Irrepressibly daft, often chaotic but always brilliantly funny; Sketch group Pappy’s Fun Club – consisting of Matthew, Ben, Tom: and Brendan - have garnered critical adulation, a channel 4 special, and two sold out Edinburgh runs in the last couple of years. They are currently touring the UK with their first full-length tour Funergy. maddog had the pleasure of catching them straight after a show in Cambridge amongst a sea of props, colour co-ordinated bags and cling film…

MD: How is writing sketch comedy different from writing stand up?

Tom: I always think you can get the joke quicker. From a writing point of view, it’s a lot more instantaneous

MD: There’s less of a set up isn’t there?

Tom: That’s it, yeah. When I write now, I tend to write just for Pappy’s as opposed to stand up, which, for me tends be a lot more long form.

Matthew: The one thing I like about stand up is that you can write a joke that day and perform it that night, but with a sketch you have to rehearse, talk through it quite a lot and take into consideration three other people

Tom: What’s nice about having freeform characters is that you can think about something and say it on stage; we like to keep it as loose as possible!

MD: I was wondering before about how much freedom you have on stage with improvisation in such a heavily rehearsed format, but having seen the show now, it certainly seems as though there is a lot of room for improvisation

Matthew: Yeah, in certain bits you can and in certain bits you can’t and you find that out the hard way where it works and where it doesn’t.

Tom:            Brendan’s a classic case of that. He’ll think of something slightly different out on stage, say it and the rest of his lines go out of his head – so he’ll do one bit that’s brilliantly improvised and then be like “uh, uh – I’m spent – I don’t know where I am”

Brendan: It’s totally true!

MD: What was the idea behind getting together as Pappy’s Fun Club?

Tom: It was partly so we could all see each other because Matthew and Brendan were in London, Ben and myself were running a stand up night in Wolverhampton for awhile; and Brendan and Matthew would come up. We’d always make each laugh and have funny ideas and we felt it would be really nice to do something together. Then Brendan started booking this room once a month and that was it. Once a month we would all hook up, catch up and show each other what we’d written so it was a real way of keeping in touch and socialising.

MD: So it was all quite unintentional?

Brendan: Absolutely, and it formed the style of what we do and the looseness of it because we would write something and rehearse it on the day of the show, put it all together – it was always really last minute and would always have big holes where we’d just have to talk rubbish to cover over.

Ben: And because it was new material all the time you’d often go out on stage and go “oh, that just doesn’t work” so you’d have to just try to make it work.

Brendan: The other big influence for us was the fact that we didn’t have any technical equipment. We had a CD player that sometimes didn’t play CDs but that was basically it.

MD: Sketch comedy is my nightmare when I go to comedy clubs. I hate them. They smack of drama school dropouts who are just cringe worthy. And that was my first reaction when I first saw you guys Up The Creek in Greenwich about two years ago. I tried so hard not to laugh, but you actually stormed the place and I gave in!

Tom: That’s kind of where we came from. We always sensed that in an audience “we’re gonna do some sketch comedy now” and hear the audience groan – but if you say “this is going to be shit” they love it. As soon as they see four twats bounding onto the stage they go “ah!”

MD: Is it harder to win over club audiences?

Ben Yeah!

Matthew It depends on the club really

Tom: Sometimes you sit there and its; stand up, stand up, stand up and you think “brilliant” because you’re going on with something completely different and that’s great, but there are some gigs where you sit there and think “fuuucking hell” like the first time we did the Owl and the Internet (a brilliant sketch with the owl and the internet having a ‘knowledge off’) and it was a proper stand up night. We thought “This is gonna be fine.” We opened with two sketches that are bankers, guaranteed laughs – and they hated that, and we were trying something we’d never done before and they were going to hate that even more.

Matthew: There is no experience quite like dying dressed as an owl!

Tom: There was just that thing of looking from the back of the room and there was nothing. Brendan and Ben were sweating on stage and stumbling, just absolute fear.

Brendan: It was not really knowing your lines but thinking it will be fine and you suddenly feel the pressure of the room and wanting to get through it at double the speed but you can’t.

Tom: But then to just glance over at Matthew to see him getting on the owl head looking at me, going “oh God” and starting to wrap myself in cling film, just horrific.

MD: I couldn’t think of a time where that could never be fun.

