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Tim Key {FRONT}
Slut
talking In 2009 Tim Key’s poetry show, The Slutcracker, earned him the Festival’s Comedy Award. Now he’s back as the Masterslut, with a new poetry collection in tow. Is he still the best in Edinburgh? Does he really not like other people’s poetry? And can he cope with The List’s fact attack? Jonny Ensall investigates
T he List has just presented Tim Key with two pages of facts about himself. ‘This is a very good piece of research,’ he says, commending the 16-year-old work experience person who compiled them. ‘I didn’t get to do anything like this on work experience. I delivered dartboards to pubs. That wasn’t when I knew I wanted to be a poet, but it was when I knew I did not necessarily want to be a white van man. Although I was quite young and I did get to see a lot of spicy newspapers and magazines.’
Key has come to be interviewed at a café in London’s Soho, having just been interviewed for Radio 4’s Loose Ends at the nearby BBC recording studios. Coming up, he has two of the most significant events of his career as a poet-cum-comedian: he’s preparing both for the debut of Masterslut, his most anticipated show yet at the Edinburgh Fringe, and for the publication of his first proper collection of poems, The Incomplete Tim Key.
Both are considerable milestones, though that’s not to say that he hasn’t already had moments in the spotlight. In his last full run at the Fringe in 2009 he walked off with the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his show The Slutcracker. His screen credits include two seasons hosting the BBC 4 quiz show We Need Answers alongside Alex Horne and Mark Watson, a regular slot on Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, and a role next to Steve Coogan as Sidekick Simon in the internet series Alan Partridge’s Mid-Morning Matters, which is pencilled in for a BBC airing this autumn. This is good going for a man who, according to fact number three, writes poems that are, ‘not actually poetic. They are sometimes not funny, but odd.’ ‘Yeah that’s definitely true,’ Key acknowledges. ‘But I don’t mind that. On the cover of the collection, at no point does it say “300 rib-tickling poems”.’ He inspects the dust jacket of his newly printed book with
unconcealed pride. ‘This doesn’t say “funny” anywhere . . . I see this as a book of poems some of which may make you laugh, and some of which may not make you laugh but you might still like them.’ If he’s feeling any pressure to be funny, not only in print but also in his show, it’s not apparent. ‘Honestly the only thing that matters is that I have a show that I love.’
Key is relaxed, but not in the way his press photos present him – droopy eyes, mouth lolling open gormlessly, a scruffy beard and a cheap suit hanging off his shoulders. Apart from the beard, this is just the image that Key has given to his stage persona as the country’s bard of the innocuous: a shambling writer and performer of unfortunate poetry, whose themes include sex, caravans, wizards, ants, snooker referee Michaela Tabb (who he describes as ‘Ideal. It’s an authority thing. And a gloves thing.’) and more sex. The poorly kept secret is that Key is a brilliantly intelligent comic. His poems are hugely skilful, and often funnier in five lines that many comedians can manage to be in an hour on stage. In performance he’s in complete control, with every fumble, swearword and non sequitur fitting perfectly into the spontaneous feel of what, in actuality, is a meticulously constructed set. Even that Marks & Spencer suit is a carefully considered part of the act. ‘When I did The Slut in the Hut [his 2007 debut Fringe show] that was me falling on my sword and realising I couldn’t do it the way I was doing it,’ he remembers. ‘I had six notepads with different poems in each all over my body. So I’d go to one, put it back in and get another one, not knowing where I was going or what poem I wanted next. It went so badly on the first night that from that point on, during that Festival, I packed my suit like a parachute. At that point I moved into a new realm of playing more disorganised than I was. Whereas before, I was genuinely disorganised.’
4–11 Aug 2011 THE LIST 15
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