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Nice Mum |
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They used to be inexplicable. They’ve been called naughty boys. Their most philosophical thought is that “booze is your friend”. Comedy Lounge have set out to discover the real life trauma behind the legends in the making that are Kris Nice and Dave Mum.
“We aren’t capable of getting real
jobs or having proper relationships, or just growing
up, so we decided we’d be comedians. We don’t have
anything else to do. We’re backed in to a corner
here.”
Kris Dyer and Dave Marks are reminiscing about the time that they interviewed the Chuckle Brothers as part of a university charity event. They are still particularly pleased with one line of questioning, when asking the brothers in chuckle about their theories behind the meaning of comedy. “We asked them ‘what is comedy to you, because to me… And they picked up on it, bless them, because they’re sharp boys, and for about five minutes it was To You, To Me, What’s That, Pack It In… they just kept going. I think it was Paul that said ‘Comedy, right, is a lady walking down the street, oh she’s fallen over and whoops, she’s on her back, you can see her bloomers. That’s comedy.’ And I respect that.”
That interview certainly has one thing in common with our experience of trying to get any sense out of the two Mums. One thing that takes some getting used to when talking to the boys is the fact that they seem unable to finish their own sentences, and this is complicated by the fact that they also insist on finishing each other’s. Every answer is peppered with a variety of silly voices – the Chuckle Brothers featured extensively on the day that we met them, and the voices of the Cherry People also make frequent appearances. They regularly stop in the middle of stories and speak in unison, something that is surprisingly uncommon when it comes to double acts, off-stage at least. Put simply, the chemistry between the pairing is by far their strongest and most striking quality.
“We’re just lazy, really. We
actually don’t like doing anything, but comedy is the
thing we dislike the least.”
niCe mUm sprang in to the consciousness of the comedy
going public at the Edinburgh Festival this year, with
their first festival show as a double act. They first
met in the “golden year” of 1998, when they were both
taking part in the Open Mic heats. Their first
meeting, Kris tells us, was “quite a romantic occasion
actually. It was across a crowded bar. Dave was at
the bar and he’d just stepped off the stage, I was
going to the bar, he had about 17 pints of larger on a
tray and a t-shirt saying ‘My name’s Dave Marks’. I
went up and said ‘Are you Dave Marks?’ He said ‘Yes.’
I said ‘Would you like a drink?’ He said, ‘No I’ve
got 17 pints of larger thank you.’ And it’s been all
laughs ever since. From that mediocre, dull
beginning, it’s really all gone down hill.”
They were both attending York University (“the same university that Harry Enfield, Victor Lewis Smith, John Peel, Adam Hart Davis and the man that invented the Dolby system”) and there became part of the part of the fluctuating membership of sketch troupe …inexplicable… “which at that time was 18 people, which then shrank to 4, then went up to 27 and just got ridiculous.” “Kris is an empire builder,” Dave says, “that’s what he does. He sort of accumulates people through a process of – is osmosis the right word? I’ve no idea, I’m going to use it – through osmosis and every so often we have to shed the hangers on. We’ll have to sack each other soon.” … inexplicable… stayed together, “on and off”, for three years, finishing in Edinburgh in 2000 where they did a “shit show”, A Man Called Martin (whose title was an unknowing tribute to a recurring sketch Punt and Dennis). When …inexplicable… finally petered out, they decided to carry on as a double act. “We are the only ones that aren’t capable of getting real jobs or having proper relationships, or just growing up, so we decided we’d be comedians. We don’t have anything else to do. We’re backed in to a corner here.”
“We’re motivated entirely by evil and
this is the way it expresses itself.”
Choosing a name for their new double act, the boys
debated over a number of possibilities. They
initially toyed with calling themselves Funny Twats
(“which we got half right”), but decided that this may
have proved slightly misleading. “The problem with
that it sounds like a freak show along the lines of
Puppetry of the Penis. People would have expected all
kinds of things.” There are a number of different
competing theories as to the origins of the niCe mUm
name, but the truth – so far as they tell it – is that
they were originally going to go with Good Dad, as
Dave explains. “In our minds, there is such a thing
as the Good Dad awards, when we see examples of Good
Dadding. Usually in public transport situations. We
will stand and applaud good dadding.” Kris gives a
recent example. “We were walking in Shepherd’s Bush
and there was a little kid walking in the way of other
people, being a bit of a nuisance. The dad just took
the kid by the hand, whispered in the ear, ‘single
file’, I imagine. There was no fuss. And we
applauded.” However, around the time that they were
trying to decide on a final title, Kris’s older
sister, who had “found God and married a crazy French
man”, found out that she was pregnant. “She lives in
Nice, and she’s just become a mum. So she’s a Nice
Mum. We think it says a certain something about a
weird naivety, a childish innocence.”
Their Edinburgh show was a refreshingly traditional style of stand up and sketch comedy, without any tacked-on themes or forced surreality. They admit that they revel in their own childishness, and this is apparent from some of the sketches, such as the gratuitously swearing vicar, the inane game show which forced contestants to guess the prices of every day groceries, and the glorious and near legendary Cherry People (which made both Comedy Loungers cry with laughter on more than one occasion). Beneath this, though, they have proved themselves to be more than capable of mature performances, with the “pissy talking bits” in between the sketches and their constant adlibs showing their ability to work around and outside the scripted material – something else that marks them out from some of the current crop of more experienced double acts.
