11:45am Saturday 6th February 2010
Viv Hardwick talks to comedian and The Thick Of It actor Chris Addison, who loves taking to the road.
IN spite of creating a stir by being part of TV’s Bafta awardwinning comedy The Thick Of It and gaining similar accolades with the movie spin-off In The Loop, plus a host of radio credits, Chris Addison says he’s far happier stepping out on stage as a stand-up.
His current 40-date tour includes Durham’s Gala Theatre on Friday and Newcastle Theatre Royal on March 21, and Addison reminds me that he’s been a stand-up for 15 years.
“I accept most people know me through Olly (Reeder, a special advisor to the Secretary of State for In The Loop) and that’s a really nice thing, but I’m a stand-up,” he says.
He confesses that he hadn’t done any acting before when he took up Armando Iannucci’s offer to join the cast of In The Loop.
“The thing about In The Thick Of It was that there’s a lot of improvisation, but my character was a bit of panic because I’d never done any acting.
I was in a room full of people who were incredibly experienced and ‘proper’ actors who were talking about their characters in the first person.
“I couldn’t bring myself to do that.
After three days I was having a panic about this and my wife said ‘well, start at the beginning, what’s he like?’ So I said, ‘he’s quite young, a bit bumptious and thinks he’s a player but he’s not. A bit of an idiot and rather gauche’. The more I described him, the more I realised ‘ah, that’s why he’s picked me, oh right, fine.
He’s just picked on the worst aspects of myself’,” he jokes.
He says he was completely overawed when actors such as US star James Gandolfini joined the cast for 2009 film In the Loop as Addison’s character transformed into Toby Wright with the same personality of being a hapless aide to minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander).
‘ACTING with James Gandolfini is hugely intimidating and a massive excitement.
But the pressure was mainly felt by other people. Peter Capaldi and I had been in The Thick Of It and knew the working method, which is so unlike any other acting job. Most people were scared and taken aback and we were the people that they were putting questions to.”
On the tour, he quotes fellow stand-up Alun Cochrane who once warned him not to fall into the trap of thinking all the work is done once the dates are booked and the script is finished.
“It’s getting through all those nights on the road. It starts off being fine, but the longer you go, the more service station pasties you eat and the greyer your skin gets and your car fills up with clear, plastic triangular sandwich cartons.
Then you end up looking like the Ood from Doctor Who.,” he says.
Addison recalls January 1996 as the start of his touring career. Dave Gorman rang him on a Sunday night to take over as compere for a show. “I was due the next morning to return to being an office boy, but I got my mum to phone in that I was sick.
“I ended up doing four dates, including Middlesbrough and Edinburgh, with me phoning in sick at work every day. There was me, David Gorman and Rich Benn in a tiny red Corsa. I remember this cavernous hall in Middlesbrough with about 18 people and I remember us hiding in the kitchen at one point,” he says.
■ Chris Addison: Thursday, Whitley Bay Playhouse, Box Office: 0844-277- 2771; Friday, Durham Gala Theatre, 0191-332-4040; March 21, Newcastle Theatre Royal, 08448-112-121.
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