Interview: Michael McIntyre
Michael McIntyre's new DVD is out now
Also In The News
Monday, 23, Nov 2009 06:09
By Lewis Bazley.
He's toured to half a million people, he's got the fastest-selling stand-up DVD ever and his primetime show is up for several awards - but what's Michael McIntyre more concerned about, the public or the critics?
A rather nervy interview with the Sunday Times was followed by a glowing profile from the Independent's Dominic Lawson, labelling McIntyre a comedian suitable for all the family, but meeting the 33-year-old with his new DVD ready for release, there's not a hint of anxiety about being the comedy sensation of the year.
Despite a sore throat being worsened by a day of promotional duties at a swanky Hampstead cinema, McIntyre's candour is refreshing, whether readily admitting his career ambitions, discussing the mix of friendship and antagonism of the stand-up comedy circuit or coming to terms with being the poster boy for middle-class comedy.
With a DVD sales record to shatter, McIntyre opens up on the stress of success, his dislike for icing and finding his comedic voice.
After Live and Laughing became the fastest-selling stand-up disc ever, did you feel a great deal of pressure to make the material for your 2009 arena tour bigger and better?
Yeah, obviously you're trying to make it better, always - but it's your voice. I've found my voice and I want to do lots and lots of DVDs, and I want to be like Eddie Izzard and Billy Connolly and just keep going and these are this year's jokes. There'll be next year's jokes and the year after that. You always want it to feel on a par and I know I can do better - I'm still striving for that.
Now you've hit this amazing high point of popularity...
(Mimics inthenews.co.uk's hand signal) This is the point here? Even though this is on a Dictaphone, I thought it was higher! (laughs) It seems really low!
But now you're at whatever level you're at - are you going to be watching the DVD sales nervously this week, thinking 'I've got to sell more than the last one did'?
You can't really resist the figures, 'cos they send you a chart so you can see them all! (laughs) I feel a bit more relaxed about it, because I've done such a big tour and have had a million people come out. I've done it endlessly and it's gone well and they're my audience and I just need them to come back and see my next tour. So I suppose the DVD is just the icing on the cake... although weirdly I don't eat the icing! (laughs) I like the cake but I find the icing a bit rich.
Does it not depend on the icing?
I don't know, I've never really gotten into icing, so although this is the icing on the cake, that's a bad thing for me! (laughs) And I hate the cherry on the top too! (laughs) But, seriously, the main thing for me is the live shows and giving them a good time, and hopefully I can keep doing that. I don't think I'm nervous about the sales - I hope people buy it.
Your rise has been astronomically fast, from the first Royal Variety Show.
Well, this time last year, the DVD came out and things started to take off a bit more, and I had a decision to make about this year. Obviously I was going to tour, but I'd planned to spend the whole year getting ready for the tour - and the prospect of the Comedy Roadshow at the BBC came up, and I knew that would sell me a lot of tickets and boost my profile. So the choice was whether I could take on both things.
As it's a lot of material?
Yeah, there's six roadshows, so all my bits come to about an hour, and then there's the live show, so that's like an hour and 45 mins, so it's almost three hours of new jokes. But I went for it - I thought I could do it. It's been really stressful! (laughs)
For some people, do you think it might feel like you've come from nowhere in two years, even though you did six, seven years of hard slog on the comedy circuit?
Well, you have to, otherwise I wouldn't know how to do it.
But do you think a lot of people might not recognise that, the amount of graft?
You have to do it, though - there's very few people who don't. I get the impression that Peter Kay didn't - I think he's really natural and confident, and obviously sensationally funny. Or Ricky Gervais, who was in TV and then took very naturally to performing on stage. But it took me a long time to work out how to be on stage and how to do it.
Is there some resentment on the stand-up circuit of people like Peter Kay and Ricky Gervais who've become hugely popular very quickly?
I don't know, and I don't really think it matters.
You're more concerned with the public enjoying it, and boosting your profile?
Yeah, the thing about other comics is that it's a weird, very individual thing. Sometimes it can feel like you're all in it together, because you're on the circuit, but you're not.
You're out for yourself?
Yeah, that's the weird thing. It's you individually standing in front of an audience and how the audience takes to you. You're not involved in each other's stuff, it's not a team game. I suppose it must be difficult if you do that for a long time and somebody comes along and gets a better reaction than you. It's always going to happen, but it must be tough if you're gigging for ten years and somebody shows up who gets twice as many laughs when they go on after you. It's hard to cope with that, but there are all sorts of things that play with the audience. It took me a long time to find that and to work on it.
Getting more comfortable on stage obviously comes with endless gigging, especially with shows the scale of which you've done recently.
The match fitness is enormously important. If you have two or three months off, or even two or three weeks, you don't really know what to do in front of an audience. But it becomes so second nature that even when I think I'm not having a great gig, I'm doing a lot that's good because I'm onstage every night and the confidence is there. I can impersonate me, I can do an impression of when I'm on form, even when I'm off.
What about the material? When you're preparing for a new show, do you try it out with your family, if you're at a dinner party with your wife, for example?
Not a lot, really. I get ideas that hang around and I build them up, but I try jokes out on audiences. I did the roadshows up until March, and then I started to prepare for the tour by gigging, I did 65, 70 warm-ups, arts centres, 2-300 people, it says 'work in progress' on the ticket, and you just see what lands. That's literally it, sometimes I'll giggle about something and it won't work, and I have to just bin it, and other times I won't expect something to go so well. It's the audience who tell you.
Did you see the recent article with Dominic Lawson where he said you're the only comedian that his kids let him watch?
I did, yes! (laughs)
And are you comfortable with being labelled "the comic who dares to be middle class"?
Well, I did this interview in the Sunday Times, in which ultimately I think I was too honest, (laughs), about how much stress I go through. And yeah, Dominic Lawson sort of picked up on it and was very nice. And he said I was a middle-class champion?
That's how the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard ran it, yes, saying you were the 'acceptable face' of middle-class comedy.
(laughs) Well, I'm grateful when people are nice! Comedy's so weird though, it just separates people so enormously. When somebody doesn't find somebody funny, they're enraged by it! (laughs) There are people I don't find funny; I've never really liked Monty Python, but I would never be rude about them because I know and understand that people love it! I just don't get it, but I don't get enraged by it! (laughs) Basically, there's loads of different comics and loads of different people find them funny. I might be perceived as being middle class, but my audience is the full spectrum, they're just there to have a laugh.
It's teenagers to grandparents, really, isn't it?
It is, all across the country, because people just want to have a laugh. but yeah, there's obviously a tendency to be pigeonholed and I'd much rather people were writing nice things! (laughs) Thank you Dominic Lawson!
Michael McIntyre: Hello Wembley! is out now on DVD.