Most of us know him as that floppy-haired presenter from Channel 4. Burt Reynolds knows him as Alan Zone. But what do we know about Alex Zane the stand-up comedian? Emma McAlpine finds out.
Working on material for his new Edinburgh show, Alex Zane is combining a cigarette break with talking to me on the phone: “It’s still far from finished. By Edinburgh it might be totally different. I've chopped a lot of stuff out and had some great bits come to me as a result. I'd love to be up there on the 4th August and be thinking 'this is ready, this is a finely tuned comedy engine' but the likelihood is a wheel will probably come off in the first 10 minutes!”
This will be Zane’s first solo show, although he has performed at the Fringe before, in open mic competitions from 1998-1999 and with Richard Morris and Lawry Lewin in 2002. Is he nervous? “A little bit yeah. It's like that thing when you're hungover and you feel really great for the first 10 minutes and then you get in the shower and it hits you. I'll just be walking around whistling thinking ‘I'm on top of this’ and then suddenly it's like I've got Tourettes in the middle of the street and I'll be like ‘fuck, I'm so scared!'”
Called Just One More Thing, Zane’s show will, amongst other things, centre on his childhood obsession with “TV’s greatest detective” Columbo: “I spent most of my childhood dressed as Columbo and the icing on the cake of this look was that when I was younger I used to go a bit boss-eyed when I was tired, so with Peter Falk's glass eye and my boss eye we looked quite similar. I found out recently that Peter Falk called his autobiography Just One More Thing so I guess it's a tribute!”
Having presented numerous TV shows, an XFM radio breakfast show and written a film column for The Sun, stand-up comedy is probably the last thing Zane would be recognised for, although that was where he started out: “I was in a band called Batmaus although we just played indie pop. We were so bad that our lead guitarist could only play lead when he was sat down on a chair. My comedy started to develop when I used to apologise for the songs and people started laughing at these long-winded apologies.”
Aged 18, Zane decided to try his hand at stand-up and got to the finals of both So You Think You’re Funny competition in 1998 and the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards in 1999. After being scouted to present a myriad of youth-focused TV shows over the next few years from MTV’s Total Request Live to Channel 4’s Popworld, his comedy career was finally put on hold when he began working for XFM Radio in 2007: “I tried to do both stand-up and the show a few times but it was impossible. The two careers you just can't juggle are drinking in a stand-up club, getting in at midnight, then getting up at 5am and being chirpy!”
He spent two years at XFM during which he was briefly suspended for broadcasting a jokey song about rape. He returned but eventually resigned due to exhaustion: “It turns into a tour of duty doing a breakfast show. I loved doing it but I was grateful when it ended. It took me about three months for my body to readjust and get my mind back. I was a bit like a zombie by the end.” Since then, he’s continued his presenting work; interviewing movie stars from Michael Caine to Burt Reynolds: “Burt Reynolds was most amazing person to interview and I saw him completely by chance in a bar the following day. I told my friend “That’s Burt Reynolds, I know him’ but my friend didn’t believe me so we went up to him and I said 'Hello, remember me? I interviewed you yesterday' and he said ‘Oh yeah, Alan Zone right?’ That was close enough!"
Yet, after all the jobs in the entertainment industry he’s had, it all comes back to stand-up for Zane: “I’ve missed it. Most people know me from TV but stand-up is the most fun thing I've ever done. There's no experience like it." And how does he think his style has changed since 1998? “You have a limited amount of life experience at that age. I find it a bit awkward watching the young stand-ups. If you tackle the big issues you're dealing with an audience that have better experience that you so you can't win. Now I’ve got more to draw on. I'm not standing on the street yelling at people but I have more opinions.”
Alex Zane: Just One More Thing will be at the Pleasance Dome from 10th-30th August at 10pm.
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