“We want to be George and Mildred,
mixed with Terry and June, via ‘Allo ‘Allo”
“It was weird being at the Pleasance,” says Dave,
“because we were like new boys. We had to ask Oram and
Meeten where the toilets were. They were like the
prefects, and we were the snotty new boys, a bit
frightened, with cheesy crisps all over our faces. We
were looking at all the other acts being a bit scared,
and everyone was really nice to us. I think everyone
felt sorry for us.” “We had a lot of fun,” agrees
Kris. “Many more people came to see us than we thought
would. We got really mixed reviews, which seemed to
work for us. People seem to have a vague idea of who
we are now, rather than who are those two twats? Now
it’s like, oh we know who those two twats are. And
that difference is very important.” They were
accompanied by their glamorous assistant Mark
Clements, who composed and performed all of the
original music that appeared in the show, as well as
working on the show as technician. “He’s very
brilliant, and we’d be nowhere without him,” they
admit. “He’s a genius. Nobody is more committed to
being talented than Mark.”
Opening the show with a very energetic dance routine proved to be more of a challenge than they had originally anticipated, as they were performing in the Pleasance Attic, which is well known for it’s sauna-like conditions. “Doing the Cherry people once, I swear I passed out,” says Kris. For those that haven’t already had the Cherry experience, the Cherry People are Mr and Mrs Bumbly, small papier mache puppets, performed behind a sheet by Kris, with Dave frantically trying to get him to shut up and finish the show. “He goes in to a trance when he does the Cherrys,” Dave claims. “It’s not me,” insists Kris. “I am just the conduit. They are spiritual people. It’s like a séance. I can’t control it.”
Dave: “My biggest hero is Spike
Milligan, but I’m not sure I’d necessarily want to
emulate his career because I’d have to fight in a war,
get shelled and then bi-polar manic depression, which
I’m not really all that keen on.”
Having studied Philosophy and Politics in university,
Dave was originally undecided about what he wanted to
do when he grew up. “I wanted a succession of jobs
that all had the common element of a lot of public
speaking, and the bit that appealed in that was making
people laugh. But I wanted to be a politician and a
train announcer, anything that involved speaking to
large groups of people.” Kris asserts that he always
knew that he would be a comedian, having performed old
Two Ronnies sketches with his sister. “We used to get
an old knackered tape recorder – we had a really good
stereo system, but it was more fun to use the
knackered one, more romantic – not that there was any
romance between me and my sister – and we used to
record the shows and then transcribe the tape in
script form with different types of pens, and then we
used to learn them and then perform it for my mum and
dad.” Dave: “And Kris’s sister does look like Ronnie
Barker.”
They both say that working together has never presented any problems for them. “We don’t argue, really, about comedy,” asserts Dave. “We argue about all kinds of shit. And we do argue about comedy when we’re not writing, but when we’re writing, I like being in a room with my best friend trying to make each other laugh. It’s fun. We’re quite good at taking a break from each other when there’s nothing going on with niCe mUm. When we come back, Kris has usually got three new silly voices that he wants to try out on me. I’ve usually got three new embarrassing stories, so we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“I’m only interested in comedy. I
don’t see the point in anything else. Apart from a
good healthy war every now and again.”
They have already begun work on next year’s Edinburgh
show – indeed, they had already begun work on that
show while still performing at the Festival. About
half way through the run, they sat us down in the
Pleasance performers bar, and explained everything
that they had thought up so far, all scribbled down on
the back of three pieces of paper. They have sworn us
to secrecy as to the contents of the new show – “It’s
all under wraps, it’s all hush hush” – but are quite
excited by what they have come up with so far. “We
are always moaning about what we’re doing, we don’t
like what we’re doing at any given time, we would
always rather be doing something else. We never like
the show we’re doing, we always like the next show
we’re going to do.” Working titles for the new show,
they say with all sincerity, include the possibilities
‘Sloppy Seconds At Best’ and ‘Nice Mum Are Chocolatey
Benders’.
In the new year, they will be running a monthly comedy night called ‘Sketches Etc’ at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden Town, on the first Sunday of every month, in aid of Global Action Nepal. Here, they will be debuting new sketches. “They are hip hop meets late sixties Swedish cinema meets – well, we hope it meets comedy. We’ve certainly started it down the track towards comedy.” A particular sketch, named Fingers, and involving Dave sticking his fingers in to a certain bodily orifice (his own, he hastens to add), he asserts is “a coruscating satire on the modern attitudes to modernity. And vegetarianism.”
Looking to the future then, their ambitions are still many and varied. In a rare moment of clarity, they sincerely assert that they would both “like to be comedians and make a living out of doing it, rather than by folding bits of paper and making tea for people.” Further ranging ambitions include making documentaries for BBC2 about spoons (Kris) and buying a helicopter to crash it (Dave). And then there’s the wedding plans. “I want to be the fourth Mrs Cleese,” admits Kris. “I’d kill his wife and marry him. And be the first British man to marry John Cleese. I would love it if that happened. He’s not a very emotional man, but I could make up for that. He’s also pretty rich as well.” “I’d like to be his mistress,” adds Dave. “No, that would cause tension. You could be Mrs Idle.”