It\u2019s interview season again and I have to pack my bags and peddle my ass and ponce off to pastures new, this time to Norway to pimp a new production of Spamalot.<\/em>\u00a0 I actually love going to places I have never been before and I treasure visits to Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Trieste, Malmo and Stockholm. \u00a0The Producers always treat me well and the casts are fun to meet as the play attracts actors who love Python, and because of the nature of the piece there is always a terrific spirit amongst them.\u00a0 It\u00a0 is exciting to visit a new city and to hear the play in a new language, and though my Norwegian is a little rusty, I am looking forward to Oslo, though I am concerned that \u201cNi\u201d actually means \u201cNine\u201d in Norwegian and there is a danger of The Knights of Ni meaning something.\u00a0\u00a0 I vaguely wonder whether I should bother Michael Palin with this.<\/p>\n The only problem with showing up for an opening is that the Producers lean on my good nature (your what Eric?)<\/em> and I have to become a walking billboard, ready talk to anyone they can cram into a hotel room for a day. \u00a0Malmo was a record eighteen and I could barely speak by the end of it.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to maintain one\u2019s human kindness under such a relentless barrage of questioning, and I have been known to grow testy, far from the saintly character both of you who read this blog know me to be, \u00a0but I recognize that it is part of the job. \u00a0We want the audience to come along and enjoy themselves and if this means I have to answer another hundred more Python questions then so be it.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mind radio interviews as I\u2019m embarrassingly good at the glib sound bite, and telly doesn\u2019t worry me at all, since I have no idea what I am going to say and so it\u2019s really a form of improv.\u00a0 Morning TV can be especially fun as the hosts are dodging between breaking news and weather and there is always something to laugh at.\u00a0\u00a0 The late night shows can also be amusing and I usually get off one or two good lines, though the worst thing about them is the pre-interview.\u00a0 To make sure the host doesn\u2019t look like a twat, a minion calls a day or so beforehand, and interviews you so they can write up some intelligent questions for their employer to ask on TV.\u00a0\u00a0 My problem, which I always point out, is that if I say something funny in the pre-interview I will never say it on air.\u00a0 Not deliberately, I just won\u2019t remember what I said, so I try to be very unfunny in the pre-interview, because if they stick to a script on the show it feels like being in the middle of a badly rehearsed play where you are unsure of your lines, and the host keeps looking at you expectantly to say that funny thing you said four days ago to their minion, which by now you have completely forgotten.<\/p>\n The very best interviewers, John Stewart or Craig Ferguson, invariably throw away the prepared line of questioning and go right off on a tangent.\u00a0 They thrive on this and both are brilliant at it and I love it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a kind of intellectual ping pong, and they are always the most hilarious interviews, since neither of us has a clue what we are going to say.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you going to do next?\u201d John Stewart asked me once.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to become a rap artist\u201d\u00a0 I said (What?<\/em> Where did that come from?)<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will you call yourself?\u201d he said, taking a swig of water.<\/p>\n \u201cMuff Daddy\u201d I said and watched him spit his drink out.<\/p>\n Jimmy Fallon is also another good comic who loves to go off book.<\/p>\n Print interviews are far more worrying.\u00a0 To begin with, most print journalists seem to come in with the story already in their heads, and your job is just to supply the quotes.\u00a0 So for instance you do a story with the Daily Quail (name changed to avoid embarrassment) which is supposed to be about Spamalot<\/em> and the story comes out about how you are at war with John Cleese.<\/p>\n The hardest interviewers are the secret Python geeks.\u00a0 They come in with the hope that one day the Pythons will reunite and like the Arthurian legend rise up and return.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes they seem to feel that I<\/em> have managed to break up the group, because of the success of Spamalot, and even when I point out to them that Python has done nothing for thirty years<\/em>, despite several attempts on my part to seduce them back into a film and a tour, they are still vaguely resentful of me.\u00a0\u00a0 So I don\u2019t like doing newspaper interviews and I avoid them altogether in the UK.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather be on telly or radio where if I say something funny or ironic it can be seen as such. \u00a0Abroad though is a different country, and I do do print, with the added tedium of having to wait for the question to be translated into English, and my reply translated back into Flemish or Catalan or whatever.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am looking forward to the Paris opening of Spamalot<\/em> in January, for my French has become a lot more fluent this summer, and I aim to bewilder French interviewers with my weird version of a Provencal accent.<\/p>\n If you still want your Spamalot in English then you may be pleased to hear that the wonderful Christopher Luscombe production of Spamalot<\/em> which ran so successfully at The Harold Pinter Theater<\/em> this summer and garnished me<\/em> great reviews for his<\/em> hard work is coming back again at The Playhouse<\/em> from November 12th<\/sup> through April.\u00a0 If you intend to go at Christmas time do book early as Spamalot<\/em> is now firmly established as an alternative Panto in the UK, having smashed Box Office records last year at Brighton, and doing really well the year before in Birmingham.<\/p>\n And for regular readers of this blog you may be pleased to know that every now and again if I write something I think funny I send it to The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em>, and this month I submitted another piece that they\u2019ve accepted.\u00a0 It will be in Shouts and Murmurs,<\/em> on September 17th<\/sup> and is called In Me Own Words, The Rock and Roll Memoirs of Eff \u201cStiffie\u201d Steffham.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s interview season again and I have to pack my bags and peddle my ass and ponce off to pastures new, this time to Norway to pimp a new production of Spamalot.\u00a0 I actually love going to places I have never been before and I treasure visits to Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Trieste, Malmo 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