Lockdown comedy star Mark Watson thrilled to go live again
After a year-and-a-half off the road, comedy is back. Theatres and arts centres are being filled with laughter as stand-up returns. Comedian, author and sports pundit Mark Watson is thrilled as he brings satire and observational comedy back to the live arena.
His new show This Can’t Be It is inspired by taking a life expectancy test using an app on his phone and discovering he could expect to reach 78: in other words, he’s just over halfway to, as it were, the finish line.
And so in local venues, Watson will ruminate on what we should be doing with our time on earth, and how can we do it better? Watson has made a lot of strides towards happiness and fulfillment over the past few years. But there’s one problem left: and it really is a big one.
“It’s been a bit of an odd path to this show because I’d almost finished writing it when the pandemic landed,” he says. “What it was originally meant to be about was the fact I’d just turned 40 last year a few weeks before lockdown began, there was a night when I couldn’t get to sleep and I started thinking about how short life is, for no particular reason. I downloaded an app which predicts your life expectancy.”
The result was 78.
“Of course these things are nonsense but it did make me think ‘If I’m basically through just over half my life what am I going to do to make the most of it?’ That was the inspiration and the original theme of the show, then obviously everything that has happened has made us all think a lot more about how frighteningly brief life can be. It’s been weird trying to grapple with the idea of just that at the time when I’d got to this point and was thinking ‘Right, what am I going to do with life?’ and thinking about making myself explore the things I wanted to make more of my life, it was the moment when we stopped doing anything. That’s been my year and a half and this show is a product of it.”
That doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom, however. Watson had a pretty lively lockdown. With Tim Key and Alex Horne, he created the game ‘No More Jockeys’ which has now had more than 2 million YouTube views and found a rabid cult following. He published his most critically acclaimed book to date, ‘Contacts’, and wrote another, non-fiction, for release this year. His show is also jam-packed with jokes.
“It’s very far from doom and gloom really because it’s still a show with a lot of jokes. I’ve always had kind of big themes in my shows before but I never let that get in the way of having a good time. At the end of the day people want to be entertained and aren’t necessarily coming to see me solve the mystery of existence.”
Watson addresses themes of happiness and fulfilment and what that actually means.
“You’d think it would be the absence of worries - not having to worry about money or relationships for example - but without some sort of struggle I suppose life is kind of pointless. It’s all a bit flat. I’m still working on this, like anyone, but I think it’s to do with being completely at home in who you are, just feeling like the best version of yourself. These days they call it ‘living your best life’ and that has become quite a cliche but I see what people mean by it. You’re happiest when you’re definitely the person you’re meant to be. I think a lot of the time we’re not that good at doing that because there are so many pressures on you to earn money or achieve things in your job, there’s lots of things that come between you being fully yourself. But as you start to get older you realise there’s no time to mess about. You’ve got to try and pursue the stuff that makes you feel most alive.”
The question that poses is obvious: What things in life does he find to be the most fulfilling?
“Another good question. I love the work that I do for a start - not just stand-up but writing and all the stuff I do. I’m lucky to have a job where I can be creatively fulfilled, express myself and do something I enjoy. I never lose sight of the fact that I’m very lucky to earn a living out of something that actually makes me happy, although I have struggled over the past year like everyone in my field. Work takes up a lot of your time and if it’s not something you enjoy it’s quite depressing to think you could be spending large chunks of your life not enjoying it but just getting through it to the good bits. I find fulfilment in the work I do and obviously being with my kids, [laughs] although not always. There’s lots of stuff I enjoy, like running and watching football and things, but to bring it all under one heading: You’ve only got one life and I want to live as much of my life as I can doing stuff I actively enjoy rather than stuff I’ve got to get out of the way to get to something else. The more I can achieve that, the more fulfilled I am.”
Watson is a happy tourer. The future national treasure had been a multi-award winner here and in Australia (a country we were once allowed to visit) and is a very familiar voice on Radio 4, where his series ‘Mark Watson Talks About A Bit Of Life’ has been one of the station’s most popular fixtures since 2007. He has most recently been working on a film project with Toni Collette and Studio Canal (while the rights to his graphic novel ‘Dan And Sam’ remain in the hands of Universal). He’s happy on the road and is looking forward to a different pace, having kept incredibly busy during lockdown.
“I did a huge amount of stuff. While lockdown could have been unfulfilling for comedians, it’s fair to say I was busier than most. I just keep myself creatively active. I did lots of online stuff, gigs on Zoom and other platforms. I did 24-hour long streams for charity three times. People said online stuff wouldn’t work at all or it would be massively alienating, and at first it was hard to find ways to do it.
“Audiences needed to get used to seeing stuff in little windows and we had to get used to building those communities, but once we got used to it on both sides it was a lot more fun than I thought it’d be. I also did shows in parks and different green spaces; anywhere you could get a licence to have 250 cars pull up to watch you perform, which is not everywhere.
“Throughout last year I found different ways to do the stuff I do and while I’ve never been much of a tech-savvy person there are a lot of plusses. There are a lot of people who consume comedy in that way because they can’t get to live shows so I found I was reaching a different audience to usual. That was definitely a massive plus. The challenge now is working out how to serve both audiences, having an online component whilst bringing things back to life in theatres.”
He didn’t master any new skills. There was no incentive to learn Japanese, master the art of carpentry or take up indoor marathon running.
“To be honest no because I was still trying to do all the work that I could. I did very little banana bread making or any of that business. I did do quite a bit of home schooling, like everyone, so I suppose you could say I reluctantly learned the skill of teaching. And I did learn quite a bit about parenting because I spent more time with the kids than normal. I also suppose I got a bit better at cooking, just because I had to, but I felt like I was running just to stand still, as they say. I wasn’t someone who spent six hours making their own linguine.”
He believes audiences are craving live performance now more than ever.
“That’s definitely been my experience. The first few shows back I’ve done I’ve felt there’s a renewed appreciation, and it’s on both sides. Audiences are very alive and excited because they’ve been starved of this for so long but performers are also really energised.
“I never took it for granted but obviously when you’re in a groove and doing it for that long you don’t really think about it. Then when it’s taken away for this long you are hungry for it again. It feels like there’s a bit of magic in the shows and on both sides of the stage because we’re lucky to have it back.”
