Interview taken ( & edited ) from HermAphrodite #4.

GO TO: Recording a Record GO TO: Other Projects GO TO: How They Met

It used to be that Stu had the coolest hair in the world. ( Or at least out of the 'Fist Of Fun' team... ) A vague fringe of haphazard twirly bits. But now it's all tidy and vertical. And it's coolness factor has been dramatically overtaken by Rich's - his hair is now all long and flowing and really very nice.

I've been making my friends watch The Festival Of Fun repeats over the last few weeks. The ones where Rich has long hair and a beard and a thing for muffins. The one that prompted my friend Louise to demand of me why exactly Stu had hair LIKE THAT.

me: "My friend Louise thinks you look like a sheep-dog."

Stu: "Me ?"

me: "Yes. With your hair when it was all ( I mime hair twirling over a forehead ) which I thought was cool but she, thought made you look like a sheep-dog. So she wants to know why."

Stu: ( quietly ) "I don't know."

I think I might have offended him. Arrrgh. S'probably good Louise didn't come to this interview. She had quite a few questions for me. ( And yes dear, Richard said he does eat his own scabs. No-one else's though. )

Stu: ( defensively ) "HE looks more like a sheepdog."

I don't agree, though Rich seems reasonably non-plussed at this.

me: "I think it could be to compliment his looking a bit like Jesus..."

So with Rich's beard and flowing locks making him look a little bit like the metaphorical shepherd son of God and Stu looking like, um, a sheepdog, they could be metaphorically leading us into a new dawn of comedy, and all that.

Stu: "Could be."

Rich: "She'll have to work out why she thinks he looks like a sheepdog."

me: "I think it was that she'd never seen hair like that before. She was quietly impressed."

This tickles Rich greatly, though I think Stu is still smarting.

Maybe we should move on to another topic of conversation...

me: "So who do you like, that you've seen ? Comedian-type people, not just generally in the whole world - that could take quite a while."

( giggles from Rich )

Stu: "Harry Hill; Alan Parker Urban Warrior, Simon Munnery he does that; Frank Skinner..."

Rich: "Al Murray..."

Stu: "Al Murray, Pub Landlord; Jerry Sadowitz; and an Australian bloke called Greg Fleet who's over here intermittently. If he lived here and wasn't A FOOL who can't stay sober long enough to get his act together he'd be possibly the best comedian in the world."

me: "Did you two genuinely want to do the World Cup Song ?"

Stu, to his credit ( or to the proof of an obsessive side to his personality ), knows exactly what I'm talking about. And exactly where I gleaned that information.

Stu: "No. I don't know why that was in there [ Public NME ]. Neither of us have ever seen Echo and the Bunneymen live, we weren't at that gig, we certainly weren't backstage at it, and we never want to do a World Cup song. And I've never been to a football match. I can only think it was a kind of NME joke about how comedians do football songs."

So it postively is not true.

Stu: "Most things in those music-paper gossip columns are wrong."

Murmurs of assent from around the table.

Stu: "I'm supposed to have played in a 5-A-Side football match somewhere with Sean Hughes - which I never did; I'm supposed to have gone out for a night with Graham from Blur - I've never met the bloke; I'm supposed to have gone to see a band called Black Star Liner, who I've never heard of..."

But then, Stu has been contemplating doing a football song.

Stu: "I thought the other day about doing a record about how I really hate football and why right-wing violent racists like it, and how scary people who like football are if you see them in a big train carriage together. And the chorus would be 'and I hope we lose.' But I think we'd probably get just beaten to shit. ( starts singing ) 'We're not going to win / Let's be realistic...’ “

So. He does want to make a record. Not all that you hear of Stewart Lee which sounds vaguely preposterous is untrue.

me: "Do you genuinely want to record a Country and Western album in Spain under a false name ?"

Stu: "Um, well yeah I'd like to make a record some day yeah. It's one thing that I've always wanted to do that I never have."

me: "So you are just a frustrated rock-star ?"

Stu: "Not a ROCK-star. But I'd like to make a record. I used to be in a band but we only did three gigs..."

Now time is concentrated on the comedy. And the script writing. The play-writing. The sitcom writing... When I spoke to them, they were writing a Hostages sitcom together, Rich was developing a sitcom & a TV programme, and Stu had finished a film script.

What I really wanna know, faced with all this information, is:

me: "How do you have the time ?"

Stu: "Easy..."

me: "So have you just cloned yourselves..?"

Stu: "We finish this tour in June..."

Rich: "And then we'll have time to do other stuff.

