Robin Ince

"That's twelve different bits of an interview there, and if you can make up the questions that will fill that bit. It started somewhere and then I lost the train, but there is some kind of conclusion a million miles away from what it was meant to be."

Having had a mosey around London's trendy West-End, we arrive in Shepherd's Bush earlier than expected and reverting back to our student days we sit in the local Slug and Lettuce staring at each other over a plate of nachos talking about life, putting the world to rights and planning our next road trip. A few hours earlier than expected, we see a figure out of the corner of our eyes striding confidently over to our table. "Have you heard this thing about the world's funniest joke?"…"Erm, yes"…."can you tell me about it?" It turns out that Robin hasn't arrived early for our long-awaited interview, he is conducting a quick spot of research before he goes on BBC News 24 and broadcasts live to the nation about the topic. He tells us about it as if it is all in a days work and we half expect him to reappear with studio make-up on, still miked up. He returns over an hour later, giving us a chance to wonder what on earth he has just been up to, gets a pint in and lights the first of many cigarettes.

"It was BBC News 24, you know the BBC news channel?" We happened to meet up with Robin on the day that the press collated thousands of "jokes", puns and "why did the chicken?" type hilarities and announced that Germany is the nation with the greatest sense of humour. Or alternatively as Robin suggests, "no sense of humour, which is why they laugh at things that aren't funny at all, which I think is possible having looked at the kind of level of [very bad German accent] 'and the cat says, how do I smell?'" and so the BBC called for Robin. "It's just general media whore punditry. That's what I have been doing. It's one of my favourite jobs. You sit somewhere and have an opinion. Very easy. Unless you're with Nelly Furtardo. Then it's not very easy. Then it's a nightmare. Because Nelly Furtardo doesn't shut up." This latter point seems slightly hypocritical - transcribing this interview has been a task in itself - although obviously given the choice, we would rather spend another evening with Robin than even just a minute in the presence of Nelly.

In a bid to kick-off the interview, Robin starts mocking the usual kind of comedy interview clichés. "It was probably about back in 1990. I mean, I'd been bullied at school and found that humour was the best defense… blah blah blah." Switching back to a more serious mode, he continues, "it's more about a desire to be popular while at the same time being rubbish at a lot of things. "No-one is very impressed when you say, 'I'm very good at chemistry', or 'have you seen the periodic table I have drawn, it's really classy?' And also people like mucking around a lot. That's my theory anyway." Robin doesn't see it as a cry for help, "being British I would never want it to be anything overly emotional. So it's more of a hearty wave for attention."

In 1992 Robin took part in the So You Think You're Funny? Final and came second to Rhona Cameron, "I was robbed obviously, I should have won, everyone thought that." It was then that Robin realised he could give up his job, still not a proper job, and he concentrated on doing stand-up full time from the age of 23. Then due to a lack of direction, he took a year out. "Since then I have been trying to work out what I want to do in stand up. And it is generally muck around, sometimes with poor taste material, but with some kind of through line, which some people do very well… some nights there are bits of material which I regret, and I might even question whether I would find them funny if I was watching me. If I believed in out of body experiences, I would frequently pop out and stop myself doing a joke about my mother's eyebrows, which is terrible."

More recently, in 1999, Robin put a hold on the stand-up side of his career and stumbled into focusing on writing. "I did the 11 O'Clock Show and did John Peel talking about dictators," which is the only impression Robin admits he can do really well, ("and if a gig starts to turn I can pull it out of the bag and hope that everyone likes indie music and knows the references.") While he was working on his John Peel insterts, he was ask whether he would like to write for the show. Of course, the answer was "yes" but at this point Robin was also working out where he wanted his career to go. "I want to do a radio show, I'd like to write a sit com, and films would be good, I'd like to direct a film probably, and I'd like to be a Stuart Maconie style pundit, that's a good thing, just remembering stuff for a living." So now, Robin's career encompasses absolutely everything but the best part of his job is that "at least twice a week, I have to laugh and go, I actually got paid for that." In the past, Robin has been paid for standing on stage and "talking rubbish" and sitting on a sofa with H from Steps (for which he probably deserves a medal) discussing the terrorist attacks of 11 September. "So that's why I do what I do."

