Jack Docherty picks his comedy favourites

Scot Squad and Absolutely star Jack Docherty is at the Edinburgh Fringe from Wednesday performing David Bowie And Me: Parallel Lives – about his teenage years, first love, hedonism and why you should always meet your heroes –  at the Gilded Balloon Teviot. Here he talks about his comedy favourites.

Mike Birbiglia: Sleepwalk With Me

I’ve always loved stumbling across stuff. About 10 years ago, me and my wife Kate were strolling in NYC and chanced upon the Bleecker Street Theatre. This show was about to start, so we headed in and I was just transfixed.

His voice, delivery, poise; hypnotic. It was a big factor in my return to performing after a ten-year break. I’d never done a solo show and I found his mix of stand-up and storytelling so inspiring that it got me up off my arse and back live. There’s a movie version where he flows seamlessly in and out of scenes in a pre-Fleabaggy way. Not as good as the live show but still worth checking out.

Vic & Bob at Just For Laughs Montreal

Vic and Bob are the best of my generation. They changed so much, inspired so many comedians. You can see a whole host of influences in their performances and yet they’re still utterly unique.

It must have been around 1990, and a bunch of us were out in Montreal for the festival. Vic and Bob did a try-out performance in one of the smaller venues before the TV taping. They didn’t change a single reference on account of the Canadian audience, not a word; they were hilariously, heroically uncompromising.

And what’s more, they didn’t seem even slightly bothered that they were greeted with baffled silence apart from eight of us Brits sitting at the back pissing ourselves.

Theatre De Complicite: A Minute Too Late

I was part of a group called The Bodgers in the 1980s and we were shortlisted for the Perrier award a couple of years. First time we lost out to The Brass Band (yes, a Comedy Brass Band. Still rankles). But the next year, I couldn’t have been happier to lose out to Theatre de Complicite for More Bigger Snacks Now.

However, they were also performing another show that year about bereavement called A Minute Too Late. I must have seen it ten times. I was obsessed with it. It was the first time I realised you could flick from comedy to tragedy in the blink of an eye. Now they’re one of the UK’s leading theatre companies, almost establishment, but it was wonderful to see them in a tiny venue back then.

True Stories, the David Byrne film

Another obsession of mine is the Talking Heads. Now there are any number of movies that I’d class as funnier – Spinal Tap, Life of Brian, Withnail, Airplane, Groundhog Day – but I’m going for True Stories.

I love anything that mashes up genres and plays with form and keeps you guessing. It’s a mockumentary, a travelogue, a musical, a character study, a live show, a tabloid satire. It’s weird, melancholic, trippy, and very very funny.

Doug Anthony Allstars at the Edinburgh Fringe

Another fringe one, another ‘back in the day’ one. (Sorry I’m getting nostalgic). In our viral days, it’s harder to be completely surprised by something but back in the 1980s, a group like the DAA could turn up unannounced and unheard of.

They stumbled into the (not-full) Pleasance Bar, jet-lagged and shambolic, and tore the room up. Within a few days, they were selling out the big rooms. There’s nothing quite like witnessing the buzz that travels round the city when a new act is about to break big. Wonderful performers and very, very good drinkers too, as I recall.

Barry

OK, sorry, I realise these have all been old things, but I’ve taken the brief to mean stuff that inspired me.

Bringing things a little more up to date, I’ve been loving Barry. The clash of hitman/acting class worlds is so inspired. No rolling of our eyes, no ‘oh God they’ve not made another of those, have they?’

Bill Hader is obviously excellent, but Anthony Carrigan and Sarah Goldberg are so so funny, just hilarious. Needlessly talented, as Martin Amis used to say.

Fifth episode of the second season, ‘ronny/lily’ is so black and uproarious. It’s the most I’ve laughed out loud in a long time. I got to episode 2 of the final season and then it suddenly disappeared from the library, so I’m a little bereft.

• Jack Docherty is performing David Bowie And Me : Parallel Lives at the Gilded Balloon Teviot at 8.30pm from August 2 to 27.

Published: 31 Jul 2023