What's So Funny?

09/03/2009

Rob Brydon spills the beans on Comic Relief and keeping up with the Joneses

Laura Kelly

To the untrained eye, Rob Brydon and his mate Ruth Jones – stars of hit sitcom Gavin and Stacey – may appear to be gadding about in the video for their Comic Relief single ‘(Barry) Islands in the Stream’. However, the Welsh comedian says they took their responsibilities very seriously indeed. A great believer in the power of Red Nose Day, Brydon was so determined to do a good job in the promo that he turned down a night of revelry in Las Vegas with his hero Tom Jones to make sure he was on top form for the shoot. Now that’s dedication.

“I don’t know if you should be impressed, or if it was a very stupid thing to do. I’m still not sure,” laughs Brydon. “We went backstage after his show and had champagne with him and it was all just fine and dandy. He then said, ‘We’re all going to go out now, do you want to come?’ – but it was getting late and we had to be up at 5.30 the next morning.

“It was very difficult, we had to say, ‘You know what Tom Jones, we don’t want to come and party with you in Vegas’.” We can only imagine what sort of high-end partying Brydon missed out on thanks to his sense of duty. Still, working with Tom Jones on the track ranks as one of the best experiences  Brydon has had in his career so far.  Brydon’s fondness for lapsing into an impression of the Welsh crooner is legendary.

“It’s always a joke among my friends. They come round and say, ‘It’s been eight minutes and you haven’t done Tom yet’. So singing with him was perfect, it really was. We had such a wonderful time doing it,” he says.

Brydon is gunning for the top of the charts with his single. He believes his tune has the edge on the second Comic Relief single – The Saturdays ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’.
“If you’re looking for glamour and wonderful examples of beauty, then look no further than Ruth and me. In terms of sheer good looks, we’d win out over The Saturdays, definitely,” he says .

Performing the Comic Relief single is a big gig – a job previously taken by comedy royalty Peter Kay, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and the cast of The Young Ones. It’s proof of Brydon’s rise that he’s been chosen to do it.

Thanks to award-winning BBC comedy hits Marion and Geoff and Gavin and Stacey, 43-year-old Brydon has become hot property. His “ruggedly handsome” (his words) face is a regular on Have I Got News For You, Little Britain and QI, while his rich, softly-accented tones have made him a fixture on Radio 4 stalwarts Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I
Haven’t a Clue.

In fact, he’s just been named as one of a trio of presenters who will take the place of the late Humphrey Lyttelton (on I’m Sorry….) and will attempt to revive the show, which had been chaired by the legendarily dry and witty Lyttelton from its inception in 1972 until the great man’s death in April last year, alongside Stephen Fry and Jack Dee. It’s a tough act to follow, as Brydon is all too aware: “I enjoy an innuendo at the best of times but you’d have to go a long way to top Humph’s innuendos!”

As the big fish of British comedy – Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand – all abandon (or are chased with pitchforks from) our shores to try their luck among Hollywood’s bright lights, it leaves an open door for Brydon to move from cult hero to major league player. All of which is a million miles from Brydon’s first job in showbiz. Although told he was “very funny” throughout his year at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, (he left without graduating), he started his career as a straight presenter on BBC Radio Wales.

He calls his early morning show “anodyne” and wasn’t even allowed to choose the records he played. Despite his radio-friendly sonorous voice, as a non-Welsh speaker he was unpopular with the establishment and had trouble pronouncing thornier names. So, after six years of putting in the hours, he woke up one day to find his contract wasn’t being renewed. He didn’t realise it at the time, but the dismissal was the start of Brydon’s rejection of all things Welsh.

“They let me go and as much as you want to be equanimous, the fact is they let me go,” Brydon says, talking to The Big Issue from his home in London, where he’s lived since the snub. “I’m on great terms with the editor from that time now and she laughs about it as her big booboo of letting me go. But there is a part of you that thinks, ‘Well I’ll show you’.”

Brydon now acknowledges the lasting bitterness connected with the affair, but the more immediate impact was he realised he had to leave Cardiff if he was going to find work. In classic Dick Whittington style, he went to London to find his fortune. He ended up on the Home Shopping Network – doing the voice over for Toilet Duck.
Although both roles provide sniping critics with plenty of ammo for mocking Brydon, he says they had their advantages.

“Being on the shopping channel and talking to the camera for an hour at a time is a great school,” he argues, “and doing the Toilet Duck commercial earned me a fortune, so I’m quite happy to take the jokes on the chin.”

In any case, while he was advertising detergents, Brydon was also creating his most lauded comedy character, storing up the seeds of his future success. A chance meeting with an old college buddy in the corridors of the BBC eventually brought brittle but cheerful divorced cab driver Keith Barret to the attention of Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow Productions and soon Marion and Geoff, built around Brydon’s alter-ego’s monologues, was garnering acclaim.

It was a long route to the top but the years in the wilderness have bestowed a prickly anxiety on Brydon’s comedy that has proved the key to his success. He says the delayed payoff taught him to appreciate what he has, and stopped him going off the rails and “acting like a buffoon”, but initially it did nothing to change his views on Wales.

He used his new platform to pillory his home as gloomy, histrionic and humourless until his oldest friend complained that he’d “sold his soul to the cynical English middle classes”.  

It was only last year, while making a documentary for BBC television, that Brydon finally changed his mind. Identity Crisis was fuelled by the fact Brydon wasn’t sure what it meant to be Welsh, and whether he liked it. It turned out to be the spark that reunited him with his mother country. “My views on Wales definitely did change,” he says, obviously delighted by the turn of events. “I don’t view it as being quite the pessimistic place that I had previously. I didn’t realise to what extent I’d drifted away from it, but I have fallen in love with Wales again.”

Naturally, the buzz around Brydon has led ramped up media interest in him. He makes a point of telling me he doesn’t trust “the person he’s talking to” to present what he’s said in a truthful way. Is he perhaps just stung by the descriptions journalists can’t help but write about his physical appearance – his face has been variously referred to as a “shovel”, “a hint of red, pallid skin marked by Olympic acne” and a “goat’s skull”?

“Not at all,” he insists. “Things like that make me laugh, really. The fact is I’m a short, balding, acne-scarred comedian. Go for it, get your thesaurus out and have a laugh. Journalists are people too but you just want to go, ‘My life’s pretty good really’.”

With a major UK tour about to start, Gavin and Stacey moving up to BBC One and his seven-month-old baby gurgling in the background, it’s tough to disagree with Brydon’s assessment. For now, there are nappies to be changed and so Brydon bids farewell. “Make sure you spell goat’s skull properly,” he chides, as sharp and prickly as ever.