Emma McAlpine talks to John-Luke Roberts about writing for the BBC at university, getting inspired by Simon Munnery as a teenager and his new murderous comedy show.
At the age of 21, getting recruited by the BBC to write and star in your own comedy series is a pretty amazing accolade. But this isn’t even what most impresses me about John-Luke Roberts. He wrote a sketch show and performed it in Edinburgh when he was 16. While the rest of us were testing our creative mettle making mixtapes (or minidiscs in my case), Roberts was getting reviewed by critics. Admittedly, the show did get panned. “It got a one star review in the Scotsman from Kate Copstick”, he tells me. “In retrospect, she probably had a point about some of it but at the time it was burned into my eyelids! She said it was plagiaristic which it wasn’t; it was making fun of plagiarism.” So to recap, he was already getting misunderstood by critics at 16. Roberts was clearly far from your average teenager.
It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock then, to hear that he later got into Cambridge University, where he joined the Footlights and in his second year, reached the finals of the 2005 BBC New Talent competition (which has seen previous winners include Rhod Gilbert, Josie Long and Nina Conti). Afterwards, he was approached by BBC producer Ed Morrish to pitch some ideas to the Radio Comedy department. Roberts manages to make the whole process sound remarkably easy: “Ed asked if I had any ideas to pitch. I came up with this format for a sketch show, won the pitch and we got two series out of it for BBC7. It was great fun to do, I’m still very proud of it.”
Since then, he has won the BBC writer’s bursary and worked on several programmes for the Radio Comedy department, including The Now Show and The News Quiz. His ultimate goal however, has always been to perform at the Edinburgh Festival: “The whole reason I wanted to do stand-up was to do an Edinburgh show. Seeing Simon Munnery and the League of Tedium when I was 14, standing on top of a van with five dildos stuck to his hands, saying “come on I’ll take you all on!” – that set me on the track that I’m on now. Club comedy has never appealed to me. I’ve always wanted the hour on my own terms.”
Although he started off performing with Nadia Kamil in the Gently Progressive Behemoth, Roberts considers himself a stand-up first and foremost. “I’ve been doing stand-up for quite a while now but always on the back burner. I’ve always thought of myself as a stand-up.” Recently, he came up with the idea for a solo show and decided to take it to this year’s Fringe while the “idea was still fresh”. Billed as esoteric and whimsical, it also involves a murder. Roberts is keen to stress this is not a murder mystery. “It’s not a whodunit because I clearly did it. I murder someone during the show without the audience seeing how or when and then there’s a series of big reveals at the end. Or maybe the big reveal is there’s no big reveal.”
“Just how esoteric is it?” I ask, whimsically.
“I feel the need to overplay how esoteric is it so people don’t feel short-changed. It’s pretty damn esoteric!”
He tells me his worst fear about taking a show to Edinburgh is people not responding one way or the other.
“What you really don’t want is silence. At least with heckling you have something to grab onto. I’m good at dealing with hecklers and getting them back on side, the problem is when I return to my original material and piss them off again! You’re essentially doing it for the rolling laughs and if you don’t get them, that’s depressing.”
We finish up talking about his post-Edinburgh plans. Until the dust settles, Roberts doesn’t have a definite idea but he’s got a few interesting projects in the pipeline. Recently he’s co-written a BBC4 sitcom called Antiquities with fellow bursary winner Gareth Gwynn, starring Tim McInnerney and Andrew Sachs (“he plays a little old man you wouldn’t want anyone to do anything horrible to”). After the pilot is aired, he hopes this will turn into a series. Plus, he’s got a play in development with the Hampstead Theatre. Then there’s talk of another show with Kamil. The pair have won critical acclaim for their offbeat and inventive sketches in the past, so it’s no surprise to hear their next idea is suitably ambitious: “We’re planning on doing one hour-long sketch with a total of 25 words in it.”
A far from your average sentence, spoken by a far from your average comedian.
John-Luke Roberts Distracts You From A Murder will be at the Pleasance Courtyard until the 30th August.
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