Comedy need not limit itself to the funny stuff, Alan Davies tells Tom McKinlay.
It’s quite striking to think, but a cursory fact-check backs up British comedian Alan Davies’ contention.
He is in fact now older than Clive Dunn was during the making of Dad’s Army. By a comfortable margin.
Dunn was only 48 when the show started, playing the much older Lance Corporal Jones. Davies this month completed his sixth decade on the planet.
This raw serving of reality comes on the back of Davies’ further realisation, after taking his son to see a musical version of Back to the Future, that he’s also older than the film’s time machine scientist Doc Brown.
Incongruous. But the signs are there. The trademark curls (not permed, never permed) that lent Davies the aura of youthful insouciance long after youth had fled, strictly speaking, are now grey.
Which is not unrelated to the promotional shot for his new stand-up show, Think Ahead, due in Ōtepoti Dunedin in August. It’s the one on the cover of The Weekend Mix and pictured above.
‘‘Well, we threw some ideas around, me and Tony Briggs, our photographer, who’s a brilliant photographer,’’ Davies says of the process by which they arrived at that particular image.
‘‘And we came upon this idea of someone at a funeral. It’s like, ‘think ahead’, right? ... Whose funeral it is?’’
That’s an open question, he says, riffing away. ‘‘Is it mine? Is it comedy’s? Is it my father? Whose funeral is it?
‘‘I don’t know, but it’s just something that you’re thinking ahead. And this is comic, right, the tea and the cucumber sandwich and the black tie. It might be you in the box, or it might be somebody you love, or somebody you hate, but it’s ahead of you, more and more of these things are ahead of all of us, sadly.’’
Mortality could have been an even bigger part of the show, as Davies had a cancer scare in recent years, but that experience won’t be getting its own joke this time around.
‘‘I don’t refer to that in the show, it almost feels like it would be a whole show by itself,’’ he says. ‘‘But there are other ailments and health issues, and the need to go to the pharmacy is frequent.’’
Which does make you wonder, what sort of show is Davies touring?
A further check of the cover photo provides reassurance. No question, Davies is mashing the quizzical with the nonplussed to find the humour - and there’s the performatively delicate china and the real slices of cucumber.
And, indeed, over the video call connection from his London home, Davies is the familiarly engaging presence, it’s the same practised mischief filling the small screen - familiar from countless TV appearances.
Funny is definitely still the point here, even as the funereal vibe signals that Davies won’t be ducking any of the big stuff with this show. The Guardian review of his Edinburgh Festival outing sums it up: ‘‘Davies rawly discusses his abuse by his father and delivers big laughs with other material’’.
Not just death then.
Davies admits to some nerves before that Edinburgh show, which effectively road tested the Think Ahead material - his first new stand-up show in a decade.
‘‘There was some trepidation about going back on the road, but I think it might be the best show I’ve done. I feel like it’s more, there’s more of me in the show, it’s more an open show, it’s including some of the more difficult subjects, things that happened in my childhood and so on, that I have previously not included in stand-up, because it never felt like it was the right form for it. But it feels to me that after nearly 40 years of doing this, that I ought to be able to handle it, and manage it, and work towards a more complete picture, not stop at the facade and the people-pleasing, you know?’’
The cost of this bravery has been noted by other reviewers, the comedian’s breathing audibly shortening as he approaches the painful revelations.
Davies might not have shared these stories before in his stand-up, but he has previously put them on record across his serial memoirs.
In Just Ignore Him, in 2020, he wrote of the years of sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, between the ages of 8 and 13. His mother had died of leukemia when he was 6, and his father combined the abuse with manipulating the other relationships in the family to cast Davies as the outsider.
This latter act, of turning his brother and sister against him, contributed to his desire to become a ‘‘people pleaser’’, constantly seeking the approval of others.
