CityLife

Stephen Merchant sells jokes at himself

SIDEKICK STANDS UP: Stephen Merchant is on a national stand up tour

SUCCESS is almost exclusively what Stephen Merchant's career has smelt of.

He 36-year-old co-created The Office and Extras with Ricky Gervais, took both to America, wrote a movie (Cemetery Junction) and starred in several others, made the ritual humiliation of Mancunian Karl Pilkington into a televised art in An Idiot Abroad, and turned his and Ricky's one-time cult podcast into a massive cartoon phenomenon.

The Merchant-Gervais relationship, which began on Xfm in the 1990s, is in many ways an utter mismatch. Gervais is a caustic comic with a wicked streak; Stephen, meanwhile, still uses words like crumbs and golly.

And yet they are both restless writers. And to satisfy that, Stephen is taking a massive gamble and leaping back into his first love: stand up. “With TV, you've very insulated, you've got a lot of time to edit and people around you,” he explains.

“With stand-up, it's raw and direct and there's nowhere to hide. You're using your own wits and confronting your own talent. And that feels like a healthy thing to do.”

Having said that, his affection for the mechanics of stand up is fading fast. He began his Hello Ladies... tour back in August and he's in it for the long haul with dates scheduled right through to December – concluding, rather glamorously, in New York just before Christmas.

He arrives in Manchester on October 27 for a three night stint at the 2,500 capacity venue as part of this year's Manchester Comedy Festival.

Based on Stephen's luckless love life, the show is a confessional and physically active gallop through the Bristolian's fumbles and failures – the biggest being his fruitless search for a wife. “I'm not trying to make you go, 'Ah', after every line,” he laughs. “If anything, I want people to think, 'At least my life isn't as **** as that'.”

As with the characters he's famous for creating, the humour usually comes from extraordinary twists or slapstick swerves in otherwise ordinary evenings – those 'I had a terrible date last night' moments. Prompted for a personal example, he tells us about the night he donned a James Bond tuxedo to escort his ball-gowned date to a private member's casino, only to discover he was barred and end the evening eating bacon butties in an all night cafe.

“I love any anecdote where someone comes unstuck,” he says. “I just empathise with it so much – there's a great bonding thing with sharing stories of misfortune, it makes us human and know we're not alone in the universe.

“I feel like life is a constant tightrope. I'm sure many people just coast along but I always feel like I'm three steps away from offending someone or humiliating myself. Comedy is a great way of controlling that laughter and being in charge of when people laugh at you.”

The audience reaction has been very rewarding. The process, though, is a different matter; right now he can't imagine ever doing another tour. His explanation, delivered utterly tongue in cheek, includes complaints about the water quality in dressing rooms and poor scheduling.

“I feel exhausted, I feel like I was expecting there to be a lot more sex and drugs and rock n roll – that doesn't seem to be happening,” he chirps.

“In fact, there's not even rock n roll because I've lost my iPod. So the whole thing is turning out to be a bit of a washout as far as I'm concerned. The audiences have been enjoying it, I don't think it's a washout for them, but I've been given a bum steer here.

“The hour and a quarter on stage is fine, it's just everything else around it. I don't trust anyone around me, everyone's after something; I'm going to get more and more paranoid, like Howard Hughes.

“People think, 'Wouldn't it be great to live on room service in a hotel?'. No! I don't want another BLT! I don't live a glamorous life but what I do lead is a very settled life, in my flat; I know where everything is, I can eat when I want.

“I didn't realise I was such a home body. I thought I was cooler, basically. This is what I've discovered.”

As much as he protests about this one, new challenges are what makes Stephen tick. His latest programme with Ricky Gervais, Life's Too Short – a semi-fictionalised documentary starring Warwick Davies, the dwarf star of Willow and Star Wars, alongside the likes of Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp – airs in November.

And he'd love to do more film; he's even happy for Holllywood to typecast him as a nerdy, six-foot seven-inch English gent. “My heroes are people who were also typecast,” he explains, “and I love them for it: Woody Allen, Bob Hope. I'm aware of my limitations as an actor; I'm never going to be cast as Macbeth.

“I think sometimes looking at it from the outside people presume that either there's some grand game plan or you only do things for the money or the fame or to be on TV.

“And actually everything I've ever done, I've only done it because I thought it would be enjoyable or a challenge to myself. I love the work, I love figuring out why a joke isn't working, I love puzzle solving.

“I don't strangely get a huge kick from being on stage – I don't think, 'I'm the centre of the universe, these people love me' – I just enjoy the mechanics of it.

“I saw a mountaineer asked why he wanted to climb a mountain and he said, 'Because it's there'. I feel exactly that way.”

Apollo, October 27-29, £25. Hello Ladies... is released on DVD and Blu Ray on November 14.