Simon Munnery is in good form when we tumble in to meet him, just past midnight, in the Performer's Bar in the Pleasance, during the 1999 Edinburgh Festival. It is the second week of the festival, days before the Perrier Nominations are announced, and his League Against Tedium show is going well.

'Dis Am Ubertechnocomedie', or 'I Am TV' ("Not my bid for the Eddie Izzard market", Simon points out) as the posters proclaim, is a highly technically advanced show. Simon uses a self-filming camera, incorporated into the 'Sword of Dst:NY', which is also connected to a computer behind a giant screen. Throughout the show, Simon films himself, cutting between images of himself and computer-generated images and graphics. Combined with this is the former 'Glove Of Power', originally a radio-controlled car component from Woolworths. This is also now incorporated into the Sword, providing aural punctuation at all stages during the show (drum rolls, cymbals, applause, even laughter). It is an ambitious venture, and one that Simon, along with Richard Thomas (keyboards) and his KombatOpera singer, pull off with aplomb.

The audiences can choose to watch The League walk across the stage, addressing the Sword and occasionally looking up into the crowd. Or they can choose to watch the images on the screen, the bigger and brighter images. The televisual images that our generation is so comfortable with. It's a slightly disquieting experience, watching television being produced so simply and so beautifully. "The thing is", Simon explains, "TV stations are SHIT. We've got to make TV, that's what I say. They are. It's an evil thing, television stations." And we're off.

"TV's always shouting at you now. It's always shouting! Shouting! It's so ugly now. And there's more and more TV everywhere you look. Screens in pubs, shops - TVs, TVs. There are more channels, millions of channels." Television, at this point in time, is Simon's primary preoccupation, and is a subject that he continually returns to throughout the conversation. "Nothing against cookery shows and all that but. it's just sad. In my lifetime I have seen TV decline, really decline. I think something should kill it. And then start again. TV wise, let's go right down to chaos. Because it means that advertising ceases to have any success, effect, if you don't watch TV. It's a desperate thing, advertising."

It's an unhappy moment, therefore, that at this point in the conversation, myself and my colleague are served Metz. Simon yells "Oh no! NO! They're Barratt Fans!!! He doesn't drink it himself you know!" Suitably embarrassed, as Mr. Barratt himself is seated at the very next table, I ask him if there was anything he would advertise. "I'm virulently against advertising." Yes, but given the choice of anything? "My own show. My own show, and the word of God, that's about the only thing. Or anything I wanted to, like London Grill?" London Grill is a feature of the show - during the Ad Break that comes about half way through. It involves of a picture of Kevin Eldon, pulling a face and shoving the bright red can of Heinz London Grill into the camera. The slogan goes 'London Grill! Because life ain't healthy! Laandaaan Grill! Eat it! And Shut Up!' "It actually exists! It's revolting! It's like eating cat food. Kev gave me a tin of it, here you are, this would make a funny advert: '(Belches!) London Grill!' It's just disgusting shit in a can. Bright red, that is the can! It's real!"

Returning for the moment to the technology of the show, it has been a long evolution to get the technology to the stage it has now reached. About four years ago the act involved a slide projector, a microphone with buttons that worked the projector, and a box of three Walkmans that produced sounds - drumming, clapping and music. "Yeah, I tried lots of things to make it work," says Simon, "but I started with the computer very early on, because I used to be a computer programmer when I was young. But it wasn't reliable enough, so I had a slide projector for whenever it went wrong. The first time we did Cluub Zarathustra in Edinburgh, I had three slide projectors, and all of them were broken by the end. They had just jammed. You go "blah blah blah", do the joke, then - 'Argh! Nothing!' Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it isn't, when things go wrong with machines."

The more advanced computer technology provides thousands of images; they can be stored on the computer and manipulated with ease. Even still, Simon enjoys the simplicity of less complicated equipment, such as Dave Gorman's 1998 show 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' "In last year's show he had loads of slides, slides he'd found or that were given to him, of people. Hundreds and thousands of them, and then he wrote his show about that song, Reasons to be Cheerful, and every line of it he'd found pictures of these things, like random, thousands of people's photographs. It was beautiful, it was really beautiful. in a way I wish I'd done it, but I use computers now. I've gone down that route."

With the Perrier announcements only days away, the subject inevitably cropped up in conversation. Asked if he was expecting a nomination, Simon replied "Yes. I am often wrong." Would he like to win? "Yes, yes, yes. Gimme, gimme gimme! Not only that, but I also lay claim to the crown of England and all other European states. I wouldn't mind being Pope as well." The 1999 Perrier Award, as we all know, went to Al Murray. The day after the winner was announced, Simon reintroduced a sight gag from his 1998 show: A picture of a Perrier bottle flashes on the screen, intercut with the word "Shite", while Simon shouts 'Perrier! Perrier! Perrier! Shite! Evian c'est bon'.

Over the years, Simon has been in the running for many awards, among them the award for 'Sexiest Entertainer In Bristol' in 1997. Did he win? "Yes. But that's not hard in Bristol. In Bristol, if you can drink six pints and still stand up you're counted as an entertainer. Bristol is the arse of Europe, ney, the world." Among the more prestigious of his nominations, Simon was up for Best Television Newcomer at The 1996 British Comedy Awards for the BBC television pilot of his character Alan Parker - Urban Warrior, entitled London Shouting. Unbelievably, it never got a series. "I don't know why. I met the producer of it, Geoffrey Perkins, at the awards, or maybe afterwards. And he seemed really odd with me. But, I couldn't really remember who he was, to be honest, which was bad, but I thought I recognised him. It takes me hours to remember who people are, even if I've had a long conversation with them. But I don't know why he was so awkward. He's never explained it. I think I asked once, but I don't know why. It's not like that. It's not like you'd know why. You never know why."

Simon will continue to do gigs as Alan Parker ["Yes, certainly. Don't know where, don't know when, but I expect it will be raining."], but the character will be taking back seat to The League Against Tedium, who, at long last, has been granted a television deal with BBC2. Avalon Promotions are keeping quiet at the moment, which is probably wise, following all the problems they have had with the BBC recently, what with their acts jumping ship and hopping on the Sky One band wagon. No information is available at the moment, so we will instead leave with Simon's Final Thought:

" 'Don't count your chickens before they're hatched' they assert. I say: Count Them! And then dismiss them for what they are: chickens, merely chickens...

Photos (c) Avalon