FRONT HARRY HILL 18 THE LIST 2–9 Aug 2012
The frame game
Best known for his oversized collars and lampooning celebrity culture on TV Burp, comedian Harry Hill is gearing up to take the Edinburgh Festival by storm . . . with an art exhibition. He tells Allan Radcliffe about the
crossover between comedy and his latest sideline
T he fact that Harry Hill is set to make an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival is not in itself big news. The bald-headed, bespectacled, large-collared comedian has a long association with the world’s largest arts beano, grabbing early raves for his quirky stand-up and winning the Perrier Best Newcomer award in 1992. But while fans of the comedian will get to see him strutting the boards, mike in hand, for four nights at this year’s Fringe, his main reason for heading north this August is altogether more surprising: his i rst public exhibition of paintings and sculptures, modestly entitled My Hobby.
‘For my day job, I watch television, play
with knitted toys and regularly get custard pies thrown in my face,’ says Hill, referring to his most familiar incarnation, as the host of ITV megahit TV Burp, which bowed out of the schedules earlier this year. ‘So, in the evening I like to listen to Schubert, read a bit of Proust and dabble in oil painting. I’ve been doing it for about 15 years now. It’s a lovely hobby with a long lineage. Prince Charles and Winston Churchill, both keen water colourists, and I hear that Peter Andre is very handy with crayons. So I’m in excellent company.’ Anyone familiar with the comedian’s career trajectory to date will perhaps be less startled at this latest extension to the Harry Hill franchise. Anyone who can make the shift from house ofi cer at Doncaster Royal Ini rmary (where he was known under the slightly less snappy moniker of Dr Matthew Hall) to becoming one of Britain’s most successful comedians with sidelines as a novelist and comic book writer and even creating his own brand