Self-described "human car crash of light entertainment" Nick Helm is taking his first full-length show to Edinburgh this year. Emma chats to the boisterous comedian about dingy pubs and being a dinner lady.
This is your first full length stand-up show this year – are you excited/nervous?
I am very stressed, scared and nervous. I am also very excited. I think I’ve prepared the show about as much as I can, but that is really nothing compared to the process of running it every day in front of real people. As much as you preview it, the previews are still really the writing stage and once you’ve sort of settled on the content of the show certain bits will expand and shrink, like a new house, depending on what works on a particular day.
Can you tell us a bit about it?
My regular club set is a bit schizophrenic and bi-polar and this show is an expansion of that. My show last year, Bad Things Happen In Trees, was sort of an hour, but I had guests during the Edinburgh run so it didn’t really count as a full hour. This show is taking the poetry and the songs and the emotions and the audience interaction and trying to take it to the next level.
As The Fix film editor and someone who’s performing in a venue called The Tron....are you looking forward to Tron Legacy?
I am more excited about The Expendables coming out, so if there was a pub called The Expendables I would be happier performing there every day instead, but as it is I don’t think I have ever sat through the whole of the original Tron. I am a bit bemused by all the hype the new one is getting. I think Jeff Bridges as a personality has changed a lot since The Big Lebowski and now he has earned himself a cult status which makes virtually everything he does a must see. Which I have no problem with as The Big Lebowski is one of my favourite films of all time, but I think that this is largely the reason people are getting excited about Tron Legacy. I saw the trailer the other day and they have digitally de-aged him so he looks really weird, like what they did with Ian Mckellen and Patrick Stewart at the beginning of X-Men 3.
Your act includes a lot of yelling – do you have to gargle after gigs?!
I basically sit very still in silence in between gigs making sure I rest my voice as much as possible. My life is lonely, quiet and miserable.
Do audiences ever dare heckle you?
Yes, occasionally I do get heckled, but then I actively go out of my way to include the audience so I should expect a bit of it. Some people shout things out because they are so excited by what is going on around them that they are overcome by the urge to get involved and join in verbally, which I like as it gives the show unexpected tangents, as long as they are coming from a good place.
You came up with a brilliant comedy night idea – My First Gig. What was yours like?
My first gig was lovely actually. I did it at Downstairs at the King’s Head in Crouch End in London. I remember thinking for months ‘How am I going to fill five minutes?’ and it being incredibly stressful. I couldn’t sleep for the week leading up to it because I was so nervous and on the day my ex girlfriend and a load of her friends came to watch on the front row so I had the added pressure of thinking in my head that if it went really well she’d go back out with me and we would be together again forever. But I wasn’t counting on falling in love that night. Falling in love with comedy.
Have you worked in any other fields besides entertainment?
Yes. I have worked in various offices around Hertfordshire, I was a dinner lady at a secondary school for boys, I have counted traffic and worked in the cafe of a garden centre which was situated next to a much better garden centre with a much better cafe. I have been an extra on the Bill, which is entertainment to a degree, but it was before I got involved in all of this so at the time it was a departure. Probably my favourite job was I used to be a bar man. I really enjoyed that. In the days when it was quiet I’d write plays and songs at the end of the bar and in the evenings when it was busy I’d talk bollocks with the customers.
Are you working on any projects at the moment for Bad Ash Productions?
We did a show a couple of years ago called I Think, You Stink! Which was a 45 minute musical B movie tribute show. So I am planning on expanding that at some point and making it into a full length show with a live band and a dry ice machine. I have also been writing a proper full narrative musical for a few years now and I want to get that finished. And then there was a play we did called Stroke in 2006 that I wanted to update and expand and develop the story and characters more. So I have some new ideas and some unfinished ideas and some works in progress. I have given my more theatrical shows a miss for the last couple of years so I am actually quite keen on doing something else in that vein, but usually I just pick the idea that interests me the most and do that. So maybe the next thing will be something completely new and original that even I haven’t thought of yet.
What made you decide to move from plays to stand-up?
Basically a play would take months sometimes years to write and then I’d try it out a bit and take it up to Edinburgh and run it for a month, and maybe I’d get the opportunity to put it on a few times after that and then I’d start work on the next one. It involved organising a lot of other people and at the end of it all with every new show I’d start back at the bottom and work my way up again. With stand up it’s an ongoing process and more immediate. You can improvise on stage and get instant reactions to stuff that may or may not work, but you try it in the moment and it sails or fails depending on the night. You are only in charge of yourself.
What other comics have inspired you (if any) and what’s the best advice you’ve been given by one?
I have always been a massive Jack Dee fan and I always liked Steve Martin and Woody Allen when I was growing up. Lee and Herring, Robert Newman and more recently I have got into Frank Skinner and Louis CK. But my main influence is probably more like Alice Cooper. He is my all time hero and he has influenced nearly everything I have done creatively to some degree. In fact if I had thought about this a bit better in the first place I would have given myself a stage name to make life less confusing.
Do you have any tips or recommendations for Festival newcomers?
As an act I always try and work on one aspect of my performance and improve on it every day. One year I decided I was going to concentrate on compering, or the next year it was playing with my energy levels. I am constantly trying to improve as a performer, because as soon as you stop that you become self satisfied and boring.
Nick Helm: Keep Hold of the Gold will be in Edinburgh from August 6th-29th, at The Tron.
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