Tony Law: a bag of inner calm and barely contained energy

This isn't edited down much because we had a long chat about how he creates his comedy, which I figured is something lots of people will want to know about. Still, you might want to scan down to find the particular meat you're after. One other interviewing note:

 

Tony Law always sounds like he's about to break into a full-blown impression of Ringo Starr, BUT IT NEVER ARRIVES.

 

 

I was actually quite delighted, actually. My instinctual reaction was ‘oh yeah, whatever’, but when it sunk in I was delighted, it’s brilliant.

 

 

I don’t know, I haven’t noticed anything. But you never know. I hope it helps with my tour dates, yeah. The other acts are great, Adam Riches is very popular. But the nomination is good enough.

 

 

I don’t know. I would accept popularity at any point. Maybe it’s because alternative-y comedy is coming back now. In the mid-2000s there was lots of Roadshow and more mainstream type stuff, which is still massive, of course. Maybe there is an alternative, nonsensical comedy coming back, or maybe I’ve just worked a lot harder in the last three years. I've decided to start going up to Edinburgh every year and producing an hour for it, and I had children which made it the hardest time to do that, because you have the least amount of time. 

 

 

I guess so. If you do something long enough, people might like it. I'm not sure how much it's breaking yet, but you know I did a little wave of television stuff about eight or nine years ago and then nothing since then.

 

 

A show called Does Doug Know? with Daisy Donovan. Jimmy Carr was on it.

 

 

Been pestering them for a long time, and we had had a bunch of producers in who had seen me live. Basically we'd thrown it against the wall long enough that some of them had seen me, and they let me have a crack at it.

 

 

Yeah. I didn't know who she was and she obviously didn't know who I was, so it was just like meeting a new friend. It's nice meeting someone from another world. And Noel's brilliant, because he keeps everyone really happy, and it's nice. The atmosphere is great. I know people who've done other shows and most are good, but some are a bit laddy and aggressive. Bit too much banter. 

 

 

No. I'm bad enough keeping in touch with people who are my actual friends.

 

 

Well, his taste is pretty eclectic, so I think he likes throwing a few curveballs in there. And the producer on it saw me, so I think it's just as simple as getting lucky enough for people to see you. There's so many good acts out there who might not get seen, and it's as simple as that.

 

 

There's a part of me that would try and have a crack at all of them, although there's some I probably shouldn't do. I haven't seen Mock The Week for a couple of years. Chris Addison's on there now, so as soon as you see those kind of names you think yeah I could probably have a go at that now. He's actually having a really big amount of success now and he's been around a long time.

 

 

Yeah, there's always a few on the boil.

 

 

No, not a sketch show. More a stand-uppy show as one idea. Another is more narrative, another is a talk show. Quite mad ideas, involving animals and time travel, usually, as my main interests.

 

 

That's another year off. I think I can carry on with it. It's very necessary; when you do so many gigs and ten people in the gig know you from before but 50 have no idea, I have to build into it what they are watching and explain why it's not rubbish. I was doing it for very practical reasons. That developed into a thing where comedy nerds really loved me telling them what I was doing, and then I started being pretend-arrogant with it. I'm just interested to see where it goes.

 

 

I'm hoping it's going to happen naturally. What I usually try and do is sit down and write out rants about things and put it away and forget it, then I might try and write bits of material that I think will become really popular and try and write some observations. But they're always terrible, and that's why I have a lot of respect for people who do it well.

 

What I do is hacky, horrible, but then I forget them. When I do new material nights it means my head is clear and my subconscious comes out. What comes out is always a surprise.

 

I don't have too much of a plan about what it's going to be like, it just unfolds. It's normally by day five of the Edinburgh festival that it's ready. I know you're supposed to have it ready before but for some reason even when I try to have it ready a month in advance it just keeps developing. That's why I'm silly to let in reviewers on day two or three.

 

 

Yeah. I've only just come to realise this long after I'd committed to it. I didn't want to lose the momentum – the last two years have built on each other and I thought, I'm in to a groove now. They don't have a noon slot for me, though, so I'm on at 12.45, which ruins my title: Maximum Noonsense. It's probably saved me from the title.

 

 

The original idea was because I couldn't afford it otherwise. In 2009 I'd just finished paying off the one I'd done in 2007. I called The Stand who offered me 7.30 and noon, as a throwaway. I took a punt and went for noon, because I thought, there's no pressure if no-one comes. Day one there was one paying punter, two reviewers and two friends. And then a couple of comedians came: Gary Delaney and Sarah Millican came, they loved it, tweeted it, it started filling up and then sold it. The same thing happened last year. I tell people now that lunchtime really has a devoted crowd. 

 

 

Um....no. Because this year I'm in a position I might be able to make money to pay for my flat. It was death by finance rather than real artistic quality. But I also thought, you're not going to get any stag dos in. You don't get people thinking everything I want to see has sold out, so I'll just see that. You'll just get the comedy nerds and nice people.

