list.co.uk/festival Liam Williams | FESTIVAL FEATURES
FIRED UP
After a hugely successful Fringe 2014, Liam Williams is back to set the festival alight. Brian Donaldson hears from a stand-up with lofty literary ambitions
and one big deadline to meet
D avid O’Doherty used to have a routine about being the third most-searched David O’Doherty on Google. Liam Williams is experiencing that exact same problem with two of his own namesakes. ‘There’s a rugby player and a boxer who have both helped me break my self-Googling habit because in recent years they’ve become much more famous than me,’ the Yorkshire stand-up notes. ‘So it can be a bit depressing just to look at my own name. I’m still vaguely toying with the idea of having a reality show called The Liam Williams, Liam Williams and Liam Williams Show. Perhaps it could have a chat show format or maybe we’d try each other’s disciplines?’.
Williams has been one-third of the Sheeps sketch team for some time now, and they’re back again this year, on the tiny stage at the Cellar Monkey. ‘Compared to previous Sheeps shows, it’ll be pretty light on props,’ he says. ‘But we’re committed to doing a satirical and topical show with a Sheeps spin on it.’ That self-same venue, somewhat off the Old Town / New Town beaten Fringe track, also housed Williams for last year’s Capitalism, an hour which earned him deservedly strong reviews and an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination. ‘Burning an efi gy on a i re is a very weird thing
to do’ On at least one occasion, three critics were in the room. In such a tight space (1980s estate agents would call it ‘compact and bijou’) where both act and audience can spy the whites of one another’s eyes, being party to that amount of notepad-turning and critical glare must be a little disconcerting? ‘When you know there are people in the room, there can be a strange phenomenon of you i ltering the show through what you imagine they’re thinking. I’m trying to stay quite clear-headed and zen. I’m still meditating, though not so much. All that stuff has become a bit fashionable and a little bit embarrassing so I try not to bang on about it. I used to be prone to getting angry and anxious, so whenever I feel that coming on, I’m much better at going, “why is this happening, then?” and taking myself off to one side and having a word. Which you can’t always do on stage; there, I just try to tell the audience what’s going on and get them involved in my private fears.’
What he’s not overly keen on revealing at this stage of his Fringe build-up (it’s early July when we talk), is too much about his new show, Boni re Night. ‘I don’t want to give away all my jokes, but there’s a bit about the fact that we’re celebrating a failed revolution and the real anti-Catholic feeling in there. It’s a very weird thing to do to burn an efi gy 6–13 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 13