Mod obsessive, Ian Moore, first rose to the top of UK comedy, then commuted from France to gigs after opening a chambres d'hôtes (B&B). Finally becoming a best selling author and chutney producer! This is the story of one man's escape from the comedy circuit.
Watch interviews on our YouTube channel. Support our show! Contributions can be made to Steve Gribbin's Ko-fi account or Paul Ricketts JokePit account. You can also email us.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
[00:00:01] Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast, You Should Have Been Here Last Week hosted by myself Steve Gribbin and fellow comic Paul Ricketts in which we interview the movers and the shakers and interesting characters involved in the comedy industry as we like to call it. And this week we have a very, very special guest, Ian Moore, stand up comedian. It says, I'm reading out the list of your cultures, but also, how do you feel about it?
[00:01:00] Highly successful novelist.
[00:01:03] I am.
[00:01:05] And one of the greatest, the snappiest dresses on the comedy circuits, the wonderful Ian Moore. So welcome to the show, Ian.
[00:01:15] Thanks very much for having me, Steve and Paul. Nice to see you.
[00:01:18] Yeah. We start off by asking you basically, how did you first get started in comedy? What was the impetus for you to become a comedian?
[00:01:30] There was no impetus for me at all. I went to see a gig at the Banana in 1995 with a friend of mine and she's my oldest friend. We've known each other since we were 13.
[00:01:48] And we were both living in South London at the time. And we came out and she said, what do you think? And I just did that typical bloke thing.
[00:01:56] I went, yeah, I can do that.
[00:02:00] And I just thought that would be it. And then she rang me up a couple of weeks later and said, all right, you put your money where your mouth is. I've booked you a five minute open spot.
[00:02:08] It was in Tunbridge Wells. The Spanner and something, it was a pub. It was, you know, just one of these pub things.
[00:02:17] So your first gig was an out of town gig?
[00:02:21] It was, yeah. I always like to do the shires and then work up to the West End before I got it ready.
[00:02:30] And what was that first gig like?
[00:02:32] Do you know what? I have no idea. I mean, it must have gone okay.
[00:02:35] But I think I was so terrified that the memory of the actual gig itself escapes me.
[00:02:42] I can remember the nervousness leading up to it. I can remember the kind of euphoria after it.
[00:02:48] But the actual stage and gig time, I have no recollection of at all. None at all.
[00:02:56] Yeah, I remember Tunbridge Wells. It used to be, there was a very, very long running gig there by Off The Curb.
[00:03:03] And they used to give everybody a note, didn't they? The note said, please do not refer to Tunbridge Wells as Royal Tunbridge Wells because they're fed up with it.
[00:03:13] Absolutely.
[00:03:14] It's in the bloody name.
[00:03:16] But it was quite funny then to go in and just go, you are, and just repeat that because I always ended up comparing it.
[00:03:24] So I'd always read that out and say, I'm really sorry that you people are on your uppers.
[00:03:29] And that you've all, you know, coming on a caravan from Celsie.
[00:03:32] And, you know, it was, yeah, it was silly that you had to be given warnings like that.
[00:03:38] But so many people did the same stuff that I guess you had to do it.
[00:03:43] I know.
[00:03:44] I know.
[00:03:44] Yeah.
[00:03:44] And so you really sort of made the crossover, not crossover, but you became a very highly successful novelist.
[00:03:55] I mean, what was the sort of the idea behind that?
[00:04:00] I mean, did you always want to do that or?
[00:04:02] I think the thing was that when I moved to France in 2005, and so the commuting every week just became tougher and tougher and tougher.
[00:04:22] I remember meeting you in like Green Ribs and you always looked knackered.
[00:04:27] Oh, just absolutely exhausted.
[00:04:30] Just trying to get by on adrenaline.
[00:04:35] And the thing was that the gigs became the least important part of the whole trip.
[00:04:41] It was about travel and about connections and about how could I double up with that to make it worthwhile.
[00:04:47] So each gig I was concentrating less and less on and therefore enjoying it less.
[00:04:52] And I just had to, I just had to, I was, I was ill by that time as well.
[00:04:56] So traveling was really, really difficult.
[00:04:59] So it became a kind of necessity, an absolute necessity to find something other than gigging.
[00:05:08] And writing is obviously the, you know, the next thing you try.
[00:05:12] So I'm thinking the subtext to this particular episode is how to escape comedy.
[00:05:20] Yeah.
[00:05:21] Well, that's, that's the thing.
[00:05:23] I looked at your website and I thought, this is a man who successfully escaped.
