After their sell out show at last years Edinburgh comedy festival Watson and Oliver have returned to this year with a brand new sketch show proving to be funnier and more dynamic than before. The two charismatic comedians Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver have been performing their show in the Pleasance courtyard everyday since the beginning of the Festival. EdinburghGuide.com caught up with them to find how they are enjoying this years Festival and their journey so far...
So how exactly did you two meet?
LW- We went to school together weirdly. We went to secondary school back in London Surrey... Kingston on Thames Tiffin Girls School and so... we have actually known each other for around...
IO- For about 15 years.
LW- Yeah, around 15 years. But it wasn't until quite recently... Well I suppose officially last year was our first year in Edinburgh together as a double act.
How did you two discover you worked as a comedy act?
IO- Well we always watched a lot of comedy and we'd always been interested in that. When we were at school we bantered a lot with each other so I guess it came from our environment. I mean it didn't matter what you looked like in school as long as you were funny.
LW- Yeah, we just watched loads and loads of comedy and I guess we got a lot of influence form that.
What are your influences?
LW- Now that is an easy one. Well for sketches it got to be Big Train. It's such an amazing show. Just anything with Simon Pegg in it really. So Spaced is such an brilliant series. Things like The Day Today, Chris Morris, The Mighty Boosh. Although we're not really like that but we love it. But that's the thing we like all styles of comedy so it's quite a mix... and French and Saunders.
So how did you both to get involved with performing?
IO- When we were in school we didn't really do any acting particularly did we? (to Watson) Then Lorna went to Edinburgh University and eventually started doing a bit of improv...
LW- Yeah I did a bit of improv and you did a bit of prose?
IO- I did one year of postgraduate in drama. So I was doing straight plays, straight acting, while Lorna was doing character stand up.
LW- Yeah, I started doing a bit of stand up in London and then improv and then allsorts. I did a show called Newsrevue that's been going for about 25 years up here so I did that show in Edinburgh. We've always come up here independently doing separate projects but we've always been friends, we just never got together.
What made you two decide that they should start up your comedy act?
IO- Well I think it was last year, when we were temping because we weren't really making any money acting and it was all getting a bit depressing and horrible... Lorna will tell you about here temping...
LW- Oh yeah, my crappy temping jobs. Well, I've done many bad jobs but the most depressing was last year when I worked for the NHS-filing peoples death sheets for £6 pound hour. I mean, it was jobs like that that made me think mmm...
IO- I came up to the fringe and I saw this show and I remember watching it and thinking; they were having so much fun, I knew that we could do that.
What was your worst temping job?
LW- I once worked as a security guard and I had to check peoples' bags for bombs we didn't have any official training as such, they just showed us a stick of semtex and said this is what you've got to look for, and wires and batteries so that was a good one. The death sheets obviously. Depressing job...
IO- I think you've had worse ones than that? You definitely have.
LW- Yeah... I also dressed up as a strawberry at Wimbledon one year.
IO- (Laughs) Did you?
LW- Yeah.
So how did you go about putting a show together?
IO- Well it got to the stage where we had to do it, otherwise we'd never do it.
LW- We had talked about doing it for a long time.
IO- Yeah, we always wrote sketches and never did anything with them. Then we decided to book a theatre in London (Canal Café Theatre) and gave ourselves two months to write a show and rehearse it. I mean we're real procrastinators and we pretty much ended up writing it in the last two weeks. We had invited loads of our friends and family so there was no way of cancelling. But it went down really well and we ended up getting signed to an agent on the back of that. Then we took it to Edinburgh the next year. It was great because we knew no one knew us so no one had any expectations.
Your sketch show sold out last year, so it was obviously well received. Has it changed your working life at all?
IO- Well, last year we were very lucky because we had quite a few tv producers particularly on the last show. So luckily from the result of last year's show we haven't had to go back to temping which is amazing. We've been able to get money writing, acting, and writing for other peoples shows. (Watson and Oliver have written for Peter Serafinowicz new comedy show currently being filmed)
So how do you go about devising characters and the style of your sketches?
IO- Well we never start developing characters right away. We always approach it by saying wouldn't it be funny if? Then you find the twist in the situation and the characters come from that.
LW- Yeah a lot of our sketches are obviously scenario based. We use a lot of music in our sketches, perhaps that's part of our style. We're really influenced by a lot of 80's pop, really cheesy pop.
IO- It's funny though because the sketches we write with music in our show wouldn't really translate to television. Which is a shame.
LW- We use a lot of physicality in our comedy too. It's good to mix around with styles.
How exactly do you go about putting pen to paper?
IO- Well I always go to Lorna's house, we eat some food for a bit, smoke some cigarettes, then about five hours later we...
LW- Watch a bit of TV.
IO- Yeah we watch a bit of TV.
(At that moment a wasp lands in Lorna's drink. After a few moments of panic Ingrid continues to answer.)
IO- Then we draw up some ideas, decide which ones we like and maybe do a bit of improvisation.
LW- Sometimes we go off and write the same sketch then run through both of them and see what works out.
IO- I mean Lorna's a bit more surreal in her approach to her writing where as I'm not.
So you write everything together?
LW- Yeah, we even take turns at typing.
IO- We're very democratic like that.
LW- Sometimes we just brainstorm random words. I mean like the mermaid sketch (included in the show) we'd just go "mermaids, mermaids, we like mermaids, how can we...? A mermaid who's a cop" and then we'd develop that. We always have a few months to write a piece but we always leave it until the last couple of weeks, we always wait until we absolutely have to do it.
IO- And then we'll do it (Both laugh) and say something like; "I can't believe we've only got two days to write this".
LW- It needs to be under a stressed environment.
You tend to play a lot of male characters in your sketches is there any reason for that?
IO- When we write sketches we rarely think of them in terms of women. We tend to think in male characters a lot.
LW- Yeah that's quite true.
IO- Yeah I quite like that, I quite like not having to...
LW- To not be gender specific, because when you have to give characters names it becomes gender specific.
IO-Yeah we kind of steer away form too much girly, feminine subject matter.
LW- Yeah it's just not something that pops into our brains when we're writing I don't know why?
A lot of women comedians tend to deal with a female orientated subject matter (Periods, waxing, cake). Given that is not your style did you find it hard to avoid the female comedienne stereotypes?
IO- Well not really because we don't write like that and people tend to appreciate that's not what we're about- which was great.
LW- I don't know, it's a tricky one, I mean if someone saw our poster with two girls would they be less inclined to come see us. That's really something I can't answer. Hopefully not...
LW- I mean our poster this year we're wearing these big feather hat... That's quite girly I suppose, with the sparkles and everything.
IO- Yeah I mean we do like sparkles, we a girls at the end of the day (Both laugh). But you know, we also like wearing suits, which I like...
LW- She wants to be a man basically.
IO- (Laughs) Yeah I'm more Madonna of the late 80's era.
LW- Yeah we should get those cone bra things. (Both laugh)
So will you be developing any material for your own television show?
LW- Well the passed year we've really been gaining experience independently of each other. We've done loads of different projects, pilots and stuff. For instance The IT Crowd (New series starts 24th of August 9pm Channel Four with Lorna) starts the Friday so you know... Check it out.
IO- (Laughs) You know start small.
LW- (Laughs) Yeah... But now we're getting to that stage that we have a back catalogue that we would very much like to film at some stage. We kind of feel that we're more ready now. It's all about timing really. I mean we've already filmed a short sketch show for E4 which is like ten minutes of our own comedy so possibly.
You can catch Watson and Oliver doing what they do best on E4 show Funny Cuts which is on in October. Information also found at www.myspace.com/watsonandoliver