Big interview with Pierre Novellie

Pierre Novellie is currently touring his show You Sit There, I'll Stand Here and preparing to take his next hour, Okay, One More Then Bedtime, to this year's Edinburgh Fringe. His Radio 4 series, Why In The Name Of Pierre Novellie has been recommissioned for a second series and he hosts Audible's new literary panel show, Book Smart. Here he talks to Jay Richardson about his work ethic, how the art form of stand-up is rooted in autism, and his love of The Goons...

How's the tour going? It feels like you're attracting more broadsheet interest...

Yeah, we thought we were being pretty ambitious but we've added extra dates so that's very satisfying. The Guardian finally cracked and came after 10, 15 years, we wore them down. I can now use an actual pull quote.

How do you feel about being praised for your writing over your performance?

Writing's the thing I find easiest. I try to remind myself to be a bit more physically expressive. But I'm not going to be skipping or lunging anytime soon. 

A visual reference point I find really funny and have chosen to emulate is Norm Macdonald's Netflix special. And early Tom Segura. They don't move at all. When Norm suddenly flails an arm, it's so much more powerful as a result. 

Leaping about just isn't me. And I don't understand the criticism. Maybe they think it isn't a choice on my part? But it is, I know what I'm doing. They just don't like it.

You've got more expressive though haven't you?

For the first few years I was visibly enjoying myself on stage. Which people also didn't like. Then I adopted more of a deadpan. And in the last few years, I've tried to get a bit more expressive and move around a bit more. But at the Fringe for example, it's difficult. When stages are a square two metres, somersaults aren't really possible.

My size on loose wooden flooring would be alarming.

You're going back to the Fringe for what, your 11th time? 

This is my 12th solo show and 15th or 16th time because I went as a student. I'm going because of the life developments I discuss in my current show, getting married and moving to the suburbs. Being a comedian in a flat is a very different lifestyle. And unless things change dramatically, this will be the last for a while. Even allowing for the Covid break, 12 hours of stand-up in a row is too much. 

Ed Gamble joked that Covid had locked you into a hell rhythm, touring two Edinburgh shows back-to-back each night. Would you do the Fringe if you were starting now? 

It would be a hard sell. If I'm 22 in this hypothetical scenario, maybe. Because it's like splurging on a holiday and you're reckless. But starting the age I am now? I wouldn't. Without an audience, I couldn't justify the expense. Every year it gets more and more so. Even if the casino never stops.

But you've felt the benefit creatively?

There's no better way. Doing the equivalent dates in a row in a similarly sized venue in London would be an interesting experiment. I don't know if it would sell as well. One advantage of doing the Fringe so many times is that I've established a cadre of people who come. Or at the very least, tell people who can afford the Fringe to come. Nothing else equates to that month in the comedy gym.

What can you tell me about Okay, One More Then Bedtime?

The title's a joke, a reference to it being the 12th one and the hell rhythm. Ed actually messaged saying he was horrified I was doing the Fringe again. One More Before Bedtime suggests something slightly indulgent, unhealthy. But we'll let you stay up and watch another thing. Or eat another thing. You really shouldn't be doing it.

You ought to have a break?

You need to crop rotate. This year, I've got this tour, I've got the Fringe, I've got a big writing project and two or three other writing projects that I'm trying to get into pitchable documents, decent enough that people can say yes or no to them. 

The recommissioned Radio 4 series is another four half-hours of stand-up. A great honour, because it's very, very rare that they let you do that. But that's the equivalent of two Edinburghs. Cleverer people than me do three hours over six years, as opposed to this over-production. But that's the model I'm doing.

You're talking about Oliver Twist though right?

There's always a routine about food and there's going to be a decent chunk of stuff about a sort of midlife crisis, me questioning what is my purpose? I think I'm going to add in quite a detailed set-piece, a framework of two interwoven stories. That's the plan. We'll see if I'm being overly ambitious.

