{FRONT} Tim Key
Despite swapping the suit for a maroon zip-up top, and the sagging jowls for a wide-eyed enthusiastic grin, he still presents much of the character – the Masterslut – for interview, and deals with the worst that The List’s work experience can throw at him with stage-ready calmness. Fact six: he’s not really into poetry but loves AA Milne. ‘I do love AA Milne. And I’m not really into poetry. Not including my own – I love my own. But mine’s not really poetry.’ Fact eight: he snuck into Cambridge Footlights after finishing university at Sheffield. ‘That’s definitely true. Though “sneaking” isn’t the right word. I got into Footlights and no one questioned this. I did the tour show with Mark Watson and Sophie Winkleman in 2001.’ Fact fourteen: he gets his characters from scouring the country making love, then sits against a tree and writes it all down. ‘I think, when I said that, it was maybe tongue-in-cheek. I don’t even sit against a tree half the time. Maybe about 30 per cent of the poems in there, I wasn’t even sitting against a tree.’
He clarifies that he prefers writing poems, ‘in a pub, with a pint’, often taking as his starting point just a funny name. Such as? ‘Tarzan Turner, I really like that one . . . but I like a basic name as well. A Steve West- style name is good. There’s room for all of them.’
He continues, ‘Sometimes I can write, maybe, three lines which build a little, insignificant world. It’s just a moment in time and then it goes. And that’s OK. Sometimes there can be two or three lines, and then it’s the last line that hooks it all together, that makes it funny or satisfying. There is a third version: a couple of lines and then a third line which tries to make it more pat and conclusive and funny than it really should be, and then the poem fails. When that happens I just don’t put it in my book. I put that in a fire.’ Other poems are drawn from personal experience. Like witnessing a beautiful girl crying on the N15 London night bus. ‘I just felt sorry for her,’ Key recalls wistfully. ‘She was so forlorn. She was broken. You can only do what you can do, so I thought I’d at least immortalise her. That’s
all that’s within my powers. Whether she’ll ever know will depend on how big the book gets. I’m sure if she reads that poem she’ll put two and two together. She must have seen me writing . . . she must have wondered why I came round to look at her face-on for a moment and then carried on.’ The beautiful blonde girl is one of the few women in Key’s poetry to escape an unexpected sexual twist. The Key universe is full of infidelities, spur-of-the-moment advances and, in the case of ‘Together’ (see panel, below), adults taking baths together. ‘Why didn’t you pick that one?’ he asks, deflecting a question about adult baths and instead pointing to the poem adjacent to ‘Together’ – a single couplet about an unstable table. ‘That’s a good rhyme!’ His disappointment is obvious. ‘There’s no more psychoanalysis to be done about the girls than there is about the unstable table,’ he suggests, seemingly trying to distance himself from the material. ‘I don’t think this collection is a cry for help to find someone to grab me by the neck with a shepherd’s crook and pull me into a deep- freeze and start ravishing me. There are a lot of poems where people suddenly die, and it doesn’t mean I want people to suddenly die. If anything I think it suggests a slight lack of imagination where sometimes I’ll write something and by default it will go towards death or screwing – though there’s also a bit of love in there, and tenderness.’
Key checks his phone. He has to head to another meeting. If the interview has made him consider anything more deeply, it’s his need for a work experience person. ‘There’s not that many jobs in poetry,’ he says, reflectively. ‘I reckon I could get a really good work experience poet. Just a little work experience who sits on a beanbag. And occasionally I say, “I need another word for ‘beautiful’”, and she says, “pretty”. And I say, “That’s perfect! Now put the bins out.”’ Tim Key – Masterslut, Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, 6–29 Aug (not 15), 9.45pm, £12–£14 (£11–£13). Previews until 5 Aug, £6.50. The Incomplete Tim Key in published on 4 Aug by Canongate Books, £12.99 (hardback).
FOUR POEMS FROM THE INCOMPLETE TIM KEY, WITH NOTES BY THE AUTHOR
A BUSINESS SCHEME INVOLVING DUCKS 'I've got a business scheme.' This was Larry Woods. 'I plan to cut all the tongues out of all the ducks in the UK.' 'That's not a business scheme,' I said. 'Stop 'em quacking!' 'That's not a business scheme,' I said again. ‘I remember writing this one in China. I didn’t go there specifically to write it but I remember sitting outside in a garden, and I think there were some ducks, so I wrote this. It’s a very nice poem. I really enjoy this one.’
PENIS EYES 'Penis Eyes!' I didn't need to hear this from Mrs Cooper. 'Just teach me the piano, please,' I said. I started doing chords again. 'They don't even jut out like penises,' I muttered. ‘I took piano lessons for a while when I was a kid. I failed my Grade One examination. My mum was in the waiting room and I pretended the reason that I’d not been able to press C was because I’d had an asthma attack. I bawled and wheezed and she took pity on me and bought cakes and Lilt and took me home.’
KEY WORDS TOGETHER Sean and Christine had a bath together. It was appalling. He had just played football and so he was incredibly muddy. And she was marvelously fat and so only a tiny bit of Sean was underwater. JOINT ACCOUNT 'Let's get a joint account .' But she had absolutely no money. I bit her lip and drew blood. And immediately we were arguing about that and not about all this joint account bullshit.
L A V I T S E F
‘Most of these poems I write them in about 30 seconds. I usually think of a first line, and then I write for a bit until I think "that’s probably done now" and then stop. Some are more successful than others. This is one of my favourites because I used this in my show two years ago. This one works well on stage. There are some poems in here that I enjoy because they’ve been good to me – they’ve helped make people in the audience like me.’
‘Have I taken a bath with someone? I’m loath to go up to Edinburgh and the first thing that’s happened is that everyone’s read The List, and the headline’s “Tim Key takes sexy baths”. That can’t be what you do. I’m from the old school though – one man, one bath. With two people there are just too many limbs.’ 16 THE LIST 4–11 Aug 2011