Over the years Robin has managed to steer clear of most of the Jongleurs breed of comics and has fallen in with 'the odder lot', namely his Rubbernecker counterparts. Having met Ricky Gervais at a gig he ran at the University of London during the second year working as a comedian, Robin's enduring friendship with Ricky, the driving force behind Rubbernecker, began when they discovered they had a genuine mutual appreciation for watching old episodes of the TV classics, "Through The Keyhole" and "3-2-1". "It's not an ironic thing, it's a joyous thing to watch an old double act called Don and Dusty do a crazy routine set in the old west and then read out the clues."

"Quick turn on the television! Ruth Madoc is on Through The Keyhole! You have to see her house, it's amazing!"

And so they became firm friends. Ricky started working with Steve which is how Robin got to know Steve and then later on Jimmy got on board. "We decided to go to the H&C and do a show. We did characters, but we're very lazy with characters, they always have our voice. We never do voices, and we never wear a hat, or an amusing moustache or funny shoes, it's always exactly the same. We did a few sketches."

Those of you who saw Rubbernecker will know that the majority of the bad taste material is that of Robin and Ricky. After the previews in London, it ran for a week at the Edinburgh Festival at the Café Royal. Every night was packed and audiences eagerly anticipated what would come from four of the country's best comedy minds. The show was introduced by the character 'Ricky Gervais' as some kind of half-hearted charity fundraiser in aid of 'little mentals'. "Some nights it was very good. Ricky and me like bad taste humour, though we do have arguments… there are some things that I would draw a line at." However, he is not keen to go for the easy laughs about people who have died or indeed anything he feels he would be unable to justify to anyone the material has offended. "I've got some jokes which involved paedophilia, they are ridiculous and I try and avoid them being trite or in any way a kind of celebration of paedophilia because I think audiences generally don't like celebrations. If you organise a big colourful march with great big floats with a big picture of Sidney Cook on the front and people dressed as Jonathon King then probably you're going to find you're going to get more people throwing things at you than people carrying you around on their shoulders, unless they are going to carry you around in some kind of metal bin, then they're going to beat that with cricket bats while spitting in your face and covering you in dog excrement."

"I was told that I wasn't dark enough for Donna Air. I wasn't mysterious or strange enough. Which is something I am very proud of."

So there are things that Robin wouldn't joke about which differ from some of his comedy counterparts. He told us of one nameless comedian who wouldn't joke about the flooding in Kent but saw no good reason not to joke about the devastating flooding in Rwanda. His argument being that people in Kent might hear the joke. "I think with a lot of tragic human things, you have to be careful. I don't mind an audience getting a joke the wrong way. I've got this joke that is based on a true story - 'American scientists have discovered how to make laboratory mice live a third longer. They've stopped injecting them with cancer.' And that often gets an 'ooooh', but to me it's very clear in that joke that the joke is about injecting mice with cancer, and that this really is quite a bad thing, and perhaps it should stop." It upsets him that people can accept jokes that involve domestic violence but won't be sure how to react to a more cerebral joke which covers real issues and has a point to make.

Having said all that, there are jokes that Robin has told which he has regretted, some of which he still uses to this day. "I don't think they should generally be let out, whether they get a laugh or not, whether it makes the audience enjoy you more. If you don't regret some of the stand up you've done then I don't think you can necessarily be moving forward." And never believe a comedian who says he has never died. "There is a story where Frank Carson has said 'I've never died. Sometimes they haven't listened, but I've never died'. And it does depend on how you categorise it. "I don't mind offending audiences. In fact, on certain occasions, once an audience starts being offended by something that I don't think is offensive, it will make me more offensive. That's true with Ricky as well."

Offending people is one thing but plain nastiness is a whole different kettle of fish. "I never like to see someone go on and just be viscous to a member of the audience, that bullying tactic. I think those comics who were particularly bullied in school love the fact that they can go into comedy where they can be in with all the lads." Personally Robin would rather not be in with the lads. He was recently recently asked to perform a gig in Bosnia to the armed forces. Having to go on stage after a troop of dancing girls was a struggle to say the least no matter how bad their choreography was. "As they whoop and cheer, I walk out. This sort of short, specky, chubby thing, there is this fight situation. Not a fight, but you have to fight to win them over. Because they're thinking 'more girls, we must have more girls'. I'm sure in day to day life most of those people would think I was a prick, but making them laugh is quite a weird thing, and when you come off stage they like you and they chat to you. And one of them actually said, 'you make me laugh a great deal, I like Bernard Manning as well', which is something I never expected to hear. I have seldom been in a same category as him."