None of this really matters though. A comedy writer was recommending my stuff but in the context of it having no theme or structure. The last few shows have been about worrying about becoming middle-aged and reactionary. The one before was about assisted dying and nihilism. But no one seems to notice, apart from other comedians and maybe one or two critics. So I'm probably wasting my time and should just do jokes in a row, American-style.

What ideas have you got for the next series of Why In The Name Of Pierre Novellie?

I'm considering Japan, pineapples and the Bible. It's got to be similar to the last series but maybe more discursive, where the topics are seemingly random. Finding the structure within a seemingly random topic is what's interesting. 

With [fellow Radio 4 series] In Our Time, it doesn't matter what incredibly niche topic they're covering, there'll be something that makes you think God, that explains something about my daily life. Or, I never thought about that, it makes it relevant. Obscurity doesn't exist if you frame something in the right way.

Tell us about Book Smart, Audible's new literary panel show that you host…

I'm delighted with it, it's a lot of fun. The kind of thing I feel I should be doing, nominally highbrow. I mean, it's not Frasier Crane level. I only throw a few pompous references in. But I like tha

[It was] quite intimidating but it helps that the contestants are all excellent and people I'd worked with. They let me do it in my own style and broadly, were happy with it. So it's very organic, it's not like I'm playing a character or anything.

It's a little experiment. And they're quite a mysterious company, Audible. There were LA guys at the pilot who were very nice and quite keen on the project. Decent production values on YouTube, that's the future now.

The way broadcasting is going ...

Yeah. For some reason it's possible to make a new show for YouTube but not to make any new shows for TV. It doesn't make any sense. But I was delighted when I saw the set, to be doing something high quality.

How do you manage the countless skills a stand-up needs now, editing podcasts, touting yourself on social media etc?

I'm not amazing at it, you know? Along with Glenn Moore and Phil Wang, and, I guess, anyone in their mid-thirties, we're the generation that entered comedy right as the old world was slipping away. When social media was starting very haltingly. I joined the circuit when you'd hear of someone getting a writing job through funny tweets.

 I feel like I've slipped between two cushions. I'm digital native enough to know how to film and edit, it's just not what I signed up for. I thought the old world would survive in a way that I could focus on skills from it, which has advantages and disadvantages. But it hasn't survived in the way I thought. Not at all.

Are you conscious of many fans of you and Glenn Moore’s BudPod podcast in your audiences, do they alter a gig's atmosphere? 

Oh yeah, definitely. Crowds are so group-minded, like a single entity. An audience of 100, with maybe six or eight podcast fans who kind of love you spread throughout, that's enough to easily change the game in your favour. It's like Ribena, you just add a little smidgen to the water. It makes a difference because they've entered into your entire thing in good faith. They're aware of your hinterland and they're not worried.

Most audiences are very worried about who you are. Did he really mean that or was he being silly? Such anxiety is out of the window because the other audience members take their cue from true fans' confidence and trust.

Having been Frank Skinner's tour support and radio and podcast co-host, what have you taken from him?

The main thing with Frank is work ethic and outlook. We'd be well into a tour and he'd still be moving stuff around, trying to get it absolutely perfect, still writing in notebooks. Just real, real craft. It was very inspiring, a good demonstration of holding yourself to high standards. Even if you're very, very famous and the crowd already love you. 

I've inherited sections of Frank's crowd. I was a good opener because I'm an odd act in some ways. Sort of posh sounding, weird French name, South African guy who talks about nerdy things. A messy CV for an audience. 

But Frank's is so variable because he's been so famous for so long and the crowds were so large. Those I picked up in Hull, Halifax or Glasgow might not be the same as in Bristol or Brighton or London, depending on if they became a fan of him in 1992 or 2012. Some became fans through the radio show, who had to discover the stand-up, people in their twenties. 

You were one of his longest, most established co-hosts. Why quit?

This tour would have completely devastated my ability to do it properly. And for these writing projects, the amount of words I have to write is between 100,000 and 140,000. So that, plus getting married, plus the Fringe, Radio 4 … I said to Frank I could do the podcast but I wouldn't be good. It would be indulgent to let me stick around and not really contribute. 

