Andy Parsons

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Comedy: Andy Parsons
THE Mock the Week, QI and Live at the Apollo regular is currently touring the country with his new show, Citizens!, in which he illustrates how we could all really change the world - if only we could be bothered.
February 13, 2009
thisisnottingham.co.uk

"It's very tongue in cheek," he says. "I'm sure people will go away from my show fired up and then do absolutely nothing about it! I'll work them up into a frenzy, in the full knowledge that when they wake up the next morning, very little will have changed. They'll still be going quietly about their business."

Parsons' schtick is political comedy without the leaflet, ridicule without the lecture and satire without the sanctimony. And recent events have supplied him with plenty of source material he says. "The last six months have been amazing. We have the first black US President and the banks are now owned by you and me. Gordon Brown was politically dead and buried, and then the worst financial crisis for decades brought about his renaissance."

Hitting his rhetorical stride, Andy expands on the subject of the new US President. "Obama outmanoeuvred corporate America on the campaign trail. He made twice as much money as John McCain, who had huge corporate backing. It just goes to show that we have much more power than we thought." Then adds: "I'm sure he'll get bogged down in the future, but even in his first 100 hours, Obama did so many amazing things, like putting global warming top of the agenda, withdrawing from Iraq and closing Guantanamo Bay. It's such an exciting time. And anyway, we've just had eight years of George W Bush, so how bad can it be? It's like being Chancellor after Alistair Darling - you can't fail too badly!"

He adds: "From my point of view, comedy and politics are great bed fellows. I think its great fun to watch the news in the morning, write some jokes about it in the afternoon and then perform them in the evening. In every show, I try to talk about something really big that's happened that day. I'm updating it all the time, so the first and last shows of the tour will be completely different beasts.

"That's the great thing about doing topical stuff - you never run out of jokes! You always sit there flabbergasted as you watch the news -'how did they think that was a good idea?' Those stories always make for great material and there's an unending supply of them. If a comedian just talks about relationships, he could do the same stuff night after night," continues the 41-year-old who was the main writer on Spitting Image. But if you do material about the news, it feels really fresh and immediate. It's pretty exciting to see if how you're feeling is how the crowd is feeling."

The comic, who has also appeared on They Think It's All Over and Saturday Live, believes there is a genuine appetite for political comedy. "People may be disillusioned by politicians, but they're still very engaged with issues. Look at the huge debates at the moment about global warming. People do like to get involved." And that can work to his advantage.

"Strong emotions help - you can tap into that. If you talk about things that people aren't interested in, obviously it's much harder. But they really get into certain subjects." He doesn't mind the odd heckle, either. "Every once in a while when I perform raw, new stuff, there'll be a palpable sense of discomfort in the audience. But if people occasionally disagree with me, then that's a good thing. That's something for me to play with. If you're saying something that everyone agrees with, you're not maximising the potential of being up there on stage. If you do something fresh, you have to accept that for some people it'll be too fresh!"

For all his joking, Parsons does believe that political comedy can make a difference. "Spitting Image changed the status quo," observes the comedian. "Various politicians felt that the public's perception of them was never quite the same after that show. And look at Tina Fey, her impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live definitely had an effect. If you were ever able to take Palin seriously before watching the programme, you certainly weren't afterwards! Fey didn't even have to change Palin's words much; she simply repeated Palin's comments and people laughed. Palin's ratings plummeted after that. That shows that comedy can have a political impact."

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I never used to like him simply on the basis of his unnecessarily loud voice - but he's grown on me a bit recently.

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‘There are idiots everywhere’
TOMMY HOLGATE
27 Nov 2009

MOCK The Week star Andy Parsons cut his teeth in the world of TV comedy writing for Spitting Image in the 1990s. A multitude of TV and radio appearances later and the joker releases his new DVD Britain's Got Idiots. SFTW spoke to the multi-award winning funnyman following his 60-date UK tour. "It's nice," he says, "not to see yourself sandwiched between Singalong-a-Joseph and Fifi & The Flowertots Live. Especially when Fifi is selling more tickets than you!"

In the show, the shiny-headed comic picks on the idiots of our time. He explains: "Idiots are everywhere. You've got people like Karen Matthews, who take their inspiration from Shameless - a fictional show based on an unemployed dad with nine kids!

Now, I'm not saying Andy is bald, but I know who he'd look good as at a Shooting Stars-themed fancy dress party. Would he consider having a hair transplant? Absolutely not. He says: "They take it from different places on your body. Look at David Gest - where on the body do you think that hair came from?"

With the economy being throttled by the grip of recession, the Government have been forced to come up with a series of plans. Some plans better than others, as Andy points out: "This Government have got an idea about bankers who've lost their jobs. "They want to retrain them as teachers... but in half the time it takes to train a teacher. These people were shit at banking, the chances are they'll also be shit at teaching. And they'll be even shittier if they're trained in half the time it would normally take to train them!"

It's the sort of lunacy that would make you want to move abroad. With this in mind, I ask the 43-year-old where his most exotic gig has been. "I did an estate agents in Thailand," he laughs. "They put me on in the back room, after hours. Goes to show that you just need a microphone and a few chairs pointing the right way and then you've got yourself a gig."

Travelling the world with your job is most people's dream so I'm curious to know what glamour Andy enjoyed in his early writing days. He goes on: "I used to go to promising young writers' meetings at the BBC. Problem is you didn't have to be promising. You didn't have to be young, and you certainly didn't have to be a writer. You'd submit reams of stuff for the BBC and they might pick out one thing and give you a cheque for £3.24."

Finally (and harking back to the title of Andy's tour), I ask him about I'm A Celebrity. It's difficult at the moment to let a day pass without the intrusion of some Aussie jungle gossip - namely Jordan. Andy jokes: "She's everywhere. You can now get ironing-board covers with a Jordan on that when it gets hot she loses the clothes... I suppose it's one way to get teenage boys to do ironing. Although you'd think it'd be pretty dangerous holding an iron in one hand, and your teenage cock in the other. Especially with all these idiots around."

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His new dvd will be available in the streaming tv section later today...