Pop Cult Magazine Interview
May 2006
by Keegan Wilson
The day is April 27th, the year 2016, and I arrive at Heathrow airport having flown in direct from the year 2006. Mine is one of two flights to land at Heathrow that day - due to current limitations on fuel and energy use, air travel is extremely limited. Generators in the airport hum, the lighting is poor and much of the place is in darkness with barely a soul around. I collect my bags and head for the exit to look for a cab. There are none. So, instead I take one of the waiting horse and carts and instruct the driver to head for an address near Leeds.
I try to sleep, but the novelty of riding in a cart pulled by a horse keeps me awake. I use the time to go over my notes concerning Robert Newman, novelist, comedian and occasional player of the ukulele. I am here, visiting him in the future, to speak about his career and stuff; the cult fame he found in radio and TV in the 1990's with the Mary Whitehouse Experience, his critically-acclaimed novels, his success as a stand-up and what he is doing now, in 2016.
We arrive at the destination in the early hours of the morning. The driver, after handing me my bags, decides to sleep in the cart and make the return journey later in the day. I make my way up to the house, knock at the door, and, following a brief wait, Robert answers it. I am forgetful that to him the horse and cart has been a way of life for some time and begin talking excitedly about the ride up country. He looks at me curiously, waits for me to stop talking, gazes over my shoulder and tells me that it's not a horse, but a donkey. I turn to look, he's right, of course, and I let out a feeble cheer "Well hooray for the donkey" and explain that it's been a long, tiring trip.
from Pop Cult magazine
We go inside and again I hear the hum of generators. Robert shows me to a room with a bed and tells me he will see me in the morning. He disappears and I'm left in the room. There's nothing in it except for a map of the British Isles. Where's East Anglia? Kent? East and West Sussex? Cornwall and much of Devon? I lean closer. And London?
They're all gone, replaced by water. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd never have believed it. On the wall, next to the map, are framed photographs and clippings from magazines and newspapers with pictures documenting the loss of whole cities, towns and villages, all of them swept away beneath a rampaging, invading sea. They're uncomfortable depressing images, which immediately make me think of the heartbreaking loss.
A knocking at the door disturbs my horror. It swings open, it is Robert, and he is grinning. He has noticed I've been looking at the map and pictures.
"Welcome to the world post-oil peak, post-collapse in industrial society," Robert announces, before continuing, "due to there being only 30% of the energy we thought we would have, and with climate chaos having begun to bite our island a bit more."
I am too bewildered to take this in, he senses this and says he will tell me more in the morning, but asks that for now I turn the lights off, because of a need to conserve energy. Then, without warning, he turns the light off and leaves me standing alone in the dark.
I wake in the morning, but no one is home, the house is empty. I search for food - I'm in need of a good breakfast - but I can't find anything, except for some rock-hard bread, which I ignore, so I help myself to water from a filtering unit and eat a bag of nuts that I've brought with me. It's a beautiful day, it's warm, it's sunny, cold breeze though, and I leave the house, deciding to go for a walk and to get a feel for the place, but within five minutes I spot Robert and a few others in a field.
It's an eccentric sight. I wander across to ask what he's doing standing behind an antique piece of farming equipment that has a tired looking goat in front pulling it.
"Well," he says, pulling the reigns and halting the goat, "This little island has been experiencing access to less and less energy each year. Climate change has shrunk the shape of Britain and drowned most of the UK's Grade 1 agricultural land. Most people spend a chunk of their time in a field nowadays, hoeing or rowing, bending or cutting and planting."
He goes on to tell me how they got a pneumatic drill and dug up the multiplex cinema in Leeds (once they'd eaten all the popcorn). The experiment is to see whether they can grow root vegetables on the compacted oil beneath.
"The thinking is we are going to have to wait a few years to let badgers and wild grasses break it up and oxygenate the soil a little, (right now it's like clothes that have been in a tightly-packed suitcase for too long!). Yeah, we spend much more of our day standing behind a plough than we thought. You still see some deluded fantasists in the high streets of the old financial and insurance sectors with cardboard signs that say 'will management-consult for food'."
It was the first time I'd properly seen Robert. The previous night it was too dark and I was too tired and disturbed to take in many details, but today, out here in the sunshine, I can see he is ageing well. He has the look of a happy rustic Mediterranean; tanned, weather-beaten skin and the mischievous grin of youth. But in my head I was confused; this grim future wasn't the one I'd been expecting. Where had all the cars gone? Where was teleportation? Electricity? Gas? Food and prosperity? Where was Blade Runner?
What had happened to technology? Did it not save us like we thought it would? I look at Robert seriously and ask what happened between 2006 and 2016.
The Presidency is now rotated weekly
"The tanking of the US economy back when China decided to switch from the dollar to a mix of euro and yuan - effectively no longer underwriting the US economy for a few billion each day - has at least meant the US has no money to invade Canada or Columbia, as they were threatening to do. But all across North and South America a myriad form of popular assemblies, which sprang from the indigenous right networks, strangely enough, have been taking more and more power from the old corporate oligarchs. The Presidency is now rotated weekly - initially it went to Star Employee Of The Month at selected branches of Wendy's and Mickey D's as they had the right kind of photographs, but after a while this has been anyone nominated by their neighbours. Most people try to get out of doing their weekly Presidential stint - it's a bit like the middle-class jury boycotts back in the day - but most are doing so if reluctant, even though it means they are away from home with no assured access to food."