[00:05:27] Tramping along in the motorway, standing in train stations and found, because I want to ask you several questions.
[00:05:36] Going further back here, we seem to have jumped the whole thing about why, how did you get to France?
[00:05:42] Why did you get to France?
[00:05:43] I mean, where are you originally from?
[00:05:45] I know it sounds like the worst question for any black person to ask a white person.
[00:05:51] How dare you?
[00:05:53] Well, yes.
[00:05:54] I'm from Blackburn originally, but then we moved around a lot when I was, when I was small and I ended up in London.
[00:06:03] And my wife is, is half French.
[00:06:06] And we just reached a point where we just had our first son and we were like, why are we living in Crawley?
[00:06:16] You know, why?
[00:06:17] I mean, her parents were living in Crawley.
[00:06:19] So that's why we were living in Crawley.
[00:06:20] But it was, I just thought, all right, so we want a bigger family.
[00:06:25] I'm going to have to work seven nights a week on the worst gigs everywhere to keep up with a mortgage in a place I don't want to live in.
[00:06:34] And that was the way I looked at it.
[00:06:37] So we were coming to France on holiday every year and we were looking at the property prices and going, oh, my God, we could sell this Lego box we have on an estate in Crawley and get a dummy chateau with acres and acres of land for the same price.
[00:06:54] But we'd be mortgage free and I could just commute back because I don't have to be anywhere specific to live because I'm getting in a different place every weekend.
[00:07:03] And that was, that was, that was the whole reason behind it.
[00:07:06] And at the time I just thought this is easy.
[00:07:08] You know, the flight, my local airport is, is like 45 minutes drive away at the flight into London Stansted with like 50 minutes.
[00:07:16] And you just say, this is, this is easier than, than getting a, you know, a commuter training from SIDCUP.
[00:07:22] This would be so easy.
[00:07:24] I mean, it didn't work out that way, but initially that's how I sold it to myself and subsequently my wife.
[00:07:34] So, which is why we came here.
[00:07:36] When you first went to France, could you speak French or did you have to really?
[00:07:41] No, I could speak a little bit, but not, you know, no, in a word, not.
[00:07:49] Not very, very little.
[00:07:52] I like that.
[00:07:53] Very, very little.
[00:07:53] Was it a steep, very steep Lurvin curve though?
[00:07:56] Because you, you sort of like pitch straight into it.
[00:07:58] Obviously you've got to.
[00:07:59] Well, no, less so for me because I wasn't there very much.
[00:08:04] So, you know, when I came home, I was knackered and we just wouldn't even unpack my case.
[00:08:09] I'd get home on a Sunday night and I would leave again on a, on a Thursday morning and virtually see nobody other than the Boulanger.
[00:08:16] And I could, I could get, I could get by on a baguette civil play for, for, for three days a week.
[00:08:24] It was harder for, for the boys.
[00:08:27] Natalie was fluent obviously and she had family living in the town that we moved to.
[00:08:31] But I mean, my, my son who was four when we moved here was very reluctant initially to, to try and, to try and even make the effort.
[00:08:40] It was only, I remember, he was making no friends.
[00:08:44] He hadn't been in school very long at this point, but he was very reluctant to, to try.
[00:08:49] And, um, I said, look, I'll, I'll buy you a lightsaber if you make more of an effort.
[00:08:55] And, and within two weeks he was fluent.
[00:08:57] And, and that is, that is the power of the hours.
[00:09:01] What is lightsaber in French?
[00:09:04] Uh, le sable de léger.
[00:09:06] No, uh, le sable de lumi.
[00:09:09] Epi, Epi de lumi.
[00:09:10] There's so many variations you could possibly have on that.
[00:09:13] Yeah.
[00:09:13] Yeah.
[00:09:14] Uh, I mean, I love the way that, I mean, they, they've sort of gone back on that now,
[00:09:18] but the French used to, there was a big movement was to get rid of all, uh, like, you know, low weekend.
[00:09:24] They wants to get rid of all foreign words and get their own words for them.
[00:09:28] Um, well, there's just no chance.
[00:09:30] There's just no chance there, you know, they're fighting a losing battle because I am, I forget the figures,
[00:09:35] but there's something like, um, 600,000 words in English.
[00:09:40] And obviously that includes American, but only 70,000 words in French and everything new that comes out is not,
[00:09:47] uh, you know, is a more global word.
[00:09:50] So it's American English, not even, not English English.
[00:09:53] So they're just fighting a losing battle completely.
[00:09:56] Uh, and it gets some people really annoyed, which is, which is fun to watch.
