Interview taken from HermAphrodite #8

Dan Antopolski is a funny man. He’s also a beardy man. The two are, most likely, unconnected. Dan Antopolski claims to be the Scissors-Paper-Stone Champion of West London. Dan Antopolski likes to think of himself as a giant carrot on a metronome, and of the audience as his hypnotised rabbit brethren. Dan Antopolski can count, he just wanted his show to have ‘2000’ in its title. Dan Antopolski believes that if the French were ever to fight the combined vampire-snail forces, garlic-power would ensure the former’s victory. Dan Antopolski begins his new show by questioning whether his lovely audience are responsible for the onstage orange; upon our denial of such responsibility, he finds a button on the orange, and presses it to hear a Mission Impossible –style imperative, emboldening him to do a show which dazzles rather than relaxes into self-congratulatory comedy-whorish arrogance. Dan Antopolski gave me an hour of his Edinburgh Monday, in the first week of the Fringe Festival, to discuss such matters. And peanuts. And the fact that he is also the proud possessor of the right kind of face/beard/haircut combination which allows him to drape blue underpants on his head, and look dashing with it. (They doth fair become his countenance.)

Isabelle – “How did you realise Pants On The Head suited you?”

Dan – “I was just mucking about with my girlfriend. Just prancing around my bedroom with my pants on my head. Then I stopped in front a mirror and realised ‘MY GOD – those pants suit me!’”

Isabelle – “So it wasn’t that you were in some sort of play, working your way up from shepherd-with-tea-towel…?”

This is strenuously denied.

Dan – “It wasn’t a pants workshop.”

And there was no process-of-elimination, using other items of clothing. Socks on the head, for example, would just look silly. Besides which, you can’t force this kind of genius.

Dan – “It was an accident. Like penicillin.”

(But only in the joyous accident sense…)

Isabelle – “It’s also a good way of selling people to your set.”

I have in fact lured several people to his previous shows, with a promise of Robin Hood Style Pants-On-Head-Excitement. This year of course, I was just building Elly up to have her knocked down.

Isabelle – “But then you didn’t do it this time around.”

Dan – “It’s all new stuff this year.”

The look of disappointment must still be there on my face, three days after his set, as his tone then turns faintly reassuring.

Dan – “Well, you have to move on, don’t you?”

Indeed.

Isabelle – “It was great that you did an actual SHOW, as well: I’ve seen some people just doing bits of old material and bits of new material with just a nice shiny sign…”

Dan – “Yeah. That’s what I felt last year. I really enjoyed doing my hour last year, but I felt that it didn’t hang together as a whole piece so well. It was just a contrived way to stick lots of things together in an hour. But this year I’ve made an effort to unite it more. It’s better for the audience.”

Isabelle – “I also love the way you seem to be heckle-proof. As though you’re unsettling people too much, they wouldn’t dare say anything because they don’t quite understand…”

If they’re not laughing, they’re not on his wavelength, essentially. But they wouldn’t really want to vocalise their dislike, as Dan’s come-back would be unintelligible to them, as they’re not on his wave-length. Thus rendering them the butt of a joke they don’t understand but the rest of the room would. Of course, this theory doesn’t always hold true. (Else he wouldn’t be aware that the occasional audience member has mistaken him for Timothy Claypole.)

Dan – “I do get heckled. I did Late & Live [notorious Edinburgh Gladiatorial stand-up session] last night, and someone heckled me. You just deal with it the best way you can I suppose.”

Which in his case, tends to involve attacking them at an entirely different angle from which they began. Behold, a favourite example of his disarming-while-engaging a member of the front row: “Where are you from?” “Yorkshire.” “Yorkshire? You must be good at French.” “No.” “Really? Don’t you get picked on?”

After that, people seem loath to speak out of turn. Dan, who’s (obviously) been to more of his own gigs than I have (the earlier ‘obviously’ was redundant, wasn’t it, really?), isn’t entirely convinced of my argument, but still appreciates my viewpoint.

