CityLife

Interview: Pappy's

Tom Parry, Mathew Crosby and Ben Clark

For most stand ups life on the road is a lonely business. For Tom Parry, one third of Pappy’s – the artistes formerly known as Pappy’s Fun Club – it’s more like being at the helm of a travelling support group for the moderately inept.

At the time CityLife caught up with him he was staying at his auntie’s place in South Wales with fellow Pappies Mathew Crosby and Ben Clark.

“I was about to get to sleep at half 12 last night and Ben woke me up because there was a big spider in his room – and then before the interview this morning,

“I had to get up and walk down to the shop to buy a needle and thread because Mathew split his trousers on stage last night,” he says.

“That’s the way it works with Pappy’s, equally blessed and cursed.”

He laughs about the pros and cons of having company while on tour – though this tour dynamic is somewhat different, as they are getting used to life without Brendan Dodds, having streamlined the Pappy’s formula.

“Becoming a three piece feels like an exciting statement of intent now. I think we really need to move forward, improve and become even stronger than we were, and see if we can validate our decision almost.”

They started out as a four piece six years ago with a shared passion for madcap humour, a keen sense of the absurd and a love of general silliness.

“Of course, there’s a Python touch there (in Pappy’s) but Mr Show With Bob And David (‘90s American TV series) in particular was very influential when we first started,” Tom said.

“David Cross and Bob Odenkirk would come on stage as Bob and David and introduce the show; and then characters would come on so Bob and David would be there all the way through as well as their characters,” he added.

The show Pappy’s are currently touring, their fourth, is the slightly tweaked version of the show they took to Edinburgh last year, playing in the biggest venue the Pleasance Courtyard had to offer. They had to drop the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse sketch, for obvious reasons.

Fresh challenge

“I had a very weird sensation in the first week of standing in the Courtyard watching the queue for our show take up three sides of it... they’re coming to see the Pappy’s show, that’s incredible,” he recollects.

It’s been a swift rise for Pappy’s. Just four years ago they were performing in a room in a pub at the Free Fringe. The following year it was in a tent run by Nottingham club Just The Tonic.
Then they were nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award (then the If.comedy and formerly the Perrier).

Two years after their newly found esteem, the gang found themselves in the coveted Pleasance venue.

However, this left them with a daunting fresh challenge relating to the size of the venue and also the show’s premise.

Back in the early part of 2009 they thought it would be a good idea to call the show 200 Sketches In An Hour.

“We wanted to come up with a strong theme for the show. Something that would grab people’s attention – so we sent it off and posters were made and then we realised that we’d have to do it. It was very much painting ourselves into a corner,” Tom said.

“We were like, how on earth are we going to do this? It would be a sketch every 18 seconds.”

Still, the Pappy’s ethos is one of contrived glorious chaos, so as Tom describes, they ‘started to quickly think of ways we could cheat the record, how we could trick the authorities into thinking we’d done it’.

“Normally, in the script we’re trying to put on a show but things go wrong and we manage to struggle through it, so we just kind of found a new thing that we could battle against really, which is, can we break this world record or how can we go about cheating it? It was a lot of fun.”

They boys are enjoying the touring too and, like their Edinburgh years, they are creating a following in the towns they visit along the way.

“This tour’s really delightful because we’re going back to a lot of venues we played last year and watching audiences return. People always come up to us and go, ‘oh I brought my friends this year to see you.’

“Or they’re wearing the badges from last year’s show. Whenever we go somewhere new we know we’re not going to have a massive audience because they might not necessarily know who we are.

“The thing about touring is about building an audience. You can really see it happen as you travel up and down the country.”

And then beyond the gig there’s the after-show spider-catching and trouser-sewing shenanigans to look forward to…
 
Pappy’s is at The Lowry on February 28, 2010.