Chances are you’re familiar with Phill Jupitus from smash-hit programs QI and Never Mind The Buzzcocks – panel shows that, according to the UK comic, have their own unique pitfalls.
“The danger is that sometimes I’ll be on a show and I’ll realise that I’ve been watching it, rather than being on it,” laughs Jupitus.
“I’m not joking – there’ll be times when I’m like, ‘Hang on, I’ve fucking not said anything for 20 minutes because I’ve been watching the other three fuckers’.”
Truthfully, Jupitus is happy to play it cool and pick his moment. “Those shows are not about what you say, it’s about listening to what other people are saying, because something’s going to come off the back of that,” he explains. “That’s the joy of it, the stuff falling out of people’s heads. It’s terrific fun.”
Similarly to his TV work, when it comes to stand-up, Jupitus lives in the moment, trusting his intuition first and foremost. “If I tried to write my show down on paper, it would kind of die in the printed word. It doesn’t make any sense to me in paragraphs with spaces and margins. I can’t work with that,” he explains. “But I can listen to people laughing and I can tell what works in front of a live audience, so I’ve always workshopped stuff through repetition and performance.”
His new show, Sassy Knack, was born out of pure instinct. Jupitus casts his mind back to one particular gig in the small Scottish village of Birnam, in which he had the impulse to invent for as long as his audience would allow. “I thought, you know what? I’m just going to chat to them before I start the show about me and Scotland.”
What followed was a bonus 45-minute comedic overture, the seeds for the new show sewn in the process. “[Sassy Knack] is about me moving to Scotland and living in Scotland now as an Englishman,” Jupitus explains. “It’s about making a big change in your life.”
The direction of Sassy Knack is true to form for Jupitus, who has honed his autobiographical storytelling style over decades. “I’m just telling true stories and I’m just putting my own life through an amp and through a wah-wah pedal,” he says of his approach to stand-up comedy.
“That utter freedom to say what you want – it’s a weird responsibility in a way,” he says, reflecting on his profession. “If I thought about it too much, I’d be terrified at this job, but thankfully it’s all about switching off and letting yourself go and going into this weird sort of beta state that
your brain’s in.”
And naturally, it’s this sort of onstage metamorphosis that’s the stuff of stand-up comedy superstardom. “You can see it in another comedian when they’re really flying, particularly anyone who does anything that you know is slightly improvised,” Jupitus elaborates. “Eddie (Izzard), in the early days, you could see in his eyes when he’d thought of something for the first time because he kind of half-smiled at the thought of it and then his eyes would go different and he’d start playing with the idea seriously. Then he’d start moulding the clay that just fell out of his head.
“I’ve been in rooms in the really early ‘90s when he did that at his club Raging Bull, I’ve watched that happen on stage. It’s like alchemy man, it’s weird to watch.”
“That’s the thing with comedians – what you’re watching on that stage, it’s somewhere between a skill and a dysfunction,” he laughs. “There’s a very thin line between those two sides of what we do. I think really there’s something kind of wrong with the comedic brain that’s doing that in those situations.”
Naturally, this makes the revelation of his daughter’s interest in stand-up all the more intriguing. Jupitus recently watched her perform – a proud yet fraught experience all at once. “It made me anxious. I was in a kind of fight-or-flight mental state, like I wanted to attack someone,” he jokes.
“I think that it’s partially because I know what it feels like to be up there and that vulnerability. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone I loved,” he laughs.
And yet, for all the quirks that come with stand-up comedy, nothing can quell Jupitus’ enthusiasm. Having made his Australian debut in 2017 – a visit literally decades in the making – he’s thrilled to return for this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
“You forget that programs like Buzzcocks and QI travelled. I didn’t realise that they were so popular over there until quite late in the day,” he reveals. “I had such a great time [in Australia] and there was an element of kicking yourself for not being over there before.”
