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Big And Daft have come a long way since their initial heady lunges into the comedy world. The three BAD boys - Ian Boldsworth, Rob Rouse and Jon Williams - are one of the best sketch troupes on the comedy circuit today. Edinburgh 2000 witnessed the world premier of Big And Daft In Space, the follow up to their 1999 fringe show. With comedy that combines word play, slapstick, rough and tumble and fabulously childish stunts, the appeal of Big and Daft is universal. And, according to one national paper, they have also gained a following among twenty-somethings of the female variety. comedylounge, being the fearless adventurers that we are, just had to investigate. We met Ian, Rob and Jon for lunch in The Living Room during the festival.
"Can I just say," begins Ian, looking at Jon's lunch, "that I had a monster burger the other day and I didn't get either mushrooms or onion rings." "Jon smiled at him", explains Rob. Ian rears up like a big gay bear. "They're making some sort of point aren't they? Some sort of fattist point." "Ian, they can't hear that you're fat on tape. You can be thin in their article."
Ian and Jon met in University. Their friendship was initially one of convenience, as Ian explains. "Jon befriended me because I had a car and he lived near me. When he needed to get home at summer, Jon would always become my friend at the last week of term." Jon appeared in some of the plays Ian wrote and directed in University, and following graduation, they were on the lookout for some more people to join their prestigious ranks. The original plan was to have five people, "a bit like the Hollow Men", but they stopped looking once Rob joined the group.
Ian first saw Rob perform at a gig he was running in Finchley in the Torrington Arms. Rob takes up the story. " I was having a very nice gig, and then suddenly I got a blow to the back of the head. And then I woke up and I was in Ian's, tied to a chair in his bedroom, and Jon was there pushing things in my mouth. No, Ian rang the next day and said that him and some of his gay university friends were thinking of putting some kind of sketch troupe together to go to Edinburgh in an embarrassing manner and that he needed me to come and join him. I went yes, that'd be great."
Their first gig together was on the 31st of October 1997. Their opening number was Re-Light My Fire, with Ian and Jon dressed in "horns and things" and Rob dressed as Lulu. "Yeah," laughs Rob. "Basically the show has been built from a drag act. Our entire career."
Although their onstage characters share their names, they are not so much exaggerations of their own personalities as caricatures of their off-stage relationship. "It's an extension of how we behave with each other more than it is ourselves," explains Rob. So in what way are they different to their onstage characters? "I'm exactly the same, according to these two!" says Rob. "Em. I don't wear glasses," says Jon. That's that settled, then.
A lot of the material from the show develops more through circumstance than structured writing processes. Taking ideas from real life situations or from conversations between themselves, they work through them onstage, with the final version often changing considerably from the original premise. But not everything makes the transfer from real life to the stage, such as this example from Ian. "I rang Jon up one morning and I went 'Jon, Jon, I'm sorry to bother you, it's just that my house is on fire, and I've forgotten the number for the fire brigade. Can you tell it to me, please?' I had a bag of crisps next to me crackling! That was in the show at first, but it didn't work. It was really funny at the time."
Some sketches are taken straight from real life personality traits, or, as we discovered, their bad habits. "Rob's bad habits." Jon takes a moment to consider. "One is he's very windy. But the other one is that it takes him fucking ages to get ready." Rob raises an eyebrow. "And I think you'll agree ladies, it's well worth it!"
Rob's inability to get ready for anything on time led to the infamous chocolate toothpaste sketch in this year's show, as Ian explains. "That bit. when I said 'Don't forget to clean your teeth', and he's like 'okay!' and he just stands still. And I say 'Have you forgot?' He goes, 'What?' 'To clean your teeth.' And he goes, 'Oh yeah'. That's Rob. That's totally Rob."
"And these two" complains Rob, "have a bad habit, which is intolerance. Also becoming slightly middle aged before their time. Because you should allow teenagers to spend as much time as they want in the bathroom. Because they could be doing anything in there. When I'm in the bathroom I could be learning things."
This kind of interaction between the three, which is as touching to behold off stage as it is on, is what holds the unique appeal of Big And Daft. Their performances are not stories - for that, as they point out, you need a beginning, a middle and an end. Neither are they strictly sketch shows either, as the relationship between the three runs through and develops during the performances, from one situation to the next. Much of the joy of watching them perform comes from observing the trust and friendship that is evident onstage.
Their style of humour holds a universal appeal. The childish nature of a lot of the show is wonderfully innocent, particularly in Rob and Ian's characters, with Jon often having to step in as the main figure of authority. This kind of family based structure, used to great effect in shows like The Young Ones, is the secret to their successful onstage chemistry. The usual cynicism of much of today's comedy is put aside for a much more tongue in cheek innocence that hasn't really been seen since the hey-day of The Goodies.
Playing with their off-stage relationship on-stage does inevitably lead to complications. The show is tightly scripted, but does allow for some deviations and ad-libbing, so the lines between real life and stage show can become blurred, particularly during intense performing experiences like the Edinburgh Fringe. "It's a weird thing in the dynamic," explains Ian. "In our show there's a lot of adlibs and a lot of stuff where we're us as ourselves. So, you think I'll undercut Rob, or I'll undercut Jon and we'll have some kind of bicker on stage. And normally that's fine, but if you've been bickering during the day, then you think that they're having a bit of a go at you on stage and you get a bit wound up with that, but they're not. But that's not really been a real problem."
With a five star review in their pocket, and universally great press and public attention from their Edinburgh show, are Big And Daft planning a return visit to the festival next year? "We don't know yet," says Jon. If they do come back up, Ian already has plans for next year. "If we do, we're going to call our show 'Big and Daft, Back Down To Earth'. We'll have no props or set and we'll do it all in black. Back to basics. Maybe a couple of wigs. We could do it in French."
In the meantime, they will be appearing on UK Play in November, on a show called Terrorville, alongside Jon Reed, Count Arthur and Terry Titter, and Noble and Silver. Like most UK Play comedy shows, their sketches will be interspersed between music videos. "It's a good place to start," says Rob, "but I think ultimately comedy and music are oil and water, unless it's comedy music or musical comedy. And having things broken up because that's the way it is, ultimately isn't the easiest way to do things." "Unless it's one of Keith Harris's fantastic comedy songs," points out Ian. "There aren't enough of them anymore."
Further ahead, Jon has a dream. "At some stage, I'd like the three of us to be doing Saturday prime time live, doing something like the House Party. I think the three of us would do really well doing that. Our characters, something really prime time. BBC 1, Saturday, 7 o'clock. Doing family daft stuff, new stuff. Take the genre and move it on." Rob agrees. "Ultimately the show we're doing now, with a few changes, can pretty much appeal to a family audience without offending anyone and making everyone laugh regardless of their age because it's funny. And ultimately, things being funny, that's the main thing. Yeah, being on BBC1, 7o'clock in the evening, 15 million viewers all laughing at something funny. It would be brilliant."
Big And Daft as the Noel Edmonds for the 21st century. The BBC letter campaign starts here.
Review of Big And Daft in Space