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Relative Values: Russell Kane and his mother
Russell Kane, 33, the award-winning stand-up comedian and presenter, and his mother, Juliet, 55, a cleaner
Interviews by Danny Scott
Sunday Times[/align]
JULIET: Russell gets bored very easily. When he was little he couldn’t wait to get to school. He wanted to be out there, making his mark on the world. When I took him on his first day, all the other kids were crying and holding on to their mothers, but Russell just said: “Bye, Mum. I’ll see you later.” I think he was relieved to finally have an outlet for all his energy.
Motherhood was very important to me, so I always took jobs that allowed me to work around Russell and his younger brother. I was able to watch them grow up, and even at an early age I could see that Russell seemed to be tremendously focused. He was always making up stories and games, but they wouldn’t be the usual kids’ stories and games. They were incredibly complex and full of interesting ideas. He would fill exercise book after exercise book with his stories.
If he had homework to do or was revising for exams, he’d give himself 15-minute coffee breaks. He’d time it exactly — as soon as his 15 minutes were over, he’d get straight back to work. We never had to force him to do his schoolwork. He wanted to learn; he wanted to do something with his time. He couldn’t just sit around watching TV. He was always leading, arranging things, happy to be the centre of attention.
I sometimes wonder where he gets that from. It must be that he was born with it, but I don’t think it’s from me, so I guess it must be from his father, my late husband, David [Grineau]. He ran his own sheet-metal business and he worked hard all his life. That was his mentality. Doesn’t matter where you come from or what your circumstances are, if you work hard you can make something of yourself. Work hard and earn your success.
Russell’s dad also did a bit of acting when he was younger, so maybe that’s where Russell got the idea to be on stage. He could be very funny, too, in his own way. Not that he and Russell had much in common. You wouldn’t look at them and think, “Ah, yes, Russell’s just like his dad,” like you can with some families. And they didn’t always… how can I put this? Let’s say that they didn’t always get on.
David died about five years ago — a heart attack. Russell was just a young man at the time, but he was fantastic. He coped so well. It all happened very suddenly, when we were on holiday in Cyprus, and Russell immediately got on a plane, came out to stay with me and started organising everything. He got on with it: “Mum, let’s do this. Have we done this? Do we need to get in touch with these people?”
I’m not saying that Russell has been the perfect son. God, he could be so naughty when he was younger — slamming doors, shouting. We had some terrible arguments. But he’s also someone you can always rely on. It doesn’t matter how bad the argument is or how many doors have been slammed; if you need Russell he will be there for you.
When it came to moving forward with my life, I knew Russell would support me. I decided to get out of north London, where I’d lived all my life, and move to Hertfordshire. I wanted to be closer to my brothers and sisters and I wanted a fresh start. Okay, Russell did pull my leg a bit when I started dating — and he still pulls my leg about my new partner — but as long as I’m happy, he’s happy. He always looks for the positives in a situation.
Russell certainly applied that approach to his comedy, and I think that’s why he’s done so well. He worked out what he needed to do, set himself goals. Even when he came to me and said he was giving up his day job, I knew he’d be all right. Everything in his life had been arranged to allow him to do what he needed to do.
It’s like he was ticking all the boxes. He’d been to uni and got a first-class English degree. He had a successful career as a copywriter. He started doing comedy gigs and began to make a name for himself. Then he took a 12-month break from work so he could do comedy full time. Everything was in place — if it didn’t work out, he was respected as a copywriter and knew that door was always open. He did come to me and ask for advice, but I don’t think he really needed it. I told him: “Yes, go for it.” But I knew he was going to do that anyway.
As a mother, you’re supposed to worry about your children, but I’ve never worried about Russell. Some people might say he has an old head on young shoulders, but those aren’t the right words. He’s not a boring grown-up. He doesn’t always do the sensible thing. The only way to describe him is “organised”. In his head, everything is sorted.
RUSSELL: I don’t know why, but Mum never takes credit for what she’s given me. That whole super-organisational, get-your-shit-together side of my life comes from her. Totally! Take an ordinary day: let’s say we’re meeting up in London. Every day of the week leading up to it she’ll call and check the details. What time are we meeting? Where are we meeting? On the day I get three more phone calls. We check the details again, the train times. She’ll want to know where we’re going, what we’re doing, will we be taking the Tube, will we get a bus, will we walk? She wants everything in triplicate.
She was exactly the same when I was at school: “What lessons have you got today? Will you need a spare top? It might rain later — take an umbrella.” I always — always — had the biggest bag in school. Full of all this stuff that my mum gave me to make sure I’d covered every possible eventuality. Remember those really long Head sports bags? Well, I had the biggest one you could get. And of course somebody had written “Dick” in front of the “Head” in large letters. The bag was so big that one day some kids actually emptied everything out of it and made me climb into it.
So what did I get from my dad? Well, inadvertently, my dad is probably the reason I’m where I am. He’s the reason I’m doing stand-up. The reason The Sunday Times wants to talk to me. From what my mum says, Dad was great with me and my brother when we were little babies, but as soon as we started walking and talking and doing things he lost that ability to interact with us.
Dad was into all that alpha-male stuff. Very working-class, into body-building, never-read-a-book-in-my-life, been-there-done-it-all-done-it-better. “Been there, boy.” That was the stock phrase: been-there-comma-boy! Didn’t matter what you were doing or what you were interested in, he’d done it and he’d done it better. And, what’s more, he could tell you it was all going to turn out shit. But the thing about my dad was that he wasn’t doing this out of nastiness. It wasn’t some twisted, evil behaviour. He was just trying to tell it like it is — that life was hard and things might not work out as you planned. And he was trying to do me a favour by not cushioning the blow of this terrible news. Well, you know what? Sometimes, the blow does need a cushion.
As you can imagine, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but our flawed relationship gave me this intense desire to soak up everything that the world has to offer. Every time he said there was no point in reading a book, I would read it. Every time he said there was no point in trying something, I’d try it. I was like a sponge.
Obviously, he had no time for me going into comedy: “Been there, boy!” Believe it or not, Dad had done a bit of acting and been a Butlins Redcoat in the 1960s. “It’ll all go wrong, boy! It’ll all turn out shit, boy!” But that just made me try harder and harder.
Would you believe he died the same month that I did my first comedy gigs? Looking back, it must have been terrible for my mum. I’ve never realised that she was caught in the middle. I mean, God, at one point, it got so bad that I moved out and lived with Mum’s nan. It couldn’t have been easy. Maybe that’s why Mum doesn’t talk about it much. But out of that chaos — out of my mum’s organisational skills and the intensity of my dad — you get this. You get me.
Mum’s been through a lot these last few years — Dad dying, moving from London, starting a new life — but she’s as rugged and organised as ever. One day, she might be totally depressed, crying, lying on the floor in a pool of snot, but the next morning the survival instinct kicks in: “Right, let’s make a list. This is what we need to do.” She’s like the Duracell bunny. That’s how she gets through life’s shit.
Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it — Mum’s meerkat state of readiness has stayed with me my whole life. Everybody takes the piss out of me now because I carry a huge rucksack with me everywhere. Let’s see what I’ve got in here... Ideas book, spare-ideas book, in case I lose one, spare top in case it gets cold, umbrella. No matter what life throws at me, I’m prepared.
Russell Kane’s Gaping Flaws tour finishes in Edinburgh at the end of March. He lives in Southend-on-Sea. Juliet lives in Hertfordshire.
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I had no idea he was 33 - he looks about 18 in that first article!
