COMEDY: Sean Lock takes time out from writing 'masterpiece' for stand-up in Liverpool

Mar 7 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

IT’S difficult to believe but the comedian Sean Lock – the spectacle-wearing, slightly nerdy-looking one on numerous TV panel shows – was once a strapping building site worker.

“I was a lot bigger then, nearly 16 stone,” he says. “I was a big, strong lad. It was mostly muscle, although I did have a fry-up every morning so there was a bit of fat.

“I have not weighed myself for a while but I know I am not the great hulking figure I once was.”

It was the change of occupation that made the difference.

Back then, Lock was on a building site on the Isle of Dogs putting in concrete floors.

“The wind used to come up the Thames and it was freezing cold.

“Then I did my first paying gig as a comedian at a pub in Stoke Newington for £15 and while it went badly I got through it. At the same time, I was earning £35 a day laying floors.

“I worked out that in 20 minutes I got nearly half a day’s pay. It was then that I started considering it as a possible alternative to freezing my what-nots off.”

Lock did decide to try his luck on the comedy circuit, and is one of the few to make it to the big time. By 2000, he had been named best live act in the British Comedy Awards and been nominated for a Perrier.

He has gone on to create a good living on radio and television, was given his own shows, wrote and appeared in his sitcom 15 Storeys High and became a regular on panel games like QI, Have I Got News For You and 8 out of 10 Cats where he was a regular team captain.

Now he is heading for Liverpool as part of the second leg of a massive tour, appearing at the Philharmonic Hall on April 12.

It is his first visit to Liverpool in four years, although he had difficulty in recalling where his last gig was: “It wasn’t The Neptune but like a large, church-type council meeting hall,” he recalls vaguely. I offer him a few suggestions but, no, he says, it wasn't there.

It’s hardly surprising as Lock has been touring for ever it seems, 10 years before he got his television break and continuously since then. “It’s what I do for a living,” he explains. “I am not going to say I am going to do a Tommy Copper and die on stage, but the only way to do your job is keep doing it, otherwise you lose the knack.”

Born in Woking, Surrey, (“Paul Weller’s home”) it was 1988 when living in London he discovered the alternative comedy scene. “You could get in a club for a couple of quid and after a few visits I thought I would have a go at it. I had never done anything like it before but there were these open mic sessions and I did have a go.

“The country was in the grip of Thatcher’s evil vice at the time and there was not a lot of work around so I fell into the perfect job for a feckless idiot like me. You didn’t have to get up in the morning, just make up stupid jokes. I didn’t treat it as a career at first, just a fantastic lifestyle which involved very little effort or pain on my part.”

Many would rather have their fingernails pulled out than stand in front of an audience and tell jokes. But joke-telling is only painful if you are not very good at it, says Lock. “It’s the ones who are not good at it who I admire, the ones who keep going. I won't name names but they are the comedians I have respect for.”

Lock never had any training for his stand-up work. “Some people run stand-up classes but I don’t know how they can teach you. I am just one of those smart alecs who think they can do it.

“I have always wanted more than my fair share of attention. I am not saying that people would say ‘come and meet my mate, he’s a right character’ – something inside you dies when you hear that – but I have always been a fairly mouthy, cocky bloke, even if that does not describe me flatteringly.”

The spectacles he began wearing when he started stand-up so he could see everyone, but dropped them for a while “because I thought I didn’t look as funny”.

But, realising he needed them to see who was heckling him, they came back again.

Currently he is writing a commissioned film script for Channel Four about comedians. “They have been badly represented in the media, in films and plays. The lazy stereotype is of a bitter, twisted old hack who thinks time has passed him by or a ruthless viscous comic who walks over anyone to get to the top. There is far more to them than that, and there is a gap there.”

The untitled script, he assures me, is “virtually a masterpiece” with just a few full stops to be added. But he doubts that it will provide a leading role for himself. “Films get made because they have film stars in them,” he explains sadly.

* SEAN LOCK is at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on April 12.