there be another series of Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation?
“Probably, It seems to keep happening. Yeah, I keep trying to stop doing it, and keep doing more of them. But I was pleased with the last one, actually. So I probably will do another one.”

Jeremy Hardy, Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, Sunday 6 October 2013, 7.30pm, £14/5, 01273 709709, www.brightoncomedyfestival.com