Rhod Gilbert

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Funnyman Rhod laments his Welsh worth
“COMEDY is a bit like discus throwing, I suppose,” says Rhod Gilbert. “It’s just one of those things that doesn’t grab the public’s imagination.”
Sep 14 2008
Nathan Bevan,
Wales On Sunday

The 39-year-old Carmarthen funnyman was recently shortlisted for – and only narrowly missed out on – the top prize at the prestigious if.comedy awards at the recent Edinburgh Fringe Festival – the stand-up world’s very own Oscars. Not that anybody in Wales really gave a monkey’s, he argues.

“I’m much better known in Edinburgh than I am in my home country,” he sighs, amidst the hubbub of a pub near the Mumbles where he’s been fixing up a house he’s bought. “I was the first Welshman ever to be nominated, but down here there was hardly any fuss about it – not even a mention in my local paper. It’s very frustrating.”

But why does he think that is?

“We’ve always had that contradiction in us, haven’t we,” says Rhod. “We shout like fuck about being Welsh and our national pride, but when one of us does well on a bigger stage or something we’re never really that bothered. I find it totally remarkable.”

Although he’s keen to point out he’s not bitter.

“Not a bit – after all, when I was younger I didn’t give a toss either,” says the former market researcher, who broke onto the scene late in 2002, aged 33. “Back then stand-up simply wasn’t on my radar. I’d never set foot in a comedy club, never heard a Billy Connolly routine – still haven’t. The problem with Edinburgh is that it can be a real bubble and us performers are all in that bubble. It can be easy to forget there’s a world going on outside with far more important things to be talking about,” he shrugs, smiling. While I’m ever so pleased to have been nominated, I realise I have to keep my feet on the ground about it all because deep down I know nobody else really gives a sh*t.”

It must have been a blow not to have won then?

“I won’t lie to you, it was very disappointing, yes,” says Rhod. "Everyone was telling me I was the bookies’ favourite and after a while I started to believe it and became convinced I would win. But, win or lose, it’s been the biggest moment of my comedy life so far.”

Just over a year ago Rhod was being taught to speak in his native tongue by Cerys Matthews for BBC’s Big Welsh Challenge, in the hope of, as he put it, “trapping myself a woman”. So how did he get on?

“Very well,” he beams. “Ended up with a Welsh speaking lady and we do siarad Cymraeg a little bit. It’s a bit hard work though, because I can only say the words and phrases that Cerys has taught me. Things like, ‘Can I have another tequila and two pints of lager’, that’s about it.”

And isn’t part of the new show about what it’s like to go out with a much younger woman?

“Yes, but that’s not to do with the girl I’m with now,” he’s quick to qualify. “I’m harking back to an earlier relationship – she’s long gone, left me for a younger man.”

Really, how much younger?

“Someone who didn’t tell her to ‘grow up’ when she suggested doing it twice in the same day.”

And the Valleys come in for a battering too, with Rhod describing Ebbw Vale as being so rough it was where they filmed Ross Kemp In Afghanistan.

“Ha! I’m joking. It’s all done with great affection, I love the Valleys,” he says. “I may name check places like Ebbw’s Beaufort Theatre in my act, but I’m a huge fan of those places. The Beaufort’s stage manager was even in the audience of my Edinburgh show. And anyway, my parents are originally from Blaenau Gwent. Mum’s from Abertillery and dad’s from Cwm.”

So, aside from a lengthy, national tour starting in October, what’s next for him?

“Well. there’s a radio sitcom, that’s still happening. I was supposed to have recorded it in April, but Edinburgh put that on the back burner. So, hopefully, at the end of this month we’ll be full steam ahead with that.” Set in the fictional village of Llanbobl, whose weird and wonderful residents have inhabited Rhod’s live shows up until now, the pilot episode looks set to go out on Radio Two after Jonathan Ross’ Saturday afternoon programme. “If that goes down well then I’ll be talking to Steve Coogan’s production company Baby Cow about adapting it for TV.”

But next he’s off to Hong Kong and Bangkok.

“I was the first comic ever to play Taiwan, you know,” says Rhod. “At least, that’s what they tell me. It was quite odd though, there was no stage as such, just me standing on the bar and walking over the taps cracking jokes.”

A far cry from the Wales Millennium Centre which he’s just been booked to play next March.

“Oh, I can’t wait for that,” he says, bristling with excitement. That’s a great space, a great space. As long as the recession doesn’t stop everyone coming then it should be a blast.”

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I'm surprised to hear that the Welsh weren't all behind him in the if.com award. I thought he should have won it.

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Rhod takes centre stage with a major comedy breakthrough
With an appearance at The Royal Variety Performance, is 2009 Rhod Gilbert's year? Arts reporter Nick Ahad spoke to him.
13 February 2009
yorkshirepost.co.uk

When he finally arrives for our interview, half an hour late and carrying a huge bag of his own props, Rhod Gilbert is in a bit of a flap. "Righto, sorry I'm late. I've just spent four hours driving from Cardiff and an hour driving around Huddersfield's one way system. It's a bloody night-mare," says Gilbert. His lilting, musical Carmarthenshire South Welsh accent gives him a lovable quality, one which he exploits to the full on stage.

We accompany Gilbert backstage where he runs through a five-minute technical rehearsal – theatre shows normally take around a week for their "techs" – during which he gives the technical crew a crash course in his show. "Right, come on down to the dressing room and we can have a chat," says Gilbert. I'm loath to point out that it's now 7.10pm and he's due on stage at 7.30pm. "Oh, I thought it was an eight o'clock start. I better get ready," says Gilbert and digs out an electric shaver to clear away a good couple of days of stubble growth. "Is this how you normally prepare for a show?" I venture. "Doing an interview with my top off, shaving in a mirror backstage? Not really." This is the surreal world of Rhod Gilbert.

