Writer Robert Wringham returns to live comedy. Plus a chicken sexing fall-back.

Robert Wringham is what Americans would call a hyphenate. He does all sorts of things. Basically he is a writer of humorous books; plus he has written two histories of alternative comedy; and he is editor of the New Escapologist magazine which “takes the stance that work has too central a position in Western life”.

He has appeared in previous blogs here and is currently co-producing Melt It! a documentary film about The Iceman.

We were supposed to be having a chat about Robert’s live performance at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this week. But I am not one to keep to the subject…

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JOHN: The Iceman has transitioned from a performance artist with added humour to a ‘proper’ painting-type artist… He’s sort of an outsider.

ROBERT: Yes. But he refuses to see himself as an outside artist. He was just given the chance to show his art in Paris under the premise that he is one of several ‘outsider’ artists. But he wasn’t happy with that, because he sees himself as an ‘insider’ artist.

JOHN: Define an outsider artist?

ROBERT: People who are not professional artists. They’re usually mentally ill or children or animals.

JOHN: I think he qualifies on all three. Do you think you are an outsider writer?

ROBERT: No… Well, yes.

JOHN: You’re a mad, childlike animal?

ROBERT: The thing I aspire to is… well, I always look to Simon Munnery. To many comedy fans, he’s the finest comedian there is, but he is not a household name and I think that’s the way to be. To try and create something integral, something different. He used to have a mantra: We aim to fascinate, not entertain. 

That’s what I like: Simon Munnery, Chris Lynam, The Iceman. People like that.

JOHN: You said ‘integral’ there. What does that mean in this context?

ROBERT: They haven’t ‘sold out’, they haven’t been chasing the Eddie Izzard market. 

JOHN: You mean they’re not recognised by the average punter standing in a bus queue?

ROBERT:  They have their own standards and been successful in what they want to do.

JOHN: They’ve become admirable cult successes. So what’s this show of yours: The Annotated Audiobook?

Annotated Audiobook annotated…

ROBERT:  I’m doing a live show for the first time in fifteen years.

JOHN: It’s part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival and you’re performing in the Peaks Bar of the Drygate Brewery.

ROBERT: Yes, it’s literally a piss-up in a brewery So what could possibly go wrong?

JOHN: It’s happening this Wednesday – which is the 13th. 

ROBERT: Like I said, what could possibly go wrong?

JOHN: Why did you stop doing live shows fifteen years ago?

ROBERT: Because really what I like to do is write. I got my start in stand-up comedy but I never considered myself a stand-up. I was basically just dabbling in something I was a fan of. I always loved stand-up comedy of the 1980s and speciality acts.

It was my start, but then I realised: Yes, I want to write funny stuff, but I don’t want the comedian’s lifestyle – I don’t want too be touring and fretting about performance all the time; I want to be writing short pieces and that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. But your real question is Why now?

JOHN: Is it? Oh… Why now?

ROBERT: Good question. People are nostalgic about the pandemic now because they’ve all had to go back to work. But, for me, the pandemic was utterly depressing – stuck in my flat, alone, without much to do. So, when we came out of the pandemic, what I wanted to do was live, real entertainment again. Collaboration with people. Going out. Engaging with real life again. Not just the internet.

I thought: How can I turn my comedy writing into performance again? And I think I’ve found a way. 

The Iceman book, currently being shot as a documentary

So I’m working with other people. There’s the Iceman film Melt It!, of course, with Anthony Irvine and Mark Cartwright – YouTuber GingerBeardMark. And I have a novel in progress with an American artist called Landis Blair.

JOHN: An artist? So he’s illustrating it?

ROBERT: He is writing long-form for the first time. It’s a comedy fantasy. There will be illustrations, but it won’t be a comic book. It’s a novel. 

JOHN: Lke Charles Dickens’ novels, which had illustrations?

ROBERT: Yes. If you think of those Sherlock Holmes novels where there’s occasionally an illustration.

All these works are not just me on my own; they involve other people.

JOHN: So you’re basically just being lazy and letting other people do the work?

ROBERT: (LAUGHS) I wouldn’t go that far.

I want to get my works out and actually read them in public. I’ve always wanted a theatrical premise to go with the reading. Whenever you go and see someone doing a reading, it’s fine if you know what you’ve signed up for. But, in a comedy environment, you kinda want something a bit extra. You want a premise.

