Battenberg tattoos and adjustable nipples: an interview with Rhod Gilbert

Battenberg tattoos and adjustable nipples: an interview with Rhod Gilbert

16 May, 2012
by: Emma

Rhod Gilbert talks to Emma McAlpine about his Work Experience TV series and his new show The Man With The Flaming Battenberg Tattoo.

He's had his own panel show on BBC1, hosted Have I Got News For You, performed in front of 60,000 people at Twickenham and driven across the world's most dangerous roads with Greg Davies. Yet some of Rhod Gilbert's toughest challenges to date have been carrying out the jobs of ordinary people, from a stay-at-home mum to a fireman. Rhod Gilbert's Work Experience (currently in its third series on BBC1) sees the award-winning Welsh comic learn the hard realities of every day jobs with some suitably amusing consequences. We caught up with Gilbert to talk flaming Battenberg tattoos, dressing in drag and the highlight of his career to date.

You've just started your sixth tour. Do you enjoy being on the road so much?

Yes – I find TV things and writing are quite stressful whereas touring isn't. Touring is the lovely fun bit where all that hard work, the writing and agonising over blank sheets of paper, pays off. You've written the show, hopefully you've got confidence in it...what could go wrong?! When I'm at home, I always have TV stuff on, I'm getting up early to film things or write things and it's quite stressful. When I'm on tour, I have a lie-in, I sit around and read, go to museums and sit in a cafe and watch the world go by. Then later on hopefully do a show I enjoy. It's lovely!

The show you're currentloy performing is based on an episode of Work Experience right?

Yes, it's called The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo and it's based on an episode I did during the second series where I had to be a tattoo artist and get a bloody tattoo, totally against my will.

Why it was necessary for you to get one?

I was getting pressure from two angles. One from the tattoist whose argument was that I needed to understand what the people I was tattooing were going through – entirely reasonable – and two; I was getting it from the production team who were saying "Go on, it will be really funny!" – a much more spurious argument. I am the pettiest person on the planet. I'm contrary and argumentative and I do things just to make a point. In the end I just went "Fine, I'll get one if that's what you want. For the record, I think they are completely pointless and just to show you how pointless they are, I'll have the world's most pointless tattoo done." I think I made my point and now I've got a tattoo for life.

What's the worst job you've had so far?

Drag queen. On the series out now. Bizarrely on paper, you'd think it would be the closest thing to what I do as it's performance. But I'm naturally quite a shy person and on stage I'm who I want to be. Well not quite who I want to be, Christ, I'm a ranting, raving lunatic on stage, but I direct it in my own head. I decide how to be out there and have total control over that, whereas in drag, as soon as someone's got you in a pair of suspenders with false breasts and adjustable nipples, you're no longer in control. I hated it. And the day before they waxed and plucked me to within an inch of my life – it was just horrible. 

You also tackled the world's most dangerous roads with Greg Davies – you obviously like a challenge...

Well that was just awesome. That was one show that didn't feel like work. It was terrifying and a joy in equal measures as Greg and I are great mates and love working together. We're currently trying to get another adventure comedy show made. 

You've said before you have a fear of acting, would you ever do a sitcom or film if you were asked? 

It's one of those things that terrifies me. Like the drag thing, I'm not in control. I don't think I'd like someone telling me how to do a character. I can't be this wussy about it though. I need to go to acting classes and have some help with my issues over it! 

You've had your own TV series and played some enormous stadium gigs. What do you think has been the highlight of your career so far?

Blimey. Do you know, no one has ever asked me this. I think in all honesty it is doing things that don't feel like work. Like the podcast show that Greg, Lloyd Langford and I are starting to put together. We did the first one the other day and it was such a laugh. If you can do something that you're in complete control of and you have fun doing it, it hardly feels like work at all! You might expect me to say it was taking on Prince Charles in the Royal Variety performance or playing to 60,000 in Twickenham but it's not. It's things like my little radio show every Saturday on Radio Wales, where I can just be me, choosing music and having a laugh with mates. Stuff like the Twickenham gig carry an enormous amount of stress whereas that is just a joy. That's the highlight for me.


Rhod Gilbert: The Man With The Flaming Battenberg Tattoo is at the EICC  in Edinburgh from the 15th-26th August

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Emma