So how did it all begin for Nick Doody?
I started in comedy as a student. I was 19 years old, it was the first week of university and I wrote a sketch with a guy I didn’t know for the campus comedy club, then he bottled it and I ended up roping someone else in. But the only thing that got a laugh was an ad lib of mine, and everyone else was doing stand-up, so I thought I’d do that next time and I was hooked.
Is it true you were ‘headhunted’ as a student by legendary comic Bill Hicks?
I wasn’t exactly headhunted, no. I did an interview for a student paper with him and we just ended up getting on really well. I’d just started stand-up at this point and he invited me to support him. He’s like a guru to most comedians. Bear in mind, because he was still alive, he didn’t have that cult status. Yeah, he was the best comic I’d ever seen, and I still think he is up there to this day. I know ‘best’ is a sweeping statement but I think he’s still the most impressive.
What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given?
Try and follow a hard right punch through with the elbow.
So, it’s all about the fighting, eh?
That’s a huge question to just spring on someone! I don’t know. It might be something about bear attacks which I’ve never put into practice. I won’t know until I’m attacked by a bear – then it’ll be, ‘oh yeah, that was really good advice’.
What’s the fewest words you’ve ever said to make someone laugh?
That probably wouldn’t even be a word – more a noise.
You’re not going to break wind are you?
You probably can’t even print this, but it goes: ‘heugh’ (sounds a bit like a disinterested fox). That was it. It was the punchline of a private joke between me and my girlfriend.
Do audiences change around the world?
Definitely. I did a gig in French a few weeks ago. It was terrifying. I didn’t even prepare for it. It was something called the Altitude Festival in the French Alps and I thought the idea was to do Franglais – a mixture of English and French – but they advertised it as ‘the French comics will perform in English and the English comics will perform in French’. They just didn’t tell us. So I arrived and had a couple of hours to prepare – which I spent sleeping – then I just translated what I could of my act into French.
How’d it go?
You just have to do the best you can. It’s not a literal linguistic translation, one to the other, but putting the idea across as comedically as you can. Sometimes you change the joke because in French it works better to emphasise different things.
How was the crowd?
It went really well. I was heckled, but it was good natured.
What’s the best heckle you’ve ever had?
A friend of mine recently reminded me of an appalling heckle at a Christmas gig I did in Cambridge, England. I walked out in front of what was essentially a Christmas party and from the moment I stepped on stage, a party of 40 people started yelling: ‘Hingey! Hingey!’ I found out afterwards it was because I apparently looked a bit like their friend Mark Hinge, or Hingey.
How do you respond to that?
There’s no possible retort. I’m being heckled by 40 people all at once for something I not only have no control over, but no knowledge of. It was just so baffling. They reacted to everything I said with puzzlement, as if they were thinking, ‘that’s not the sort of thing Hingey would say’. It was like someone had ordered a Hingey-a-gram and the person who turned up was crap. ‘He doesn’t sound anything like him,’ they thought. ‘That’s not what Hingey thinks about the invasion of Iraq.’
Will you change your act for a UAE audience?
I don’t know. Do I have to? I don’t go out of my way to rile a crowd. I suppose you could call that self-censorship. My comedy tends to be from my opinions. I have a reputation for being more political than I think I am.
So, Hingey, what’s the first thing you’ll do when you get to Abu Dhabi, bearing in mind that we have camels to ride?
Ooooh, camels! I’ve never been to the Middle East, so I’m more curious than anything else. I would imagine I would just try and get some sleep, but it sounds like there’s fun to be had.
Nick Doody plays Heroes as part of the Laughter Factory on May 12, 9pm. Tickets are available from www.timouttickets.com for Dhs115.
