NICK HELM
T here’s an old showbiz adage that all comedians are playing an exaggerated version of themselves. Even if they’re performing the most intimate and personal of material, what you see on stage is a heightened reality. That’s much easier to accept when it’s an obvious ‘character’ up there with a different name and wardrobe to the real person. For the record, though, Nick Helm is as far from the bellowing, aggressive, bombastic and occasionally bullying act you might have seen in the l esh or on TV affairs such as Russell Howard’s Good News or Live at the Apollo.
For one thing, offstage Helm has the gentlest of voices, perhaps as a way of protecting his vocal cords from all that sustained growling, but just as likely because that’s who he really is. ‘People say I shout all the time,’ he says, all hushed. ‘It’s not true. I do a lot of quiet talking; you can’t just have shouting. That would be ridiculous. There’s no longevity to that. So, on this tour, there will be a lot of whispering and talking quietly and sitting down.’
A low-energy Nick Helm might be quite a sight to behold, so accustomed are we to him bounding around, top sometimes off, pointing in an audience member’s face and loudly repeating: ‘d’you like jokes!?’ One thing that the people who design his posters might not especially like is the extra work he’s given them due to his tour’s title: There is Nothing You Can Do to Me That I Haven’t Already Done to Myself. ‘I’ve paraphrased it from Some Kind of Wonderful, one of my favourite i lms when I was growing up,’ Helm reveals. ‘There’s a bully who’s going to get his comeuppance but instead of beating him up they say, “there’s nothing I could do to him that he hasn’t already done to himself”. I always thought it was a nice little insult so I’ve used that. The basic gist of the show is about redemption and acknowledging the past and moving forward and rising from the ashes. It’s about me having a rocky couple of years on a personal level and moving on from that to learn from your mistakes.’
Helm promises songs, poems and some sitting down, but not being able to help himself, there will also be plenty sweating. But will he have a specii c look for the tour? ‘When I was at university, I did a sort-of drama degree and you’d get these group assignments where the i rst thing that was said was “what are we going to wear?” I think it’s better to concentrate on the thing and then decide what to wear. So, I might have a tour haircut, and there will be costumes and stuff: I’m still working it out.’ While fans will know Helm from Edinburgh Fringe shows such as 2011’s Dare to Dream and 2013’s One Man Mega Myth, both of which were nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, he’s also gained a higher proi le through TV. In BBC Three’s Uncle, he played the titular relative, reluctantly taking a socially awkward nephew under his wing before a true bond gels them together. He’s currently hosting his own Dave TV food travelogue show, Eat Your Heart Out with Nick Helm, and he appeared in Channel 4’s Loaded playing Watto, a key member of a tech i rm that suddenly makes an awful lot of money thanks to a terrible smartphone game.
THE
QUIET MAN
Loaded, in particular, dragged Helm i rmly out of his comfort zone. ‘There’s a scene where I ride a bike,’ he recalls seemingly innocently. ‘After I passed my cycling proi ciency at the age of nine or whatever, I was in an accident riding home after that test and I never rode a bike again. But when I was in Loaded, they said “can you ride a bike?”. It turns out that I can. And I did zorbing and had to hang out with a dog and had to take my clothes off for a couple of scenes: I did all these things that normal people wouldn’t have a problem with but I have all these hang-ups. I had to just do it all on camera because I didn’t want to draw attention to that in front of a crew.’ While Helm is grateful for the opportunity to have made TV which has given him extra exposure (Elephant, a short i lm he co-wrote and starred in was nominated for a BAFTA last year), the live stage is where he truly comes alive. Which is not to say that he doesn’t feel a pang of nervous tension before he enters the room, a disposition that may even feed the more intense moments in his live act.
Nick Helm has been stepping out of his
comfort zone on TV recently, but he’s now
back on stage where he belongs. Brian Donaldson talks to the comic about being
less brash in his live act
‘Comedy is quite a crazy thing, and I get nervous because I never know how an audience will react. But in a weird way that’s when I’m good, because you use that energy on stage. I have had great gigs in my life and I have had terrible gigs in my life. I have had great gigs and terrible gigs at the same time. You just never know . . . ’
Nick Helm: There is Nothing You Can Do to Me That I Haven’t Already Done to Myself, Òran Mór, Glasgow, Fri 13 Oct. Eat Your Heart Out with Nick Helm is on Dave, Thu, 8pm.
1 Sep–31 Oct 2017 THE LIST 27