The Welsh comedian came to stand-up late, having never been to a comedy gig before he was 27. A company director, he was in the final weeks of a deal which would see him become a partner in a pharmaceutical company and made the decision to quit and give stand-up comedy a go. "I won a few national awards, BBC talent awards and that kind of thing and just kept plugging away," says Gilbert. Taking shows up to Edinburgh, he built an audience and garnered impressive reviews. In 2005 he was nominated for the Perrier Newcomer Award, then two years later, his show What's Eating Gilbert's Grape was a hit with audiences, and when he toured it to venues like Leeds City Varieties he noted that he was now able to half-fill the theatre.

Last year his Edinburgh show, Rhod Gilbert and The Award Winning Mince Pie, saw him narrowly miss out on the main if.comedy award, previously named the Perrier. Not taking the top prize did little harm to his career and he found himself booked to play the BBC show Live at the Apollo and the 80th Royal Variety Performance. Both shows exposed the comic to a wider audience than he had been slowly building on the traditional stand-up circuit. He was also shortlisted in January for the South Bank Breakthrough Award.

At the gig in Huddersfield, at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Gilbert arrived on stage shoeless and feigned surprise at the number of people in the audience – he sold out the venue. "Oh. Have you all seen me on the telly?" Gilbert asked on the night.

A week later when I finally catch up with him, he admits it was a genuine surprise to be met by a full theatre. And he really had forgotten to put his shoes on. "I only had my boots with me and I took them off when I was getting ready. I normally like to wear trainers on stage and I just forgot," he says. "I've found over the past five years that I do a gig and there's a small number there, then I go back a year later and it's a bit bigger – it's grown year on year. But this was the first time I've played in Huddersfield, so it was a really nice surprise to see the theatre full like that."

For those who haven't seen Gilbert's work, it is a little difficult to explain. He plays the everyman, perplexed and occasionally outraged at the world around him, with a nice line in surreal humour. How surreal? In his stage show he has spent the last five years living in an imaginary town called Llanbobl. What's Eating Gilbert's Grape was built around stories of how he met his wife, having a baby and turning 40. At the end of the show he explained that not only did he not have a newborn, he was in fact single and only 37.

He name checks Eddie Izzard and we discuss that comedian's riff on bees making honey (Izzard admires the complexity and surreality of nature – "do ants make chutney?" he questions). The comparison between Izzard and Gilbert is an obvious one. A few days before we speak Izzard announced a stadium tour this year.

Gilbert will be playing the Millennium Centre in Cardiff next month and sold out the 2,000 seater with no advertising within days of the announcement of his appearance. "We stuck on another date and that's sold out already," says Gilbert, clearly pleased and showing off a little. So we're going to do another. There's a question whether I'm ready to do the CIA in Cardiff, which is 5,000." The comedian is unsure about this idea, concerned that it may interfere with the subtlety of his performance. It might seem a bit surreal for a comedian who's only been on the circuit for six years, but with his star rising the way it is, the gig will be his if he wants it.

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We talk to a top new comedian ahead of his Cresset gig
03 April 2009
peterboroughtoday.co.uk

ONE of the UK's best new comedians is coming to Peterborough this weekend to entertain with his tale of The Award Winning Mince Pie. Rhod Gilbert (aka the Welsh Misery) is on the road with his hilarious show about his on-going experiences with service station food. Armed with a travel pillow, a flask and a very powerful torch, Rhod aggressively demands to know more about the "Award-Winning Mince Pie" on display on the service station counter one morning.

Suddenly aware of what he is doing, he is forced to acknowledge that he may be having a very mild nervous breakdown. How did it come to this? He doesn't even like mince pies. The pressures of living in a tedious and absurd world have finally taken their toll on the Welsh comedian. This is the slightly ridiculous story of how one mince pie broke the camel's back, and you can hear this, and more, at the Cresset tomorrow night.

"I've been doing this show for nearly four months now, and it's starting to wind down. Peterborough is one of the last shows before I end up with a couple of big ones in Cardiff. The show is basically a pop at some of today's everyday culture. It just so happens the focal point happens to be the food on sale at Knutsford service station. The tour has gone well. I've been everywhere. Some places I'd never even heard of before. You get warned about some towns where the crowd might be a bit flat, Telford was one! But Telford was one of the best, so I tend not to believe what people say anymore."

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Rhod Gilbert - Defining Rhod
08 August 2009
By Jay Richardson
scotsman.com

'TRIVIAL?!" Rhod Gilbert growls in his distinctive South Welsh timbre. "You said I was 'unremittingly trivial'! Pot fucking kettle Scotsman! I'm not the one devoting 48 pages to Scotland every day!"

Oh God. Despite me lavishing praise and a five-star review on Gilbert's last Fringe show, the Carmarthen-born buffoon appears to have misinterpreted a compliment, seized the wrong end of the stick and is now brandishing it over my head. Given that he's 40 and a heavy smoker, I suppose I can outrun him if push comes to shove. But, as he showed in Rhod Gilbert and the Award-Winning Mince Pie, life's petty irritations seem to send him nuclear with rage.

Luckily, he laughs before exhaling and saying: "I'm just a total stress bunny. And that comes out in my comedy." In truth, the affable Welshman has simply been detailing how, for the second year running, his Fringe show commences with a spluttering denunciation of his Scotsman review. He relates how he builds to a vein-popping rant before admitting to attending anger management classes. Once there, he apoplectically explodes at his therapist and fellow classmates.

"The ranting and raving's going to stay," he chuckles. "I've found a voice there that I want to pursue for a bit."

Can it all just be an act, though? The favourite to win last year's if.comedy award, he narrowly lost out to David O'Doherty and shortly afterwards appeared on the BBC's Culture Show in a segment with comedian-turned-psychotherapist Ruby Wax. Their session revealed more about Wax than it did the bemused Gilbert, with him repeatedly reiterating that he was just playing a character and didn't actually have any demons. He allowed that there was an element of catharsis to his shows, but gave a very fine impression of a man simply saying that to escape Wax's couch.

