CityLife

Interview: Mitch Benn

Mitch Benn

WHEN Mitch Benn answered the phone, CityLife wasn’t sure whether we were through to the musical comic or the exotic birdhouse at Chester Zoo.

Can you you just give me a minute, I’ve just let the parrot out,” he requests. That would explain the squawking then.

Benn, having put the parrot to bed, seems to have a pretty settled and charmed life at the minute. As well as a parrot, he has a good lady, two little girls and a steady amount of regular work.

That work consists of a combination of live gigs – both with his band and on the circuit – plus a bit of broadcasting too.

It’s a level of career that provides him with a following but not one that gets to the point of becoming an inconvenience.

“I like being the kind of act that people think they’ve discovered for themselves,” he says.

“Their mates have lent them one of our albums, or that I sneak my way into people’s consciousness rather than get launched at them.

“I get stopped in the street just enough to keep the ego ticking over. Though it’s always nice if it happens when my mum’s there,” he notes, laughing.

He’s been on the comedy circuit for 15 years now, becoming known for his swift ability to knock together a song on just about any topic. It’s a skill that has brought him work on Radio 4’s topical news comedy programme, The Now Show, and bits and pieces of TV work such as his recent appearances on Watchdog.

Improv

His ability to manufacture a song stems from his comedic beginnings while at Edinburgh University where he joined the Improverts improv troupe based in the uni’s Bedlam Theatre.

“It’s become a little institution. The Bedlam Theatre’s an amazing place. It’s basically a completely autonomous theatre company which just happens to be part of the university, but it’s not a drama society, it’s a theatre.

“The student body’s entirely responsible for the upkeep of the building, for all the administration work. We used to run the place from the floor upwards. What it would teach you was versatility and tenacity.”

Though much of Benn’s actual improv training came from across the pond.

“The guy that brought improv to my University company was a Canadian. He put me in touch with his improv nerd buddies in Montreal so I spent the whole summer hanging out with them in this comedy club.

“I ended up doing a few short spots for the sheer want of anything else to do and it went quite well.

“I was the only limey who was in town at that time and the only guy doing music.”

On his return he took a break from comedy but started up again in 1994 performing in comedy clubs across the country.

Classics

These days he tours with his band The Distractions and consequently finds that his gigs and followers are a hybrid of music and comedy fans.

“I’m equal parts musician, equal parts comedian but also my audience is equally a musical audience as a comedy audience and as such I can’t get away without doing any old stuff.”

So there will be a few classics in the latest show – such as his Beatles parody, dusted off given the renewed interest in The Fab Four at the moment – but there is plenty of new stuff from his latest album for Benn to showcase too. An album that represents a slight change in direction.

He says: “One of the main differences with this album is that a fair bit of it was actually written to be on the album, which is fairly unusual for me.

“I’m writing all the time for the radio so a lot of the time with the previous couple of albums its really been stuff that’s been harvested from the various radio shows I’ve done.”

Having not done a series of Crimes Against Music, his own show on Radio 4, he didn’t have that series’s material to draw on for songs on the album. So the end result has worked out quite differently from before.

“What I’ve noticed is that when I did Sing Like An Angel (last year’s album) it was actually quite political. That only really struck me when I put it together. It’s mainly because I've been having to write more from ‘within’ that this is a personal one.

“I'll be 40 in January and I’ve got two kids now. I’m at a slightly more interesting phase in my life personally. There’s a song on it about one of my little girls, a song on it about getting to grips with your own middle age and also specific stuff to me like eating at motorway service stations, which I seem to spend an awful lot of time doing.”

It’s comforting to know that despite a level of success, some things, at least, are a constant in a comedian’s life.

Mitch Benn and The Distractions are at the Dancehouse on November 21, 2009. His album, Where Next? and book, The History Of The World Through Twitter are out now.