So my premise is it’s an audio book recording for which I want a live audience; so the audience are coming to play a part in that. A little bit of participation from the audience and, if nothing else, I’ll capture their noises.

That’s the premise of The Annotated Audiobook and I’ll be riffing around the material. It won’t just be me reading it verbatim from the page, I’m going to be telling the story behind the story, commentating on what happens in the room and things like that.

So what do you think, John. Is it a clever idea or is it all doomed to failure?

JOHN: Everything’s doomed to failure. We’re all going to die. Eventually, the sun explodes and destroys everything.

ROBERT: I was thinking a little more short-term than that.

JOHN: It’s a one-off, isn’t it? You can’t say every time you perform that it’s for an audio recording.

ROBERT: Originally, I had no interest in actually recording it. It was just a theatrical premise. But I think next year you could see a Robert Wringham audio book come out of it.

JOHN: Will that sell as well as a printed book?

ROBERT: What I hear is a lot of people don’t read ‘old-fashioned’ books; they only want audio now.

Robert Wringham with two of his own many ‘old-fashioned’ print books

JOHN: So have you a grand tour planned?

ROBERT: No. The Glasgow show will either be the beginning of something or the end of something. Kind of a pilot. If it goes well, I’d like to do more shows like The Annotated Audiobook. I’d like to do them occasionally. 

I want to bring my books to the stage and I think I’ve found a cheeky, crafty way to present that.

JOHN: …and you’ll make loads of money out of all this, like Simon Munnery and The Iceman…?

ROBERT: Of course not. No. Simon Munnery recently worked as a cleaner in a chicken processing plant.

JOHN: Is this common knowledge? Can I print that?

ROBERT: Well, he talks about it in his act. It’s all real stuff. He brought some innovation to the job. He made some sort of extended vacuum cleaner that could get into places the regular vacuum couldn’t get. 

JOHN: I’ll tell you where the money is: chicken sexing. I once met a man who travelled the world chicken sexing. He was making an absolute fortune because it’s really commercially important to know whether these tiny chicks with tiny genitals are male or female.

ROBERT: You’ve told me that before.

JOHN: I am a man of few anecdotes.

ROBERT: It’s very strange, because The Iceman once worked in a chicken factory as well. It seems like that’s the social safety net for comedians who don’t make fortunes.

JOHN: There was Chic Murray… but what did The Iceman do in the chicken factory?

ROBERT: He was a security guard.

JOHN: To stop chickens escaping or cats invading?

ROBERT: He says they were worried about Animal Rights protestors getting in. But he says, as a vegetarian, that if they had broken in he would have just let them carry on.

JOHN: I may have gone off-subject.

ROBERT: Yes… The Annotated Audiobook at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this week…

JOHN: Oh yes.

The future of comedy…

A bit of a chat with Robert Wringham – Part 1 – The Stern Plastic Owl man…

Robert Wringham describes himself as a ‘humorist’… His latest book is 2021’s Stern Plastic Owl.

His first book, in 2012, was You Are Nothing (about Simon Munnery, Stewart Lee et al’s comedy show Cluub Zarathustra).

After that, he wrote A Loose Egg (2014), which was shortlisted for Canada’s 2015 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

His 2016 book Escape Everything! was a spin-off from the New Escapologist, a lifestyle magazine he edited and published 2007-2017 and which continues as a series of online essays. New Escapologist describes itself as “the journal of the art of getting out of things” and suggests that “work has too central a position in Western life”.

Escape Everything! was successful enough to be translated into German and released in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as Ich Bin Raus and then, in 2018, in South Korea as [책] 탈출하라. No doubt to further confuse readers, it was also republished in the UK in 2021 in English as I’m Out: How To Make an Exit.

Meanwhile, in 2020, in English, Robert had written The Good Life For Wage Slaves, which was re-published in Germany as Das gute Leben.

He had also written a regular column 2016-2020 in The Idler, a magazine whose declared aim is to “return dignity to the art of loafing” and had written for a variety of other esteemed outlets including Meat, The Skinny, the British Comedy Guide, Playboy etc etc etc.

Obviously, I had to have a chat with Robert.

It would have been churlish not to.

