Having loved their sketch show Idiots of Ants 2008, I was excited when I had a chance to meet the guys behind the sketches. Dressed in a nice causal fashion, as opposed to the suits they wear on stage, Benjamin Wilson, Elliott Tiney, Andrew Spiers and James Wrighton, joined me at the Pleasance. In the shade of the canopy, we discussed writing their sketches to middle names they didn't know each other had . . . .
First of all, can you tell us a bit about your show?
JW - Our show is just fun. It's quite silly and it's loads of different sketches, and we touch on lots of subjects. This year the show has more of a completeness to it I would say. It feels like it's more a collection of sketches and I hope the audience leave feeling like they have gone on a bit more of a journey.
BW - We touch on subjects again and we kind of tie the show together. This is done to at least fool the audience into thinking they've seen a complete experience. We always just wanted to do a sketch show, rather than a story, because we don't want to be constrained to doing one thing for an hour.
ET - We don't even like doing runners that much. For me, the thing about writing sketch comedy is finding the idea and getting in and out of it in two or three minutes.
AS - We don't have recurring ideas and characters like Little Britain, it's more like, "as many ideas as possible" in an hour.
Did it take you long to write?
ET - We've kind of been conscious of working on it since our last time in Edinburgh. We also wrote some sitcom sketches in that time and some other bits and bobs we were commissioned to write in that time. It's strange how some sketches have taken a long time to write. For example, the ones with more detail, like "Baby's," "The Love Builders," and old people. It's the gag based jokes that end up getting changed and then there are other sketches that are written in two drafts.
JW - Like the love song where we serenade the girl, that came in two weeks before we came here.
AS - It was mostly over the past year, as we do various gigs in and around London, where we just try stuff out. When you have the pressure of a show coming up . . . .
BW - We run a monthly night called Crash Test Comedy.
Oh, no wait! You're jumping the gun - we'll come back to that! Do you write your sketches as a group?
JW - Kind of, yeah.
AS - Sometimes we have done, but sometimes they come in from Ben or Elliott.
ET - More so this year. Last year, Ben and I would write them and then bring them to the group. Whereas this year, Ben and I would write a first draft, bring it in and then it would be a case of everyone's input. It's great doing it that way because it gives everybody a voice on it, and I think that's why the show feels a lot more "owned" by us all.
How did you all meet?
JW - We need to get a better story! The three of us, me, Andy and Ben were at Birmingham University together. Elliot went to LAMDA Drama School with Andy.
ET - It's always the question that people ask us in interviews, and we start answering and we're like, "there's no jokes in this . . . ."
BW - We were at a bare-knuckle boxing match!
I was having a nose on your website, and I read that you did a lot of Shakespeare, Elliott?
ET - Yeah, I'm kind of the most talented one . . . .
[They all laugh]
BW - And the most modest.
JW - And a compulsive liar!
AS - The thing is, Elliott's done the most Shakespeare, but he's probably the one who's done the most comedy and that is because he's done stand-up.
ET - In the world of comedy, people are quite mocking of drama school, and it's an opinion that I completely share. I knew I wanted to do something, and for a long time I thought it was acting and it wasn't. I didn't particularly enjoy drama school, and then to come out and find this, I realised that this is what I should have been doing from the start.
I meant to ask this at the start - do you have middle names?
All - Yeah.
What's your middle name?
ET - Clark.
BW - Really?! No! With an ‘E'?
ET - Nope, no ‘E'. Elliott Clark Tiney, yeah.
BW - Really?!
[Laughter ensues, as the realisation appears that nobody seemed to know that]
ET - [To Andrew] What's yours?
AS - Johnathan Colin. Andrew Johnathan Colin Spiers.
JW - James Paul Kenneth Wrighton.
[Ben can't stop laughing at this one!]
With a hyphen?
JW - No, no hyphen. Just Paul Kenneth.
BW - My name's Benjamin James Kirkby Wilson.
AS - Kirkby?!