It was a real shame. But there's no way of doing all these things at once.

How does it feel when you see friends such as Phil Wang and George Fouracres suddenly shoot to stardom? Does it give you hope that it only takes one project to transform your career?

Exactly right. Though Phil's career was good from early on, he was immediately on stuff and successful quickly. But George is finally getting his due, he's been so good the entire time. I would be Comfortable suggesting George is in the top five funniest people in the country, easily. 

He's so quick and so unique. Having been in the RSC, they work them like dogs. Playing Falstaff in a suit of armour and padded tunic in 38 degrees to tourists at The Globe twice a day for weeks. Oh man, that's so intense. But it comes through now in his performances. You watch him on SNL and you can just see the years of experience, even in a silly sketch.

You never know what's going to work. Actually, Book Smart might be a good example. One of the guys in charge, an American executive, saw me doing a Fringe show in Monkey Barrel Three when the pipes burst at the back of the room. It started flooding and I improvised around it for 25 minutes. We found a plumber in the audience and it was a whole spontaneous, crazy, unplannable thing. Years ago. 

But he was so impressed he remembered. So you never know who's in the room. Which is infuriating. I would really love some data I could plan my life with.

With your international background, do you have international aspirations?

If anyone's going to offer me work, I'll take it if it's a cool job. But even in an Anglophone country, it's not easy to gig because so much comedy is culturally specific. I'm less culturally specific than say, Peter Kay. I'm able to do tour shows in the Netherlands. And I've always done well when I've gigged in Norway, Estonia, Denmark. Their English is completely fluent. 

But they have less idea about what's an unusual or silly word. Idioms and metaphors are out the window. It's harder but I am able to do it, partly because of my international background.

Trevor Noah has made it easier to tell Americans about South Africa. But there's too much information to process with me. They don't know how the Isle of Man [where Novellie grew up] relates to London. And with my name being French, it's just a hat on a hat on a hat. I'd have to change my name to … I don't know, Arthur Britain.

I'd love to do more with the US in terms of writing though. Because you can work from anywhere now. And they actually make stuff, with money crucially.  

When you and Phil were in the Cambridge Footlights, why did the focus shift from sketch to stand-up?

Before our generation, there were almost no Footlights stand-ups. Simon Bird did it for a bit …

Mark Watson I guess ...

Tim Key too, you could argue. But that's poems and there's more going on there. Very few though, it just didn't really happen. 

And then suddenly there was a spate. I think it was the dominance of stand-up as a form filtering through and the complete death of TV sketch comedy in the UK. For so long The Footlights were doing sketch in the same way they always did. But then you just couldn't make any money from it. And no-one was making it until SNL UK, which hopefully changes things.

In your book Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things?, you talk about being really last-minute with essays. But now you follow Graham Greene's writing method?

Yes, so you write 500 words a day, no less but also no more. Even if you're on a hot streak, you're enjoying yourself, you have to make yourself stop mid-sentence. Even if you think it could be a 3000-word day. Because you'll be frustrated but excited to get back to it. You'll be thinking about it all day. You'll be chewing it over in a way that you wouldn't if you were exhausted and just thought, that's done. Fucking hell, thank God. 

Then, when you get back to it the next day as a routine, you'll be excited and positive and that becomes a virtuous cycle. And 500 words a day is not a crazy amount. But it's also two novels a year, a lot of output. That's the magic of it. I used to write 5,000 words a day, give myself a month off. Get completely out of the habit, lose trains of thought and it would be fossilising work in a really unhelpful way.

You've said that you'd like to give your book to Jerry Seinfeld. Do you try to be as systematic as him with stand-up?

Yes. If you're in the business of producing things, you need a production line of some kind. And it doesn't mean you don't get inspired. But you can't be some aristocrat in a hammock writing when you feel like it. You've got deadlines and you've got to make a living. You need stuff pumping out all the time in some form. 

