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More Leicester Square Theatre fun tonight as I interviewed Katy Brand and Julian Clary for podcasts that will be released in August. I had enjoyed catching up with both their work during the day - there’s lots of funny song parodies from Katy’s Big Ass Show on Youtube and some of Julian’s stand-up and interviews. Clary is a force of nature. There’s something instantly loveable about him on stage and you still love him however caustic of arrogant he appears to be. It almost wouldn’t matter what he said (even though he is very sharp especially with putdowns - as I’d later discover to my own delight) but the self-regard and good looks mixed with the willingness to look camp and ridiculous (but somehow always cool) means you’re laughing before he speaks.
There was much I wanted to talk to him about, serious stuff as well as funny, but I felt quite nervous about fucking it up and indeed being in his presence (as you’ll see).
Katy must have been feeling the same about meeting me, as I am sure I am a kind of comedy god hero to her. She managed to hide her awe very cunningly though. When we’d been doing the commentaries for Fist of Fun, one shot had started with her young and happy face in the audience, leading me to remark that even our audience are now more successful than me. We had some interesting chats about teenage Christianity and chocolate bars in anal passages and I rolled out my new emergency question that I confidently predicted would be a classic (and I’d also used to good effect in the backstage interview with Adam Buxton -
you can see these by becoming a monthly badger) “What’s the strangest thing that you’ve ever found in the embers of a bonfire?”For a few moments it looked like the question would misfire, but then bang it dredged up a weird and wonderful memory. I love it when I find the right kind of question to do this stuff. People burn some weird stuff. Having read Julian’s book I knew he had a good one, but weirdly he went for a totally different story.
Julian was sizing me up and trying to work out what was going on before the podcast, remarking after all the chocolate bar material that heterosexual men were obsessed with bums. But we all have one and we can all use it for whatever pleasures or functions that we desire. As my natural compunction in the podcast is to say the wrong thing it was tricky to discuss some of the stuff I wanted to talk about. But having rewatched the Norman Lamont moment that has in some ways defined Julian’s career, I was struck by many things. Firstly, it went down very well in the room - Richard and Judy and Mark Lamaar loved it- secondly, it is a joke which shouldn’t have caused a furore, as it only makes sense to someone who is aware what “fisting” is, which would, I think, have been practically none of the people who were offended by it. You had to be told why to find it offensive. Thirdly, as super fan Andy McH pointed out, the fisting remark was actually the set up line. The punchline, slightly swallowed in the exuberant reaction and by Jonathan Ross’ poor timing is “Talk about a red box.”
But having watched a few interviews and an incredible clip where Jimmy Greaves (pre fist-gate) questions whether Julian should be on TV (in very unpleasant terms) only to be chastised by the surprisingly heroic Mike Smith, I wondered if the whole furore over that British Comedy Awards Clip was actually just the homophobic establishment getting a chance to stick it to this proudly gay man. I also wondered why Julian had happily gone on Piers Morgan’s interview show, after Morgan had ben one of the editors leading the charge.
But Julian is philosophical about it all, believing it happened for a reason and allowed him some time to himself, away from work, when he was coping with some very depressing stuff in his life.
We got some good stuff out of this interview, in spite of me being slightly foot-in-mouth and awkward at times. I think Julian might even have enjoyed it.
