Classic Interview: Richard Gadd - 2015

Rarely Asked Questions With the Baby Reindeer/Half Man Man

Richard Gadd’s Waiting for Gaddot was one of the most talked about shows at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2015. It won an Amused Moose award, but how it didn’t pick up a Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination for Best Show I don’t know. Maybe it simply freaked the panel out, relentlessly upending expectations of what a comedy show should be. They caught up in the end though. He won Best Show in 2016. Gadd went on the become an international star with Baby Reindeer and looking back, this instalment in beyond the joke’s regular Rarely Asked Questions Q&A offers a remarkable insight into the Gadd mind.

Gadd’s latest work, Half Man, is currently on BBC snd iPlayer

1. What is the last thing you do before you go on stage (apart from check your flies, check for spinach between teeth and check your knickers aren’t sticking out of your skirt)?

I usually unzip myself, stuff a load of spinach in my mouth, then make sure my knickers (and bollocks) are as visible as possible through my skirt. I also cough a lot. I don’t know why, but I get this really weird, anxious, psychosomatic cough every time I am waiting to go on stage. I convince myself my throat is drying up and closing a millimetre at a time until eventually I pass out. It is very weird. It probably stems from nerves though. Or that time Mr. Bates made a pass at me in the changing rooms at school...

2. What irritates you?

Broad questions like this. I could spend hours and hours talking about what irritates me, from my squint bottom teeth to the fact John Humphrys always takes his glasses off when addressing the camera on Mastermind. Then we need to wait until he puts them back on again, before reading out the first question, thus eating into about three seconds of valuable question and answer time. He does it with every contestant. That’s four a programme. Fifty-two shows a year. That’s one-hundred and eight seconds wasted per series John?! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT?! HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR FUCKING MIND?!

3. What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?

I got hooked on Crystal Meth during my final exams at school. That was probably the most dangerous thing I have done. I did it intentionally too. Just so the three hours of essay writing would pass quicker. I wrote all three essays in ten minutes about the late restoration poet Wilhelm von Adamson, then had to sit there for the remaining two hours and fifty minutes until I was free to leave. I got so bored I ended up humping the desk and gave myself sweat rash. Once the effects had worn off three days later, I realised two things. One: that I have a serious problem. Two: that Wilhelm von Adamson doesn’t exist.

4. What is the most stupid thing you have ever done?

See above.

5. What has surprised you the most during your career in comedy?

I guess... how well it has gone? I mean, I have only been going at it properly for three years. I was never all that sure that the self-flagellating freak that spends hours talking about how depressed he is, whilst trawling through such inaccessible subject matter as drug addiction, sex addiction, and just about any kind of “iction” there is, would have a place in a world where most people’s impression of comedy is what is churned out on Live at the Apollo and Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow.

I thought I would be niche. Like, very niche. So I was surprised when I was selling out the Soho Theatre and there were queues round the block to see me in Edinburgh. Turns out we are all a little fucked up...

Picture above from Half Man: BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck)

6. What do your parents think of your job?

My parents are awesome. So awesome I cannot praise them enough. They are the biggest supporters of my stuff and they really do not need to be. They gave me a great upbringing and they both have stable jobs and could easily tell me to sort my shit out and “get a real job” or “do something with my degree” but they never have. I have comedy friends who talk relentlessly about the pressure from their parents to get a real job and essentially give up on their dreams, and that makes me so unbelievably sad because all we want to do is make our parents proud.

So if they fundamentally disagree with what we want to be then I really cannot imagine how hard that would be. Luckily my parents have never questioned it. Hell, even persuaded me to stick with it in those times I phoned them crying in the dead of the night having eaten my twenty-sixth Pot Noodle of the week telling them “I just cannot do it any more.” I remember my Dad’s words: “What else are you going to do? Sit in an office with a suit and tie and be a cunt all day?” It meant a lot him saying that (even though, ironically, he sits in an office in a suit and tie all day). He always had a way with words my father...

