So it's not normally the kind of thing I'd post on here but I'm currently in the middle of a work placement with Venue magazine - hence the temporary blackout. Anyways, I'm rather proud about this so check out my interview with Terry Alderton below - its an honest, funny and pretty deep and reflective piece. He's on tour now so if you get the chance, make sure you go and see him...
"Listen to the voices in your head: the goalie-turned-comedian Terry Alderton talks to Mike Pattemore.
Around the time I was leaving school, I was playing football with Southend United. Eventually, it turned out that I wasn’t ‘good enough’. I’d like to say I had a bad injury but I didn’t, I was just crap! I was a goalkeeper so perhaps it was a logical transition to put myself on the spot again. I could do impressions so that was my first port of call in comedy. Learning the funnier side of impersonating someone gave me the confidence in the power of stand up.
My show’s all over the place but there is a method to the madness. I’m doing my new show from Edinburgh but I don’t stay still so I’ve got new stuff that I’m bringing in already which will then become the basis for next year. I’m excited for the new stuff - the older stuff I don’t really worry about anymore; it’s a matter of shaping and shifting, thinking “that old stuff would work better like that now”. It’s a lot of working on the spot; me going off on into my own head. I don’t like to title the shows. Some people say it’s stupid because people don’t know if they’ve already seen it but my theory is you’re never going to see the same show twice.
I’m so excited about what I’m doing at the moment because I’m doing something different. Whether you like it or hate it, no-one can ever deny that I’m trying to do something different. Whatever happens, perhaps in 100 years’ time, if someone goes on stage and turns around and starts talking to their inner demons, people will be like “that was done 100 years ago by another comedian”. I know it seems pretty simple what I’m doing, ‘talking to the voices’, but it’s given me the confidence to take the extremities in what I’m doing and be more diverse and take it to another place.
The voices in my head are a wonderful thing to have. They give me this huge safety net which in turn gives me the power to be able to go off into whatever I want, because the comedy is then in me defending myself or making it worse. I’m doing it in two different voices but it’s still essentially me fucking myself up. If you look at the science of what I’m doing, it’s twisted and wrong; it’s completely mental. However, it’s becoming less of a defence and more and more of a thing they already know about. I used to start my acts with the whole “You can’t please all of the people all of the time…” thing, I had to always say that. It got a laugh and the audience understood that it was heading off towards this weird place whereas now, I’ve built that confidence up where I can just nonchalantly go straight into it because this is what I do. You either fall into it or you don’t.
I know there’s a danger to what I’m doing. The trust from the audience is very important to me. I’m willing to go 5 or 10 minutes without anything because I’m building it to go somewhere and it’ll be a whole explosion of stuff that’s all being called back at once. There’s other stuff I do that’s risky, politically incorrect, that calls back later on in the show. I make light of the incorrectness of political correctness; “Was it right, was it wrong?...Who gives a fuck!” I’ve had people walk out early, leaving me on stage thinking “wait 20 minutes and it’ll all make sense”. It’s proving the point that people sometimes take too much on face value, hear what they want to hear and are too quick to say “That’s wrong” , when I’ve not even got to the point I’m trying to make.
I listened to Steve Martin’s autobiography last year and it changed everything. I was fairly sure I was heading where I wanted to be but then listened to that and thought, “That’s it!” There’s a sequence in there that made me realise I was doing the right thing; to push it to that extreme and do what I wanted. It’s a real hard lesson to learn in comedy; do what you think is funny and do something different and create some sort of art.
Don’t pander to the masses. I did that for so long because I was being ‘professional’. There’s no point in playing it safe. I remember seeing Julian Barratt die on his arse once at Jongleurs and all the comics were stood around like “what is he doing?” Yet I was there thinking ‘This is brilliant. I wish I was doing this shit!’ When you’re a comic and you hit success, when you know people buy into your thing, it’s very hard to take it another way. It’s easy to get caught in that and if all you’re after is making money then fair play. I’ve tried to make sure my act is constantly changing so that someone who hated me last year might love me this year - and vice versa. If I ever get to a point where I think I’ve become a product or ‘sell out’, I hope that I’d have the foresight to say “This is over”.
I don’t think I have to live up to anything. None of it matters. I know that sounds really bad but I’ve learnt in my life (and it took me a long time to get to this point) it doesn’t really matter. My wife telling me she loves me; that’s just amazing. Saying goodnight and I love you to my son and he quietly whispers back “I love you too daddy” – nothing in my life will top my little boy saying that to me. Let’s not forget I’m a business and I want the masses of people to come and see me and enjoy themselves but in the grander scheme of things, comedy’s just an enjoyable pastime that I’m lucky enough to earn a living out of.
My friend made a point to me the other day. He said the more people slag you off, the bigger you’ll become. It’s a great way to gauge your success; the nastier people are towards you, the better you’re becoming! You’ll get comics that go online and torture themselves over the stuff that people have written about them. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion; the thing to remember is that someone saying you’re shit isn’t a problem. I had someone once Tweet “You’re so unfunny, I hope your mum dies of cancer”. You’ve got to laugh at that! It’s brilliant that they’ve gone out of their way to do that and regardless of whether they think you’re a prick or an arsehole, they don’t know you. As long as you’re true to yourself and your own integrity, you’re never going to have a problem in life.
I’d really be interested in doing Strictly Come Dancing. I can body-pop and do a bit of robotics but generally, I can’t dance at all. I’m not one for mainstream stuff but I really got into Strictly. It’s the fact you get these people that have two left feet but by the end are brilliant dancers. I’d be up for that challenge. As for Let’s Dance for Sport Relief, that’s purely for entertainment. I don’t know if we’ll be on the same show but imagine me and Omid Djalili dancing together; that would be hilarious!
Catch Terry Alderton at Komedia Bath on Thurs 2nd February and Comedy Box at The Hen and Chicken on Fri 30th and Sat 31st March. See www.komedia.co.uk/bath and www.thecomedybox.co.uk for details. Let’s Dance for Sport Relief will be on BBC 1 in February and March, dates TBC as we go to press. Ffi: www.sportrelief.com"
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