That doesn't mean I'm very good at it. Every so often, in my Edinburgh shows, I will break one of my own rules, I'll do something different. But for good reason because I understand the structure in the first place. It's about your own clarity for every single decision and the audience's clarity as to what the hell you're talking about. 

Despite this planning and thinking obsessively, the best lines come out of nowhere, improvised on stage. Or really come together through the adrenaline of the moment. Those are gifts, you can't plan for those. Both things are going on at the same time and both feed each other.

How do you feel when big stand-up names like Seinfeld, Stewart Lee and James Acaster suggest they might be autistic? Or indeed, have been diagnosed?

I'm very pleased when anyone gets diagnosed, just because I know from personal experience how much more sense it's making of their lives and how useful it is. They will have had worse lives if they haven't been diagnosed, I'm pretty confident of that. Especially if they're comedians. And it's going to help the general public have a better understanding of what it can be like.

Presumably your book prompted a few conversations?

Yes, I've helped a few people realise they were autistic and some are comedians. They'll ask about resources, they'll have questions. But it's always down to them figuring it out, as opposed to anything I could diagnose them with.

Beyond being endemic in stand-up, you've suggested that autism might even be the artform's origin. Can you explain?

Yes, it's in the constant observing of human behaviour and the ability to comment on it. Because you've had to observe it in order to try and imitate normal social mores. The very act of noticing these things that other people have noticed unconsciously but never quite managed to articulate is downstream of all kinds of types of masking and trying to use logic to understand the world instead of intuitively understanding. 

Deliberate control over facial expressions and things like that, as opposed to instinctive control. There's a difference between pulling faces on stage by decision each time and proper acting, where you sort of become the person, and you're not thinking about your face.

And it's in those odd little leaps of logic that wouldn't occur to other people. It's that awful phrase, a sideways glance. Because it's from a perspective that only one to three per cent of the population have.

Then there's the obsessive working, the repetition. You're doing the same set but to different audiences, honing it, building this little machine. Not talking to anyone all day and then being hyper-expressive in a very controlled environment where no-one can interrupt you and there are set rules. It all fits.

Did you fear being labelled an 'autistic comedian' if you talked about it again in your current show?

It wasn't relevant. And also, I thought that the kind of people who will expect me to talk about it already know I'm autistic, so they should be able to insert the autism as they watch. Do I really have to say I was nervous about moving to the suburbs and meeting new people because of the autism? 

As you say, I didn't want it to become the topic I talk about. That's why the book exists. The comedy I do is inherently autistic because I'm autistic and I'm doing it. It can't not be autistic.

How do you find writing for other acts?

I do it less and less as my own awful deadlines loom. But I still do consulting, where someone will maybe show me their Fringe show in an early form and ask what do I reckon? And it's just much easier from the outside to say, 'oh, that seems unsympathetic because of the way you dress, you seem like maybe you're from high society. People worry you're being mean and that's why that's not working'. It's like unpicking a little puzzle. 

It's much easier for other people than yourself. Because you have to have such a third person view of your own appearance, voice, the way you carry yourself, what cultural assumptions are being made when you first appear on stage. 

Beyond a heckler spotting you were autistic, have you had blind spots?

Absolutely. For my first three Fringe shows, I just wore whatever I was wearing that day on stage, which was a terrible, terrible decision, at least with my act and vibe. The clowns are good with this stuff, high status and low status. I thought I was a low-status clown because I didn't understand how the world worked, I was constantly tripping over my shoelaces, getting frustrated and annoyed. 

And I can't remember who it was, it might have been Stuart Goldsmith, who said no, you're a high status clown. You're tall, you sound posh and you have a deep voice. All the cultural signs of being Basil Fawlty, head of the hotel. He's still a clown, still ridiculous. But he's in charge. Whereas Manuel is ridiculous but he's a waiter. He's not in charge and he's low status.