Still, mirroring his hastily put-together show last year – "the nervous breakdown thing building to the mince pie didn't come until July I don't think" – Gilbert says he has been "desperately hoping" that this new one holds together every bit as effectively while he seems to lose it.

"I wish I enjoyed it more," he says of the Fringe. "Because I get in such an intense, anxious bubble, every day this Groundhog Day thing of getting up, the sheer stress of it. I can't sleep because I can't wind down after the show, because I've had so much coffee to wire me through it. I'm usually awake till 6am and the whole day I have this nervous energy about me. Considering it's the biggest arts festival in the world, I never feel less stimulated than when I'm in Edinburgh. I can't go and enjoy anything or relax for the entire month.

"I see people like (Andrew] Maxwell, strolling around, all hours of the day, looking as relaxed as you like. And I think, 'When have you written your show?! When are you thinking about, or devoting time or energy to this?!' Because in my head the whole bloody time, everywhere I go, I'm getting ideas. If I don't record them I forget them. The whole time my brain is buzzing with a mixture of creativity and anxiety."

Only daring to scan his reviews at the end of the Fringe, Gilbert compares the incessant media and public scrutiny of the festival to that of an 80,000-strong football crowd advising David Beckham how to take a free-kick. Winning awards he likens to winning an international cap. Ironically, he performed badly at the English PFA Player of the Year Awards in April, with "Alex Ferguson, Giggs, Ferdinand and Scholes sat on the table in front of me".

"I didn't die on my arse," he chuckles ruefully as he recalls the reaction of the 1,000-plus, "but I wasn't far off." Nevertheless, having come within a whisker of the top prize, Rhod Gilbert and the Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst sounds like an attempt to take the renamed Edinburgh Comedy Award this August or die trying.

"I'm used to big stages now and the way I'm writing and performing at the moment, I'm getting more and more physical, more and more silly," he explains. "There's going to be a lot of running around the stage, inhabiting characters, becoming a sprinter, or a lion, that kind of thing. Though I'm not saying I'm Steven Berkoff."

Indeed. Gilbert has been in discussions with Baby Cow, the independent production company owned by Steve Coogan and Henry Normal and behind such hits as Gavin & Stacey, The Mighty Boosh and Ideal, to develop his BBC radio sitcom pilot for television, along with his fellow writers Greg Davies and Sian Harris. But, he adds, "there's a big question mark over whether I will be in my own sitcom".

"I'm willing to audition for the part but if I don't get it…" He shakes his head. "Imagine me sitting in a room auditioning people to play Rhod Gilbert! I'm obsessive, I'm anal and a drama queen. I love acting on stage. If a gig is going well and people are laughing, then that's total oxygen to me. I probably act more than most stand-ups on stage – I'm bewildered, I'm angry, I'm furious, I'm sad, I'm confused; a far wider range of emotions than most. But give me a script and somebody else telling me to do it, without an audience giving me that immediate response of laughter, and I've no idea what I'm doing."

A former market researcher, Gilbert admits to "having done nothing virtually ever, other than try to make people laugh in every environment". He came lately and reluctantly to professional comedy, dragged to see his first gig at 27 by an ex-girlfriend, before finally biting the bullet and embarking on a stand-up course run by the comedian Logan Murray.

The class proved to be a vintage year, producing two-thirds of We Are Klang! in Greg Davies and Steve Hall, as well as Alexis Dubus and CBBC's Ed Petrie. Yet such was Gilbert's reticence that "I didn't turn up to half of the classes, to be honest. I was so shy, self-conscious and nervous. You can hear it in the radio sitcom, I've got a phobia of acting, absolute proper phobia.

"Greg's a drama teacher, so he absolutely loves it, it comes naturally to him. But I used to say I was sick or ask to sit out because I didn't feel confident. So I really didn't learn a lot but it was worth its weight in gold. The one thing it did do was take me, someone who was thinking about doing stand-up but would never actually have done it, and forced me to perform. It completely changed my life."

And he's been forcing himself ever since. In just seven years, he's experienced a rapid ascent from eye-catching triumphs in new act competitions, to winning countless awards and becoming one of the festival's most consistent draws. Yet though he continues to push himself ever closer to that first proper onstage breakdown, a forthcoming television project ought to give him a sense of perspective.

With apologies to Tom Jones, Charlotte Church, Shirley Bassey and Katherine Jenkins, Gilbert's adverts for the Welsh Tourist Board and weekend show on BBC Radio Wales have earned him the definitive title of Voice of Wales. In Bricking It, a BBC Wales production, though, he'll be performing society's unsung roles. Taking on occupations including soldier, sewage worker and house husband, he's planning to meet a "few local heroes but also have a good laugh".

The show was prompted by his repeatedly being asked "oh, how do you do your job? That's surely the most terrifying thing in the world!"

"I'll be sitting at a table with surgeons, lawyers, even a triathlete," he fumes. "People who do genuinely worthy, life-affirming jobs. Yet people still gravitate towards the stand-up.

"It's embarrassing. Barack Obama, Saddam Hussein and (Colonel] Gaddafi could all be sat there and people would still want to talk to me!"

• Rhod Gilbert and the Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst is at the Pleasance Courtyard, 8:45pm, until 31 August

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Edinburgh: it’s a grave situation
Ed McCracken
herald.co.uk
9 Aug 2009

If stress could be passed via ­osmosis, having lunch with Rhod Gilbert would give you a stomach ulcer. The 40-year-old comedian should be happy. He is not. Happy men do not spend an afternoon dreaming up their own epitaphs. That is the disposition of the haunted. Gilbert has been spooked by his own success. His gravestone, he says, will simply echo the reviews he is bracing himself to receive at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe: “Not as good as last year.”

