FESTIVAL FEATURES | Pappy’s
PAPPY DAYS Good news fans of general silliness: Pappy’s are back!
W ell, they’d probably argue that they’ve never really been away. But their last appearance in Edinburgh as a trio was back in 2012, where they presented their Comedy Award- nominated show, titled Pappy’s Last Show Ever – so you’ll understand why we were worried. Over the intervening years, the threesome – Matthew Crosby, Ben Clark and Tom Parry – have been busy, in particular with their BBC3 show Badults, which has had two series broadcast since their last Edinburgh appearance. Their 2015 return sees them with something of a full roster: Matthew and Tom both have solo shows at Just the Tonic; Matthew’s also hosting comedians’ game show The Humble Quest for Universal Genius; Tom’s directing sketch group BEASTS’ show, as well as Max and Ivan’s hour; and Clark’s in Comedians Theatre Company production, Marriage (see review, page 76), which Tom’s adapted. But they’re making time for Pappy’s stuff too: for a few nights at the Fringe, they’ll be hosting their Brixton-based night, The Secret Dudes Society, which has in the past featured pals like Lazy Susan, Bridget Christie and James Acaster. And over the last weekend of the festival, they’ll also be taking over the Pleasance Cabaret Bar each evening for Pappy’s Live at the Cabaret Bar!, effectively a ‘best of’ series of sketches from their back catalogue. Yet these three lovely lads still made time to come visit us at List HQ as the festival kicked off, to chat about their busy month ahead – even if Tom was a bit late...
Welcome back! Over the last two years, has it been nice to come up to the festival for pleasure rather than work? Ben: It was and it wasn’t. Matthew: It’s a little bit like when you leave university and you still have some friends there. And you come back and go ‘I’m going to have a pint with you guys!’ And they go ‘Uh, who’s the grandad?’ Ben: [laughing] ‘Get out of here old man!’ Matthew: I think two years away is long enough, we all wanted to come back and do something.
So the last show you did together was called Pappy’s Last Show Ever, and that was two years ago. You had people actually thinking it was your i nal show... Ben: Yeah, I think a lot of people did... Matthew: Including us. Ben: [laughs] We always thought it’s quite risky having this title, Last Show Ever. But it’s kind of exciting and it was the theme of the
10 THE LIST FESTIVAL 20–31 Aug 2015
ut show. It’s wasn’t just to get people into it to watch it [laughs]. But actually, as it went on I was like ‘Well, it isn’t but it could be’. as Matthew: It was our sixth Edinburgh show, so at that point it was we about eight years of us performing together and it was what we gs always dreamed of achieving with a sketch show. Loads of things he we talked about for years and years ended up happening in the ng show: for instance, us playing ourselves as older people and going us through an entire life within one sketch. It corresponded with us he getting a sitcom commissioned, which took us away from the nd Fringe. We went to Glasgow and we spent two years writing and at putting that on, so it felt like the Fringe is now something that it we don’t have the time to put our energies into. So it’s funny, it of was kind of a self-fuli lling prophecy. And part of the reason of e, doing these shows at the Cab bar and the Secret Dudes is because, s especially with us doing the solo shows, people write about us as h ‘former Pappy’s’. And even today I was doing the press launch d for my solo show and one of the guys said ‘former Pappy’s’ and I went ‘No, no, current Pappy’s! But also current me as well.’ Do you feel like people can’t reconcile you doing shows s as a group and alone? Ben: I think particularly with sketch groups, people are waiting for r you to stop doing it. Because it does tend to happen with a lot of f sketch groups, you know. They’re around for a few years and then... h Matthew: We went from a four to a three [Pappy’s parted ways with t original fourth member Brendan Dodds in 2009], so the trickiest thing in the world is keeping that working relationship going, but a lot of it is i lled by us doing other things. I’ve always done stand-up ever since we i rst started doing Pappy’s. But you know, if you’ve got all your eggs in one basket people think I’m just part of a sketch team. There’s loads of other aspects of performance that we all enjoy doing. Just Pappy’s seems to be the one that has been the most visibly successful. It’s funny, especially the way we are on stage, people often think we live together. But I’m married and it would be insane if I also had Tom and Ben in my house. Ben: Well, we keep saying we could make it work... Matthew: People see we all live together and sleep three in a bed [in the show] and that’s what people assume. In my i rst solo show in 2011, people were like ‘What do the other two think?’ I said ‘They don’t give a fuck!’ So tell us about the Secret Dudes Society... Matthew: Well it was just a way of us getting together and trying to write new stuff. And actually what we intended it to