Andy, You're a Star

Best known for his contributions to Mock The Week, Andy Parsons is shortly to hit Ireland as part of his I’ve Got A Shed tour. Where does the show’s name come from, I wonder?

“Well, it’s to do with how I’d ideally like to be at the shed at the bottom of my garden, pottering about,” answers Andy. “It’s a double-edged sword though. You know how it is – you’re dying for a bit of time off, then it arrives and after a few days you’re thinking, ‘I wish I had some work to do’.”
What other topics does Andy tackle in the show?
“Well, one of the big ones is frustration,” he responds. “Like, recently I was online trying to pay my tax bill, but some technical issue with the bank prevented me from doing it. So I had this big back and forth with them about trying to solve it. But you just realise the huge irony of this situation – where a bank is actually preventing you from paying a tax bill, as opposed to facilitating it.”
Of course, it might be said that a comedian actually paying a tax bill is a big enough novelty in itself these days. I wonder if that subject is the elephant in the corner of the room when Parsons runs into Jimmy Carr?
“Well, Jimmy has a funny line about it,” notes Andy. “He says the episode of 8 Out Of 10 Cats where he apologised got the biggest viewing figures ever, so he wonders if there’s any other controversies he can become embroiled in!”
Although Andy hasn’t appeared on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, he is of course a regular on Mock The Week, which has sparked a few controversies of its own, most notably through the appearances of former panellist Frankie Boyle. One of the biggest kerfuffles Boyle caused was as a result of a joke about the Queen, whom he quipped was “so old her pussy is haunted.” Cue outrage in certain quarters and Conservative MP David Davies condemning this “disgracefully foul comment.”
“You know, we used to have a checklist of the topics Frankie would try and work into the show,” recalls Parsons. “There was disability, race and so on. I remember one time, he was in a particularly bad mood and managed to work in all of the subjects on the list. They had some job editing that! I think when Frankie eventually left there was almost a collective sigh of relief in some ways, because he used to get so worked up about the producers, the editing, etc.
“But obviously we’ve had some great fun doing it, and we’re doing another run of shows in the summer. Dara Ó Briain is still in situ as the presenter and I think the last time I was in Dublin was for Dara’s stag night, which was an enjoyable evening. Well, what I can remember of it was good at any rate!”
Of course, there was more panel show controversy over Christmas, courtesy of Channel 4’s Big Fat Quiz Of The Year. James Corden and Jack Whitehall hit a sufficient number of Daily Mail hot topics – the Queen, Prince Philip and Susan Boyle – for the paper to run an impressively self-parodying article, headlined “Channel 4 and the sick show they call comedy”.
“I just hope that the BBC and other broadcasters stand up to that stuff,” Andy proffers. “For edgy comedy to be sacrificed for fear of outrage in certain newspapers would be a real shame.”
Andy attended Cambridge and was a member of Footlights, the college society which has spawned such comedic legends as Peter Cook, Monty Python and Fry & Laurie, as well as, latterly, Mitchell and Webb, Richard Ayoade and the Inbetweeners cast.
“I didn’t actually get into Footlights at first. It seemed to be a bit of a public schoolboy clique. I then went off and did stuff in regular theatre, which seemed to legitimise me in their eyes and I subsequently got involved in Footlights. I suppose once you’ve done it for a bit, it gives you some confidence and you realise that you might be able to do this for a living. I studied law at Cambridge which was a bit boring, so to realise there might be an alternative route I could go was great.”
Andy’s first writing job was on Spitting Image, the satirical show where the cast were puppets.
“It was interesting to work on a weekly show like that which made an impact,” he reflects. “It was the early ‘90s and people like Blair were coming onto the scene. It was quite a fluid situation and writers would switch around and work on different things. I did some stuff for the sketches about John Major and the peas, which was a part of the show people tend to remember. I think that’s partly to do with the fact that it had a slower pace. With Spitting Image sketches, the formula was generally three gags and a punchline, but occasionally you could do something that took its time a bit more.”
Another panel show on which Andy has appeared is QI, which he says is considerably different to Mock The Week.
“Rhey’re almost like polar opposites,” he says. “The atmosphere on Mock The Week is a lot more frantic, and you’ve got comedians going at it hammer and tongs and trying to outdo each other. Whereas on QI it’s a bit more gentle, everybody gives each other space and it leads to some good stuff. So, different approaches but the ultimate goal is still to make people laugh. And working with someone like Stephen Fry is a pleasure.”

Andy Parsons plays the Olympia, Dublin
on March 27.