With three weeks to go until his new show at the Soho Theatre, comedian William Andrews chats to Tom Jeffreys about ideas, whales and Michael McIntyre.
I first saw William Andrews at the first Pork and Pickle Comedy night back in November 2009, and things didn't quite go to plan. Andrews' act – a kind of hapless, incompetent Geordie comic – was hilarious, until technical issues cut his set sadly short. The gist of the act was a set that's always about to completely break down, but when it actually did, it was a little painful for all concerned.
It's now less than three weeks until Andrews' latest show – Nitwit – comes to the prestigious Soho Theatre, and at the same time he's writing for The King is Dead, a quiz show conceived by Simon Bird from The Inbetweeners, writing an animation, a film pitch, a pilot for Radio 4, and doing weekly films for his Team Wonderful YouTube channel. It's a pretty hectic time!
I catch up with the Crouch End-based comic in a pleasantly grotty café just by Finsbury Park tube station to see how it's all coming along. “It's fine,” Will says, “but it's weird though. I did the show up in Edinburgh and it was a bit 'Marmite' – it split audiences. I had some incredible shows, and then some where people were looking at me in the same way a labrador looks at a clock....” Will makes a kind of dumb Scooby Doo sound to neatly illustrate the point.
“One could flatter oneself and say you're doing cutting edge stuff. But it's also possible that the show was a bit fragile, so that if something doesn't go well in the first instance then everything is on a precipice slightly. But I've got considerably better at it. Confidence has improved – it's louder, it's noisier, it's much slicker and much faster.”
So what can audiences at the Soho Theatre expect? “There are so many sketches in it – about 25 I think. It's quite multimedia – there's a box like a table, with a computer screen for a face and a record player on top. It's full of lights and props that come in and out for various bits. I just try and do as much as I can – in my head the show was going to be called Every Single Idea I've Had This Year. There's a series of character sketches, micro-films, and then just lots of ideas really: there's some pastiche, some story-telling.”
“That's not to say that my show is in any sense that complicated. It's just that it's a series of non sequiturs. I'm not talking about anything, I'm not here to say anything; I'm just here doing a series of ideas. It's sort of clowning, I guess. And I'm very proud of the ending. People said it was worth the ticket price alone! I'm not sure whether that's a good thing...”
So Every Single Idea I've Had This Year? How do these ideas come about? How do they form and evolve? “The writing process is always left of field,” Will says. “I text myself continually.” He rummages through his inbox. “Here's one – 'Cadbury's Creme Chickens'! I can't believe no-one's done that. I literally have hundreds of these. There's a meat R2D2 – not sure where that's going to go... Here's another: 'A blue whale has a nine-foot penis. But none of my friends find that sexy. Except one of them, but she's a... a whale... no she's not, sorry... she's Welsh.”
Although this might make the Andrews act sound wilfully weird, it's not really. “It's about joy,” Will says. “At the heart of everything, it should be joyful. Sean Lock, for example, is an incredible comedian because he does everything with joy. Even Michael McIntyre as well – who's a sort of hate figure to a lot of comics – at least he likes his audience. He smiles and he moves and he does his job. It's really just about fun and happiness and making people laugh.”
William Andrews – Nitwit is at the Soho Theatre from 25th-27th February 2010.
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