This is Simon as Simon, on the road with Screwed Up, with dates including Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre on December 11 and Brighton Dome on December 19.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers.
00:05Lovely to speak to Simon Brodkin. Simon, wow, things are going brilliantly for you
00:10at the moment on a tour which keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,
00:13and you're heading to Brighton and Eastbourne before too long.
00:16But the really interesting, the really significant thing is, it's not you as
00:20your characters, this tour is actually you as you. You've been liberated from
00:23your creations, haven't you? I have been liberated from my creations,
00:28what a lovely way of putting it, absolutely, yeah. I'm standing up there
00:31wearing my own clothes, speaking in my own voice, and slagging
00:35off my real family this time, yeah. And how, well that must feel incredibly
00:40different. So it's a very fun tour. Must be a huge difference to be doing
00:44that at last. It does, it does feel really different,
00:50it does feel really different. I think the main, you know, the thing
00:54that is consistent is trying to make as many people laugh
00:59in one show as many times as possible. That's always been the goal, but here I
01:03think there's a bit more of a, you know, a richer connection because
01:06I'm talking about, you know, this is, I'm really opening up.
01:09It's called Screwed Up and I'm talking about how I,
01:13yeah, there was a diagnosis I had that made me realise
01:17I'm possibly, you know, properly, it's not quite wired up right up there,
01:22but I'll leave that for people who are coming to the show
01:26and it does feel really different, but it's great.
01:29But the point is you have greater potential as you than you did as
01:33your characters. Yeah, well there's a connection,
01:36there's an actual connection that I'm getting with the audience.
01:40This is the second Brighton Dome show of this tour. Yeah, the tour's just
01:45been snowballing. I think I did, I did a hand many shows at Comedia
01:49and then came to the Dome and there's, I think there's a connection that people
01:54get. It's obviously, it is, you know, mainly about
01:57making people laugh, but when people know that it's
01:59coming a bit more from your heart and you're talking about real things and
02:02there's real skin in the game and talking about the,
02:05you know, some of the stunts and the hate I got from the
02:09KKK after the, after the Donald Trump stunt
02:15and I'm glad that stopped him from getting back into politics. Put that,
02:19put him back in his box. You showed him.
02:23I showed him, he's running a mile, I haven't heard from him since.
02:26This is interesting. So yeah, there's a real story. Those stunts were part of the
02:30pushing aside of the characters, weren't they?
02:33You started to emerge more as you, but through doing those stunts.
02:38Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The stunts were, I guess, the beginning of me
02:45doing characters but not being completely
02:48committed to an exact character like I always was,
02:52sort of obsessively on stage where I wouldn't give interviews at a character.
02:57I think you were telling me about one where I refused to step out. I was on the
03:00end of that. And not be Lee Nelson. You were at the end of
03:03that. He's not for, he won't take no for an answer
03:08that lad. So I'm more malleable, more empathetic.
03:12But I started doing the stunts which were
03:15in the guise of characters, you know. It was Jason Bent
03:20as the Premier League footballer who did the deal with Sepp Blatter for North
03:24Korea 2026 World Cup did, but ultimately people aren't really
03:28thinking of that stunt as a character. It's just, you know,
03:31chucking all the notes over Sepp. And so the characters were starting to sort of
03:34become a little looser with the stunts, the more I did.
03:37You know, given Teresa made the P45, I was,
03:40you know, I was a Tory aide. But let's be honest, it didn't
03:45take a lot to brush your hair to one side, put on a
03:48a blue tie and be slightly arrogant and obnoxious. So that was
03:55sort of the character. And then
03:59that made me start thinking, hang on, there is,
04:03I'm starting to emerge here. I can see a path for me
04:07in this comedy world. So what's the future of the stunts? Will the
04:11stunts just the bit in the middle in between the characters and you being you?
04:14Or will the stunts still have a future?
04:19Yeah, interesting. Once a pranker, always a pranker. I
04:23or someone shouted some similar thing to me on the street once.
04:27I don't know is the honest answer at the moment. It's nice spending
04:31not a single night in a police cell for quite a few months.
04:35The family's happy. In fact, that's one of the family walking behind me now.
04:41So yeah, it's nice, I think, because also the
04:46criminal record starts to expire after a certain number of years. So it's
04:51looking really clean at the moment. And I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying
04:56doing the tour. The tour's going amazing. So at the moment, I'm a bit busy to stunt
05:00anyone. Donald Trump is breathing a sigh of relief.
05:05Say that again. 160 odd dates. That's pretty cool.
05:08Yeah, it's amazing. And some of them were and are in America.
05:14So let's hope that visa stays true. I'm sure Donald Trump will welcome you
05:19back, won't he? I'm sure he has. And I hope he's bought
05:23this whole I'm never going to stunt him again business that he'll be
05:26watching online on this interview.
05:31Fantastic. Well, really lovely to speak to you. Congratulations on this accessible
05:35tour. And thanks for your time. Good to see you.
05:38Thank you, mate. Well, thank you.
05:40Absolute pleasure.