Brendan: It was pure death. They started to applaud half way through the sketch like the Women’s Institute and Tony Blair “Come on, time to leave now.” Pure, pure death.

Matthew: Afterwards, I was walking out with our friend John who’d been on before us, and he just does it for a hobby – he’s a pension’s lawyer – A member of the audience goes up to John and says “teach this bloke how to be funny” pointing to me so I felt terrible because we were doing our first shows at the Soho Theatre the next night and we’d won the Chortle award that year and were nominated the year before. The good thing is that there’s always justice. You can pick up all these nice things people are saying in the press but if you’re not impressing the 45 people in front of you that night the feeling you get from reading a nice review is completely destroyed, smashed.

MD: how important is it to get the critics and comedy writers on board. There aren’t many nationally, I can think of maybe two in William Cooke and Bruce Dessau. Are they influential?

Matthew: There might be some, but I would never write thinking “What would Bruce Dessau think of this or what would William Cooke think of this?” Their job isn’t to influence, it’s to record and I think that’s how they would want it as well so we would never write a show with critics in mind.

Tom: Edinburgh is where you really think about the critics and that’s only if you fall into the trap of doing it, but the first week and a half when you’re waiting for the first review – that’s the only time you really think about them. There is a trick where we try to get the show absolutely ready; we preview a lot before we go to Edinburgh so we don’t need to finish it or touch up once we’re up there. We’ve been lucky enough to have that three years on the trot so far and you get to the point where you think “well, that’s as good as the show is going to get so critics be damned!”

MD: You’re probably into that Edinburgh preview season now I suppose?

Tom: The plan is that the first half which was either very old stuff or there was three little brand new bits in there and the plan will be to phase out the old stuff and bring in the new stuff that we’re road testing as we go in that first section.

Matthew: So eventually, what we’ll be doing is 45 minutes of brand new stuff at the top of the show and then Funergy, so it will be quite a nice show by the end of it.

MD: Where does your focus lie with writing? Is it focussed around Edinburgh or for the circuit?

Matthew: When we write sketches, we just write, rather than think “where’s it going to go?” When it comes to Edinburgh we put together what we’ve got and write a show around that and write more stuff.

Ben: Edinburgh’s good though because it’s specific. It springs in and puts pressure on you which we kind of need.

Matthew: We’re only just getting into this idea because this is our first tour. We’ve had three successful Edinburghs and we’re touring off the back of that. We’re already booking for the autumn, which presumably will be the start of the tour for whatever this next Edinburgh show is going to be called – we still haven’t decided.

MD: I think you have done well with this show. I’ve seen a lot of comedians go from clubs to their first tour and perform what is essentially their ‘Greatest Hits’ from their club acts and most of the time it doesn’t string together very well over the course of an hour and a half.

Matthew: The good thing is that we’ve got a show with a narrative so that’s always a bonus. You’re seeing some sketches in the first section then a proper ‘play’ type sketch show in the second half which is a benefit over watching a stand up show that has just got a theme to it.

MD: I think I have run of questions now –

Matthew Well, we’ve run out of patience

MD: Ok, Ok – one more rubbish question that I thought I’d ask if it was all going wrong!

Matthew Go for it…

MD: Ultimate comedy bill?

Matthew: That’s a good question!

Ben: This is the kind of question where Matthew and Brendan go “Can we email the answer?!” OK – if we pick one act each… Can I pick compere?

Matthew: Who would you have compere?

Ben: [Daniel] Kitson

Matthew: Yeah, good compere… it will be a long show, mind…

Brendan: I want to go for Harry Hill who is hugely mainstream but does extremely exciting stuff.

Matthew: Do they have to be alive?

MD: No, they don’t have to be, they can be dead too.

Matthew: Oh, our lord Jesus Christ.

Brendan: Great sermon.

Matthew: I would love to have seen Peter Cooke performing live. That would have been proper genuinely exciting, so I’m gonna go with him.

Tom: and because we need an open spot in the middle I’m gonna go for Carl Donnelly.

Matthew: Yes! DONNELLY!

Tom: Richard Prior. So much came from him and his style. You still see his style all the time.

MD: Have you heard Eddie Murphy is rumoured to be playing him in a new biopic, is that bad or good?

Tom: I reckon it will be good.

Matthew: Only if he’s in a massive fat suit playing four people – It’s The Priors, he’s in that whore-house and they sit around and they fart…a lot!