Added to that, when we meet on a sticky July afternoon in London, he has just completed an episode of the BBC panel show Mock the Week. It is an experience he relives without affection. “I hate doing it,” he says. “It’s a bunch of comedians shouting over the top of one another. I’m almost in tears the day before, ­thinking about it.”

For many reasons, Gilbert should be ecstatic. His Fringe show, The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst, almost sold out before the Fringe even started. In the past year, he has finished his first sitcom pilot, continued his successful BBC Radio Wales show, toured the world with last year’s garlanded show, The Award Winning Mince Pie, and become the face of Wales in a series of adverts promoting his native land’s charms. He’s also batting away requests to appear on TV panel shows.

If he thought like a more swaggering comedian, such as Steve Coogan, Gilbert would expect to step off the train at Waverley and be carried through a ticker-tape parade by adoring crowds to the Pleasance Courtyard. But on this July afternoon, I catch him at comedy’s horse latitudes. His touring and other commitments have finished. Edinburgh is three weeks away. It is a strange period of nervous apprehension, procrastination, self-doubt, dread and a half-finished script.

“I have three weeks to knock this into shape, and there is no guarantee that I will,” he says. “And that’s why I stress. This year I’m hugely feeling the pressure. Massively. It’s all to do with last year and how well it was received. The previews I’m doing now, people are coming out saying that they really enjoyed it but it wasn’t as good as last year.”

Gilbert is obviously not a Coogan, a comedian who feasts upon his own bravado. Instead his shows, like his general demeanour, are built upon rage and exasperation at the world, with its idiocies and unnecessary baubles like award-winning mince pies. In the flesh he is more muted than on stage, but it makes him a personable, honest character. It is much easier to like a hangdog expression than a puffed chest.

Despite his marquee billing at the Pleasance this year, Gilbert is a relative latecomer to comedy and newcomer to the Fringe. He began doing stand-up seven years ago, aged 33. He began with a comedy writing course: two members of the sketch troupe We Are Klang were also in his class. But due to crippling shyness – something which Gilbert signed up to the course to overcome – he attended only five of the 11 classes. “And when I went I just avoided everyone’s gaze for as long as I could,” he says. “I was really facing my demons. Acting is a real phobia. So I said I didn’t feel well, real sick-note stuff.”

Despite his demons occasionally having him in a headlock, by the end of the course he delivered five minutes of material to a group of friends, families and classmates. “And after 1500 gigs around the world, it is still my best ever. I took the roof off.” Ten days later, he performed the same set at a comedy club and “died an absolute death”. But a comedy career was born.

Gilbert’s first foray to Edinburgh, as is the case for so many comedians, was as part of an ensemble. That was in 2003; the following year he shared an hour with comedic polymath Mark Watson, recently seen advertising Magners cider, and graduated to his first solo show in 2005. Initially Gilbert traded in surreal tales of whimsy set in the fictional Welsh town of Llanbobl, before moving into more personal territory.

Last year’s show, The Award Winning Mince Pie, was about how Gilbert saw the offending pastry at a motorway ­service station and had a nervous breakdown at the absurdity of it all. Five-star reviews rained down. It was the hot favourite to win the big prize, the If.comedy award, but he was pipped by the Irish comedian David O’Doherty. Nonetheless, a DVD is due to be released later this year. It was a show created, he says, “by alchemy”. But like some rebellious golem, the show’s success has tap-tapped at his window in the dead of night ever since. Every once in a while you write a show that really hits the spot,” he says. “And that happened last year. I don’t think if I spent 20 hours a day working solidly for a year I could get that again. I don’t think this year will do that. And that’s a ­horrible pressure and stress.”

When we meet, in a roof-top bar in a private club in Soho, the air is thick with media babble. Deals are being brokered, pilots commissioned, adverts brainstormed. It is an environment into which Gilbert has been increasingly dipped over the past year, and one that has impinged upon his principles. Firstly, advertising is anathema to him. Appearing on commercials for Wales is his exception to the rule. Secondly, he is picky about the interviews he does. There are certain kinds of publications that would like to feature him, but he has refused.

“Lads’ mags are always asking,” he says. “There has never been any question in my mind whether those things were detrimental to society and people’s attitudes towards women. I’ve always held these opinions. They are certainly reinforced by my current girlfriend. But I get leaned on from every angle to do these interviews. I know I’m losing DVD sales because of it, and all because of these bloody principles. They get tested more and more all the time.”

One principle he has gone back on is returning to Edinburgh. At the end of each festival, he says “never again”. He describes the Fringe in no kinder tones than Mock the Week. “It is miserable, absolutely miserable,” he says. “I hate it. It is a relentless Groundhog slog.”

He doesn’t sleep during August, lying awake until 7am, thinking over the last show. The Fringe is too long and takes too much of a physical toll. Last year he had to communicate via notes with his flatmates because he got ill and lost his voice. “I spent five hours a day gargling elderflower and other weird stuff from witch doctors,” he says. “And every comedian has their own suggestion. I spent about £300 on things to gargle.”

But he is back. And the three-week run-up is over. The Fringe has started. For the next month, the epitaph writers will still their hands and line up to see, along with Gilbert, if the gods of alchemy or stress have visited him. Chisels and camomile tea are at the ready.

The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst is at the Pleasance Courtyard until August 31 (not 12 or 19), 0131 556 6550, www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh

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I was going to post about Rhod Gilbert myself, being a Welshman, but its obvious his popularity is growing incredably well. Fantastic comic, if you havent seen any of his stuff its well worth a watch

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Rhod Gilbert - 2009-11-07 - Jonathan Ross
download mp3

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My Hols: Rhod Gilbert
Goat-hunting, bag-losing, cabbage-picking, louse-dodging: it’s all an adventure for the disaster-prone Welsh comic
Interview by Caroline Rees
November 15th 2009
timesonline.co.uk

All my life, the main characteristic of my holidays has been shocking disorganisation leading to fairly disastrous trips — although they have all turned into a good adventure.