[00:10:04] Yeah.
[00:10:05] The iPhone.
[00:10:06] Did they say iPhone?
[00:10:07] We have to say iPhone.
[00:10:08] Uh, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:10] Be iPhone.
[00:10:10] Yeah.
[00:10:11] Yeah.
[00:10:11] Yeah.
[00:10:11] And, and, you know, they had this, um, email, which is email is so easy, obviously, but the French,
[00:10:18] uh, the Academy Francaise, which is, which is the kind of custodian of the French language.
[00:10:22] So no, no, no, no, it's not email.
[00:10:24] It's le, le courier de mail, uh, which is, you know, that's four words.
[00:10:34] No, no, no, we're not doing that, mate.
[00:10:36] We're not doing that, pal.
[00:10:37] More now, mate, it's me.
[00:10:40] I do remember you telling me once that, um, you became, so in your local community, they,
[00:10:45] they refer to you as the Englishman, didn't they?
[00:10:48] Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:48] Miss you are so British.
[00:10:50] That is my nickname.
[00:10:51] Miss you are so British.
[00:10:52] Ha, ha, ha, ha.
[00:10:56] What do they think was so British?
[00:10:58] Yeah.
[00:10:59] Well, I, there weren't, there wasn't many, um, mods wearing Edwardian frock coats in the
[00:11:05] boulangerie queue in the morning.
[00:11:07] I think that's probably what gave it away.
[00:11:09] Um, you know, and I would try it, but my accent is so, um, my, my accent is not good.
[00:11:18] I've, I've worked on it for years and years and years.
[00:11:20] And I do gig in French and I always make it clear at the start of the gig that I will
[00:11:25] say, look, you can either have the words or the accent, but you can't have both.
[00:11:29] And you certainly can't have both at the same time.
[00:11:31] So you're going to have to make a choice.
[00:11:34] I mean, what is that like gigging?
[00:11:36] I mean, doing a gig in another language.
[00:11:38] I mean, what's the first time I did it, I was utterly terrified, utterly terrified.
[00:11:43] Um, cause you're, you're, you're flying on one engine and you know, you've got four
[00:11:49] because you, you haven't got the ability to, you know, riff.
[00:11:53] I don't really like the word in terms of comedy, but you can't be relaxed.
[00:11:57] You can't react to a situation as quickly as you would like, or react to a reaction as
[00:12:03] quickly as you would like.
[00:12:04] So you are basically just doing the material, um, without any kind of real
[00:12:09] personality behind it.
[00:12:11] So it certainly initially, it was very, very difficult.
[00:12:14] Um, and I remember I did the first gig I did in, in French.
[00:12:19] Um, there was a French actor who came on after me and she was quite new.
[00:12:22] She, you know, she, she wasn't very experienced herself.
[00:12:25] So she hadn't really judged the room.
[00:12:27] And my gig had gone really well.
[00:12:29] Um, and she came on and she went, that guy, how, how on earth did you understand his
[00:12:35] accent?
[00:12:35] That's just a, you know, awful accent.
[00:12:38] And they booed her, the crowd booed her because, because they had it in their head that I was
[00:12:46] this sort of character act who'd done an appalling accent deliberately.
[00:12:50] Brilliant.
[00:12:51] And, and, and, and therefore she had misjudged not only the room, but me as well, which
[00:12:57] wasn't fair.
[00:12:58] I mean, it wasn't an appalling accent.
[00:12:59] It wasn't deliberate at all.
[00:13:00] Um, but, but I kind of prey on that now when I do a French gig that I, you know, will
[00:13:06] make sure that it is, you know, I once did, I was once employed.
[00:13:11] I've always looked for various jobs over here and I, and I was employed to do a voice
[00:13:16] over for a game, uh, a video game thing.
[00:13:21] And I, and I'd had a few jobs through this company in Paris and I'll go up and I, and I'd
[00:13:24] do these, you know, screeching into a microphone and cries and all that.
[00:13:28] And they, they employed me to, to play a role of an invading Viking, but I would speak French.
[00:13:35] And the reason why they employed me was that they wanted somebody whose accent was, was,
[00:13:40] was really quite bad.
[00:13:41] So you'd know that they were speaking French, but they weren't French.
[00:13:45] Yeah.
[00:13:46] Yeah.
[00:13:46] And, um, and I started it and they sacked me after 10 minutes and said, your accent is
[00:13:51] so bad that, that it goes way beyond the remit and nobody's going to understand the word.
[00:13:59] You're like the Dick Van Dyke of, uh.