 

 

Sam Simmons; Benny Boot; lots nominated on the Chortle awards this year, especially on the breakthrough acts, lots are quite mad. They're all lovely chaps. Maybe apart from me it's the year of the lovely chap. 

 

 

Well, I don't know about that. There's probably still an appetite for that. But it seems to me that when there's so much of one type of comedy represented something else comes up. Simon Munnery is very popular now and he wasn't for a while. I don't know. There's a big appetite for comedy because it's fun and cheap. People can always afford to go to comedy, unless you're selling out the O2. Although on the one hand that's not taking away my audience. I can't believe people who go and see John Bishop, who sells thousands of tickets and makes huge amounts of money, will want to go to that and then come and see me.

 

 

I've had a little crest of a wave before and I survived in the lull. And I try and do bits of acting too, do some sketchy stuff.

 

 

Yeah. I normally do 40 minutes, then a break, then 30 or 40 more minutes instead of just an hour from Edinburgh where there's a sort of a structure to it. I tend to do the highlights and then in the second half, do the new stuff. It's exciting and you've also built up some goodwill, so that's fun. The tour is different from Edinburgh as there's no bolted-on structure, it's just maximum nonsense.

 

 

When I'm not looking after my children I try and read as much as I can of anything; watch as many documentaries about things I'm interested in. History is my main thing, and economics, because I have no understanding about it. That's my new thing so that might come up. I just try and fill my mind with as much stuff as possible, and then write reams of stuff that will never be used whenever I get the chance.

 

The writing for the actual show happens at the new material night – I'll go to The Old Rope at Oxford Circus, leave home at 7.30 when the kid's have gone to bed, get on the tube and think, shit, I have nothing to say. So I get out my notebook and in the fifteen minutes on the way there just write everything that comes out my head. Then when I'm waiting to go on I really feel panicked and start scribbling ideas. And then I go on and just fill it up. That's when a good bit comes up. It's a bit manic.

 

 

No. The hardest part is the most exciting part, the Monday night. It's really intense but really fun. If I'm getting really angry because some right-wing person said something horrible about someone, I don't want to be the someone who goes 'hey man, that's bullshit'. So I have a system where I have my little private rant book. I hope that if I'm doing something surreal that underneath it will be something representing my liberal outlook without forcing it on it.

 

 

That's my thing this year, I'm going to be right wing. Pretend right wing.

 

 

Yeah, a little bit.

 

 

No, it's only that other people have told me that my style is jazz. I have no knowledge of jazz. When I toured with Stewart Lee he played me some of his jazz and I liked it, and I understand a little bit of why he likes it. But I think it's because there's just a lack of a word for what I do.

 

 

No, not at all, I don't know what it means. I'm poorly educated. I've gone and read what it means and it doesn't feel like what I do. Maybe it is. David O'Doherty calls himself lo-fi whimsy. But I don't want to use the word whimsy because David O'Doherty and Josie Long use that.

 

 

Yeah, I don't want that. Maximum bollocks, that's nice. What I do is more bollocks than surrealism. Getting across there might be something underneath the bollocks is difficult. The cover for The Who's Maximum R&B, I like that. And I might wear a white jumpsuit this year. 

 

 

Like a cheap boiler suit. Pete Townsend wore one when they played Woodstock, and everyone else was dressed as hippies and he came on looking like a killer. That was really cool.

 

 

Sometimes, yeah, I like to apply some sort of reality. This year I'm thinking more along the lines of people who don't like me a bit – I'm thinking of one reviewer who said they wanted the show to reveal something about you, and I hate that. Do you need a comedian to come out and tell you literally everything about themselves? Stuff about their mum and their dad in order to understand them? Can you not just get that from what they're doing?

 

So this year I'm going to talk about my mum and my dad and my uncles. My dad is Marcus Aurelius and I'll do everything on him, my uncle is a Viking on Stamford Bridge who the Anglo Saxons wasted all their energy on.

 

 

I haven't cast her yet, we lack enough female heroes. Probably Joan of Arc, or someone obscure. 

 

 

It gets me all fired up about inequality. I'll write something really basic ranting about things that make me angry. I don't want to go out and get angry about them, I read enough about them. But it comes out in a fun way at some more interesting level. 

It's interesting with socially divided comedy that few people are doing straight-down-the-line critiques about it.

 

For me, it's sort of been done. Bill Hicks did it. A lot of people are smart enough to realise what's going on and don't necessarily want to be preached at. Everything develops to the next thing, you find ways to communicate ideas in a more clever way. You're not talking directly about bankers: there's a more subtle way to do it. You can lure people in that way.

 

 

There are loads doing it without it being a thing. John-Luke Roberts, that stuff drips out of him. And Thom Tuck. Doug Stanhope, where it's more obvious. Rob Delaney on Twitter, his tweets are really political. He's a really nice man who talks about boobs a lot, but underneath he's a feminist anti-homophobe.