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Rebel
with a cause Having just left his teens behind, Jack Whitehall has packed loads into his TV CV. He tells Julian Hall how he’ll avoid being just another media twat
G iven the small screen and stage poise of Jack Whitehall, it’s hard to believe that this bright young thing of comedy still lives at home with his parents. This startling fact will be part of his debut solo Fringe show, Nearly Rebellious. ‘In some ways I’m quite mature,’ insists the 20-year-old star of Big Brother’s Big Mouth and The TNT Show. ‘I’m happy to go out and work full-time but the thought of dealing with fabric conditioner scares me.’
His domestic bliss came after attempts to strike out on his own. ‘The show is broadly about rebellion, and my experience of coming from quite a smothered background and trying to break away from that. For the most part I failed and found myself asking why I wanted to rebel.’ It was a mild kind of resistance that led Whitehall to his first Edinburgh show. Three years ago, he and some friends wanted to put on a Fringe show but their drama teacher warned against it. ‘He told us it was a total waste of time but we ignored him, found some money, saw loads of other shows and had the best month of our lives.’ The Fringe spirit kindled, Whitehall has been determined to pick the right time to make his mark with a solo show. On the one hand he didn’t want to do it too early in his stand-up career, and on the other he didn’t want to let TV commitments stop him. Having built up his ‘TV CV’, Whitehall realises that some of his Fringe fans will be unaware that stand-up was his first love. ‘I can only imagine I’d be thinking, “Let’s see if this dickhead can do stand-up”. To some, it will seem like a TV presenter trying his hand at stand-up, when in fact it’s the other way around.’
TV exposure means there will inevitably be an expectation that Whitehall will make his celebrity status part of his show. ‘I don’t want to be self-referential or talk about celebrity in the same way that Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand do, although there is one point where I have a go at George Lamb for having a really attractive girlfriend.’ The relative infancy of his telly career may help him avoid too much pigeon-holing but, while youth may be on his side, Whitehall says he finds himself straining at the leash to stay young and ‘be a normal person rather than some media twat’.
Jack Whitehall, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 9–30 Aug (not 11, 18, 25), 7.15pm, £10–£11.50 (£8.50–£10). Previews until 8 Aug, £5.
Breast in show Among the best new sketch acts around, WitTank are more than just a dodgy pun. Brian Donaldson hears how they are licking the opposition
When you’re gathering up your all-shiny new comedy group, a few key questions have to be posed. Do we go for silly or scary sketches? How many members are too many? And most crucially of all, what the hell do we call ourselves? Whatever you may think of WitTank as a name (and it does serve the dual purpose of being a ‘clever’ pun while making you think of a container of humour), the Durham team could have landed themselves with a far worse moniker. ‘Some of them really were rubbish,’ recalls original WitTanker, Naz Osmanoglu. ‘When we first started no one was quite sure who everyone else was. Mark thought Kieran was Russian for the first six months because he didn’t say anything and had an odd face and we came up with lots of bad names.’ One of which was Yehudi Did It which thankfully didn’t quite make the cut. ‘Another was something horrific like Scombroidal Mackerel and was eventually rejected. And so we thought we’ll go with, well, a tit joke and it suited us for the first few years.’
As with many good things, WitTank arose out of defeat. After Durham Revue’s round of rehearsals four years ago, several of those who would end up as part of the WitTank family were handed their rejection slips. ‘Initially, it was born out of failure,’ recalls Kieran Boyd. ‘Myself, Naz and Mark didn’t get through, but were informed that a group was set up in opposition to the Revue every year though they never seemed to last.’
WitTank though, were in it for the long run and, as Osmanoglu insists, ‘we were fierce rivals for the first few years because WitTank became more popular than the Revue.’ Certainly on the evidence of both group’s 2008 Fringe shows, WitTank outshone their rivals for innovation, performance and material, with routines about towels and Princess Diana all hitting their target. This year the quartet, completed by Guy Corbett (angry, geeky) and Mark Cooper-Jones (intelligent, rude), will also be flexing their comedic muscles with a stand-up show under the banner of their club, Comedy Baby. Tawdry name or not, it’s one you’ll be hearing more of very soon. ■ Comedy Baby, The Rowan Caves, 226 0000, 8–29 Aug (not 18, 26), 1pm, free; WitTank, The Caves, 208 0882, 8–30 Aug (not 18), 5.30pm, £8 (£7). Previews 6 & 7 Aug, £4 (£3.50).
26 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 6–13 Aug 2009