Phill thinks Big! (From The Northern Echo)

Phill thinks Big!

3:04pm Thursday 12th January 2012 in Features By Steve Pratt

Steve Pratt discovers how Phill Jupitus was talked into a role written especially for him, even though there was no script, and why he changed his mind about quitting Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

PHILL Jupitus apologises for “spacing out”. His system has been thrown into chaos by a trip to Japan in the middle of rehearsals for the music hall comedy Big Society!

“I used to go to America quite a bit, and America is fine – a couple of days and you’re back in the routine,” says the comedian, actor and TV’s Never Mind The Buzzcocks team captain.

“Going East is just enough to throw you out and I have no idea where I am. You can take a guess, I don’t know... somewhere over Finland. I was up at four this morning. Yesterday I went about 28 hours without any sleep, right from the day before to last night. It was very strange.

“In rehearsals as long as it’s quite repetitive I can do it, but as soon as they ask me to think, it starts to fall to bits. That’s what you get for going away in the middle of rehearsal period. It’s my own fault, I’ve only myself to blame.”

But we’re not here to talk about the problems of time travelling, but his starring role in Big Society!, Boff Whalley’s new play for Red Ladder and Chumbawamba being staged – and indeed set – at the newly-refurbished City Varieties music hall in Leeds.

He’s starred in two large-scale musicals Hairspray and Spamalot, but this is something “very, very different”, not least because the part was written with him in mind.

“Whenever you’re approached about a play the first thing you say is, ‘can I read the script?’ And they were full frontal and said, ‘no you can’t because we’re writing it around you. We came up with the idea for the show and you came up as the guy to play George before it was written. So if you say yes, we’re tailoring it to your personality’.”

This marks the latest episode in an unplanned career that has taken in stand-up comedy, acting, working in the music business (including press officer and compere for The Housemartins) and of course Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

Stand-up, he points out, is changing. When he was growing up, the main joke delivery system was just telling jokes, although some stand-up was different to others.

“I’d listen to Bob Newhart on albums and, for all the fact he was standing up there on his own, he was a sketch comedian. Then (Billy) Connolly came along and he was unbelievably influenced by Richard Pryor. But at the time he was the only person in the UK doing that kind of storytelling with jokes on the way.

“When you do that and the media becomes familiar with that literary idea and skillset you can fit into lots and lots of different departments as a stand-up. So a stand-up can act. If you can sing, it means you can do musicals. And you can present, if you can stand up and talk and television wants you. There is so much television time to be filled now.”

Jupitus has taken all those opportunities, not because he gets bored doing one thing but is just fascinated by doing new things His biggest change was quitting as a civil servant after five years and pursuing a career as first a performance poet and then a comedian. He doubts he would have stayed in the DHSS much longer. “I seem to recall at my last staff evaluation, in November, 2004, I remember Dave, the area manager for the Manpower services commission for Essex, taking me into an office and going ‘I’m getting the feeling this job isn’t really you, is it?’ “At the time I was starting to perform and doing gigs and being a poet. My mind was on that all the time.” Later, after five years in the music business, it dawned on him that’s an office job as well – “it’s just go weirder hours and the people swear more”.

Big Society! brings him full circle because it’s like the agit-prop political theatre he used to watch when he was 17. This music hall comedy finds a theatre in 1910 under threat from censorship, a topic that’s as hot today especially in the comedy field as ever.

The production is described as part theatre, part show, part timely rant as it’s set “in a time when trumped-up public schoolboys ran the country and when corruption and sleaze riddled the corridors of power”. Inevitably Jupitus is drawn to the political debate that the piece is designed to provoke as an allegory of Cameron’s Big Society idea.

JUPITUS isn’t happy that modern politics are about personalities more than policies, and that the boundaries between the parties make it difficult to tell the difference.

“When I was first involved in politics as a kid it was much easier – the boundaries were so much more distinct,” he says.

“Conservatives were posh people and didn’t relate.

There was a clear line drawn. Labour people were all a bit brash, speak as I find and did better in the North, and Liberals were these people in the middle who wore jumpers and wanted to legalise cannabis. Bang, bang, bang, simple.

“And yet now you can’t tell politicians apart.

They all look the same, they’re all image-managed and media-coached by the same media coaches. So Labour politicians, Conservative politicians, Lib Dem politicians, even the BNP see the same media coach people.

“It’s the dull predictability of it. There’s no soul in politics.”

He hopes the play can raise questions as well as entertain. “One of the reasons I am sat in front of you today is Billy Bragg. He offered me a tour that enabled me to stop being a civil servant.

I’ve watch him throughout the years and shift and evolve and still be in entertainment and still be an engaging brilliant performer who still writes brilliant love songs.

But also as an individual he has an incredible appreciation for the state of the world and what’s going on.”

The constant in his career in the anarchic pop quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

He thought about leaving two years ago because he wasn’t happy with Simon Amstell as the presenter.

“He’s a brilliant performer, an unbelievably unique stand-up. But there’s a spiteful side to him, a malicious side that some people take delight in,” he say.

Jupitus felt that guests were being booked as potential targets rather than anything else.

But with Noel Fielding as the other team captain and guest presenters like Cilla Black, Terry Wogan and John Barrowman, he feels the show is back on track.

“So the last two years I have enjoyed more than any other and that was always my thing if I stop enjoying it, go,” he says.

• Big Society! is at City Varities Music Hall, Leeds, from Wednesday until February 4. Box Office 0113-2430808 and cityvarities.co.uk

• Re-runs of Never Mind The Buzzcocks continue on Thursday, BBC2, 10pm