ALEXANDER ARMSTRONG | INTERVIEW
Legendary comedian, host of Pointless, voice of Danger Mouse and remarkable singer Alexander Armstrong speaks with Tom Gane about sketch comedy and his upcoming tour, as well as showing off his karate chop skills.
Alexander Armstrong is pretty much everywhere at the moment. He hosts Pointless, is trekking across the Arctic for Land of the Midnight Sun, and has a number one album, A Year of Songs, in the classical charts. With some people this might become overkill, but Armstrong’s affable nature means we haven’t reached a saturation point, even a full eighteen years after he emerged as one half of Armstrong and Miller. Before this comedy breakthrough he was actually considering enrolling in the Royal College of Music, having sung in a choir since age seven. Now 45, Armstrong has returned to his musical roots with A Year of Songs and says singing had always been “in the back of [his] mind”.
“When you get to University a lot of people get to play sports at a very high level, a lot of people get to do drama or music”, he explains. “And you leave university at the age of 21 or 22 and you’re kind of at the top of your game, but what’s quite cruel is that’s the point you have to decide whether you’re going to do it professionally. If you decide not to then you step off this enormous platform you’ve been building. I guess I did what everybody else does when they quit something they love; they keep it going in a personal way. It might be playing five-a-side football or acting in amateur productions, but you sort of keep the flame burning. So I kept singing for my own benefit, but I haven’t really performed in public, although I always hoped someone would ask me to.”
That someone would be Tim Rice, who asked Armstrong to perform at the Royal Albert Hall last Christmas. After that everything snowballed. He got a manager, a deal with Warner, and less than a year later a number one album. He’s also preparing for a January tour of some of the UK’s most famous theatres and almost purrs with excitement when he talks about it.
“We’ve got a nine piece band and it is going to be glorious, God it’s going to be so good. I’ve toured in the past with a quartet, and that quartet forms the core of this band, but we’ve bolstered it with some strings and an extra keyboard player. They are all just incredible musicians and it’s going to be a real privilege to share a stage with people like that. If I’m about to go on stage to do comedy the thing I’m nervous about is forgetting what I’m meant to be doing. That’s what scares me. Whereas when I’m about to sing I get nervous about opening my mouth and singing, but then when you’re on stage and you’ve started there’s a lovely release. You’ve opened up something and after you’ve sung your first song and I don’t feel there’s any tension left between performer and audience. Whereas if you’re giving a performance you’re holding some drama back because you hold the interpretation of the rest of the night in your hands. I find singing to be a more fulfilling and honest performance. It’s a bit like, and I’ve never been a life model, but I imagine it’s like after you’ve strode out onto your little platform, hung up your dressing gown and plonked yourself down on the couch, there’s nothing left to be scared of.”
This is the second time Armstrong has returned to a childhood passion this year as he was also chosen to voice Danger Mouse in the BBC reboot. I’m a massive fan of the original and when I heard he’d been chosen for the role it was very much an “of course” moment. When I ask him what it’s like to play such an iconic character his voice again exudes an almost childlike enthusiasm.
“It’s just the best!” he exclaims. “I cared so desperately about this, and like you I loved Danger Mouse; loved it! I was quite scared, wary shall we say, until I saw the scripts. Obviously in the audition process you get to see little bits, and the minute I read those, even if I only got a snippet, I could see we were in very good hands. It mattered so much to me and it’s a wonderful thing to be part of; a real joy.”
Rather than cut together later like most cartoons, Armstrong describes the process as “the nearest thing to drama that I’ve experienced in the world of animation” because the whole cast work together and “actually do the script not just read the lines”, including stage directions. To demonstrate he treats me to a very convincing rendition of the classic Danger Mouse karate chop noises he has to make, which may be the highlight of the interview.
Before finishing this piece it’s only fair I admit that I’m a comedy nerd. In particular I’m a fan of British sketch comedy from the late 90s to mid-00s. Armstrong and Miller was first broadcast in 1997, and would be followed by the likes of Big Train, Blue Jam, Bruiser and Mitchell and Webb. Just for my own indulgence I couldn’t resist asking what it was like working in such a prolific period.
“It was a great time”, Armstrong agrees. “Little Britain and Fast Show need honourable mentions in that list, and then Cardinal Burns. They’re my sketch comedy heroes; they’re everything Armstrong and Miller wanted to be when we started out. Which is probably style over substance, but one hopes there was a lot of substance too. Ben and I slightly fancied ourselves as actors as well as comedians, so we used to love doing the acting bit. We’d invest a lot of acting into our scripts and I think that was kind of a particular thing of ours. They were very whimsical ideas that would go on and on, and we had hardly any budget, so it wasn’t a matter of editing sketches to their bare bones, it was seeing how long you could make them to fill your half hour [laughs]. God we had fun doing that.”
In recent years however TV sketch comedy has fallen away in the UK, whereas America is still regularly producing sketch shows, like Netlix’s brilliant w/ Bob and David. Armstrong thinks UK sketch comedy will come back, and the lack of sketch shows at the moment can simply be attributed to the fact that “these things come in cycles”.
“Four or five years ago Miranda and Mrs Brown’s Boys were suddenly the massive breakaway hits on television, and this caught executives completely by surprise, like ‘hang on, this is old fashioned sitcom’. Then everyone was ‘oh god, we’d all better start making old fashioned sitcoms’ as the whistle blew in comedy writers meetings all over the country. It just comes in fads is the answer and sketch comedy will come bouncing back, it always has done.”
Alexander Armstrong, A Year In Song, St David’s Hall, Wed 27 Jan. Tickets: £25-£35. Info: www.stdavidshall.co.uk