Paul Foot Interview (Melbourne Comedy Festival 2014)
Welcome to Impulse Gamer Mr. Paul Foot … your one stop shop for online entertainment!
So Paul, how did you get into comedy?
It all started in a pub in Oxford. I went to an open mic night and just went around the audience asking them to name fruits until we’d named all of them, and then I got off the stage and went home.
What’s your most glorious moment as a stand-up?
Once during a gig in Versailles this giant Louis XVI style crystal chandelier became detached from its ancient chain and fell on my head from the roof of the theatre. It should have killed me but instead it landed around me without actually touching me. If somebody had filmed it I think it would probably be the most watched video on YouTube. But it didn’t actually happen so there’s no record of it.
Worst?
Once I was booed off-stage at a gig in this awful caravan park full of what in England we call “complete oafs”. I refused to leave the stage though because I rather enjoyed how much it annoyed them that they just couldn’t defeat me.
Between you and me… what do you think of Melbournians?
They put the Melb into melba toast, I can tell you that for free.
What are you most looking forward to at the 2014 Melbourne Comedy Festival this year?
Trees. I’m compiling a personal photographic archive of the weirdest looking trees in the world. That’s what I shall be doing on my day off, if Josie Long doesn’t want to go to the beach that is. Josie’s always dragging me down to the beach. She goes there to find the sex.
What can we expect from your show?
This is a very hard question. This year my audiences will be laughing a lot without actually being able to say why it is that they’re laughing. It’s beyond surreal.
Should people at the front be worried?
I tend to pick on those in the fifth row. Or seventeenth.
If we can trace back your lineage, are there any Foot comedians in the Foot family?
Yes. Lady Patricia Foot. Or Lad Pat, as she preferred to be known. She was probably a hardcore lesbian but it’s not mentioned anywhere in the vaults. She used to stand on the table after dinner and tell each and every member of the family how much she hated them, and why, while tap dancing to the musical accompaniment of the Amersham Spit Orchestra – a musical group that she founded in the late 1870s. The members were all blind and created music by spitting onto what I suppose we would now call circuit boards. There’d be coffee afterwards.
How do you react to heckling?
My friend Malcolm Head taught me a good technique by which you write down the heckler’s email address and contact details and then later on after the show when you’ve thought of a good response you can get in touch. I’ve adapted his system. In my version I then track the person down and smash their life possessions with a golf club, while blasting Mozart out of some incredibly loud speakers and then I encase the heckler’s head in a sapphire lasagne and let them marinate overnight in their own tears of regret.
If you were Superman, would you wear pants?
I’m not Superman, I’m Paul Foot. Journalists don’t research anymore do they, it’s all gone down the Buzz Feed spinney.
Thankyou Mr. Foot and all the best for the 2014 Melbourne Comedy Festival
That’s all right. May I go to bed now?
Yes you may… and if you want to catch Paul at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, please visit – http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/words-paul-foot
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