When my girlfriend, Sian, and I went to Brittany a few years ago, we arrived at our gîte only to find it locked. The travel agent said I’d never booked it. So we ended up in the only place left: a man in a sailor’s hat and shorts took us to his house near Vannes. It looked lovely, with a pool, but he put us in his garage. All it had was a little bed, an oven and a canoe down one wall. We could peer over the fence and watch him and his wife floating on lilos. You have to laugh.

I’ve just had another holiday in France, where my agent booked everything for me. It took a bit of the adventure out of it, but it was fantastic. After my last show in Edinburgh, I flew straight to the Côte d’Azur and was on a beach in Antibes the next day. It was the first holiday where I’ve managed to switch off and read without anything random happening. But there’s always something wrong, isn’t there? She’d booked me into a really expensive hotel, and when my girlfriend and I sat on a lounger and ordered coffee, the bill was 75 quid. So I spent three days whingeing about that.

I went to India after university. I arrived with a mate at three in the morning and what I remember most is the rows of sleeping bodies on top of every bus shelter. We found a cheap hotel, complete with lice and massive spiders, and hugged each other to sleep, we were so scared. In the light of day, it was different — India bombards your senses, and we fell in love with it within hours.

We went on to Nepal and Malaysia, and did all sorts of jobs. We picked cabbages in Western Australia. It was hell, up to our knees in soaking fields. The guy started paying us in marijuana, which didn’t help. The cabbage machine had gone bonkers and, instead of planting one every 12 inches, had sprayed them everywhere. We were paid to tidy them up. And this field was the size of Cardiff.

Then the only place we could afford to go was West Timor, where we met an Indonesian guy and ended up subsistence-living on an island for five months. It was mind-blowing. We would frantically hunt goats round the beach and cook them, fish for lunch, climb palm trees and shake down coconuts. Then we woke up one morning and said we’d had enough. Back in Carmarthen, it was incredible how we just slotted back into normal life.

For family holidays, we used to go camping. My parents were teachers, so the car was loaded up and off we’d go for six weeks to the south of France, five of us in a plastic-seated Hillman Avenger. Basically, it was six weeks of car sickness. But we went to amazing places. And camping is always an experience. Every camping holiday since, whether it was on the west coast of Wales or in the Australian desert, I’ve got flooded out. At Coober Pedy, in South Australia, they have only 1.9in of rain a year, but we were bailing out the tent. I’ve got a whole list of disastrous holidays.

The lost-luggage routine that I do on stage is an exaggeration of what happened when I lost my luggage and was left with one of those extendable handles. I was going to Ireland for a month, and watched this handle going round and round the carousel, with everybody laughing. Until, one by one, they left, and there was just me. In the routine, there’s five minutes of me taking this handle to the desk and the woman saying, “Did you pack it yourself? Have you left it unattended? Could anyone have interfered with it?” And my dumbfounded responses. I got my luggage back — after it had been off on its own travels.

Partly to limit my carbon footprint, I’ve holidayed in Wales for the past few years. I’ve bought a little holiday flat on the beach near Mumbles. It’s very much for downtime — reading, walking, possibly going in the sea. And it doesn’t matter if the wind is howling on a winter’s night, it’s still stunning.

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Would the real Rhod Gilbert please stand up
Jan 16 2010
Western Mail

RHOD Gilbert is not a morning person. He’s also gone four weeks without a cigarette. So when he appears for our chat, bleary-eyed and apologetic for being late, I’m slightly worried I’m not going to catch him in the best of moods. After all, comedians are supposed to be quite complicated creatures, aren’t they? Hyper and happy on stage, in their element doing stand-up and making people laugh, yet morose and often depressed when the curtain falls. Right?

But after a strong filter coffee, Rhod is, to my relief, anything but unfriendly. In fact, he is charming, likeable and eloquent, and as the caffeine kicks in, talks with enthusiasm and disbelief at his journey from mischievous schoolboy and painfully shy college student to market researcher and now a much-in-demand award-winning stand-up comedian and TV presenter.

The 41-year-old, who critics have hailed as one of Britain’s most exciting comedians, is the first to admit that he never meant to enter the world of comedy, let alone perform sell-out tours around the world, have the third biggest-selling Christmas comedy DVD or presenting duties on shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Royal Variety Performance and Live at the Apollo.

Speaking in his wonderfully gruff Carmarthenshire accent and wearing just a T-shirt, despite the big freeze outside, Rhod recalls how he spent his childhood and teenage years drifting, with little ambition for anything, let alone making a lucrative career from being funny. Growing up in Carmarthen with his dad Malcolm and mum Norma and older siblings Geoff and Jane, he was the quiet one, the kid who was quite happy to sit in front of the TV, while his sister had a head in a book and brother kicked the football in the garden outside.

Rhod says of his early years: “I used to sit in front of the telly, goggle-eyed, while life went by around me. To be honest, I don’t think I ever really watched what was on. You could have put me in front of a screen saver and it would have been the same. I don’t know whether I was sitting imagining things or what, I suppose I must have been really. My brother was always inventing games, always busy; my sister was a real bookworm and then there was me, sat in front of the TV while the world passed me by.

“It was a good childhood, normal, happy and school was OK, but I think I was always involved in some sort of mischief there. I went to Model Primary School in Carmarthen and whenever there was any trouble, I was always on the fringes of it, usually walking away, but always under suspicion. Afterwards, I went on to Maridunum Comprehensive, but even there I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My parents were both teachers, and my brother and sister work in academia now, but I was never really interested in it.”