"Everything that I have written has always been found funny by at least one person. I have a friend, who laughs at everything if I deliver it correctly. It's not always the same friend, I have made up a network of friends."

But the Edinburgh festival consisted of much more than just Rubbernecker for Robin. He was also working on a television show with Sean Hughes which saw him writing during the day, warm up for the show and then going on to do Rubbernecker. The fact that the other three in the show were having a great time getting up with the rest of us a one o'clock in the afternoon made the experience even harder for Robin. "As you know this is the tradition of Edinburgh. To get up at one o'clock in the afternoon to eat poor food, probably to eat a baked potato from the baked potato shop opposite the record shop where everyone goes and then sit in City Café and laugh at people's bad reviews and then be furious that you have only got 3 stars whereas I had no time to do that." We almost feel guilty for having a whole month of debauchery but at least the enjoyment factor increased for Robin towards the end of the festival.

The first series of 'The In Crowd' was repeated over Christmas and Robin is currently writing and recording the second series which will be broadcast almost immediately. Having had two series within six months of each other and having received some great reviews, the BBC are putting 'The In Crowd' up for a Sony Award, which shows great encouragement from the BBC. Having been written by a larger number of people, the first series was harder to produce than the second. "Obviously there were going to be disagreements, we were still trying to shape it. I think the second series is going to be much funnier… we really are going to enlarge a lot of the characters. We're really up against it, we haven't had much time to write it, so the good thing is I've had to write a lot of it this time and a lot of the characters I've written especially for me, so I tend to dominate the whole show this time." They will be trying to avoid the usual cliches, "we wouldn't do anything about feng shui or crystals or the media, because they seem to dominate so many shows, and a lot of other shows do them very well, and we want to concentrate on building characters and building situations." Alongside Robin in the writing team, there are a lot of people who are new to radio who Robin knows through stand-up. Such as Susan Vale ("very, very funny" ) who mostly does stand-up in Manchester and Carl Cooper who has "one of the best comic minds" and apparently a bigger collection of comedy videos that both of ours put together. "We are trying to avoid that air of smugness. I think as writers we can go the easy route, and you can get that easy smug student laugh."

The supposed typical Radio 4 listener is said to be a 58 year-old housewife, and with the majority of comedy shows featuring at 11pm leaves Robin wondering about his audience. "I don't know how many are still doing the washing up at 11 o'clock. If they are, they should get a new brush or something, because they're taking too long to do the washing up. Or they should cook earlier. I don't know." They haven't aimed 'The In Crowd' at any particular target audience because ideally it will appeal to a broad range of listeners.

"I'd like to write the best sit com and the best sketch show. And I'd like to write something that my Mum understood and found funny. Normally things that she'd see would be "I saw you on that thing with those Steps people", and she won't know who Steps are. She's not mental, she's not mad. It's just that obviously there is a point where mothers get old enough to no longer read Smash Hits. "

There currently a number of projects in Robin's pipeline, so to speak. He is currently working on the second series of 'The In Crowd', working as a writer on a show anchored by Gaby Roslin and writing on a new Saturday Night Live-esque show for BBC Scotland of which he doesn''t even know the name. Look out for a live sketch show in March/April time and maybe a return to the Edinburgh festival in August, if Robin can find time to write the show he'd like to take up focusing on people's bizarre beliefs and the reasoning behind them. "I'm probably going to be doing a live sketch show with some friends around March or April. And also I'm developing various animations with a show I used to do on XFM called Grunge Hill, with John Peel as the headmaster of an odd ball school full of strange people." He is continuing the Rubbernecker brotherhood with Jimmy Carr in a show entitled 'Arts Bandits', "and just on the name alone, we should be commissioned by Channel 4 at least for a one off. Look at the quality of the word play there."

So I think next year I'm going to spend as much time as possible developing things and saying to TV people, "I know I'm a bit jowly, but honestly, I'm very good. Give me a go". My aim is to work on as many new things. I am not intending to go back to the bookshop I worked at 9 years ago because the boss had halitosis.