[00:14:02] Oh, worse, worse than Dick Van Dyke.
[00:14:07] I'd like to ask what, what French audiences are like to play to?
[00:14:11] How, how's their behavior and how do they react to comedy?
[00:14:14] The biggest difference, the biggest difference is that, um, obviously the, the British have
[00:14:22] this reputation that they can laugh at themselves.
[00:14:26] Um, the sort of self-deprecation and self-mockery is part of their psyche, whereas it certainly
[00:14:35] isn't in France.
[00:14:36] You, that you can't, you can't get away with that in France.
[00:14:40] They'll take it very personally that you are, you are slating them.
[00:14:43] So if I do, um, a gig in English, I will mock the English because that's how we do it.
[00:14:50] We laugh at ourselves.
[00:14:51] If I'm doing a gig in French, I will still mock the English because that's what they expect,
[00:14:57] you know, and, and they, they, they wouldn't take it any other way.
[00:15:01] I mean, really, if you sort of went on and did that kind of classic thing, oh, good to
[00:15:05] be in Toulouse, what a shit hole this place is, they'd get really angry.
[00:15:09] Well, they just, just wouldn't, they wouldn't get angry.
[00:15:12] They'd just go, hang on, this is, this is not why we're here.
[00:15:17] We're, we're French.
[00:15:18] This is, this is the greatest Toulouse in the Toulouse region.
[00:15:21] We're not having this fun in the Toulouse region.
[00:15:23] I mean, and also what about styles of comedy?
[00:15:26] What, what sort of things are popular in France in the way of...
[00:15:29] Well, it's more physical.
[00:15:30] I think it's more, there's more physical humour that's still, you know, the classic one that's
[00:15:37] always sort of trotted out is that they're all fans of Benny Hill, which I don't know
[00:15:44] if that's true.
[00:15:44] You don't see Benny Hill on television, that's for sure.
[00:15:47] They love Mr. Bean, but then Mr. Bean is completely universal because it's physical.
[00:15:52] Um, I remember years ago being, um, we were staying with family for Christmas and my wife's
[00:15:59] uncle said, oh, you know, you're a standup comedian.
[00:16:02] You'll love this.
[00:16:03] And he put this DVD on and it was, it was basically the Charlie Chaplin, um, dancing with the potato,
[00:16:10] with the potential in the potato.
[00:16:12] Um, but with a silhouetted background and sort of, so it's just the heads above that.
[00:16:18] And it was just pure puppetry.
[00:16:20] It was, it was quite childish puppetry.
[00:16:23] Um, and that, you know, and I think that that's still quite pervasive on television.
[00:16:28] You don't get a lot of, uh, the satire is more spitting image, the gonguignol on, uh,
[00:16:34] on an evening, but you know, you don't see a lot of, it's very slapstick based still.
[00:16:42] I think, um, there's no, there's no kind of circuit here or there wasn't certainly, you
[00:16:49] know, 15 years ago.
[00:16:50] There is, there's more of a circuit now and it's, and it's a really interesting circuit
[00:16:54] because it's come out of the, the suburbs of big cities.
[00:16:58] So it's, it's, it's very sort of, um, North African pushed, if you like, it's almost, it's
[00:17:05] almost the way rap grew, um, in the seventies that, that people who feel like they're disenfranchised
[00:17:11] by what's going on elsewhere.
[00:17:13] Yeah.
[00:17:14] This is their outlet for it, which is a really interesting thing.
[00:17:17] Um, well, that sounds pretty vibrant.
[00:17:20] Yeah, it is.
[00:17:21] And it's growing and it's growing more and more.
[00:17:24] Um, but it is also growing in terms of, um, an American model, which means that, you know,
[00:17:32] people aren't earning money out of it and they're doing like six or seven shows shuffling
[00:17:36] around three or four gigs in Paris doing that.
[00:17:39] Um, so there's not, there's not, you know, we, we got very lucky when we were, when certainly
[00:17:44] when I started, I started just the right time that I could, you know, sell my soul to the
[00:17:49] jungler's devil.
[00:17:50] And it was able to make a living out of it.
[00:17:53] There was, there was no artistry involved in that.
[00:17:56] I mean, that's fascinating because I, I, friends of mine have told me that they have seen stand-up,
[00:18:02] French stand-up, but exactly borne out by what you said, that it's, it was rare until
[00:18:09] quite recently that it's getting more prevalence.
[00:18:12] Um, so going back to the, so, I mean, we could talk about the novels now because, um, why did
[00:18:19] you choose the sort of the genre that you chose?
