No Tim Like The Present

Tim Key is a funny man. As the recipient of last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier), he has been officially recognised as funny ha ha, but he might just be a little funny peculiar too.

“What is that?” he asks looking perplexed as we sit down to chat.
The ‘that’ in question is a dictaphone. Odd, especially since he’s been fielding questions from hacks all morning.
“You came all the way to London to talk to me?” he beams. “I would have been happy to come to Ireland.”
A good thing he feels that way – Key will be visiting our shores to take part in the Carlsberg Cat Laughs Comedy Festival this June. Alongside comedians such as David O’Doherty, he will be performing twenty-minute slots from his award-winning solo poetry show ‘The Slutcracker’. “I’ll be doing the poems,” he says, “for better or for worse.”
Poetry yes, but not as you know it. Key’s ‘tiny poems’ cover a range of topics from the sublime to the ridiculous – politics; the Queen’s sex life; bankers; jealousy – and have been collected into a book, the somewhat wordily titled 25 Poems, 3 Recipes and 32 Other Suggestions (An Inventory).
Key’s comedy career began when he finished university, returned home to Cambridge and blagged his way into the famous Footlights Dramatic Club in 2001.
“I was trying to work out what to do next, and my parents were trying to work out what they thought I should do next – they were not exactly the same things really! Parents never sit you down and say: ‘I think you need to get into sketch comedy.’ It took about five years for my mum to stop using the phrase ‘law conversion’. I auditioned and the assumption was that I was a student. I didn’t disabuse them of the notion. If anything I abused them! For several months! I suppose there was an element of deceit.”
Deceit or not, Footlights kept him on and Key enjoyed some early success with the troupe. Their 2001 show, ‘Far Too Happy’, was nominated for a Perrier for the best newcomer, after which Key got an agent and hot-footed it down to London to make his mark.
“I thought, ‘This could really work’, but I was quite largely mistaken.”
These days work is not a problem. In addition to his stand-up work, Key writes and performs in the BBC 4 sketch show Cowards, co-created the panel show We Need Answers, and has been given a commission to write a film after his debut effort, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, won the award for Best UK Short at the 2007 Edinburgh Film Festival.
“I spent several years trying to get several different things underway and trying to do lots of different projects, waiting for one to be something where I started to get paid. I’ve always had lots of work, lots of fingers in lots of different pies, and the pies have all started to… hatch eggs!”
But the biggest pie is his solo show, and after winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award, Key has been in demand.
“It’s such a prestigious award you don’t have to shout it from the roof tops. It helps ticket sales and festivals become more interested in it. I’ve been able to do the show in Sidney, I’m doing the show in Melbourne, I’m doing a London run, the Cat Laughs; and because of the award the show has sold very well so I’m doing extra dates in the West End.”
While winning the award has brought definite perks, being nominated was not without difficulties.
“It was the most difficult Edinburgh for me, I think partly because I got nominated. The thing with Edinburgh is, you get there and it’s hard work to get the show going and you have to keep the energy up, every show has to be as strong as it can be. I was doing two shows – there are tougher jobs I’m sure – but it is emotionally quite tough.”
“Usually in the last week all the reviewers have stopped coming in so you can just kick back and enjoy your show. This time it was screwed by the fact that the judges were coming in. It’s quite a peculiar pressure. Your number one priority is to do your show as well as possible and that the audience will enjoy it, but you have this peculiar weird element that there is also a judge and you are expending energy trying to shut out the fact that there is a judge there. You have all this pressure, but you have to remind yourself that you might never again go to Edinburgh with a show that is going that well.”
Key’s previous poetry show, ‘The Slut in the Hut, sold out in Edinburgh and Key attracted a number of devoted fans, but it did not have widespread appeal. “We transferred to London in a small studio space and half filled it,” he says. That ‘The Slutcracker has been so popular with the critics and public alike is in part Key believes, because his stage persona has undergone a transformation.
“My stuff two or three years ago was much more divisive. I almost wilfully split a room whereas now I don’t. It can still sometimes split but my new solo show is more robust. In my last solo show I guess I was a little bit deliberately antagonistic and challenging. If you went with it, there was plenty for you to go with, but if you didn’t it would have been a bit alienating.”
“This show, ‘The Slutcracker’, I started doing at the start of last year and it developed in an interesting way. My persona changed during the show’s development and I became less contrary and menacing and became more charming.”
With his newfound charisma, Key found he could say what he liked without estranging the audience.
“There was a bit in my show where I talked about fucking a dog, but because it was quite impish, it really didn’t offend. I think if I had done that using my previous nuance or persona it would have caused problems. If people don’t like you and find you menacing that might be…. But if you are chuckling away and I say something like that and I’m quite apologetic about it…. That bit always went quite well, even though it shouldn’t. It should be awful – it’s an awful, awful moment in the show but people are kind of enjoying it in spite of themselves. If you have a glint in your eye… With a touch more charm you can be a little more edgy with some of the material.”