Despite lacking direction, Rhod, whose ranting clip about his lost luggage has become a huge YouTube hit with more then seven million hits, went to Exeter University to study languages. But, after three weeks hidden away in his student accommodation, he almost threw in the towel and went back home to Carmarthen, through sheer fright at the prospect of making new friends. Such was his painful shyness he didn’t even have the courage to eat with other students in the canteen, let alone knock on the room next door to make friends.

He admitted: “For three weeks, I didn’t talk to anyone, look at anyone or make contact with anyone. I was so nervous, I couldn’t even bear the thought of eating at the canteen, despite the fact I’d paid for meals. I would sit in my room and watch from the window as other students walked across to the canteen and then I’d go to a garage and buy myself a sandwich or a pasty. It was easier that way. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. After three weeks, I went to see my lecturer, a Welsh guy called Lyn Williams, and told him that I couldn’t stand it any longer and wanted to leave.

“I didn’t even have the guts to knock on the bloke’s door next door to say hello. It was awful. But Lyn said to me, ‘Would it be unreasonable to stay until the end of the month?’ and I said I supposed not. Then I met a Geordie called Tristan, who was pretty much in the same boat as me, which made me feel a bit better, but then he went and left too. But I was glad I saw it through. It did get easier; I met more and more people and ended up getting a 2:1 in French and Spanish, despite the fact I only went to two lectures out of 60 in the final year.

“I never did any work at all, so how I managed to pass I’ll never know. My dad was a teacher and I remember I would be given an essay to do and I’d phone him and say, ‘Right dad, I’ve got this question to answer about Moorish Spain’ and he’d say, ‘Right, go and grab a pen’ and then would dictate a whole essay down the phone. Then one of my mates would come to the phone and he’d do the same for him. Honestly, he knows everything. My brother’s the same. In fact, all the family are academics except for me.”

After graduating Rhod, who lives in Cardiff with two friends, including fellow comedian Chris Corcoran, still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life so he packed his bags and travelled for a year and a half around Australia and Asia before returning to Carmarthen and working as an admin assistant for the Welsh Office. When I ask if this was a pretty dull existence, Rhod laughs, shaking his head, taking a big gulp of his coffee, and proclaiming it was the best two years of his life.

“They were fantastic times. I still had no idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be and there were five or six of us, all 20-somethings, working during the day, going out drinking in the nights. It was like living an episode of Friends every day. The work was easy, we weren’t being challenged and we just had an absolute laugh. Then everybody started to leave and I was the last one left, so I decided to move to London to actually get myself a career.”

Rhod spent the next eight years in market research, having finally found a career he enjoyed, new challenges to stop him getting bored and learning a business acumen that meant he felt ready to take on the business as his own, buying into the company with a couple of colleagues. Except it never happened. Just as Rhod had found a career that brought him satisfaction and a fresh challenge, he also discovered comedy, thanks to a girlfriend’s constant nagging about how he should give it a go.

He said: “I never meant to do it, but my girlfriend at the time, a lovely girl called Bryony Worthington, kept telling me I was funny and should give it a go. She nagged me constantly for those eight years, taking me to comedy gigs and telling me I should do something about it because she reckoned I was a funny bloke. But it wasn’t something that I’d ever thought about. I’d always liked having a laugh and a bit of banter down the pub, but I had never watched comedy much and I’m not one of these people who grew up influenced by this comedian or that one. But we started going more and more and I suppose I started to enjoy it. We went to comedy clubs, held in little rooms above pubs.

“I got more and more into it and started to ask if I could help out at all and then this comedy workshop came up and Bryony convinced me that it was worth giving it a go. But it was awful, my idea of hell. I’ve got a complete phobia about acting. It makes me feel self-conscious, stupid and an absolute dick and we had to do all these terrible drama exercises. I remember there were about 10 of us in a small room and half of us had to be someone of low status, the other someone of high status and we had to meet and greet each other. I just couldn’t do it. It made me feel sick and I wanted the floor to swallow me up.

“When I’m on stage now, it’s totally different because I’m directing what goes on, I’m on control. But when I’m told what to do and how to act, I just freeze. It just makes me feel a complete idiot. I think there were 10 lessons in all, but I skived off six of them because I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of acting in front of them all. I was really afraid, and still am, about looking like a twat. In fact, even thinking about it now is awful. I’d rather do anything than that again. Mind you, there were some really funny people on that course. Funnier than me. A chap from Pontyclun called Simon Phillips was one of the funniest people I met. He works at B&Q now!”

But, despite his phobia, unease and embarrassment, the course culminated in a graduation ceremony of sorts, giving each student a chance to do their own stand-up routine in front of everyone else and a couple of friends.

“That was the best gig I’ve ever done,” says Rhod, smiling, clearly enjoying the memory that kicked off his amazing career in stand-up. It was brilliant; everyone in the audience was someone who had done the course or a friend, and it was a brilliant atmosphere. It’s still the most enjoyable gig that I’ve done.”

Within 18 months of finishing the course, Rhod had already won several different talent competitions and was nominated for the Perrier Newcomer award for his first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005, entitled 1984. Since then, he has performed shows worldwide, becoming the first western comedian to perform in Taiwan, and has firmly cemented himself as one of the leading comedy names in the UK. Unfortunately though, with success comes sacrifice, and his relationship with Bryony didn’t last.

“I was away such a lot with work that we eventually split up after a few months but it was all very amicable. She’s a climate change campaigner in London and doing very well for herself and I suppose I’ll always be grateful she nagged me so much because I’m having a great time. It’s unbelievable really. I never thought I’d be in the position I’m in now. I hoped I would be able to make a living out of it, working every night in a comedy club or, at best, performing at somewhere like the Glee Club in front of 500 people every Saturday night, but I never imagined it would get to the type of scale it is now. The Hammersmith Apollo, selling out the Wales Millennium Centre, it’s just mad.”