[00:18:22] Because every single comic has chosen the same genre, uh, pretty much.
[00:18:27] I mean, that's a massive generalization.
[00:18:30] Yeah.
[00:18:30] Yeah.
[00:18:31] If it's, I think it's fair to say.
[00:18:33] Yeah.
[00:18:33] I've got, yeah.
[00:18:34] What?
[00:18:34] Billingham, Quave, me, uh, who's the fourth?
[00:18:39] Evans, uh, Dan Evans.
[00:18:42] Dan Evans.
[00:18:42] Dan Evans.
[00:18:43] Of course.
[00:18:43] Dan.
[00:18:44] Yes.
[00:18:44] Of course.
[00:18:45] D.I.
[00:18:45] D.I.
[00:18:45] S.
[00:18:45] Yeah.
[00:18:47] D.I.
[00:18:47] S.
[00:18:52] D.I.
[00:18:52] That he should, he should make them, um, uh, what's the adult word for comic books?
[00:18:59] Um.
[00:19:00] Oh, graphic novel.
[00:19:02] Graphic novels.
[00:19:03] Graphic, that's it.
[00:19:04] It's the same thing, you know, but, you know, I think they make great graphic novels.
[00:19:09] Anyway.
[00:19:10] Yes, mine are more certainly the ones that have been bestsellers,
[00:19:16] the Folle Valley series that I write.
[00:19:18] They're more comic than the others.
[00:19:24] There's an element of slapstick to it.
[00:19:26] And I just, to be honest, I'd written a serious crime novel
[00:19:32] and tried to push it with agents and it didn't get anywhere.
[00:19:36] And I self-published it then and then realised that self-publishing
[00:19:41] is so much hard work and that I didn't have the energy or the time to devote to that
[00:19:48] because you need more energy in self-publishing to push it
[00:19:53] than you do to even write the bloody thing in the start.
[00:19:56] So I sat down and this was sort of early 2019.
[00:20:06] I sat down and went, right, I need to change career.
[00:20:09] I need to do something.
[00:20:11] But I'm just going to write something I want to read,
[00:20:14] which is a purely comic crime novel set in rural France.
[00:20:18] I'd opened up a B&B at that time, a Chambordort here.
[00:20:25] And so I based it around a middle-aged Englishman who owns Chambordort.
[00:20:30] That was the centre for it.
[00:20:33] And partly because I thought, well, this is a great centre for a book
[00:20:38] where you can get different characters coming in and out in different stories.
[00:20:43] But also it was a cathartic experience because I was so bad at hospitality.
[00:20:50] You were famously copy host, weren't you?
[00:20:54] I know.
[00:20:54] I used to see your posts.
[00:20:56] Just awful.
[00:20:57] You know, and rude.
[00:20:59] And I just thought, well, I could sort of kill my guests in a literature sense
[00:21:05] or kill them in a literary sense.
[00:21:08] And obviously your TripAdvisor ratings go down if you actually murder your guests.
[00:21:13] So I just thought I'd put them in books.
[00:21:16] And it's worked.
[00:21:17] It worked out pretty well.
[00:21:19] I mean, how many is it?
[00:21:21] Five now you've done?
[00:21:22] Five?
[00:21:23] I'm writing the fifth now.
[00:21:25] I've had the fourth one of that series is being published this June.
[00:21:32] That's Death in Le Jardin.
[00:21:34] But I write another series as well, which is more serious and sort of more –
[00:21:40] I call it Morse on tour.
[00:21:44] It's that kind of more cerebral but not heavy psychological noir.
[00:21:50] Yeah.
[00:21:51] But again, those are set in France.
[00:21:53] And I really enjoyed writing those.
[00:21:55] And I've written the second one of those.
[00:21:57] And I'll start on the third one of those after I've written the fifth one
[00:22:01] or the other.
[00:22:01] But I've set up some kind of crime sweatshop here in Rural.
[00:22:08] Loads of kids just banging them out.
[00:22:11] Yeah.
[00:22:12] Very little money.
[00:22:15] When you write them, do you write them in English
[00:22:17] and then they're translated into French or –
[00:22:19] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:22:20] Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:21] No, I would never write them in French.
[00:22:23] It just – I'm fluent.
[00:22:25] According to my wife, I'm fluent now.
[00:22:27] But it's not – that's not something I like to put about in case people
[00:22:30] will test you out.
[00:22:31] Oh, God, yeah.
[00:22:32] But I'm – no, I would never start with the idea of writing them in French.
[00:22:36] Did publishers take you seriously straight away when you went to them,
[00:22:41] coming from comedy?