Dan – “If I put people off heckling, that’s great.”

Having the power to simultaneously intrigue, entertain and unsettle is one which comes with great responsibility. And great accessories.

For the deliberately anachronistically-named ‘Antopoloski 2000’, Dan had a belt made. Almost like the kind of thing you’d see a cowboy/plumber wearing. Except for the small foam type-writer and fold-out baton-esque desk it involves.

Isabelle – “Was it Batman-related, your belt of excitement?”

Dan – “Kind of Batman-related, yeah.”

Isabelle – “If Batman was to ever need a type-writer and a small desk?”

Dan – “Yeah. Exactly. That was the idea.”

But it doesn’t stop with the type-writer and small desk. Oh no.

Dan – “There’s some shark repellent. Useless objects…”

Isabelle – “It would be good if you were ever going to be mugged, you could just whip out the desk…”

Dan – “Yeah.”

Though wearing the A2K belt in public (ie in front of a public who haven’t paid to see it) could be seen as quite a price to pay for one’s personal safety. Anyway.

Dan – “I’ve been thinking of wearing it more in the show. Actually using it more.”

There’s a pause.

Dan – “Or actually using it. Actually using the desk to get into a stand-up routine. If you do a one-liner, that’s for everyone’s concentration span, but if you do a long surreal bit, one of my goes-off-in-tangents-all-the-time, then you have to be concentrating a bit. People do drift in and out over an hour – that’s just a fact of an hour. So maybe I should use that more, actually use it to get people’s attention.”

Isabelle – “Do you have a favourite prop?”

Dan – “I like my Mirror-Head. I’ve got a friend called Anna, who built that, and the belt. I’d like to do more stuff with those kind of props – it’s fun for me, and fun for the audience. Just a bit different.”

Isabelle – “Was the show named after the fact that the belt has a A2K emblazoned on it?”

Dan – “No. The belt was just named after the fact that the show was A2K.”

And there is an explanation for that as well, folks.

Dan – “I just thought it would be funny to call it ‘Antopolski 2000’, when it’s not 2000 any more.”

It could also be inverted nostalgia, a subversive Space Odyssey thing, or a slight satirical twist on our insistence to name all NewAndExciting products by their year of manufacture so as they seem outdated within only 12 months and you feel obliged to seek out the newer model. Whatever. It’s intentional. And is definitely NOT a typing error. And if it were a name with New Millennium intent, that would match the posters…

Isabelle – “Is it a futuristic poster-thing you’ve got going there? With a little bit of chest hair and a helmet.”

Dan (slowly) – “Yerrrs. I guess so. I just thought it was a funny picture.”

Which could be seen to promise certain things that the show lacks. Such as:

Isabelle – “Chest hair and a helmet. You haven’t had any disappointed punters then?”

Dan – “Thinking it was a, uh, different kind of show? No. A poster’s a poster.”

And his audience are credited with a certain level of intelligence. Enough at least to presume that Dan Antopoloski is not:

a) a man living in a time-warp

b) a race-car driver

c) about to do a show about a race-car driver who lives in a time-warp

No matter how many times they see such an image emblazoned about the city.

Isabelle – “Does it freak you out, going around and you keep seeing your own face on the side of buildings?”

Bands have time to get used to it. But it’s uncommon for a stand-up; they don’t usually get that kind of publicity ANYWHERE but a comedy festival. Particularly on this level of intensity.

Dan – “No, I’m used to it now. It is funny when you start doing Edinburgh, and you started seeing posters of yourself plastered all over. But you get used to it, like anything else.”

Though, presumably, there is only so much that you could take…

Isabelle – “You haven’t yet been flyered for one of your own shows?”

Dan – “No, no, I haven’t yet. But a friend of mine got flyered for one of their own shows. Someone in the Comedy Zone.”

I’m presuming this to be John Oliver. How depressing for him. And for the flyerer. (As it proves they haven’t even studied the piece of paper, let alone seen the show – with their eyes open – to recommend it to people…)

Isabelle – “We saw that on Saturday.”

