David Mitchell and I have one very pressing thing in common. We are both ravenous. It’s two in the afternoon and neither of us has eaten. Mitchell then corrects himself. He actually had a biscuit for breakfast. He then apologises, feeling as though he has furnished too much detail. This is characteristic of his endearing awkwardness. In our brief time together he oscillates from being very self-assured and quick-firing on the subject of work, to anxiously choosing his words and correcting himself on more personal matters.
Just before the PR woman leaves, she asks him quietly if he’s going to be alright by himself with me. At this early stage, I feared he might not be. Eye contact so far was minimal and he kept repeating ‘great’, ‘yes’, and then ‘great’ again, whether or not a question had been asked; a steadying mantra of sorts.
He is slimmer and, dare I say it, better looking than I had expected. He is far more cheekbones and unusually large eyes, than double chin and pallor, as in some early episodes of Peep Show. Renowned for being a world-weary fuddy-duddy, he is actually fresh-faced, clean-shaven and, judging from our handshakes, has very soft skin. This, of course, is set against his history teacher-esque sartorial choices. Today he is in his typical outfit of brogues, a navy shirt, velvety-looking trousers and a jacket.
Only an hour ago, he had a room full of people eating out of his hand as he argued Ed Vaizey, the Shadow Minister for Culture, into a corner during an Orwell Prize debate on the BBC. He was on classic form and would have made an excellent lawyer, had comedy not worked out so brilliantly. Ed Vaizey wants to cut current waste at the BBC which sounded very sensible until Mitchell punctured it, explaining that they were hardly spending millions of pounds on cake. He was confident, witty, and, whenever he felt like it, able to make Vaizey sound silly. Usually king of sarcasm and irreverence, before me now was the flipside; the insecurity and the painstaking politeness.
Reverting to childhood tactics, I decided to try and make things less tense by offering him some of my sweets. He took so long to answer that I put the packet down on the table and then he paused before picking them up. Hesitantly, he started crunching through my Mini Eggs, not taking more unless I offered them again. He suggested that on an empty stomach the E numbers might go to his head.
While waiting for him, I had helped myself to a complimentary gin and managed to spray myself in tonic. Beginning the interview, I was still trying to cover the damp patch with my cardigan. So there we were; two embarrassed strangers not really looking at each other, with stern instructions not to overrun our five minutes, one gin and tonic between two, and some Mini Eggs. I imagine it’s what a speed date might feel like.
Having read many interviews in which he has described his loneliness, anxiety and single life with his lodger in Kilburn, I wondered if he had revealed too much about his private life. He didn’t agree, but conceded that, as a general rule, in the past he has been compelled to fill gaps left by interviewers with ‘something entertaining’. This seems like a good tip off
, so I don’t speak. He resists the urge to fill the silence and we both start laughing – ‘it won’t work on me anymore’.
He does acknowledge that ‘inevitably’ he has ‘hit a groove’ in his comedy persona that is ‘a caricature’ of himself and insists that really he is not ‘a complete Luddite when it comes to popular culture’. So I wondered if his anxious nature was also part of this comic persona, but he banishes any sense of it being synthetic when he starts describing his feelings of ‘doubt and, well, self-loathing’. I wasn’t expecting such openness only two questions in to the interview but he explains that dark emotions are part of his job – ‘one thing comedians do well is express their own depressed or doubting feelings in a way that other people can identify with. There are no real jokes about feeling great’. I feel that he has more to say on his own ‘depressed or doubting feelings’ but I didn’t want to be so intrusive.
Slightly taken aback by the self-loathing, I thought I would turn to a hard-core set of middle-aged women who I had noticed following him on Twitter: we’re talking David Mitchell as their wallpaper, pictures taken with him, daily rounds of sycophantic tweets about every show he has been on, and pleas for him to tweet hello back to them. I thought this would be a lighter topic but he finds these people alarming, and he shifts around for a while in his chair. For someone so articulate, this topic of fan attention throws him into some verbal difficulty as he slowly explains, ‘I mean it’s all very nice, really. It’s nice that people are supportive but, yes, I’m not used to forming that fan relationship. I don’t know how to be appropriately grateful for the support and not sort of inappropriate… but still keep a sort of distance. It’s difficult. These aren’t people I really know. What I’m at pains to do is to focus people on my work, not focus on me as a person’. Such discomfort seems reasonable. I can certainly see that for someone like him, who is polite but distant, it must be tricky to get levels of familiarity right – ‘I want people to like the comedy I do, that’s great, that’s what I want, as long as that doesn’t spill over’.
I move onto a Not The Nine 0’Clock News sketch called ‘The Two Ninnies’ which parodies The Two Ronnies. Not The Nine o’Clock News was a show that launched the career of Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, and I thought it was worth a bet that Mitchell would be an aficionado – luckily he was. I asked whether there was anything within comedy left to rebel against, in the spirit of that lampoon of The Two Ronnies’ puns-and-innuendos-reliant humour. He names My Family as a possible contender, ‘It’s not very good. No one likes it, including the people in it. Why are we making that? We’re patronising the audience’. However, he does not believe it is suitable for a send-up, ‘certainly not’ out of conscience, but because it is unquestionably bad. Warming to his subject, he enthuses that ‘The Two Ronnies was a brilliant show, so what is interesting and edgy about ‘The Two Ninnies’, is that they’re having a go at an institution that had a lot of merit. It didn’t have the cutting edge of Not The Nine o’Clock News but it was a good show – that’s why the sketch was ballsy. My Family, by contrast, is just plain dreadful’.
Just when I think we have moved sufficiently far from the self-loathing, I inadvertently bring it up again. As readers of his Observer column will know, he claims to have an incredibly limited knowledge of popular music and only two albums in his collection – Phil Collins and Susan Boyle. When I put this apathy to the arts to him, he responds by wailing in mock distress – ‘I’m not unmoved! I like the cinema and the theatre, but having said that, I have been rather busy for the past few years, and I hardly ever go’. Then a pause, ‘I find art galleries a bit of a drag and I sort of… hate myself about that’.
Wanting to move again from this murky world of self-criticism, I try for a cheerier angle and ask him what he finds life-affirming, if the arts don’t seem to figure much. However, this triggers the most pained reaction of all – ‘Oh that’s a hell of a tough question. Oh, oh. I don’t know, I mean I love performing. I find jokes life-affirming and I find getting laughs life-affirming’. He apologetically adds, ‘I know that sounds a bit hollow’. Hollowness? S
elf-loathing? I feel ill-equipped to respond to all these emotions within my five minute slot and all I can do is proffer my trusty Mini Eggs by way of diversion.
With about thirty seconds left, I decide to go for broke in the awkwardness stakes and ask him about that camera angle in Peep Show, when the characters are kissing each other and it zooms right into their faces. I ask if he ever thinks about that camera angle when he’s about to kiss someone in real life. He starts beaming, ‘That would be very unhealthy! No, no. It’s not actually like kissing because you’re just leaning in at the camera, and jiggling your head around, because one imagines there is jiggling involved. You’re leaning in like this…’ To my delight, he starts moving forward in his chair.
At this inopportune moment, the PR woman rushes back with merchandise for him to sign. Our five minutes at an end, I wasn’t sure what I had seen. He basks in attention but is easily embarrassed, is strident but self-doubting, reserved but not at all evasive. With a second handshake, he hurried back to the safety of polite platitudes and they tumbled out, one after the other – ‘Marvellous. Very nice to meet you. Yes. Thanks. Wonderful’.