[00:22:45] I got very lucky with this – well, the first one in this series
[00:22:49] was called Death and Croissant.
[00:22:51] And I just got lucky straight away.
[00:22:54] I found an agent and a publisher was sort of lined up already
[00:22:59] because I had contacts with – I published a couple of books
[00:23:03] about 10 years ago about moving to France and being a comedian on the road
[00:23:07] and having the two lives.
[00:23:10] So I had some contacts from there.
[00:23:12] In fact, that was called Alamod, the first one I wrote of that,
[00:23:17] and that's been re-released – this year being re-released and repackaged
[00:23:21] and called Vive le Chaos, which is – you know, it's interesting
[00:23:27] that the books, the crime books have been so successful
[00:23:31] that a publisher has gone back and scraped what they can out of my back catalogue.
[00:23:41] Yes, yes.
[00:23:42] Your early albums have been repackaged.
[00:23:45] These are an early pressing at Sun City Studios
[00:23:49] that are going to make the light of day.
[00:23:52] This is a true story about French attitudes.
[00:23:55] I know Parisians are meant to be much ruder than the rest of France,
[00:23:59] but I actually went into – and I used to be able to speak a bit of French,
[00:24:04] but I went into this patisserie in the centre of Paris,
[00:24:08] and I just said, you know, je voudrais acheter un croissant.
[00:24:12] And she went, huh?
[00:24:14] And she made me say the word croissant about ten times
[00:24:19] and just affected not to know what I was talking about.
[00:24:23] So in the end, I was reduced to going – and then she went, ah, croissant,
[00:24:29] right in my face like this.
[00:24:31] And I felt about that big.
[00:24:33] Paris is an entirely different world.
[00:24:35] I've got really good friends in Paris, but there are just –
[00:24:40] you just hit upon these big city attitudes whose livelihood actually depends
[00:24:45] on people like you going in and buying a croissant.
[00:24:49] But they're so willing to burn that bridge that it will make you go through hell.
[00:24:56] But outside of France, it just isn't like that.
[00:24:59] You know, I mean, we've been here, what, 20 years, next January,
[00:25:03] and we've just been, you know, just delightfully accepted since the minute we arrived.
[00:25:10] You know, I mean, obviously that's a lot to do with the fact that Natalie's French,
[00:25:14] she had family here.
[00:25:17] The kids have grown up completely bilingual and as French as English.
[00:25:21] But I've never encountered anything like that.
[00:25:24] The only rudeness I've encountered around here is me from my own B&B.
[00:25:28] I think that I'm about the rudest person in the area.
[00:25:31] So I'm carrying that sort of Parisian tradition further south.
[00:25:36] Chutney, because I just thought, I mean, the idea that you go to France
[00:25:40] and then make chutney, that's – I just love the name anyway.
[00:25:45] I mean, it sounds like, you know, it should be part of London.
[00:25:48] It sounds vaguely disgusting as well.
[00:25:52] You say that, you know, you're a chutney producer.
[00:25:55] It just sounds euphemistically.
[00:26:01] We moved in here.
[00:26:03] The people who sold this place, they had one daughter.
[00:26:08] It's a big place and they had one daughter.
[00:26:10] And for her 21st birthday, they planted 21 fruit trees.
[00:26:14] And this is a – you know, which is a lovely gesture.
[00:26:19] But she very rudely just went, I don't like trees, I don't like fruit,
[00:26:26] and I don't like this place.
[00:26:27] She was some angry, spoilt little girl.
[00:26:32] And they immediately put the house on the market,
[00:26:35] like the day after her 21st birthday.
[00:26:37] What?
[00:26:37] I haven't given this gesture.
[00:26:38] Yeah, and we, like two hours later, turned up and signed a compromis devant.
[00:26:45] So within 24 hours, they had this fit of paper that their place was on the market
[00:26:50] and it was sold and we took it.
[00:26:52] What a birthday party that was.
[00:26:55] I know, what a disaster.
[00:26:57] So we had this orchard and just so much fruit.
[00:27:04] So it's so much fruit.
[00:27:04] And I'm not a fruit eater because – and I used to say this on stage as the lead up
[00:27:11] to the chutney material.
[00:27:13] The chutney material.
[00:27:15] As the lead up to this, I used to say, look, I don't eat fresh fruit.
[00:27:18] I'm a mod.
[00:27:19] I don't want any juice on my Fred Perry.
[00:27:21] That's not the way forward.