ET - You can't be called Kirkby, it's not a name! Why did you ask that question?
It's a good one to ask.
ET - I didn't think it was at the beginning, but you were right! [Still shocked] Kirkby?!
BW - Kirkby is my mum's maiden name!
[After more discussions on these new discoveries, I managed to get the interview back on track]
Do you test your material on people?
AS - We test it on the sketch comedy circuit in London. There are a lot of sketch nights floating around London that we go and do.
ET - On a more basic level than that, flatmates are quite good.
BW - My first port-of-call is: have an idea, ring one of you, no matter the time - three o'clock in the morning: "Mickey Mouse . . . picture the scene!"
AS - Because we spend a lot of time together, we do pitch them on each other, don't we?
ET - Sometimes, with my housemates, I'll start a conversation and then I'll just steer it round to something with material in it. Then I'll just gauge the reaction I'd get from that!
What do you with your spare time in Edinburgh? I went to see Lucy Porter, and she said that she loved the Fringe because, "It's like a holiday camp for comedians, where we all just get drunk and shag!"
[They all laugh]
AS - We'll have to go and find Lucy Porter then!
ET - We just go and see other shows really. The nice thing about being here, is that there are some great shows, and we have these yellow passes that get us in for free if it's not sold out.
BW - It's like you're topping up on your comedy. You see other people and get inspiration. I mean there is loads of comedy here, musical, sketch. You see it and think, "that's amazing! I wanna' do something like that."
ET - Or you could just form a new sketch group with new talent!
[Andrew just laughs]
Do you ever just steal?
ALL - No. [I wasn't expecting such a stark answer!]
ET - That's like comedy death. If you look at stand-up, other comedians study it so much. I mean, you could mention a joke and some comedians can just tell you who said it and what year.
AS - We did the Jim Bowen show the other day, and he was saying that back in the day they used to just steal material from each other. And he said, "You can't do that anymore - it's a damn shame!"
ET - A comedian in the 70s was someone who just knew a list of jokes, from, like, pub jokes, and then they would put their own persona onto it. But nowadays, it's much more of a writer's medium.
BW - So much so, that you think of an idea, pitch it to the boys and maybe pen a first draft. But then you would type it in Google or YouTube and you may see that Big Train did it, you know?
ET - You do have to be careful. The cardinal sin of a comedian is to steal from someone else.
In my online snooping, I read on your cv, Andrew, that it's you who runs Crash Test Comedy . . . .
AS - Well, we all run the night.
Can you tell us about it?
AS - Yeah! It's a once-monthly sketch night, where we have ten to fifteen acts on. We have some more established acts and some brand new ones. We try to get a nice array throughout the evening. It's in the studio of the Pleasance Theatre in London, and it's the last Monday of every month at 8pm. It's all comedy, and it does really well. It's a really fun night, with the main idea being that everyone comes down and tries out their new material.
ET - We also run a night in Brixton, that runs every Thursday night, and that is a stand-up night. It's called Brixton Comedy Bugs. We often perform at that too, but it is more of a stand-up night and not a sketch night.
I also read that you, James, are a Guinness World Record holder, for marathon running?!
JW - Yeah, there were seventeen of us chained together - that was two years ago. We got the record for having the most number of people chained together while running the marathon.
That's ace! Apart from asking people to come and see your show, is there anything else that you want to say?
JW - We did a pilot for E4 and it was on last week. You can see it online, and you can vote for it.
ET - E4 Comedy Festival, Idiots of Ants, and you can vote for it.
AS - We would just love for people to go and watch it, and see what they think!
BW - There is also our site on Facebook and MySpace, so you can check those out too!
Well, what a lovely group of ants . . . or idiots? I think they would prefer decent blokes, as that really is what they are. The chat descends into talk of movies and world-domination, with Elliot receiving a call from his mother somewhere in between. These guys are dead on - I feel privileged to have spent some more time with them. If you are reading this now, then you should really go and catch the show, before they start to sell out theatres across the UK.