Andy Parsons has been making us laugh for nearly 40 years. His satirical, sharply observational, politically aware brand of comedy aims to “puncture people in power” – and the way the country is going at the moment it looks as though he won’t have any problems finding material for his shows.
He’ll shortly be returning to the road with his show Please #@!$ Off To Mars. He takes as his starting point the trillionaire Elon Musk spending “vast sums of money sending himself into space. There seem to be some missing values,” Andy remarks drily.
So why have a go at Elon Musk? “He was getting involved with politics on this side of the Channel, giving his five pence worth, so he seemed like a good candidate.
“The further right the parties go the further he decides he’s going to sponsor them. I’m not quite sure how he’s getting on with Nigel Farage at the moment.”
Andy also takes a swipe at actor and political activist Lawrence Fox who is leader of the Reclaim Party.: “Maybe he’ll go even further right. He and Elon Musk may be the first to go on the SpaceX rocket up to Mars.”
In his latest show Andy casts his inimitable eye on the cost-of-living and the energy crises. “You name it, there’s no shortage of topics. Throw in the Iran war because the chances of that being sorted by the autumn seem pretty slim as well.”
Anything from potholes to whether the government will get anywhere near its “stupidly ambitious” housebuilding target will come under Andy’s scrutiny. So is he saying what people are thinking?
“Hopefully it’s some of what people are thinking – otherwise it’s going to be a long two hours!”
I spoke to Andy shortly after Andy Burnham had moved into 10 Downing Street. So does Andy have any advice for the new Prime Minister?
“Don’t appoint Peter Mandelson! Don’t allow him anywhere near anything. Andy Burnham has already done better than Keir Starmer: we haven’t seen any Taylor Swift freebies in the first week of his government; and he’s started off with a message of hope rather than this is only going to get harder and things will only get worse which didn’t get Keir Starmer off to a very good start.”
Andrew John Parsons who will turn 59 later this year was born in Weymouth. His father was a head teacher and his mother was a radiographer.
Andy went to Christ’s College, Cambridge to study law. There he met comedy writer and performer Henry Naylor and they formed a double act. “We took it to the Edinburgh Fringe and it seemed better than getting a proper job. It was good fun in the early days. I still see Henry socially and it’s always nice to catch up.”
Andy started writing for the BBC Radio 4 satirical sketch show Weekending. “It was the BBC’s access show which ran for decades.
“I was working for a law firm at the time and managed to sneak off on Tuesday lunchtimes to write for Weekending. Gradually those Tuesday lunchtimes went into Tuesday afternoons.
“Gradually the law firm picked up on the fact that I wasn’t there as much on a Tuesday as I might be. They did try to sack me but thankfully I’d learned enough about comedy and employment law at that stage and I managed to persuade them they should give me redundancy rather than sack me.
“So they gave me I think it was three months’ redundancy. I had a tiny bit of money to keep me going and thankfully I got commissioned to write for Weekending. So I was getting a guaranteed amount for my one-liners.”
Weekending led to Andy writing for Spitting Image. He was in his early twenties and was writing for the biggest satirical show on British television.
“There were only four channels at the time, so we were regularly getting ten million viewers. There aren’t too many shows getting that on British TV these days.”
Andy points out that advances in his career were a natural progression: “Spitting Image was a progression from Weekending. I could have taken the writing further but at that stage the stand-up was going okay, the double act was going okay, we did six or seven years on Radio 2 doing the comedy slot on Saturday lunchtime.
“I got a regular weekly gig at The Comedy Store – ‘the beating heart of live stand-up in the capital’ – and off the back of that Mock The Week happened. So everything leads on to everything else. And obviously off the back of that you can do tours.”
Mock The Week is a topical, satirical, celebrity panel show. Andy spent ten years on it before taking the decision to leave.
“It gradually changed,” he laments. “For a while we were getting better viewing figures than Have I Got News For You? so they decided to put that on BBC1. Then they worked out that because they had six comics on Mock The Week they could do it as an access show for younger comics.
“You couldn’t say half of the things you used to be able to get away with. We’d won awards but it felt as if they weren’t doing topical material, so I was quite happy to move on.”
Andy returns to his humorous side when I ask him what his influences were when he was starting out: “The bank manager! Basically you had to make sure you could earn enough money just to feed yourself.”
Andy also did five-minute spots on the comedy circuit and small bits of acting to boost his income.
“Gradually the small amounts of money added up. The more you do the more you enjoy it. The more you write hopefully the better you get at it. Thankfully I haven’t had to go back to the law, so everybody’s benefited!”
Andy tells the story of the first time he went to Edinburgh: “I had four in the audience, three who’d been given free tickets and one who was in the wrong show!”
But he confesses he loves touring: “The shows are always good fun. You can fill big theatres under your name – but not always spelt correctly on the outside. I did one recently and Andy Arsons was performing. It wasn’t quite the ego boost I was looking for but a good night was had.”
Andy who has appeared at Nottingham Playhouse several times will play the 270-seat Arts Theatre in the city for the first time. Some people might think it strange that he didn’t go for a bigger venue.
“What you really want is all the venues you play to be stuffed to the gunnels. So let’s hope we can get Nottingham stuffed to the gunnels, although I’m not really sure what a gunnel is, I’ll be absolutely honest with you. It’s some sort of boat metaphor. We’ll hope it fits the bill.”
Never experienced Andy’s brand of comedy before? You know what you’re getting because he’s “basically talking about life’s experiences and how they affect us.
“Literally everything in your life there’s politics somewhere. You can laugh about something or you can think about something. In many ways I always think the ultimate is if you can get people laughing and thinking at the same time.”
This tour will take Andy into the beginning of December. Ater that he’ll start thinking about his next show.
“I’ve pretty much got the idea of what I’d like to do for that. But being a parent of two kids and going round the country touring, you don’t want to work so hard – you want to have a bit of free time.
“I’ve been pretty busy and I look forward to a little break before we kick off with the autumn tour.”
Andy Parsons has already done eight national tours, so he should know how to win over an audience. I don’t know if anyone who goes to see Please #@!$ Off To Mars at Nottingham Arts Theatre on Wednesday 7 October will be thinking about the material – but they should certainly be laughing at Andy’s humour.
