Classic Interview: John Robins – 2015
Edinburgh Comedy Award Winner In A Philosophiocal Mood
Below is an interview with John Robins first published on Beyond The Joke in 2015. Since then a few things have changed and a few things have stayed the same. He’s still working with Elis James on their award-winning podcast but they are no longer on Radio X. He also fronts the podcast How Do You Cope? Robins shared the Edinburgh Comedy Award with Hannah Gadsby in 2017. He no longer drinks alcohol, having charted his relationship with booze in his recent acclaimed book Thirst. Buy Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life here. I’m not sure if he still has a bandcamp page. Does anyone?
If you don’t know who John Robins is, then it is about time you remedied the situation. Robins is one of the damn finest stand-ups around at the moment. Well-informed radio fans will know him for his Radio X show with Elis James, TV fans should know him for the spooky story about spiders hatching on a friends’ face that he told on Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled. If you get a chance to catch him doing stand-up grab it as if your life depended upon it. For more on John Robins go to his bandcamp page here.
1. What is the last thing you do before you go onstage (apart from check your flies, check for spinach between teeth and check your knickers aren’t sticking out of your skirt)?
One thing I’ve learned from gigging, is that a secure backstage toilet is more important to me than critical acclaim.
2. What irritates you?
There’s the usual stuff – the way people drive in London, the way people cycle in everywhere, people who get to a shop till after queuing for ages and it’s as if they had no idea they would have to find money to pay, or where their money is, or what money is. But all that stuff pales into comparison with how irritating I find myself. And it is absolutely impossible for me to escape me, or even have a break, if I step out of my house to have five minutes alone THERE I AM! With all my habits, my weaknesses, the odd pain I get in my hip, the little thought worms that have been going round in my head for nearly three decades. I once read an interview with Johnny Vaughan when he was on the Big Breakfast where he said the secret to dealing with early mornings was to get in the shower as soon as you’re up. I have thought of that every time I have had a shower, ever. Can you imagine thinking that thought nearly ten thousand times?! I procrastinate. I play more iPhone games than you could possibly imagine. I panic when shopping for clothes so still wear t-shirts I bought in NINETEEN NINETY SIX . If I’m buying something important like a laptop or sat nav I get so obsessed with researching it and getting the best price that by the time I buy it I just loathe myself. Imagine being that guy 24/7!
I am guilty of all the things that irritate me in the world. I’ve driven poorly, I’ve taken ages trying to pay with things with the exact change at busy tills, I would make an awful cyclist. I think we dislike in others what we fear in ourselves.
Though one thing that does irritate me is noise. Not just car alarms or music on trains, but the noise of life, social media, endless content online about absolutely nothing. So I try to keep a very low noise footprint.
3. What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?
I once jumped between two third floor balconies at University, and every time I think about it I feel completely awful. I had to let myself in through some girls window. She wasn’t there luckily, imagine how terrifying that would have been for her! I stole a cotton bud from her desk. Oh God!
4. What is the most stupid thing you have ever done?
I have a running joke with Elis James on our radio show that I’m plagued by regret whereas he’s totally content. I certainly was plagued by regret in the past, but now I’m more obsessed with the idea of being plagued by regret. I do regret some stupid things I’ve done. Putting chewing gum in a friends hair c.1999 buying a cricket bat that was far too expensive c.1995 making bad jokes before thinking what effect they might have on people around me 1992-present. Sometimes I can’t sleep for thinking about them, lying awake blushing and feeling shame! Oh Shame!
5. What has surprised you the most during your career in comedy?
How much work goes into the very best things. Before doing comedy I loved shows like Bottom, The League Of Gentlemen, Alan Partridge, but I don’t think I ever appreciated the craft, the writing and effort and time it takes to make something like that. The most successful comedians aren’t always the funniest, or most naturally gifted (though they often are), but they are always the hardest working, the people who care the most.
6. What do your parents/children (delete as applicable) think of your job?
My mum has never once expressed any negativity towards anything I’ve ever wanted to do career or education-wise. Which is a wonderful thing to give to a child. She was dead against me smoking cigars when I was fifteen, but, to be fair, then I did look like an ABSOLUTE TOOL.
7. What’s the worst thing about being a comedian?
Josie Long once said comedy was her way of making sense of the world, and her life, it’s the same for me too, and that’s a big upside. But the downside is, as quite a biographical/anecdotal comedian, that I’m constantly thinking about myself, my thoughts, my past etc. So it can be very introspective. On the few occasions I’ve written for other people’s projects I’ve loved that, because it’s just coming up with lines or ideas you think are funny, and it has no context with you personally, so it’s quite refreshing.
