Penny Dreadfuls’ audio book
This week’s guest on the increasingly prestigious Grouchy Club Podcast was comedy performer Thom Tuck, whose idea was to come on and plug the two new Penny Dreadfuls‘ audio book releases. This seemed perfectly simple.
But, as always, comedy critic Kate Copstick and I got sidetracked. For example, in this section…
Kate Copstick & Thom Tuck eat at the Grouchy Club in London
JOHN: What did you want to be when you were 16? Did you want to be a stand-up comedian and Doctor Who acolyte?
THOM: I’m pretty sure I wanted to be funny. I was always a performer and, in school plays, it was always: Well, you be the funny one.
COPSTICK: Oh good! Well, that’s a good sign! The great Mark Steel said to me that the great comics are the ones who could never have been anything else.
THOM: Yes.
COPSTICK: You say to them: So, what did you want to be?… Comic!… What would you have been if you hadn’t been a comic?… I’ve absolutely no idea. I couldn’t NOT be a comic.
THOM: With people like (Doug) Stanhope and Patrice O’Neal, that’s unavoidable. You ARE a comedian. There’s no…
COPSTICK: Michael McIntyre.
THOM: I think Michael McIntyre is born to be a light entertainer.
JOHN: Ah well, yes…
COPSTICK: (GROWLS)
JOHN (TO COPSTICK): That’s OK.
THOM: He’s very good. He’s a very good comedian, but he’s not a ‘comic’ in the same way. I think there’s a distinction.
JOHN: You mean stand-up…
THOM: Yes, a stand-up comic on the road. Inescapable. There’s no destiny beyond the road.
COPSTICK: Oh, I see what you mean. So, once you’re on telly doing a ‘shiny floor’ show, you are no longer a stand-up comic…
THOM: No, not necessarily. But I don’t think he’s…
COPSTICK: What about John Bishop?… Oh… He obviously wasn’t born to be a comic, because he spent most of his life not being a comic but…
THOM: He was in marketing, wasn’t he?
COPSTICK: Correct.
JOHN: Or whatsisname…
COPSTICK: …Jimmy Carr.
JOHN: Yes.
THOM: Well, Jimmy Carr is classically not a born comedian. Not a born comedian in any way.
JOHN: He is a made comedian.
THOM: Yeah.
COPSTICK: He’s a brilliant…
JOHN: …brilliant…
COPSTICK: … a brilliantly made comedian, yes.
THOM: There are people who, if they hadn’t found work being stand-ups would have been just drunks in a corner.
COPSTICK: Exactly. Stanhope would have been an ugly drunk and drug addict.
JOHN: You can be both, Thom. You can be both.
THOM: Yes… I mean, I don’t think Stewart Lee is a natural comic.
COPSTICK: No.
THOM: He’s a comedian and he has made himself a comedian and he has made himself battle-hardened, but he’s not a natural… If he had ended-up not finding stand-up and becoming a writer, a novelist…
COPSTICK: Well, that is what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a writer.
THOM: I don’t think I am a natural comic either.
JOHN: Actually, I suppose Stewart Lee is a writer who performs, isn’t he?
COPSTICK: Yes, I think Richard Lee is a more natural.
THOM: Richard Lee?
COPSTICK: Not Richard Lee – Richard Herring. Oh my God! I’ve just come up with the perfect comedian! We are going to put them both in test tubes and meld them!
JOHN: Richard Lee and Stewart Herring.
COPSTICK: That sounds like a job for Doctor Who.
THOM: Fist of Fun crossed with The Fly.
COPSTICK: Stewart Lee will just get progressively hairier and hairier and hairier. That’s a recipe for some very interesting…
JOHN: …composite comedians.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 
I would agree that comics are born, but comedians can be too- few of either genre hit the ground running and never get anything BUT success. This is one thing that Bobby Ball made plain when he and Tommy Cannon were in their early days working the pubs and clubs- they’d often get booed off and have things thrown at them, and refused follow-up bookings etc. Ball said that you learn from such experiences, if you get it wrong you examine what you could’ve done better (timing, and a lot of indefinable things) and gradually get it right. Eric Morecombe was classed as a ‘comedian’, but I’d say he was a comic- he was just born to be funny and make people laugh (though capable of playing serious roles too)- same with Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, Tommy Trinder and Harry Secombe.
I’ve known of people who were just naturally very funny but never got the breaks, or weren’t interested in persuing it- one was a guy my mum knew at the Little Theatre in Neath, South Wales in the early ’60s, fellow called Doug Bailey. He could make the most miserable person laugh, but he never valued his gifts and just retired from amateur dramatics and moved on. And I’ve known so-called ‘stand-ups’ who were just pathetic, i.e. a guy who played the now defunct Con Club venue in Great Malvern one night- utterly pathetic, got no laughs and was heckled off when he finished with barely any clapping.
And where do Reeves & Mortimer stand in all of this? Born or made? I seldom found them funny except for the Renault Clio ad. they did on TV- they were just too surrealist. Went on to try a relaunch of the ’60s series ‘Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)’ , but it flopped…..