And Rhod certainly has a point. Debut DVD, Rhod Gilbert and the Award-Winning Mince Pie, became the fastest-selling debut stand-up DVD of 2009, he’s appeared on BBC Two shows Mock The Week and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which he presented last October, and Channel 4’s 8 Out of 10 Cats and has used his comedy talents to write and narrate BBC Three’s Goals Galore, Pranks Galore, Football Gaffe’s Galore and TV Gaffes Galore. He has his own Saturday morning show on BBC Radio Wales, promotes tourism as the official ‘Voice of Wales’ for the tourist board and also fronts Visit Wales advertising. He is also a regular guest on Live at the Apollo and took part in Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow for BBC One.

And now, after taking a short break from his current tour, Rhod Gilbert and The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst, which restarts in February, he has been conquering more demons by filming Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience for BBC One Wales. In the show, which starts on Tuesday, he takes on a number of tough jobs, from joining the squaddies on their overnight exercises in the bitterly cold Brecon Beacons to mucking in on the bin rounds in Barry. But the jobs were anything but easy for a man who happily confesses to having a few “issues”. In fact, the whole experience has made him wonder if he needs some therapy.

He says: “I like my own privacy, my own space. I like to be in charge of my own time and I’m fiercely independent. I also have a real issue with intimacy. I don’t do it, so when I was told I’d be working in a beauty and hair salon, doing spray tans, rubbing gel into people and, worse, washing people’s hair, it made me feel physically sick. This is someone who hasn’t had his haircut by a professional for more than 20 years. I do it myself with the clippers as I don’t want anyone doing it for me. I was washing one poor woman’s hair and just kept saying, ‘This is disgusting’. I couldn’t bear having my fingers through her hair. I’d have rather put my hands in a bag full of bugs like a bushtucker trial on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! than go through that again. I had no idea how hard I should do it either, because I didn’t want to crush her skull. It was awful, absolutely awful. I was so uncomfortable doing that job. I’d be rubbing gel into people and I had to imagine they were a chicken that I was getting ready to cook. That’s the only way I could deal with it. They’re lucky they didn’t get half a lemon! I obviously have a real hang-up about personal space, so washing a stranger’s hair or spraying a tan was not easy. It was honestly worse than being a bin man, and that was bad enough.”

Rhod spent three days with the refuse collectors from the Vale of Glamorgan Council and admits it was “disgusting”, but it has given him a brand new respect for the bin men, who sometimes have to collect up to 20,000 tonnes of rubbish and walk 12 miles a day.

“If I ever become Prime Minister I will make everybody be a bin man for just one day. They’d never have to do it twice, but I want everyone to know exactly what those men have to do. It’s disgusting. It’s smelly, it’s physical and you have to get up at some ridiculous hour to start. I’m definitely not a morning person. I’m nocturnal because of the job I do. I don’t normally go to bed until about two or three o’clock in the morning, so that was the first obstacle. I wasn’t looking forward to it as I knew how horrible and stinking it would be. But I thought at the end of the day it’ll be a bit of fresh air, and really, how hard can it be, chucking a few sacks into the back of a lorry?

“But I’m not a fit person. I haven’t done any proper exercise for 20 years. Up until just four weeks ago, I was smoking 15 to 20 cigs a day. I bought a cross-trainer for the house that I’ve been on about twice and now it’s a brilliant clothes horse. I just don’t do exercise, so I found it completely exhausting. I walked miles. I just never appreciated the work they do. I was under the impression they earn quite a lot of money. But they don’t, they earn close to the minimum wage. When we see the bin lorries, we just assume they are going to do our road, then disappear. But I don’t think anyone realises they are still collecting rubbish seven hours later. And the abuse they get is unbelievable. We were blocking up a road and this really nasty, aggressive bloke in a 4x4 launched into a real tirade. It was so bad, we couldn’t show it on the show. So yes, I have a new-found respect for these men. Forget bringing back National Service, make everyone do a bin round just once in their lives and they’ll soon be brought into line.”

Having spent three days collecting rubbish and cleaning up dog mess on Barry Island beach, Rhod was hoping that being a mum for two days would be a breeze. But, with absolutely no experience of children whatsoever, and his less-than-perfect time-keeping, he had to face new challenges, once again testing his need for independence and privacy to the limit.

“Being a mum was just as hard a slog as being a bin man, even harder I reckon, and just as smelly. How can so much poo come out of something so small? I had a day following the mum around and then the next day it was down to me. The mum was always nearby, in earshot, but I’ve never held a baby before let alone look after five kids, two aged 10, a four-year-old, a three-year-old and a one-year-old. It was completely relentless. I was late picking the three-year-old up from nursery and she was in tears when I arrived. I couldn’t believe it though, because even though she’d only known me a day, she ran up to me and put her arms around me. I couldn’t believe the trust she had put in me already. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to get away once they’d gone to bed. I left the one night about half nine and then the four-year-old came out barefoot and in his pyjamas to ask me to peel a banana for him. I couldn’t get my head around it. There was just no privacy and getting up at 5am to do chores before they all wake up, well, that’s the middle of the night for God’s sake.”

But for a man with few ambitions when he was growing up, a taste of life as one of the UK’s top comedians has given Rhod the confidence to look ahead and make plans. He is desperate to deal with his fears of acting and issues of self-consciousness, and is currently writing a sitcom with girlfriend Sian Harris that he is hoping to star in. But, for that to happen, he is only too aware that he has to face his acting demons.