( Like write a whole play ?!? )"

Stu: "We've got a system for TV as well. For this series we used a lot of stuff from our last tour, and we did a gig every week at Battersea Arts Centre where we tried to write a new hour of stuff, though we very rarely did. And a very small percentage of that new stuff bore repetition on the television - so we got quite a lot out of that in the end... If we did all the stuff we were doing at the start of the tour, the show would be about four hours long."

Rich: "We also do Edinburgh every year... We've still got all the props from last year in our office; lots of archaeological equipment, a seven foot penis, a whale..."

( And no, they're not getting rid of them ,because they might need them again. The penis was for Stu's show. Nothing else. Alright ? )

Rich: "You come up with loads of material doing that. Like again I've said I'm going to write another play for Edinburgh so if I do that I'm going to have to write it in June. Because I haven't written anything for it yet - I was trying to write something on the bus today..."

Stu: "Oh, were you ? I wondered what you were doing."

me: "Do you genuinely have NO idea about it ?"

Rich: "I've got a vague idea. This is the least of an idea that I've had... I'm always writing them right up to the last minute - I wrote most of 'Excavating Rita' in July and finished it about three days before it went on..."

me: "Do you find it cathartic ?"

Rich: "Yeah, but it's horrible. It's really hard. The writing part you're completely on your own... But it is like a learning experience - like cheap psycho-analysis on yourself... When you start looking inside of yourself, it actually is quite upsetting... But having done it, it is really really satisfying."

me: "Do you like his plays ?"

Stu: "Uh, yeah I do, they get better and better over the years. In fact the last two were good to the point where you sort of think ( dazedly ) 'someone I KNOW wrote that' - you can't square it up, because it's so good, with the person you know. You sort of think really good things are done by other people..."

me: "And does he find you funny ?"

Rich starts grinning.

Stu: "Well presumably, otherwise there's no need for us to work together..."

me: "But you don't watch the Comedy Network going 'oh, he's quite a funny young man...' ?"

Stu: "He's seen all that stuff anyway."

Rich: "Yeah. And we make each other laugh in this double act show so I think that's the heart of it. The days when we're not making each other laugh the show doesn't go as well. Because part of if it is just the fun of two blokes pissing about - but there is quite a lot of structure and work that goes into it..."

Stu: "And also we don't NEED to work together - you've seen all the other stuff we can do. Whenever we get offered the chance to work with people other than each other if we don't think they're funny we don't really ever do it. We've never done anything that we haven't wanted to."

me: "Do you feel it was Fate that brought you two together ?"

Stu: "Uh, no. Not really, It was just coincidence."

And no, they don't celebrate their anniversary. But they still act like a married couple about it. Both insistent they can remember the exact place, neither agreeing on it. Or how long ago it was.

Stu: "It was ten years last year."

Rich: "Eleven years last year, twelve this September."

Stu: "It depends when it is as well, it's hazy in the mists of time, like how did The Beatles meet... ( Rich giggles ) I thought we met at a Christmas party..."

Rich: ( insistently ) "We met in a corridor."

Stu: "...But Rich thinks we met in a corridor before then."

Rich: "And I saw him through the window of a Kentucky Fried Chicken."

me: "So you were stalking him before you actually came across him?"

Rich: ( defensively ) "I just SAW him."

Stu: "He met me in a corridor - but I don't really remember that - when we were both auditioning for some student show. And then he saw me through the window of a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop, when I was on my way to a Suzanne Vega concert, but I didn't see him. And then we met at this party, which is where we spoke and decided to try and do some stuff together."

Rich: "Maybe if we hadn't met we would've teamed up with someone else."

Stu: "Or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference. ( pause ) To suggest that it was Fate suggests that some superior power ( Rich starts laughing ) had an interest in bringing us together to make our 'average to quite good' light entertainment. I think if there was a being or force controlling the destiny of man - which I don't think there is - I think it would have higher concerns on its mind. And things like this would be largely incidental to its plan."

me - "So you're quite humble with what you're doing ?"

Stu: "Humble ? Well, realistic."

Rich: "He doesn't think a GOD made us get together. I don't that that's humble. In a way I think it's arrogant."

Stu starts cackling at this.

me: "Do your mums like what you do ?"

Rich: "Mine does, yeah."

Stu: "I don't think mine does. But she likes it when other people like it. And she likes boasting about it to her friends."

God might not like it. But Rich's mum does. And me too. Heh-heh...

Go And Do Something Else With Your Life

Last revised: 26/07/01