Comic v Comic: Robin and Helen

Helen Arney: Hello Robin Ince 

Robin Ince: Hello Helen Arney 

HA: I’ve been chasing you around London to get this interview 

RI: No, that’s unfair because you make it sound like you were chasing me as opposed to you were remarkably late, which is a very different thing really. I feel really awkward in this situation now but I’ll take the blame if you want. 

HA: It’s all my fault, I failed to turn up at the right place. Which is really my first question. How many shows are you doing at the Fringe this year? 

RI: Four. It’s four shows. One is a group show about science, which obviously you’ll be part of as well. One which is my very angry show with Michael Legge, which is kind of a cardiovascular workout for middle-aged men. And then there is the one that is meant to ask: Can you be happy through science? Can scientific understanding make you happy, or do you always need a veil of mysticism? The answer is no, it’s fine, but don’t tell anyone that because it’s a spoiler. And then one called Struggle For Existence, which is the return of the general ‘what makes me apoplectic’. I always try to do one show about being apoplectic. 

HA: I can’t even turn up to an interview on time and you’re doing a number of shows that could only be as punishing, bordering on self-harm.

RI: Yeah, it is self-harm 

HA: Why do you do this to yourself?
RI: The reason is that you can’t really function in Edinburgh as a human being. People obsess about what some website written by a 3-year old or some 97-year old opera critic has said about them. They can only talk about their own shows, they can only talk about themselves. I thought if I’m going to be talking about myself, I might as well do it on a stage with an audience. 

HA: So in Edinburgh you put your human existence on hold and just focus on showmanship. 

RI: Yeah. This year I’m planning on not doing lots of other people’s shows. Last year I was up for 13 days and I think I did 82 shows. This year, I’ll be doing about 85 shows. ‘Cause what I always do is I turn down the really well-paying shows and then some broken poet shows up and says “We’re doing an event down a well at 4 in the morning, would you like to come along?” I feel sorry for broken poets. 

HA: You’re bringing the lunchtime science show back again. You’re a well-known atheist. Can you separate your atheism from your love of science? 

RI: I think atheism is a sideline, it’s nothing in particular for me. For me, the science thing is anti-dogmatic and trying to get to some kind of truth. So that has a knock-on effect if it turns out that it’s highly unlikely there’s a god.

HA: Some would say that you have created this audience for science and comedy. 

RI: I have literally created them. They are a collection of homunculi.  

HA: Do you think in turn that’s influenced the comedy that’s happened? I definitely feel I’ve been allowed to develop stuff that I wouldn’t have if there wasn’t an audience that wanted comedy with science, comedy with substance. 

RI: I think it’s one of the most useful things it’s done. The same with Book Club. Right from the start I said “Just so you know, there will be people experimenting and trying out ideas. Just so you know, you might not like it but if you don’t, you are wrong.”

I wanted to set up something because for so long a lot of the big comedy clubs were saying “You have to entertain these people by any means necessary. We need to sell this many pints of beer and you just have to make them laugh” and all the joy was gone; comedians were just a mechanism for generating laughter by any means necessary.

I wanted to do something that got rid of that and went: “Fail: it doesn’t matter if you fail.” It was the same with the science thing. I wanted to talk about ideas which might have been hard in a 20 minute set. it’s good for comics to know that there’s not just one road in comedy. It’s not just a journey of playing clubs and hoping someone from BBC is going to be there. I did a set last year supporting Richard Herring and I thought “You know, some of my stuff about particle physics isn’t quite as accessible to a broader arts audience.” 

HA: Why are you doing stuff on the Free Fringe? You’re doing one show at The Stand and three on the Free Fringe. 

RI: I like the idea of the Free Fringe. The last time I did a show in the paid fringe, I just felt it was too expensive. And it put a lot of pressure on me, and I felt uncomfortable and unhappy, and I think the audience have a different sensibility. I’ve been coming to the Fringe since I was 17 and I thought, ‘You used to come up here and experiment, but it’s very hard to experiment when the audience have paid £14 for 55 mins of entertainment.’ [With the Free Fringe] I can cover my costs, I can enjoy it, I can experiment. The whole point for me of doing Edinburgh is that I can try out new ideas. 

HA: And my last question for you is: are you going to watch anything else at the Fringe? 

RI: No. It’s not likely. I’ll just stay in and watch my Ingmar Bergman box set. Why, what’s on? 

HA: My friends are doing a show called Can You Dig It? In the botanical gardens which is about allotments. 

RI: Well anything that mixes the Mock Turtles with allotments, I’ve got to see.