Lost Features Week: Eldon and Widdicombe, Lee and Munnery, and much much more...

Having relaunched a couple of weeks ago, we've been transferring our archive and digging out all sorts of unexpected comedy gold from our early days that we'd completely forgotten about.

 

We're giving it an airing, and have got some of our favourite fellow comedy site friends to dig theirs out too. 

 

They are the 'who needs Wikipedia, we've got the' British Comedy Guide; capital specialists London Is Funny; longform interview pros The Humourdor; and we also got Harry Deansway to nab us some features from the now sadly-defunct comedy magazine The Fix.

 

We'll be releasing them every day this week so check back for more...

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a strange one: the original idea for Such Small Portions was from an editorial team that included up-and-coming/up-and-come Josh Widdicombe, back when he was but an aspiring magazine journalist, and this is an interview of his with Kevin Eldon.

 

Eldon is on bizarre form here: there's lots of joke answers, and although the Q&A format means it's not clear what mood he was in, 'awkward' seems a highly possible answer. Widdicombe, meanwhile, is massively keen to prove his comedy chops (although, it's Kevin Eldon, we'd probably all do the same in that situation).

 

A choice answer to an out-the-box question: “You see this is the boredom with interviews for me. 'Oh, yes, I think I was burrilliant in the following...' 's'a bit wanky innit? I try to do me best in everything, guvnor. I more often than not look at what I've done and cringe for just not getting it right. It's not false modesty. I wish I could relax and enjoy what I do but that's often not possible.”

 

Read: The Nicest Man In British Comedy?

 

 

 

 

 

An interview with Stewart Lee is worth reading. An interview with Simon Munnery is worth reading. Put the two together in 2009, talking about what inspired them, what they think about where comedy is going, and some particularly juicy stuff about their relation with TV, and it is very, very much worth reading.

 

Lee on doing TV: “I think you have to stop thinking that television likes you or dislikes you. It’s like if the rain made you wet, you wouldn’t feel like the rain hated you, it was just some rain. And likewise if the sun made you warm, you wouldn’t thin that the sun favoured you. They’re just phenomena that overlap occasionally with your needs.”

 

Read: Stewart Lee and Simon Munnery in conversation

 

Harry now runs Deansways in Bethnal Green and tweets over here.

 

 

 

See which of YOUR favourite comedians is the sweatiest

Paul Fleckney, editor of London Is Funny, says: It's possibly the thing I get most excited about in Edinburgh – receiving a daily file of backstage photos from Nick Collett (who takes them). You get the odd comic who's a bit stroppy that he's there, but on the whole they either don't mind or don't notice.

 

Best encapsulation of the Fringe in one photo: Jigsaw

 

 

Read: Edinburgh Festival in pictures: Behind the Fringe

 

 

 

 

 

Si Hawkins' Circuit Training has long been a great read, providing a space to talk with comedians who are about to break into broadcast. However, ol' Hawkins often veers off-topic to all sorts of interesting places, and this runthrough of old interviews of his with Michael McIntyre to work out how he became a hit, is fascinating. It's a bit like the bit of a horror film where a detective has stumbled into the killer's apartment and is rifling through a pinboard of pictures and notes to build up the bigger story. Although McIntyre hasn't killed anyone. YET. 

 

McIntyre giving the royal family all the respect their due: “By the time of interview three, in January 2007, he'd just been unexpectedly invited to appear at the Royal Variety Performance, and "met Prince Charles," he recalled. "We had a chat, he said he was amused by it. I saw him cracking up actually - he was fucking loving it."”

 

Read: The Mac Factor

 

 

 

 

 

The Humourdor says: This was the first interview we ever did for the site. We didn't think anyone would reply to an email from two guys without a website yet, let alone agree to be interviewed by them, but amazingly Richard Herring did both. Even better, his responses were warm, insightful, and generally great for two comedy nerds getting to talk to someone they thought of so highly.

 

Herring on the disintegration of Lee and Herring: "We were unlucky, or maybe lucky that it didn’t catch fire. I don’t really understand why though. I think that the executives at the BBC didn’t know what to do with us and maybe because we were young some people dismissed us without giving us a chance."

 

Read: Interview with Richard Herring, of Richard Herring Fame.

 

There'll be more from our multiple archives every day this week...