One thing I’ve really struggled with is I can’t sit down and just write comedy on a sheet of paper or a computer. 90% of what I write comes out on stage, but I’m only onstage about 3% of my waking life, so that’s very frustrating. Anything else I can type away (cf. this Q&A), but not stand-up.
8. I think you are very good at what you do (that’s why I’m asking these questions). What do you think of you?
That. Varies. Wildly. (And thanks!)
I had a bit of an epiphany in Edinburgh this year (big fan of those). For many years I’d really fixated on getting nominated for the comedy award, it’s just one of many paths to success but it was the one I wanted to go down. And that means you go to all this effort, create something you’re really proud of, perform it the best you can in all given circumstances, but then go home feeling like you’ve failed, and this awful, awful feeling of embarrassment that you weren’t on that list.
But then this year was the first year I’ve really felt I was playing to people who really, really wanted to see me, I think mainly because of the podcast with Elis. And during one of the shows I just had this sudden feeling of pure connection between what I was doing, and how it was being received, just for a split second, not because the gig was going especially well, but just because I was doing what I wanted to do and they wanted to see. There was no struggle or compromise between the show and it’s reception. And it dawned on me that you can just keep doing your job, and getting better, and pleasing people, and it may take A LONG TIME, but you can build an audience without awards or huge amounts of telly. Which is a model I thought had gone out with the explosion of panel shows.
And I just had this enormous feeling of pride, in absolutely everyone who’s ever tried to create anything, ever. And for all the people working in that city, for that month, to be creative. (I think I was a bit tired / emotional towards the end of the festival!). And it hit me like a fucking train, that the Edinburgh Comedy Award is, and has always been, a selection of the most exciting, creative, unusual and inventive comedy performed up there. And there’s no way I’d say that about myself. And that was a big letting go moment, where I realised I could just do what I do, being as funny as I can be, and be really pleased with what I, and everyone else had done.
That wasn’t the question really was it? OK, I AM PHENOMENAL OFF THE CUFF
9. How much do you earn and how much would you like to earn?
I love reading people’s answers to/ways of dodging this question!
I remember when I was thinking of quitting my job in 2005 my manager saying something like “If you stay here, in ten years time you could be earning thirty grand a year”. And immediately saw this life I didn’t want to live opening up before me, doing something I had no passion for (sorting shipments of books in a bookshop) in order to one day earn thirty grand while ten years just fly by. That was ten years ago and I never, ever regretted quitting. And in the end I beat his timeline by two years or so by doing comedy. Which is insane. Now I earn enough to spend a bit and save a bit and I’m happy with that. Once you’re paying your rent with a job you love you have truly won at life.
There’s a great quote, which I absolutely love, often credited to Goethe, but actually by a mountaineer called William Hutchison Murray. It’s a great comfort to me, especially the last line
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now!”
10. How important is luck in terms of career success – have you had lucky breaks?
I spent a long time thinking that other people had all the luck, and it eats you up. It’s so much easier to create a narrative where your failures are the faults of others, or the system, or anything but you. What I realised, was that the other people were living in London, doing the gigs that got them seen, and working really hard. So I did a lot of things I never wanted to do. I moved to London. I spent a year starting from scratch getting the gigs I needed to do to be seen, and I worked harder. Miraculously my luck changed.
11. Alan Davies has said that comedians fall into two categories - golfers and self-harmers. The former just get on with life, the latter are tortured artists. Which are you – or do you think you fit into a third category?
For the last three Edinbrugh’s we have played in the Industry VS Comics golf tournament! Watching you tee off has taught me two things:
1. Never fear a critic
2. Golf can be a form of self-harm
12. Who is your favourite person ever and why - not including family or friends or other comedians?
Watching Ronnie O’Sullivan play snooker is honestly one of the most emotional and heavenly experiences for me. I cannot really describe what it means to me when he wins. Frank Zappa has, and always will be a really important figure in my life. Mohammed Ali documentaries always have me in tears, George Foreman says he finds it insulting when people ask if Ali was the greatest boxer, because “he was the greatest human”. But, I think, Freddie Mercury will always be my hero. As a little boy he taught me it was ok to be flamboyant and introverted at the same time, to be exactly who you wanted to be and don’t give a rats ass if the kids on the school bus make fun of your velvet jacket/Mohican/leather dog collar/painted nails (I was a very confused teenager). He gave absolutely everything to make sure every person, in crowds of over quarter of a million people, felt part of the performance. Legend.
13. Do you keep your drawers tidy and if not why not?
Some are tidy and some are messy. I’m a very complex man.