Then last year, Davies published White Male Stand-Up, something of a sequel memoir, telling the story of his stand-up career, which involved, he says, a search for family and connection within the stand-up community - and subsequently the cast and crew of the various television shows that became a big part of his life, the likes of Jonathan Creek and QI.
It also covered the cancer diagnosis - and successful treatment - and the enduring impact on his life of that early abuse. Alongside his fanatical-adjacent support for Arsenal.
This new openness has fed into both the new stand-up show and his life away from the stage in positive ways, he says.
White Male Stand-Up talks of the ‘‘angry boy’’ that dwelt just below the surface of the successful actor and comedian, a manifestation that could burst into the open at the slightless provocation. Davies tells of one occasion when he’d grabbed a man by the collar after the stranger had tried to hurry him and his children down the stairs at a swimming centre. Police were called and the story ended up in the British tabloids.
He realised he needed to confront the root causes of that anger, the PTSD he endured as a result of his father’s actions.
‘‘I was talking to a friend of mine about it today, funnily enough, and I said it’s a bit like, you know, if it’s a house, I’ve previously been downstairs entertaining everyone, and saying nobody can go upstairs, the rooms upstairs are closed. And now I’m able to say ‘let’s go upstairs, let’s go upstairs, look at this room, oh, bad, bad, but look, look’, and they go ‘wow, I didn’t know about that room’.
‘‘And the whole house is on show now, and it didn’t used to be, and that’s sort of the best metaphor I can come up with really.’’
It’s a metaphor with a further shadow sitting behind it, as Just Ignore Him also tells of the discovery of his father’s child pornography stash in one such room - some of which was unloaded on to Davies by his stepmother, in an apparently desperate attempt to halve the problem.
But should the house metaphor not appeal, no problem, Davies has another.
‘‘Sometimes, I think of all the shows I’ve done, imagine if they were cakes, and they were nice cakes, they’re tasty, but they’re not the full, this cake has got all the ingredients in. And it might not be as pretty as that cake, but at the end of it all, you’re supposed to say, ‘that is the best cake’, because it’s all in it, so that’s my kind of internal metaphor.’’
It feels much better to confront things, he says, to open up about things, knowing there will be people in the audience who’ve had similar experiences.
‘‘People come up to me after shows and say ‘I really appreciate the stuff you were talking about, things that happened to me in my life’, so it means a lot, it means a lot, it’s very gratifying.’’
As much as people have arrived to be entertained, they respond to the tougher material.
‘‘They like that, they want to know about you, you’re up there a long time, they want you to be honest and open.’’
Everybody has their own experiences, their own stuff, be it family troubles, or losing a parent, or illness, or struggling with kids, he says.
‘‘This is just life, and my story's not that special, it's just another story.’’
The stories are, of course, thoroughly mixed in with the punchlines, so the medicine follows quickly on the heels of the diagnoses, which again makes it more accessible and approachable.
‘‘Absolutely, and of course there’s nothing quite like being in a room where everybody’s laughing. I mean, the sound of it is wonderful for me, because it’s the currency of my trade, but it’s also, I know myself, that it’s lovely to be in a room, and all be enjoying the same thing, and all laughing, applauding the same thing, there’s nothing quite like a theatre.
‘‘People have been gathering in theatres for thousands of years, and it’s nice that they have not been scrolling on their phone for thousands of years - this is a recent mental health crisis. What they’ve been doing is gathering together collectively and having shared experiences, and it’s a very important part of human culture.
‘‘I’m not trying to overstate my role in it, the drop in the ocean that I am, but the principle is the same, these beautiful theatres that were built a long time ago for a reason, to get people to come together, and it’s very good to see that people still want to do that, possibly more than ever.’’
So, for these and other reasons Davies is very pleased to be back on stage, microphone in hand.
In between, there have been those two memoirs and his TV work, not to mention a third child with wife of almost 20 years Katie Maskell, but stand-up, he says, in terms of his professional life, remains central.
