CityLife

Comedy prospects good for Electric Forecast

Electric Forecast

THE last time CityLife saw Electric Forecast was in the CityLife Comedian of the Year competition in 2001.

“We’d only been going about a year. Did we come third? I think we were second runner-up, that is third isn’t it?” ponders Dan Wright one half of the duo.

“I remember thinking at the time that it was between three of us, a guy called Nige and us and John Bishop.

"I didn’t know where we were going to end up. But no, we thought John Bishop would get it anyway to be honest. He had a lot of hype around him, he’s a great comedian so it was no surprise.”

Not that, as it turned out, they needed the leg up the competition can give as two years later they auditioned for Big Cook Little Cook and got the job.

For those without young kids or a penchant for unchallenging cookery programmes, BCLC is a Children’s BBC cookery programme where Wright is shrunk to table-top friendly size (a bit like Tony Hart’s Morph for those of a certain age) and Steve Marsh his Electric Forecast partner is the big guy behind the counter.

Wright considers it to be the chemistry between them that got them the gig.

“I think because we know each other, there aren’t many double acts out there… because we’re mates really first of all and we’ve been writing for ages.”

Plenty of other TV work followed including a stint spent presenting Big Brother’s Big Mouth, a documentary fronted by Wright called F*** Off I’m Ginger for BBC3 and a role for Marsh as the lead bad guy in Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric.

Plus there was Sky’s knockabout experiments series Crash Test Dummies, “I’d love to do another series of that but they’ve got enough, they did 20 episodes and so they just repeat them. They think they don’t need anymore, we think they do...”

The pair met at University in Huddersfield where they were both studying drama.

“We were just mates at uni and we were doing some plays together.

"I’d done some gigs on my own and then I got Steve a gig on his own and then there was this one gig that we both wanted to do and we thought why don’t we do it together?

"That was at the Contact Theatre in Manchester. It went really well, we won this competition – there was only four of us in it and the other three were quite frankly appalling so we could have gone on and just danced around which is pretty much what we did I think.”

Warrington

Though Wright hails from Essex, Marsh being from Warrington was more familiar with the North West comedy scene so that’s where they tried for early gigs.

“We started to get a few open mic gigs, one of them was the Frog and Bucket actually, it was one of our first ever gigs and we won their competition on a Monday night and we kind of went from there, all from word of mouth.

"It felt like there were a lot of gigs around about Manchester and Liverpool that were giving young comics a chance - more so than London at the time and we were both 21 and had a go at it really.”

In the early days before the TV work started to come in they were working as supply teachers.

Their sudden appearances on BCLC must have come as a surprise for their former pupils.

“Yeah, younger brothers and sisters watching TV and they come into the room and think, God he taught me maths… badly… what’s he doing cooking?”

Wright imagines the scenario.

“I never really thought about it like that. If you’ve got a degree they will take you on (to supply teach in any subject) but you often get the bad schools that do that.

"I did supply in Liverpool and someone threw a bottle at my head in the playground. And then that night we did a gig at Liverpool University and it went terribly.

"You feel like chucking it in. What am I doing with my life? But it all worked out ok.”

Though they have taken many breaks from the stand up scene over the years when filming commitments necessitated, they’ve never given up on live comedy.

“We’ve kind of dipped in and out in between TV projects but we still really enjoy gigging, we love that live feel, that interaction with the audience and just being out there really.

"It’s such a different sort of performance from being in front of a camera. There’s so much more of a buzz. And to do somewhere like the Frog and Bucket is quite exciting really it’s quite a raucous atmosphere… yeah it’s really good.”

Electric Forecast return to the Frog and Bucket on Friday and Saturday, May 22 and 23 with Sarah Millican and Sean Percival. £6-£13.