[00:27:22] So I would literally just – we'd take the surface of fruit
[00:27:25] and I'd boil all the goodness out of it and stick a load of vinegar
[00:27:29] and sugar in it and make chutney.
[00:27:31] And I just happened to mention this a couple of times early on when I started doing it
[00:27:36] and it just – it kind of stuck.
[00:27:38] People – every interview, I would have to go, so what chutney do you do?
[00:27:42] And I built up this whole myth around me being this independent chutney producer
[00:27:50] in France, which, you know, I made a load of chutney, but, I mean,
[00:27:54] I was not selling it at all.
[00:27:56] But people kind of fell for that nonsense that I was an independent producer
[00:28:04] of chutney in rural France, which it would never have caught on.
[00:28:09] You know, I mean, the thing – it's changed now.
[00:28:12] There's a sort of relaxing of the chutney attitudes now,
[00:28:14] but certainly initially the idea that you would be served local French cheese
[00:28:22] and you'd say, hey, do you want some of this stuff that I've boiled into a jar
[00:28:27] to have with you?
[00:28:31] You'd be deported.
[00:28:34] Local chutney for local people.
[00:28:37] So I'm just – I'd like to ask as well.
[00:28:40] I mean, are you – so you're still doing some comedy, aren't you?
[00:28:45] You haven't given up entirely.
[00:28:46] Are you still coming over and doing gigs or –
[00:28:49] Only corporate stuff.
[00:28:50] Right.
[00:28:51] Only corporate stuff.
[00:28:52] I did my last – my last circuit gig I did nearly a year ago,
[00:28:59] which was in Harrogate.
[00:29:00] And I was at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and having a great time,
[00:29:06] and then somebody dropped out at a gig that Toby Jones runs,
[00:29:10] and so I went across town.
[00:29:12] And it's such a lovely gig.
[00:29:14] You know that gig, the Harrogate Theatre.
[00:29:17] Oh, God, it's so nice.
[00:29:19] And I had a great time, and I came off, and it literally fell into Toby's arms,
[00:29:24] a little bit of a tear, and I just went, that's it.
[00:29:28] I'm done.
[00:29:29] And that's the perfect ending.
[00:29:31] It was – you know, I'm here to sell books and to talk to crime writing fans,
[00:29:38] but I've done this, and it's just the perfect sort of relay
[00:29:41] that the batons have been handed on.
[00:29:43] And that was it.
[00:29:44] That was it as far as circuit comedy goes.
[00:29:47] But like I say, I'll do the corporate stuff, which I'm happy to do, obviously.
[00:29:53] It's not as glorious as Harrogate Theatre on a Saturday night.
[00:29:58] Yeah, but it pays well, doesn't it?
[00:30:01] It pays well.
[00:30:02] And, you know, and I do enjoy a lot of – I do mainly awards ceremonies,
[00:30:07] and I enjoy them.
[00:30:08] I just enjoy them.
[00:30:09] And because a lot of comics go into corporates with the wrong attitude,
[00:30:15] like they're either – they're above them or the idea that corporates are beneath them
[00:30:21] as an art or they're expecting to die or whatever.
[00:30:26] I just don't.
[00:30:27] I just go in there and just enjoy myself, you know.
[00:30:30] I mean, you've probably got better suits than a lot of people there at the corporates, haven't you?
[00:30:35] Well, that is one of – that was the thing.
[00:30:40] That was – I mean, that was the thing.
[00:30:41] When I first – because obviously when I'd been here about – when was this?
[00:30:47] It was 2011, and it was getting more and more expensive to commute every weekend,
[00:30:52] and I needed the corporate work to be able to continue to do the circuit work,
[00:30:56] but also to live where we're living.
[00:30:59] And I said to my agent at the time, you know, I need more corporate work, you know.
[00:31:04] And he said, we could get you more corporate work, but it's your sideburns to hold you back.
[00:31:15] What are you talking about?
[00:31:20] It's sideburns or no.
[00:31:23] I've done very well out of it.
[00:31:27] And refuse to refuse to compromise on facial hair of any kind.
[00:31:31] Yeah, good for you.
[00:31:33] I think we're running out of time, Paul, aren't we?
[00:31:35] Yes, we are.
[00:31:36] That's what happens every time, round about this time on the podcast.
[00:31:39] Round about this time, yeah, I know.
[00:31:40] It's been really interesting.
[00:31:42] I mean, the whole thing about corporate is a whole other thing in itself because, you know, there's so many –
[00:31:49] And that's very interesting that you should say that about that attitude because, you know, I have done some,
[00:31:55] but, I mean, they've mainly been disasters because I'm not – but it's horses for courses.