Dan – “It’s good this year isn’t it? Had you seen it before?”

Isabelle – “No. It’s our first year up here.”

Dan – “Well it’s new-ish people, some years are better than other years. And this is a really good year.”

(I like that. As though these comics mature like wine and whisky in oak-barrelled casks for most of the year, before emerging to be funny about pagers and the Incredible Hulk around August…)

We discuss various performers with enthusiasm; it gradually emerges that, for the Festival, he sees more of other people than he does the city.

Isabelle – “So have you been to the zoo?”

Dan – “Here? No. I haven’t. Never have.”

Isabelle – “You haven’t been up to the castle?”

Dan – “Never. Each year I think I’ll go to the castle, and I never have. Or The Tattoo.”

Performing at Edinburgh seems to be the only swing of things he’s interested in getting into.

Isabelle – “Not bought any crap souvenirs at all?”

Dan – “Naaah.”

Isabelle – “So you don’t have one of those tam-o-shanters with a ginger wig attachment?”

Dan – “Nooo.”

I think they’re reserved only for Americans.

Dan – “Actually, for my birthday last year Lee Mack gave me a little bear that’s dressed in a kilt that plays the bagpipes, and when you press him he shakes, like that.”

Dan shakes, briefly, like a bear in a kilt.

Isabelle – “It’s nice that he saw that and thought of you.”

Dan – “Isn’t it?”

Mmm-hmm.

Isabelle – “So do you actually do EDINBURGH things while you’re here?”

Dan – “Not so much. I start off with good intentions and then I find I want life around the show to be as normal as possible, because it’s quite intensive. You just wanna not get too high if you get good reviews, or get too neurotic about it if you get a bad review. Everyone does that – the most sane people come up here and get swept up in it. Which is not really in answer to your question. In general I kind of want to behave as normally as possible, so I’d much rather lounge around my flat.”

A flat which he shares, by the way, with Chris Addison, Richard Herring and Jenny Éclair. I think this sounds like the good basis for a sitcom. Dan assures me that making toast doesn’t become hilarious even when four comedians are at the controls. Though their company, and the sofa, is still preferable to traipsing about the place seeing shows.

Dan – “And in a way it’s a shame, because there’s so much brilliant stuff on. But I can’t fool myself that I’m a punter, and when I leave my venue I really don’t want to go and see other stuff, I don’t want to be in other venues, because I’ve done it for an hour a day. If you that was your job you just wouldn’t want to. So I’m going to see my friends, and some theatre perhaps, but I won’t go and see many things. My girlfriend’s coming up in five days, and we’ll do stuff. But at the moment, I’m just sort of… in a Bachelor Pad.”

Doing Bachelor Pad things.

Dan – “And I include Jenny Éclair in that. We’re just slobbing around.”

Isabelle – “Is there a holiday camp feel to all this?”

Dan – “Yeah, there is. And especially at the start, when you’re still finding your feet, and you see all your friends. When you do stand-up, you might work with someone three times in a couple of weeks, and then not see them for eight months, you just don’t know. And here everyone’s here every day, so it’s very nice.”

Isabelle – “Do you have to have a detox week when you get back home?”

Dan – “I’m learning to pace myself while I’m here. I mean, I haven’t managed not to drink so far, each night. But if you do it for a month you start getting pretty pasty and, you know, under par.”

But he isn’t relying on vitamins to see him through (or all the required daily nutrients reputedly present within Guinness), but rather the promise of a vacation.

Dan – “I’m having a holiday to the States after this; just going to drive across America with me lady. That’ll be lovely.”

Isabelle – “In a Jack Kerouac kind of way?”

Dan – “Pretty much. It’s a fly-drive; we’re going to go to LA, just get a car, and drive around Colorado and the Rockies. Just get lost. It’ll be really nice. I’m really looking forward to it.”

For the next few weeks though, it’s all ComedyComedyComedy.

>>> Part 2

Last revised: 19/08/01