That was huge because I understood what the crowd were presuming about me. They're not neutral. Consciously or unconsciously, they're biased, everyone is. And you need to be able to roll with that and understand it. Otherwise, you'll always be making mistakes in writing or presentation.

What changed?

After my 2017 show, I've deliberately worn high status clothing that is slightly undermined by being a bit stupid. Like a velvet jacket. But that's too cool now Daniel Craig wears them, that's been ruined. It's not silly enough. 

Now I wear a fairly generic suit but with a hideous tie. Or a slightly odd suit where it's maybe slightly too light blue, like a weird preacher's suit. Just a tiny bit off, suggesting the tiniest amount of oddness. Creating a little touch of suspicion.

Do you extend that to language, balancing your erudition with foolishness?

I only tone down the language when a critical mass of people have no idea what the word means. I had that problem with my KFC routine and the word 'suffused'. Some audiences understand it or get it from the context. But some really stick on it, wonder what it means and just unplug immediately. 

I only kept it in because it wasn't load-bearing. It was just a fun, silly elaborate word to use in the midst of an otherwise ongoing punchline. You can still use long words and be a sort of moron. Or not understand something. Or be gross. The contrast is fun, talking in a really highfalutin way about, say, public toilets.

Would you like broader appeal?

It's not up to you, you don't really get to choose your act. The more you choose, the more artificial it is, the more stressful because you're constantly having to come up with ideas in a different frame of mind to your own and be a bit unnatural. That's much harder. More like being a playwright, this weird fiction where it's you but it's not you. 

The fact is, if I'm naturally throwing in words like 'suffused', then it's goodbye arenas.

I really like what Stewart Lee does, where he does Leicester Square Theatre many, many times in a row because it keeps that closeness. It's a big room but any bigger and you wouldn't really be able to see him. It's a close-up artform.

Again, that Norm Macdonald Netflix special. He doesn't really move at all but he's got overgrown, old man eyebrows that he hasn't trimmed. And he's using just one, here and there, to get huge laughs. Enhanced expressions that he wouldn't be able to do if he was leaping around or in an arena. Cameras might show it on the Jumbotron. But it's not the same.

You grew up film-obsessed. Have you got a screenplay?

I've got a couple of ideas, including one I'll be working on this year with a friend, just to see if there's something in it. A family film idea we came up with many years ago. And I've got a parody idea I think would work really well that I need to somehow find time to sit and sketch out. I've never done that before, so that's intimidating. I don't really have a clue what I'm doing. 

You didn't fancy the intermediary step of a sitcom?

That's always being pitched. But it's hard to get stuff made. The old ladder doesn't exist. It took me nine years to get a single guest appearance on Radio 4 when I'd been on television five times. It's completely random. 

There are weird blocks. But then the pipe suddenly opens. The world is upside down. There's no progression where you do your sketch show on the radio, then you do a sketch show on television. All of that is in the toilet.

Were Radio 4 unaware of your enduring love of The Goons?

I think that's precisely what frightened them off for years.

How did they capture your imagination as a kid?

The Goons admitted the influence of cartoons on them and it's very cartoon-like. People explode, get fired into the air and thrown off cliffs, lots of physical stuff happening. There's very clever wordplay but also very silly voices and it's kind of endlessly repeatable. You don't have to know who the new characters are because it's the same characters in different guises. Which is so unusual, it's almost like Commedia dell'arte. You don't see it done really. 

The Mighty Boosh came close. They're in a zoo, now they're in a band. You love the characters because of their personalities and the dynamics, you don't really care about the setting. The Carry On films is the only other example I can think of. So that was very appealing. And it was theatre of the mind, you could picture it.

Also, I knew my dad and his brother listened to The Goons on the World Service from South Africa when they were kids. So it was endorsed. I trusted their taste because my dad introduced me to The Pink Panther. 

Anytime an adult admits that something silly is funny, you think well, it must be powerful and good because it's managed to make grown-ups laugh. 

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Published: 13 Apr 2026