Sean Lock is ready for the lighter side of life... like immigration and James Bond

NOT a man known for being especially serious, Sean Lock is upping the ante with his new tour, very aptly named Keep It Light. But as ever, he’s either looking at everyday life from a fresh perspective or tackling topics that rarely get an airing on stage.

“I’m going to talk about jewellery heists and I just got into ballet recently so I’ll talk about that,” he says. “I watched a ballet on BBC4 and after five minutes I really got into it. I’m not into contemporary dance, though – you can shove that back where it belongs in small marginal arts venues on the fringes of town.”

Taking a deep breath, he plunges into yet more areas of concern for the tour, which visits York next month and Sunderland and Newcastle in November.

“I also talk about James Bond. I find the very notion of him so ridiculous. This thought that one man can save the world is so childish – an inebriated nine-year-old would struggle to maintain plausibility in that idea. I’ll talk about immigration, which is always fun because it’s an easy topic to get wrong. But I keep it light.”

This might be the right time to ask Lock what attracted him to the title phrase.

“I like the ambiguity of Keep It Light. I like it as just a throwaway comment you can make to somebody when they’re talking about a terrible mishap that has befallen someone. It’s a pinprick to any kind of heaviness, and ultimately I see that as my job. So I can go down a particular path, but I can keep it light by doing some silly stuff.”

Keeping it light is one thing but actually getting the show written is another matter entirely. It’s something that Sean Lock struggles with each time he sits down to create a new stand-up set.

“I have this weird feeling that other comics have a much more effective and swifter, more skilled working policy where they’d say to me ‘no you don’t have to do it like that, you don’t have to take a year saying the wrong thing. You do it like this’.”

Lock puts this perceived flaw in his work code down to not having gone to university.

“It’s my major regret in life, though not for the qualification I would have gained. People I know who went to university have a working method where they sit down and get something done. I have one method and that’s blind panic so I’ll sit down in my kitchen and suddenly get on with it. Maybe I just imagine it’s greener for other people.”

Erratic or not, his method has proved just the ticket. He has toured the country and notched up a weighty TV CV which features the likes of 8 Out Of 10 Cats, QI and Argumental. He even has his own office now as a means of injecting a degree of discipline into his work regime.

“I spend a lot of time achieving nothing – days go by sometimes,” he adds. “I do rent an office and go there, though not every day: that would be a lie. It’s like fishing. If you don’t sit at the river bank with a fishing rod, a line, a hook and a worm on it, you’re never going to catch any fish so if I do this for a whole day, then something will slot into place. People perhaps assume that you just walk into a room and make this stuff up, but jokes are very hard to come by.”

Once they’re finally all in the bag and ready to be offloaded on to the public, other problems arise: dealing with the rigours of large-scale touring and handling the post-show come-down.

“Doing the show is enjoyable, the hard bit is being normal afterwards and trying not to be this twitching demented clown. Last year I thought I might knock stand-up on the head and take a longer break from it. After a few months, I realised I didn’t really like that idea because all the things that make me good at the job don’t switch off and so if you have nowhere to go with it, you just turn it on yourself. So, I’d give myself a hard time, mocking myself and then patronising myself to try to make me feel better. When it comes down to it, comedy is rehearsed moaning.”

  • York Barbican, May 19. Box Office: 0844-854-2757
  • Sunderland Empire, Wednesday, November 23. 0844-871-3022 or ATGtickets.com/Sunderland
  • Newcastle City Hall, Thursday, November 24, 0191-277-8030