Interviewed by Andrew Marc
A consummate professional, master of banter, loquacious and hugely personable – it can only be Lee Hurst, visiting Brighton & Hove on the 23rd on his new tour Too Scared To Leave The House. It’s his first proper tour for over a decade, starting in September 2012. Hurst, once a regular on our screen in the 90s on the popular BBC comedy panel quiz show, They Think It’s All Over, had to leave in 1998 due to illness. In the meantime he built his own comedy venue, The Backyard Club in his home manor of Bethnal Green, London, continued with stand up, writing and also ventured into property development.
He devised the hit-and-miss comedy C5 show Bring Me The Head of Light Entertainment, which first aired in 1997. Other TV credits include Shark Tank, Salvage Squad, The Warehouse, That’s Showbusiness, The Stand Up Show and Have I Got News For You. Lee also experimented with a topical stand up show format in 2011 called Man vs Woman in which audience members wrote down ideas for him to use in the second half, which turned out to be embryonic for his current tour. As a guest on radio shows, he’s been on The Steve Wright Show, Euromix, Two Men and a Transmitter and The Robert Elms Show and was team captain on Hold The Front Page.
I talked to Lee about his welcome return to proper touring, future plans and his steadfast fatalism.
“You can’t stand up here being
the big Charlie Big Bollocks …”
TOO SCARED TO LEAVE THE HOUSE
The title of Lee’s tour comes from an idea about basing a show around people’s fears. In the first part of the show, he gets people to write down their fears – the more bizarre the better; in the second part, he delves into them and improvs hilarious observations and engages in banter with whoever wrote them down. So far topics have included acid rain, mad cow disease, bird flu and “nightmares of coloured blobs” (Hurst reckons he drilled that one down to the man in question’s childhood viewing of 60s series The Prisoner). The audience interactive format emerged from doing gigs at his own club and trying out different formats.
‘What happened at my club over the years was I used to do one man shows on a Sunday night … we went through various changes – I would do three sections, so we’d get two intervals in – the first section would be circa 30 minutes warm up for the audience, but also you’re picking out characters throughout the night, you’re establishing characters in the audience.
Then the second section – in the early days it used to be a chat show. The audience would write questions – I would get a punter out – I would give them a tiny hand written script and they had to introduce me as their guest, so they were the chat show host. They would introduce me, I would come on, and then … they would interview me with the questions that the audience supplied.’
This then evolved into another gameshow type version called Beat The Hell Out Of Lee where a guest audience could ask anything they want, one of them became a quiz master and Lee had to improvise off that. This and his recent Man vs Woman mini tour in 2011, have been developed fully into his new tour.
Lee will tackle anything honestly given to him – one woman wrote down her fear as “Death of My Son” – obviously very emotive, but, as he says, rules are rules. ‘… in the end you think “do you know what? Do it. Do it.” Because you can’t stand up here being the big Charlie Big Bollocks and going “right, write down your fears and we’ll go through ‘em.” But then look at one and knock it back because you think “oh, that could be dodgy.” So I went for it. I just started chatting to the woman about it … and to be honest with you I can’t remember what I did now, but you just talk about it then you think “right, let’s see where this goes” and just go for it.’
COMEDY AND FATALISM
“It was a little bit naughty out there to be fair.”
In a recent TV appearance on Loose Women last month, Lee confirmed that he “doesn’t get nervous”. It stems from when he was doing athletics at school (he still keeps fit by running and attending a gym), and realised his nerves were detrimental – so he just rationalised them away. A neat trick if you can do it.
This rationalising of fear morphed into a fatalism that enabled him to go to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006 during a “big break from my club” to do stand up for the troops. It was during one of the most dangerous periods of the war when enemy IEDs were increasingly causing casualties but Lee was more concerned about whether they had air conditioning.
‘It was a little bit naughty out there (Iraq) then to be fair. And then we went straight out to Afghan – that’s when it was kicking off in Helmand. That’s why I went. We were in a place called Al Amarah – Camp Abu Naji, near Al Amarah in Iraq – I’d done a couple of shows there that day. We were sitting with the lads watching British Forces Broadcast – you know, their TV channel, and they’d took a couple of casualties in Afghan and I went “can we go to Afghan n’all?” If they blow me up they blow me up, there’s no point just sweating about it.’ (laughs)
Lee remembers it as one of the best and most worthwhile experiences of his life and did the gigs free of charge.
BACK IN BETHNAL GREEN’S BACKYARD
In his free time between tour dates, Lee’s been working hard on the re-build of his Bethnal Green club, The Backyard Comedy Club which he had demolished two years ago – “working like nutters to get it done”, and the project includes a hotel above the club. Delays due to contractor problems and a burst pipe mean some planned dates there have had to be postponed, but he remains upbeat about the project. ‘Yeah, we’re still fighting’. It’s due for completion this month.’
Most of his tour dates have been sell-outs, not just locally but further afield, a good sign of Hurst’s continued pulling power and fan base. He’s back doing what he loves best – engaging, rewarding and hilarious interactive comedy. He’s already planning his next tour, due to start in October and “a couple of other things I might get involved with which are very much out there” as well as more property development. It’s great to see him back.