CityLife

Interview: Rhod Gilbert

Rhod Gilbert

EVERY time CityLife passed Rhod Gilbert’s posters advertising his latest Fringe show – Rhod Gilbert And The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst – in Edinburgh this year, it raised a smile. Gilbert’s mug shot was barely seen under the four and five star ratings and plaudits pasted to it.

“Yeah… I didn’t read them,” he notes uncertainly of his reviews. “I had a look at two the other day but it doesn’t matter how many fours and fives you put on there, give me a three and it still kills me.

“This Edinburgh, I got a three off the Independent who gave me a five last year and I almost gave up stand up. That’s how much it hurts me, I can’t help it,” he bemoans forlornly in his sing song Welsh accent.

It’s a typical Gilbert response, wonderfully worrywart – this is the man who the previous year we’d bumped into in Tesco and who had expressed his concern about how his show would be received.

That year’s offering featuring an ‘Award Winning Mince Pie’ was itself nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award – previously the Perrier. His first Fringe show, 1984, won the newcomer award and its follow up Who’s Eaten Gilbert’s Grape? too was critically acclaimed.

Beautifully poetic rant

“I’m someone who has benefited enormously from reviews, don’t get me wrong,” he counters, “I’ve got five stars on my posters, I’ve got fantastic quotes.

“I’ve always had that from day one really and I’m certainly not in a position to complain, I’ve done very nicely and they’ve contributed to where I am but one little negative comment is all that it takes.

“I can only imagine that it’s like a marathon runner with a little chipping in their shoe. It’s a tiny little chipping, but that’s what it’s like; having that niggling irritation you can’t quite take out of your bloody shoe.”

Talking of irritations, it’s life’s annoyances that have made Gilbert’s shows what they have become in the last two years. His early routines and shows centred around his upbringing in the fictional (or not, we’re not telling…) town of Llanbobl.

Then the acclaimed mince pie story told of how he punched out a sales assistant thanks to a row over duvets and had a nervous breakdown at Knutsford services – all constructed into a beautifully poetic rant.

Gamble

This year, reassuringly, Gilbert has found a whole series of new things to get angry about. “Oh God, I bought a vacuum cleaner that was irritating, my washing machine is aging and getting increasingly irritating. So all the big things as usual. Taking on the really important things in life,” he laughs.

Those problems aside, one particular event in the last year that that went Gilbert’s way was the Royal Variety Performance. It’s a notoriously tough gig for the stand up; a non-comedy audience that you can’t eff or indeed jeff in front of.

It sets many a professional comedian quaking and last time we spoke, Gilbert wasn’t looking forward to it.

“That went better than I could possibly have hoped I think. All because of that gamble of having a chat to Prince Charles, accusing his kids of vandalising the bus shelter and all that because he owns a house down near where I live so I decided to take it up with him.

“It was a very big gamble especially doing it at the top of my set, but thank God I had the confidence to stick with it and the rest of my eight minutes went very, very swimmingly.

DVD success

“I think it was one of the bits that people remember about the evening. The cheeky Welsh bloke having a bit of a pop. I don’t think anyone remembers the rest of the set or the material.”

Meanwhile, if you missed the mince pie story, it’s being committed to disc as Gilbert’s first DVD comes out next month.

“It was filmed in June at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London and the presales on it are really good on it. It’s outselling... I won’t mention any names, but a lot more household names than me. So who knows? I’m amazed.

“For someone who never had any ambition or interest to get into comedy, I never thought about it, never considered it. I grew up in a small Welsh town where there was no comedy club, there were no comedians, comedy even on my radar. So for somebody like me it’ll be very odd to go past HMV and see my DVD on the shelf there, it’ll be very, very strange.”

Llanbobl will be proud.

Rhod Gilbert opens the Manchester Comedy Festival at the Comedy Store on Thursday, October 15, 2009 - and returns to play The Lowry on April 10, 2010. His DVD is out on November 16, 2009.