Comedy: Andy Parsons
THE Mock the Week, QI and Live at the Apollo regular is currently touring the country with his new show, Citizens!, in which he illustrates how we could all really change the world - if only we could be bothered.
February 13, 2009
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"It's very tongue in cheek," he says. "I'm sure people will go away from my show fired up and then do absolutely nothing about it! I'll work them up into a frenzy, in the full knowledge that when they wake up the next morning, very little will have changed. They'll still be going quietly about their business."
Parsons' schtick is political comedy without the leaflet, ridicule without the lecture and satire without the sanctimony. And recent events have supplied him with plenty of source material he says. "The last six months have been amazing. We have the first black US President and the banks are now owned by you and me. Gordon Brown was politically dead and buried, and then the worst financial crisis for decades brought about his renaissance."
Hitting his rhetorical stride, Andy expands on the subject of the new US President. "Obama outmanoeuvred corporate America on the campaign trail. He made twice as much money as John McCain, who had huge corporate backing. It just goes to show that we have much more power than we thought." Then adds: "I'm sure he'll get bogged down in the future, but even in his first 100 hours, Obama did so many amazing things, like putting global warming top of the agenda, withdrawing from Iraq and closing Guantanamo Bay. It's such an exciting time. And anyway, we've just had eight years of George W Bush, so how bad can it be? It's like being Chancellor after Alistair Darling - you can't fail too badly!"
He adds: "From my point of view, comedy and politics are great bed fellows. I think its great fun to watch the news in the morning, write some jokes about it in the afternoon and then perform them in the evening. In every show, I try to talk about something really big that's happened that day. I'm updating it all the time, so the first and last shows of the tour will be completely different beasts.
"That's the great thing about doing topical stuff - you never run out of jokes! You always sit there flabbergasted as you watch the news -'how did they think that was a good idea?' Those stories always make for great material and there's an unending supply of them. If a comedian just talks about relationships, he could do the same stuff night after night," continues the 41-year-old who was the main writer on Spitting Image. But if you do material about the news, it feels really fresh and immediate. It's pretty exciting to see if how you're feeling is how the crowd is feeling."
The comic, who has also appeared on They Think It's All Over and Saturday Live, believes there is a genuine appetite for political comedy. "People may be disillusioned by politicians, but they're still very engaged with issues. Look at the huge debates at the moment about global warming. People do like to get involved." And that can work to his advantage.
"Strong emotions help - you can tap into that. If you talk about things that people aren't interested in, obviously it's much harder. But they really get into certain subjects." He doesn't mind the odd heckle, either. "Every once in a while when I perform raw, new stuff, there'll be a palpable sense of discomfort in the audience. But if people occasionally disagree with me, then that's a good thing. That's something for me to play with. If you're saying something that everyone agrees with, you're not maximising the potential of being up there on stage. If you do something fresh, you have to accept that for some people it'll be too fresh!"
For all his joking, Parsons does believe that political comedy can make a difference. "Spitting Image changed the status quo," observes the comedian. "Various politicians felt that the public's perception of them was never quite the same after that show. And look at Tina Fey, her impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live definitely had an effect. If you were ever able to take Palin seriously before watching the programme, you certainly weren't afterwards! Fey didn't even have to change Palin's words much; she simply repeated Palin's comments and people laughed. Palin's ratings plummeted after that. That shows that comedy can have a political impact."
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I never used to like him simply on the basis of his unnecessarily loud voice - but he's grown on me a bit recently.
