Alastair Clark sits back in the seats on the first floor of FACT on Wood Street and grins. The man who hails from Grantham in Lincolnshire is intensely likeable as a person, as many of University colleagues have threatened to attest to, he is one of the many University graduates that find themselves at the bitter end of the current recession/depression, depending on who you talk to, saddled with debt for wanting to learn and trying to make a difference.

As I speak to Alastair about his forthcoming comedy shows in Newquay, The Lantern Theatre and at the Edinburgh Fringe, it is impossible not to be captured by the flowing ease of his excited words, the enthusiasm of which he provokes a snort of laughter from people talking to him, it is little wonder that this Philosophy student is making big waves.

I catch up with Alastair, his rucksack by his feet as he prepares to make his way to the Cornish coast and leave a little bit of the University of Liverpool in that seaside town.

You’re off to Newquay?

Alastair: “I am for my sins! I’m going to Beach Break Live the old music festival down there; we’re doing three things – a two man sketch show with my mate Toby Squires, comparing a stand-up night on Saturday and a workshop on the Sunday. Just something quite nice and I get to go to a music festival as well.” 

What got you into performing comedy?

Alastair: “I always wanted to do it, the youngest age I can remember wanting to do it was about 12 or 13, the only thing I’d seen up to that point that was stand-up comedy was Peter Kay on V.H.S.  I went round to my aunt’s house over Christmas and she had a DVD player and she had Peter Kay and Jack Dee on DVD. I remember watching this Jack Dee DVD and this was supposed to be funnier than Peter Kay and it was the greatest thing I’d seen!  The way he manipulated the audience into laughing – I knew from then that’s what I wanted to do. I spent a long time at school doing drama and then voice school so I just became the funniest person. We were writing all these stand-up routines that I’d never perform and I finally ended up going to university and with one of my friends who I used to do drama with and we did sketch shows and I’d do the Edinburgh Fringe with him and I have a new Fringe project which I’m now doing on my own.”

Is it a daunting thought doing it on your own?

Alastair: “I think the most nervous I’ve been was before the first stand-up I did.  There were about 100 people there and I always remember sitting there and the guy before me, I couldn’t understand a word he said as my head was buzzing. The compare – Paul Smith, one of the nicest chaps in comedy just said “Welcome to the stage, Alastair Clark” and just took a deep breath and went on and it went like a blur and a flash but it went really well. Someone said it was great, it was the first comedy gig they’d seen and I said, “Thanks that’s very nice!” It was absolutely terrifying, the one thing I realised is that you don’t have your best mates stood next to you, just being able to jump in if you mess it up, you’re on your own.

 As you get more confident and more used to it, it does become easier and easier to the point where last week I did an hour, 70 odd minutes without thinking about it and I just went on stage and did it and it was fine.  It was the first preview for this Edinburgh show, it needs to be 55 minutes, so there needs to be something taken out of there. That’s what I’m going to be doing at The Lantern, my first solo Edinburgh show which is about university – it’s called “Alastair Clark B.A. Hons. It’s an autobiographical stand-up show using a projector and photos, videos and stuff from the time so I can talk about them all. Anyone who is in it has had their name changed or is aware of their involvement. The only stipulation I had was when I was writing the show was that the only person who can come out of this show looking bad is me!  So that’s what I tended to end up doing – even when I’m talking about someone doing something silly, it’s my reaction to them that’s funny not the joke.”

It sounds like you’re taking the frustration out on yourself!

Alastair: “It’s quite tough! I’m sort of in this dilemma with stand-up at the moment in that a lot of people say that they really like it when I’m really honest. There’s a piece that I do about personal identity and it starts off with an opening joke about me being posh and there’s a bit about caviar and there’s a girl – the joke goes I’ve always had stick about my voice, I had real problems with a girl I went out with at university, she thought we’d always break up as I was too posh for her. In the end we broke up because she wouldn’t let me eat caviar off her naked body. Then I knock it back with we broke up because not because I was posh, it was because she was frigid! I do that joke every time, especially if I’m trying to win over an audience when I go on stage. Nothing about that joke is true, I’m not very posh though.

Then I tell people to look at the joke – I’ve never eaten caviar in my life, I don’t sound that posh, I sound middle class, this isn’t how people talk from where I’m from. What I did was, I put on this voice – a complete construction as this is what I thought normal people sounded like and do this whole thing where I de-construct everything like this joke, then I just start being dead honest about things like relationships. Which is the real Alastair? I put across the Alastair that sit behind my eyes who is terrified of the world and the only thing that was true about that story was that there was a girl who used to go on about how posh I was. We didn’t break up because I was too posh or she was frigid, we broke up because she saw me doing a gig and I couldn’t be that person all the time, it’s not me.

I want to do stuff like that but I also want to do other stuff where I can go on stage and do more controversial routines.”

Was your time at the University of Liverpool a great influence on you? 

Alastair: “It definitely informs a lot of stuff.  Like any sort of degree, you become critical of everything. Doing a degree really helped with structuring stuff, like when you’ve got lots of material and you’re trying to mould them into a routine, it’s quite easy to draw on those skills you developed when studying. You can put bits where you need them and organise it how it is. My friends always say that want to see me more philosophical in my routines and things like that. I really couldn’t say, I don’t think I can, I think they are separate disciplines. Everything that you do as a human being does influence other things; you can’t really do things in isolation.”

I am intrigued by the news of you doing so many Edinburgh shows in the summer.

Alastair: “I’m doing 22 days, two shows a day as well, I’m doing them in a venue called the Cabaret Voltaire which is a trendy, café come nightclub place and they’ve got two really nice rooms for comedy downstairs and I’m doing some shows in another unnamed, unknown venue as yet! It’s on the Cowgate somewhere! Cabaret Voltaire is nearby too, they are both very central. I’m really looking forward to them. Three weeks ago, before the Edinburgh preview at The Pilgrim, I hadn’t got an Edinburgh show in my head or my bedroom! Getting out there and making it real is very helpful, previewing it at The Lantern and in London and then it’s Edinburgh and take it on tour after that, will be a dream!”

It’s very interesting and exciting as you’re the first person from the University of Liverpool who has sort of run with this dream of comedy performance.

Alastair: “If you want to get wet, jump in the swimming pool! I think it’s one of these things that when I left university I thought I could either get a job and do that for the rest of my life or wake up regretting never trying to be a comedian or I can get into this as quickly as I can to the point where it’s a sustainable living so I don’t have to do the job option. So, basically as far as I see it, I’m working against the clock, I can’t do it forever unless it gets good enough.  It’s all I want to do, getting a job is the worst thing that could happen obviously I think I’m good enough and it’s funny enough and I can bring something new it as well I feel.”

I know that you’ll be fantastic and obviously all the very best, I’m sure you’ll do the University of Liverpool proud!

Alastair: “I hope so, it’s a nice show I don’t think the University come out of it too badly neither!”

Where can people get the tickets for the Edinburgh shows?

Alastair: “They are free shows, you just walk in!

Ian D. Hall