Christian Reilly was part of Rich Hall’s Perrier award-winning show Otis Lee Crenshaw and the Black Liars, went on to do musical stand-up and worked with Richard Herring.
So, you grew up in Nottingham?
Yeah, I was born in Ilkeston and moved to Gedling when I was about five. I went away to Birmingham and Manchester to study but came back and then moved to London about ten years ago because I was moving into comedy and the scene there was really good.
Where did you used to hang out?
Actually we used to hang around the left lion. I think people chose the left side because it was a bit more sheltered. I and used to frequent the Grosvenor when I lived in Carrington. Then I lived in the Lace Market and went out in Hockley. The Lord Nelson was a really nice place to hang out. There was a period when the Newmarket Inn was really buzzing but then house music came and kind of destroyed culture! You’d try to have interesting conversations but the music would get the better of you but at least it was still a good opportunity to get together with people.
Do you come back often?
I come back to do gigs at least half a dozen times a year, generally at Glee or Jongleurs. I still have family here but my Mum and Dad have both moved away. I visit friends when I’m in town. Today I’ve been to see a friend from an old band who now runs The Johnson Arms in Lenton. She gave me a Sunday pub roast dinner. Later I might try and blag my way into The Glee Club to see [alternative country band] Richmond Fontaine.
What bands were you in when you were young?
I joined my first band, called Razor’s Edge, when I was fifteen. Then by the late 80s I was in a band called We of the Never Never. By the early 90s I was writing and performing songs on my own. I started the band Nova Lounge with my friend Damian Coldwell, with both of us on guitar until he bought a double bass and starting playing that. Instead of getting a drummer we had a DJ. We played gigs all over, particularly at the Maze. I started watching stand-up comedy and tried to make the band a bit more vaudevillian and tongue-in-cheek with jokey performances.
How did you and Damian come to be part of Otis Lee Crenshaw and The Black Liars?
Rich Hall had invented the character of a Texan musician and was looking for a backing band. Darrell Martin [owner of Just The Tonic comedy club] introduced him to us. It was really good and successful and we ended up doing that for about five years, touring international comedy festivals and going to places with lots of sunshine. The festivals taught me a lot about the comedy scene – what a good comic could be and how people were always pushing themselves. It was very inspirational and I still like to watch new, experimental comedy to see what is possible.
After that how did you get started on your own?
The comedian Jeff Green passed on some great advice. I’d been annoying him by telling him all the ideas I had for jokes and he said, ‘Just shut up about it, book yourself a gig, tell people you have a gig and you will have to perform and that will make you think of something to say.’ In London there are loads of opportunities to just try new material and if you have something that appeals to 0.05% of humanity it actually adds up to an audience in a city.
You think you’ve done really well to blag a try-out gig but when you get there, three people turn up and they’re just the other acts. But you just have to keep trying gigs as each one teaches you about yourself.
And you’ve worked with Richard Herring for a long time…
In around 2003 a producer was putting together a comedy sketch show for Radio 2 called That Was Then This Is Now (TWTTIN). She had Richard Herring, Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell and Danny Robins on board and she wanted someone to add some music, so she booked me and Nova Lounge to record a pilot. We ended up doing three series. The theme of the show was what had happened on that week in history but they always commissioned the show for the same time each year, so we ended up having to make jokes about the same historical events every series. It never occurred to those in power that it needed to move to a different season.
Because it was broadcast on Radio 2 at lunchtime you had to be really careful about causing offence. Richard wasn’t allowed to use the word ‘whore’, for example. Typically of him, he came up with ways around this by making up inventive phrases for things. There was a sketch about Mother Theresa’s parents deciding what to call her and her mum says, ‘I squeezed her out of my cloaca so I get to name her’.
Then you went on to work on Richard Herring’s podcast, As It Occurs To Me…
When TWTTIN ended, Richard wanted to get away from being at the mercy of these bureaucratic top-down organisations. He decided to rent a theatre, sell tickets to his audience, risking his own money. The show would be given away as a free podcast but the paying audience would get to see some stand-up as a bonus. Half the humour in the show was about him going insane because everything he did had to be turned into a sketch for AIOTM (aiotm) and he never got a day off.
He asked me to be part of it, although I couldn’t do the first one because I was on holiday. I liked being part of a team and being able to watch the others perform. All I had to do was chip in with a song each week. There was a running joke that we’d each only made £85.11 out of each episode, but it did actually make enough money to justify its own existence. It’s really hard to get things commissioned but instead he got a commission from the tens of thousands people who follow him on Twitter. I like that model and I hope he’ll keep at it.
What other comedians do you like?
Like a lot of people I really love Stewart Lee, but don’t get me wrong, he’s no Richard Herring. I’ve been watching Louis C.K. on TV and he’s a really good comic doing stuff about love and family.
I tend not to see a lot of musical comedians at work because we’re seen as a novelty act so there’s only ever one of us on the bill at a time. I love Rich Hall and obviously there’s Bill Bailey – you think he can’t possibly get any better and then every year he comes out with a better show. There’s a Canadian guy called Seán Cullen who’s a great improviser and well worth checking out.
Your show is called ‘Bono is a Tax Evader’…
If you tell people your politics they’ll switch off but if you make a provocative statement, you can get a conversation going. I was doing the Grin Up North Festival and told the promoter I wanted to call the show ‘Soapy Tit Wank – a Show About Gaza’ because it was the kind of title what would make me want to go and see it. But I wasn’t allowed to call it that.
I heard a woman being interviewed on Radio 4 about altruistic millionaires and she came out with this statement that Bono is a tax evader. The presenter apologised and when the programme was repeated, the comment had been removed. Some listeners kicked up a fuss and it was reported in the Telegraph, of all places. So, I just named the show after that quote.
You put a fair bit of politics into your comedy…
I don’t think anyone sets out to be a political comedian. If you’re a comedian and you want to talk about politics you use the skills you have to express your opinions. I didn’t get into comedy to be political but I’m putting more of myself into my act.
I like things that point the finger at the bigger picture. The things that George Orwell was writing about are timeless because it’s the same tyranny then as now. There’s a simple solution to our problems which is economic justice and everything before that is going to be warfare and strife. I’m very positive about what has been achieved - we’re a much less racist and sexist culture compared to, say, the 1970s. That progress isn’t gifted from above, it’s snatched from below.
What have you got planned for the future?
I’m going to keep working this wealth redistribution theme into my comedy but I keep getting sidetracked by my love of lavatorial humour. I love dick jokes!
Christian Reilly was at the Funhouse Comedy Club as part of the Nottingham Comedy Festival. He will be performing at The Glee Club, Nottingham, from Thursday 29th September to Saturday 1st October 2011.
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