‘‘Walking out on to the stage and going up to the microphone is the best place for me.
‘‘I’ve always liked doing different things, and I’ve always liked going from one sort of thing to another - that’s kind of my nature I think, I’m the sort of person if I have to make a regular journey I’ll take different routes.’’
TV is all very well, but it will swallow you up, he says.
‘‘Initially, when you become well known from working on television and people see you and that feels great, it feels like a validation, it’s good for the ego, and then there comes the first day when you go out thinking, ‘God, I hope no-one spots me’, and you realise that you’ve cashed it in permanently, that anonymity will never come back. So, it’s a double-edged sword sometimes. But the being in a theatre with a live audience, that never changes, that always feels great.’’
‘‘The stressful part is forming the show, creating the show, getting the show to work, particularly talking about subjects like childhood abuse or bereavement or loss or difficult things, broaching those, finding a way to do them.
‘‘Every comedian, no matter how long they’ve been doing it, when they've got nothing and they’re starting out with a new thing, you do think - I’m sure it’s the same with songwriters - you think, I’m never going to think of another funny thing, I’m never going to have a routine that was as funny as that routine from my last show.
‘‘People say, where did you get your ideas from? It’s a mystery, it just comes, it forms, it’s some sort of alchemy. ‘Oh, that goes well with that, they like that, I’ll put that in there, I’ll try that’. ‘Oh, that worked, that’s grown a bit, I thought of another offshoot’. And off it comes, like a tree.’’
But there’s also the opportunity with stand-up to go off piste and riff on the spot, he says. It’s part of the joy - and something that has translated well to his long-running stint on QI.
‘‘QI is always off the cuff, you never know what’s going on. The pictures come up, the facts start coming, the question’s asked, no-one knows what it means, and you’ve all got to work together in the room. You can’t pre-write any jokes, you’ve got to collaborate and you’ve got to think off the cuff, and I love that, I’ve always liked that.’’
Davies has played The Regent before, remembers it warmly and repeats his belief in the ability of such places to bring people together.
‘‘I do think, whether it’s me or whatever it is, I do think getting together in a place with people from your town, the people you walk amongst every day, maybe you don’t make much eye contact these days because you’re staring at your phone, but they’re all amongst you, they’re all around you.
‘‘And they are your community, they’re your people, they’re from your street, your neighbourhood, your old school, your workplace, this is Dunedin on show, and I know people will have travelled into Dunedin from other towns around too, and everyone coming together in one place and being together in one room is a reminder that that’s what we are, we are a big community of people, and our similarities far outweigh our differences.’’
This is Davies responding, specifically, to a question about the role of comedy in our troubled, fractured world. It’s clear he’s thought about it. How could he not, coming from Britain, where the far right Reform UK party is leading the polls, and the St George Cross now flies in England as a symbol of normalised xenophobia.
‘‘There are maniacs in charge doing insane things, sowing division, sowing hatred, and we have it here in the UK,’’ he confirms. ‘‘People determined to sow division, determined to tell you that the country is ruined.’’
Which, he notes, is not the reality for most people, who are just trying to support their families, going to work, and occasionally trying to come together.
‘‘That’s why whenever I hear about a new theatre being built, or an old theatre being saved, I think good, good, good, we need these places, we need the Regents of the world.’’
So, that’s where he’ll be in August, and, with any luck, further buoyed by that time by an Arsenal triumph in the English premiership.
Asked about the prospect of it, Davies tenses for the first time in the interview.
‘‘Oh, fingers crossed. Oh my god, so close to something, it’s unbearable,’’ he says.
‘‘It would mean so much to so many people if they did it,’’ he says, heartfelt.
‘‘If they do manage to clinch the league championship, it will be a thing that we will never forget.’’
And why not. Davies shouldn’t be the only people pleaser, and it seems only fair that he should be allowed such memories.
The show
Alan Davies: Think Ahead
Regent Theatre, Dunedin
August 13
