Would The Real Stewart Francis Please Stand Up?

Have you heard the one about the guy who posed as somebody else? It’s not terribly funny. Stewart Francis certainly doesn’t think so. Known for his deadpan delivery and one-liner repertoire, the Mock The Week regular is an unapologetic and highly skilled throwback to a simpler time. So with seemingly everybody and their dog on Facebook and Twitter these days, it’s a credit to the man for keeping things old-school by not signing up for his own account. Only, a quick search reveals a very similar-looking Stewart Francis communicating with fans. What gives?

“That’s not me!” he insists. “I don’t do any of that. Someone was posing as me on Facebook, which was very disturbing quite honestly. That’s gone now I think, but someone is out there on Twitter as me, so don’t follow that guy! With Facebook, it’s interesting. I don’t use it. My wife does, just to keep in touch with some friends. So she had to pose as me and go to Facebook to tell them to shut the fake profile down. I had to send passport details. So I had to prove who I was to shut down an account from someone who I think should have had to prove who they were.

“The worst part is that these people who pose as me are asking my fans, as me; ‘Oh I was on Mock The Week last night, what did you think?’ which just breaks my heart. How horribly needy am I as a comedian that I would ask people if they thought I was funny? So I care what people think of course, but I don’t need to go looking for that approval. And people say ‘Yeah you were great Stewart’ and I’m there at my computer almost screaming ‘No, it’s not me!’”

Ouch. As if coming face to face with his own visage in one medium wasn’t a daunting enough experience, Francis has also taken a bite out of the bullet that many artists fear and viewed his own work after the fact, albeit not in the most voluntary of circumstances.

“I went to a party in Canada and it came to a screeching halt and somebody put my DVD on,” he recalls, practically burying his head in his hands at the memory. “And I thought they were just going to do it for a couple of minutes, but it stayed on and I was saying ‘Oh come on guys that’s enough, we’re having a party here!’ – it was someone’s birthday party, it was nothing to do with me! So we sat and watched the entire DVD and at the end of it I was just dripping with sweat. I was more exhausted after that than I would be after an actual performance because I was so uncomfortable with it. But I gotta be honest; I couldn’t take my eyes off myself! It was good to see things from a different aspect. I saw a lot of little things, like my facial expressions – which are completely natural by the way!”

On the surface, Francis’ work doesn’t seem to lend itself to complex analysis, but there is an admirable skill to his craft. A retro-flavoured funnyman in the mould of Tim Vine, the Canadian veteran eschews controversy and observational humour in the face of a tried and tested classic formula; the razor-sharp one-liner. Acting like a kind of comedic hitman, Francis aims to pepper his audience with short and snappy jokes before disappearing into the night leaving you desperately trying to remember his volley of zingers.

“Well I am a one-liner guy and I have no problem with that label,” he admits. “I’ve evolved into a one-liner comedian simply because that’s my favourite kind of comedy. I love the old comedians and their throwback sense of humour, just do one joke and if you didn’t get it or like it there will be another one seconds later. In saying that, I’m not strictly a one-liner guy though, I do have other jokes that aren’t like that, because I think you need to deviate from that from time to time to break up the hour. A learned audience would decipher the cadence and they’d be on to me and the last thing you want is an audience to get to the punchline before you. “

But in this era of YouTube culture, where everything is recorded and documented and broadcast around the globe, how does one avoid such an eventuality?

“Well it hasn’t happened that often thankfully, maybe once or twice in the five months that I toured first, I’d hear someone get to the end of the joke just before I did, but they weren’t doing it maliciously, they were just excited I guess. It’s good in a way because it’s a good signal for when a certain joke is at the end of its lifespan. And I don’t really get hecklers either. I think hecklers see it as contributing, but I see it as distraction. I’m taking my attention away from what I’m doing to talk to these people and it can throw you off, absolutely. It’s distracting for the other members of the audience too, who presumably have paid their money to see me – I hope! – instead of some shithead who insists on chiming in.”

So with a new show in the works, is Stewart putting himself under tremendous pressure to change the face of comedy?

"It’s the same as the last tour, just new jokes!" he laughs. "If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I’m really pleased with it. I’ve never challenged myself creatively this way because the previous tour was an accumulation of 20 years of material. I wasn’t doing Richard Nixon jokes but it was a lot of older material, so now I’m starting from scratch and writing new gags. It’s good.

"I’ve never gone in for observational humour, those kinds of five-minute bits. Not even when I started out. Five minutes? I’ve never spoken to anyone for five minutes before! Four minutes and fifty-five seconds, I’m done!"

Stewart Francis plays the Iveagh Gardens as part of the Vodafone Comedy Festival on Saturday July 23 and Sunday July 24. Tickets are available now at [link]www.ticketmaster.ie[/link] and all usual outlets.