“I’ve got to sort out this thing I’ve got about acting or the sitcom will never happen,” he admits. My current show is all about anger management, so perhaps I need therapy for the acting too. I’ve got the tour now in February for two months and I might take a break from stand-up then. It’s a hard slog and I’m looking at other opportunities that might come my way. I’ve got to admit I really enjoyed presenting the Buzzcocks back in October and if I got the chance to host that permanently, I’d jump at it. It’s a good time for comedy at the moment. Maybe it’s because of the recession and people wanting to get away from their worries and have a giggle for half an hour, who knows? It’s true that comedy always booms in bust times. But I’ve had a fantastic few years. I’ve travelled the world and made people laugh and I’ve had fun too. I’m excited by what I’m doing and I suppose I’m glad the girlfriend nagged me for all those years.”

Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience starts on BBC One Wales on Tuesday at 10.35pm. You can also hear Rhod on BBC Radio Wales every Saturday from 11am-1pm

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I'll try and get hold of the show for the Streaming TV section.

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Rhod Gilbert: “People either love me or hate me”
Insecure? Painfully shy? Can’t deal with criticism? Welcome to the real world of Wales’ most popular comedian, Rhod Gilbert. The stand-up shares some home truths with Nathan Bevan.
Nathan Bevan,
Wales On Sunday
Nov 14 2010

HAVING been bed-bound for weeks with pneumonia, Rhod Gilbert recently decided a spot of fresh air would be just the thing to cheer himself up. A better option might have been to disappear back under the duvet – and no, before you ask, he doesn’t know what tog it is.

“I went for a little walk around the block, but hadn’t gone more than a few yards when I saw this guy staggering down the street towards me,” wheezed the mega-selling stand-up, still sounding a bit rough. “He was pissed out of his mind and really looked like he was going to fall and crack his head open, so I went over to him to ask if he had far to go. He took one look at me and said, ‘Heeey, I know you, you’re a superstar. What’s your name again’?

“So I told him and he went, ‘Yeah, that’s it, seen you on the telly. Thought to myself, ‘This bloke’s a cunt’!” added Rhod, before collapsing into a long throaty crackle of a laugh. “But there was something about the way he’d said it so matter-of-factly straight to my face that I didn’t care. Actually, he admitted that I was quite all right in person and we even swapped phone numbers!”

The Carmarthen-born, Cardiff-based comic admitted he was fully aware that his was the kind of act that had a tendency to split an audience right down the middle. “People either love me or hate me. I know that, I don’t mind,” said the 42-year- old. “I can’t expect everyone to like me.” But he added that he could no longer bring himself to go online to check out what was being said about him because he found it too “distressing”.

“I’ve recently withdrawn from the internet altogether and have never understood Twitter,” sighed Rhod. “I’ve never tweeted myself, but I’ve gone on there a couple of times to see what people are writing about me. I can only equate it to sitting in a pub where every table is talking about you, but quietly enough that you can only hear the odd choice word. Human beings aren’t built to sit there and be privy to that level of feedback about themselves, and it actually knocked my self-confidence to the point where I started becoming very withdrawn and depressed,” he added. “I can take the guy on the street calling me a you-know-what ‘cos it’s face to face, but there’s something about the anonymity of doing it online that I can’t deal with.”

As a result, the comic has even handed over the reins of handling his Facebook page to his agent. “A few weeks ago someone wrote something very, very aggressive and negative about me, not to mention factually incorrect, I might add. “So I wrote back defending myself and before I knew it he was posting stuff saying that I was attacking him and...” (his voice trails off, exasperated)... “Look, it’s nothing to do with ego, I don’t consider myself too big to be bothered with the fans, I just find it all too distressing.”

The late-blooming, former market researcher added he was looking forward to finishing filming the first series of his hit BBC One panel show Ask Rhod Gilbert so he could concentrate on performing the dozen or so dates he was forced to cancel through illness. “Recording the TV show is very demanding and combining it with my tour was frying my head a bit,” said Rhod. “So my body just decided enough was enough and said, ‘I can’t do both and, more to the point, I’m not going to – sod your diary!’” But Rhod says he would always prefer marathon tours of smaller theatres around the country to playing a handful of huge arena dates which would allow him to make just as much money in a fraction of the time.

“I just don’t want to lose the atmosphere you get in the smaller venues,” he said. “I could have gone the Russell Howard route and played to the same number of people in a week and a half as I did in nearly three months, but I think it’s less rewarding that way – although my health and my bank balance definitely would have benefited. But I want to be able to chat to the audience, bounce off them. Like the time I noticed a 12-year-old girl in the crowd and, rather patronisingly, I asked her, ‘Have you seen me on TV?’ and she replied, ‘Don’t flatter yourself, I’ve never heard of you. My dad booked the tickets and, when you’re 12, it’s not like you can argue’. That was one of the most brutal put-downs I’ve ever received,” he laughed.

Another reason for wanting to stick to more manageable crowd sizes was his recent experience of playing in front of a whopping 60,000 at the Help The Heroes charity gig at Twickenham. “Terrifying, everyone backstage was bricking it,” groaned Rhod, who added that he turned to the stadium-filling likes of Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre – also on the bill – for advice. They just looked at each other blankly and said, ‘We haven’t got any, no-one’s ever done anything this big before’.”

Luckily, with his experiences entertaining the troops in Afghanistan to riff on, Rhod stormed it and spent the rest of the evening hobnobbing with the starry likes of Sir Tom Jones and Robbie Williams. “It was very surreal and part of me will never get used to all that showbiz stuff,” he said. “Maybe it’s a Welsh thing, but I just feel out of place in that weird little world. I’m like this little bloke from Carmarthen who’s on some strange holiday, living on borrowed time before someone taps me on the shoulder and asks what I’m doing there. Honest to God, mate, every time I see my name on a dressing room door it still freaks me out,” added Rhod.

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I didn't love or hate him before reading this - I just thought he was quite a good comedian with a particular accent... but knowing that he went to entertain the soldiers puts him right down my list now. I don't hate him now, but I'll think twice about posting anything about him again.

Take that you SUPERSTAR!