[00:32:00] But I've always gone in with the attitude that I'm not good enough to do them, and maybe that's coloured, you know.
[00:32:07] Yeah.
[00:32:08] It's like 90% of comics talk themselves out of corporate before they've got there, and then they'll see the setup and go, well, I can't work with this.
[00:32:17] Whereas if it was just a club, you'd go in and go, right, I'm just going to use my skills and we'll get through it.
[00:32:23] Yeah.
[00:32:24] And that's really all you need to do, you know.
[00:32:27] We've all done gigs that are far worse setups than, you know, 99% of corporates.
[00:32:32] Okay, you might struggle at the odd one.
[00:32:34] You might die at the odd one.
[00:32:35] But you are being paid well for the skills that you've accrued over the years.
[00:32:42] And that's a nice position to be in because you can storm a gig for 80 quid on a Tuesday night and something.
[00:32:48] You feel good about yourself.
[00:32:49] But I'd rather have two grand for the hotel down the road for using the same skills, you know.
[00:32:58] And the audiences aren't that much different.
[00:33:01] One of the main reasons I'm good at corporates is that, obviously, traditionally, your corporate audience is a middle-aged white audience, I would say.
[00:33:13] And they are largely disappointed in life.
[00:33:17] So when they're faced with a middle-aged white comic who can express their disappointments in life, we get on pretty well.
[00:33:26] We've got that.
[00:33:28] We've got that middle corporate ground.
[00:33:31] I've never really looked at it like that before.
[00:33:33] Disappointments is the key word.
[00:33:35] It is.
[00:33:36] It really is.
[00:33:36] It really is.
[00:33:37] Just because they're high rollers doesn't mean they're not, you know, going, oh, God, I've got to pay for this.
[00:33:42] I've got to pay for that.
[00:33:43] I found that kind of that middle ground with a corporate audience that works.
[00:33:48] I think this is the end of the podcast.
[00:33:51] I'm going to congratulate you, Ian, for finding a successful way, a wonderful way out of stand-up comedy.
[00:33:58] Like Houdini with Bob Brown.
[00:34:00] That's what this should be called, Escape from Comedy.
[00:34:03] I like to feel like...
[00:34:04] I think that's exactly what I'm going to call it.
[00:34:08] I think with the hat as well, I like to feel like I'm James Coburn just strolling across the Spanish border at the end of the Great Escape.
[00:34:16] And looking back at my friends, but not missing where I came from.
[00:34:23] You can always have Harrogate if you want.
[00:34:25] Yeah.
[00:34:25] Exactly.
[00:34:26] We'll always have Harrogate.
[00:34:30] Yeah.
[00:34:31] Brilliant.
[00:34:31] Well, thanks very much for coming on, Ian.
[00:34:33] That was really, really...
[00:34:34] No, thanks for asking me.
[00:34:36] Fantastic.
[00:34:36] Yeah.
[00:34:37] Thank you for coming.
[00:34:38] Brilliant.
[00:34:38] Paul, are you going to wrap up?
[00:34:40] No, I've just wrapped up.
[00:34:41] That's it.
[00:34:42] That was me wrapping up.
[00:34:43] Oh, OK.
[00:34:45] Everyone said thank you, thank you, thank you.
[00:34:46] What else do I need to say?
[00:34:48] Oh, I thought you were going to say, please tune into this wonderful podcast every week.
[00:34:53] Actually, you're right.
[00:34:54] You're right.
[00:34:54] Let's do this quickly.
[00:34:56] Yeah.
[00:34:56] So if you've enjoyed this podcast, tell your friends, Facebook, YouTube, all the social medias,
[00:35:02] all the things I can't remember, trying to do it in less than one minute and burning up time by saying how much time I've got left.
[00:35:08] We'll see you in a couple of weeks' time.
[00:35:11] That's it.
[00:35:11] I'm done.
[00:35:12] Everyone say goodbye.
[00:35:14] Goodbye.
[00:35:14] Bye.
[00:35:15] See you soon, Ian.
[00:35:16] Cheers, mate.
[00:35:17] Cheers.
[00:35:17] Thanks, Paul.
[00:35:18] Thanks, Steve.
[00:35:19] Bye-bye.
[00:35:19] Cheers, Mum.
[00:35:19] Bye-bye.
[00:35:20] This show is part of Podomedy, the podcast comedy network.
[00:35:42] We're the best kept secret on Acast.
[00:35:46] Why not laugh at what else we've got?
[00:35:49] Check out Podomedy.com now.