TOUR
OF DUTY
As one of alternative comedy’s
forerunners, Andy de la Tour decided to quit stand-up in 1990. He tells Marissa Burgess why he’s back in the game
Andy de la Tour hadn’t performed stand-up for 20 years when he started to feel its pull again. ‘If you don’t do stand-up, you can still get on with your life, but there’s something about it which you miss. It’s the buzz, the adrenaline, the rush. A little bit of the middle-aged feeling of not wanting to just end my life in dressing gown and carpet slippers,’ he laughs.
Back in the early 80s, de la Tour was one of the
original comedians on the alternative scene playing the Comedy Store with the likes of Alexei Sayle, Ade Edmondson and the late Rik Mayall, but in 1990 he left stand-up behind. Then, four years ago, he suddenly decided to try his hand on the New York live scene. ‘I didn’t want to do it in Britain for all sorts of reasons so I thought, “I’ll do it in New York!” It was a mad idea. So without any planning or knowing anything about the scene I just took off to New York with my partner. It turned into a great adventure.’ After returning to the UK, he performed a run at
London’s Soho Theatre telling his New York tale and is now bringing the show to Edinburgh, performing here for the i rst time since 1984. ‘I never thought in a month of Sundays that I would ever go back to the Edinburgh Festival as a stand-up comic. It still feels a little bit strange – a bit scary as well.’ ■ Andy de la Tour: Stand-Up or Die in New York, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, 1–25 Aug (not 12), 5pm, £11.50– £12.50 (£10.50–£11.50). Previews 30 & 31 Jul, £5.
P H O T O © S T E V E U L L A T H O R N E
P H O T O © G E R A N T
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FESTIVAL COMEDY | Adam Riches & Andy de la Tour
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Given the nature of his show, some audience members believed this was merely an extension of his performance. When he left on a stretcher never to return, it was clear then that it wasn’t just the fourth wall that had been broken: his leg had snapped, though he did bravely return a few days later to perform bits of the show from a wheelchair. Riches has a fairly strong notion of where his thick skin has come from. For a period during his childhood, the family relocated to Glasgow where his dad ran a Berni Inn on Sauchiehall Street. ‘This was the late 70s, a time when Scotland-England rivalry was especially high. And I have all these stories of my dad being this Sassenach trying to win over the locals. And he was successful. My dad was extremely charming and genial, a very old-fashioned restaurant manager. It was like GoodFellas, where everything is laid on and he made everyone feel very special.’
Every time Riches prepares to take to the stage, he sees himself as the outsider about to confront a possibly hostile home crowd. ‘It’s the same thing, this idea of going into a foreign environment and trying to win them over with charm. That aspect of my dad is something I’ve tried to bring into the comedy so if I am going to use someone, then it should be a positive experience for them, albeit that they’re going to have to pay the ferryman along the way. But we don’t want them to suffer, we want them to come through it and succeed.’
The irony of all this is that, as an audience member, Riches is absolutely terrii ed of any kind of participation. ‘I always sit in the middle of the back row so that I won’t get involved. It would be my worst nightmare. I’m good in a costume and with a script; I’m not good on my own in my own clothes.’ For Riches, audience participation for the sake of it or to get the performer out of a hole is never a good enough reason to do it. ‘It has to spring from the character or the scene, and come from a place of truth; otherwise it’s just a tacked-on gimmick. No one wants to see Passage to India in 3D; it’s not really using the medium for what it was intended. You want it to feel right.’
Hopefully that rationale will act as some kind of consolation if you do i nd yourself being dragged up during an Adam Riches show. And despite the sudden appearance of the emergency services at a previous gig, take solace that there is never usually any lasting damage inl icted on a member of the audience.
‘As far as I know, no one has hurt themselves on my stage; maybe psychologically, but that’s the good kind of damage isn’t it, because we can’t see it?’ he mocks. ‘There was a bit in the last show where I was thrown and that caused me more pain than anything else. But when an audience can see me in that situation, I think it calms them down when you ask them to do something because they’ve seen me there. It’s like the old thing of the movie sex scene where the director will get naked as well: it’s that kind of mindset. I hope no one has been hurt, and with the new show, nothing could happen like that. But who knows, I may be so desperate for material that I might end up punching someone.’
■ Adam of the Riches, Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, 2–24 Aug, 9.45pm, £10–£14 (£8–£12). Previews 30 Jul–1 Aug, £7.
30 THE LIST FESTIVAL 31 Jul–7 Aug 2014