7. What’s the worst thing about being a comedian?

The connotations of the word “comedian” - I mean, I have said this a thousand times but when I think of comedian I think of the Jason Manfords and the Dylan Morans of the world. They are comedians. They are the ones standing on stage telling jokes and spinning you anecdotes. I don’t think I have written a joke or spun an anecdote in my life. It is not my skill set. I would say I am (and I hate this term for its connotations just as much) a “performance artist” in the sense that I use comedy in amongst a lot of visual and audio art to tell a theatrical story. The humour is a route into the bigger themes or concepts I want to explore.

I know that sounds pretentious, but I do not really identify with the word “comedian” any more. It comes with too many negative expectations, like when you are introduced to someone you haven’t met as a comedian and they respond with, “GO ON MAKE US LAUGH BIG MAN?!” - what do I do in that situation?! I cannot respond with a joke because I do not have any. So do I give them a slice of one of my shows? Strip completely naked and slap myself relentlessly with a belt before collapsing onto the floor in a pool of my vomit? I can only imagine how fun it would be to kill the question dead like that...

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?

Jesus, this is a very good question... I like me. But I am very self-punishing. Nothing is ever good enough. I can sell out big theatres and have the audience in the palm of my hand but I will come away kicking myself for that time I stumbled over a word and it will stay with me for days. It is all very obsessive and weird. It is the whole Neil Gaiman “fraud police” idea. The whole notion that no artist really believes in himself and he is waiting for the man with the clipboard to knock at the door and tell me my time is up and I am not fooling anyone any more.

That resonates powerfully with me. I believe in myself more than anything but I have to excavate through a whole load of self-doubt and mental neurosis before I get to that realisation. I do not know where it comes from because, as I said, I had a wonderful childhood. But someone along the line my confidence took a knock, and I guess doing satisfying work is the only was I can get it back up again.

9. How much do you earn and how much would you like to earn?

I earn fuck all, which is ironic because nobody is working harder than me right now – I challenge anyone on that. I am selling out comedy venues but I am still pulling pints in a bar to get by. I am flat hunting at the moment and I have a tight budget so I will be sleeping on top of broken glass in a kitchen cabinet by the end of October and still paying through the nose for it. Fucking London landlords. They are the worst, they really are.

Money is not everything. I have been brought up well enough to know that – and I would not be doing what I am doing if I thought otherwise. But the answer is still more than I am earning right now. Enough for a decent flat, and some decent moisturiser. My face is as dry as a tumble-dried bathmat right now.

10. How important is luck in terms of career success – have you had
lucky breaks?

I haven’t had any. I have worked hard for my breaks and I still have a long way to go so I will continue to do that. Luck is only a temporary thing. You can have a lucky break but eventually you will have to show you can sustain your talent. You might get a few things here and there but ultimately those who have had stuff handed to them and cannot prove themselves over time, will fall away eventually.

Luck is fine, luck is great if you get it – but sustainability is more important. Those who have clawed their way to the top are the ones who produce the best work mainly because they have learned so much from the battle to the top. My opinion anyway.

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?

I will give you one guess...

12. Who is your favourite person ever and why - not including family or friends or other comedians?

Shane MacGowan. His music has gotten me through the toughest times in my life. He has this ability to encapsulate so much emotion and feeling in once line. “One summer evening drunk to hell I sat there nearly lifeless...”It’s so good and so fucking evocative. He is the true definition of an artist. I was brought up on the Pogues, and I always remember sitting in the back seat of the car whilst Red Roses For Me played on a cassette tape and all the imagery just echoed throughout my brain: “... and I took him out the back and I broke his fucking balls...” - so aggressive and powerful – so expressive.

It really tuned me into the bigger themes of life at a young age. He has a knack of not sugar coating anything and just saying it like it is. The world is shit. Life is hard. But there is beauty everywhere. You just need to look hard for it.

13. Do you keep your drawers tidy and if not why not?

Strictly tidy. All colour co-ordinated and at right angles. I feel if I can keep my belongings in order, then hopefully that will have a direct impact on keeping my mental thought processes in order. It never works. Ever.

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