He lives in Glasgow and Montreal (his partner is Canadian), so we talked via FaceTime.

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JOHN: You have said: “The highest form of human activity is the shenanigan”…

ROBERT: It makes sense, right? What could be better than a mischievous, spontaneous act?

JOHN: ARE you a mischievous, spontaneous act?

ROBERT: That’s what I aspire to.

JOHN: You describe yourself ‘a humorist’.

ROBERT: There’s a thing on Wikipedia at the moment about the definition of ‘humorist’ which says it’s “an intellectual who uses comedy to get his or her point across”. And that nails it for me. I don’t want to think of myself as an intellectual, but I do like the idea that I’m trying to communicate a ‘point’ packaged nicely with humour, so you can get inside somebody. It’s the sugar pill, right?

“I think it’s to do with anti-pigeon…”

JOHN: Why is your latest book called Stern Plastic Owl?

ROBERT: That’s a theme. My previous similar miscellany book was called A Loose Egg because I got hung up on that phase “a loose egg”. It came about by accident, because there was a loose egg in our fridge back in Canada.

Stern Plastic Owl is a random phrase too. Like all comedians and writers, I have a notebook nearby at all times, including by my bed. There is an idea that sleeping should be when your fertile ideas come up although, really, what I write down in the night is gibberish. But it feels like it’s a resource I should use and one of the phrases that stood out was Stern Plastic Owl. I didn’t know what it meant.

So there is a story in the book where I try to work out what it means. It’s kind of a detective story in the middle of the book.

JOHN: So did you find out what it means?

ROBERT: Not exactly. But I think it’s to do with anti-pigeon, do you know what I mean?

JOHN: No.

ROBERT: An anti-pigeon device. You’ve got an owl and you put it up on your roof to scare pigeons away. There’s one nearby and I think I must have seen that and it came back to me in a dream. So I tried my best to write a piece around one of those stern plastic anti-pigeon owls.

JOHN: I’ve never heard of this before. Are you telling me, if I come up to Glasgow there are fake owls on window sills and roofs all over the place.

ROBERT: They’re everywhere.

JOHN: You were a stand-up comic.

“I never got a horrible heckle ever…”

ROBERT: One of the very brief things from my very brief stand-up period was my come-back to hecklers: “Sir, you cannot count the number of cylinders I’m firing on”. I’m still happy with that. I never got to use it, but it was just there on standby. I never got a horrible heckle ever.

JOHN: You were too loveable?

ROBERT: Probably too young. A lot of audiences are just polite if you look very young.

JOHN: Why did you give up stand-up?

ROBERT: My favourite thing was writing the jokes and fine-tuning them. The hardest part was making it sound good, sound spontaneous. I didn’t enjoy the late nights or the Green Room badinage. I have met a lot of wonderful comedians in Green Rooms but I never felt I was holding my own in those conversations.

JOHN: You wrote that one great climb-down of your life was “pointing your imagination in the direction of writing rather than performance”.

ROBERT: Well, that’s not really true. That’s just what I put in the book. It didn’t really feel like a climb-down. I just didn’t want to tell the story in the other direction which was I was travelling in a favourable direction to the thing I wanted to do. I didn’t think there was any comedy in saying that.

JOHN: Is it a book full of lies? Like comedy routines?

ROBERT: Oh completely. The idea of what is true is something that is always on my mind a lot. For example, my real name is not Wringham. My actual passport name is Westwood. Robert Westwood.

 I wanted to change my name and be a persona. So, when I’m on the page or on the stage, it’s a separate thing. 

JOHN: Why Wringham?

Agraman aka The Human Anagram, John Marshall, c2018

ROBERT: I was always entertained by people like The Human Anagram (aka Agraman aka John Marshall) in the 1980s, but I wanted to do something else. I like horror novels and there’s one called The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

 It’s of the age of Frankenstein, but it’s Scottish and I think that’s why no-one has given a shit about it and it’s unjustifiably obscure. The villain in that is called Robert Wringham.

So, when I moved to Scotland, I thought: I’m taking that name! It’s sort of similar to mine and the thing about that book is it’s about doppelgängers. So I thought: My persona is going to be my evil twin. He’s going to do the stuff that I don’t do in real life.

(… CONTINUED HERE … )

Robert’s books have been published in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Korea