Robert gees the goat forward and helps push/steer the plough along. It looks hard work, he was right about the soil, and it offers stubborn resistance to his and the goat's strenuous efforts. I offer to help, but he politely thanks me and declines. He is quite happy to push the plough by himself, almost serene about it.
I tag alongside, and Robert tells me what he was up to last night.
"We were in a long meeting in an old warehouse in Leeds, debating how to stop people burning kerbside plane trees. Some people didn't want to be authoritarian about it, but we agreed a compromise that the burning of park benches and Adshell, Maiden and JCDecaux advertising hoardings were fine if people needed fuel – even though a little toxic. That was all well and good as far as it went, except of course that only the few hundred people at the meeting agreed. There's still no idea of how to stop gangs of young kids from ripping up the trees. The young kids hate everyone over thirty because we had all the consumer goodies and foreign holidays and they get nothing now. Also because it's perceived that it was us that f**ked things up."
The kids have been hating people over thirty for some time. Abbie Hoffman, in his role as radical leader of the Yippies, a group political monkeys who nominated a pig as their candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1968 because they liked the idea of having a president they could eat, openly warned the American youth not trust anyone over the age of thirty, even though he himself was thirty-plus at the time, but Abbie was fond of his ironies.
As a child, I sat in awe of Laurel and Hardy, I watched their films repeatedly, I still do. I was then, as I am always now, transfixed by their ability to create comedy. In terms of comedy, they are simply perfect. The thing with Robert Newman is this. Over the years there have been many great comedians, genuinely funny and entertaining people, but Robert seems to me, in his work and artistic ambitions, to be one of a select few comedians since Laurel and Hardy made their films, who could sit happily at a table with them and not feel wholly embarrassed, ashamed or in awe.
I suspect Robert to be a fan of L&H, because much of his comedy, like theirs, seems to come from a dark place and is tinged with sadness and human vulnerability. Much of the dark, observational character-based comedy we know today and its techniques have their roots in Robert's early work on radio and TV.
"The inspiration," he says "for writing comedy about human vulnerability and sadness came from a number of sources. One was noticing that there was not much attention given to this area and yet it seemed pretty central to most people I knew. Also when I was in my twenties I used to be depressed quite a lot of the time, and somehow the depression seemed more 'real' than other emotional states. I'm not sure if I believe that is the case now, but it was certainly how it felt then. Depression was where you returned top after exhausting a lot of false leads (or so it seemed). There were also many comics doing very confident, smug routines basically saying 'look how I've got life licked' and it seemed to me more a comedic and honest thing to be saying 'look how life has got us licked'. The comedic tradition of saying that and of not being so self-possessed is a rich one too. The English comedians Chaplin and Laurel injected world cinema with this idea. My favourite comedians are Laurel and Hardy, and my favourite film of theirs is their last one: 'Utopia'."
For some, Utopia is one of the worst of all L&H films. It is a cruel reminder of their sad demise that sticks in the throat. It was produced and made by a bunch of well-meaning but unqualified Europeans who couldn't communicate with one another, because they all spoke different languages. The actors sharing the screen with our heroes are even worse! What makes it sadder is that L&H are also physically ailing, you can really see it, in fact Stan Laurel had been in poor health for some time prior to filming, and on set he had a medical team present whose job was to keep him alive. The story behind the making of this film is so absurd you'd think it was an L&H script. Others see the poignancy in this tragedy, and when you couple it with their humour, Utopia becomes undoubtedly tender, beautiful almost and funny too. You can't imagine they'd have it any other way. L&H were fond of their ironies too.
I've always thought it funny that with a market flooded with DVDs, none of Robert's shows are available.
He tells me: "I don't really want to release MWE on DVD", and he offers no further explanation. I get the distinct impression that he is not interested in looking back, but is always thinking forwards.
I'm interested in the past though. As a comedian and performer, Robert Newman takes risks and is not afraid to go up to the edge and take a peak at what lies beyond. There is danger in what he does. Reviews of his 2005 gigs compare his stand up to the legend that is Bill Hicks, a link, which Robert tells me later, that was made in Hicks' old stomping ground of Austin, Texas. For much of his career, Hicks battled censorship and freedom of speech, and I ask Robert if the BBC ever told him 'no, you can't say that'.
He stops the plough, walks to the side, again stretching his muscles out and loosening the tension. He sips from a bottle of water, then speaks about MWE.
"There was lots of censorship from the BBC and all non-negotiable. You'd be informed of a 'fiat' which had come down from some man you'd never met whose office was 'upstairs' just saying 'nothing about Iraq' (the show went out during the first gulf war). The father of one of the cast members was a bishop and so he was very against a sketch I wrote about religion and vetoed it. I wish I'd forced the issue now and one or two cast members – or possibly me - would have had to walk. Then I think I may have put all my great ideas into a better programme."
Following his success on TV, Robert embarked on a number of high-profile live tours with David Baddiel, culminating in sell-out gigs at Wembley arena to crowd sizes no other comedians had ever played to before in this country. As a result, the press went and declared comedy the new Rock and Roll. Where do you go to next from there?
"I just wanted to write books and have more time for reading. The reaction to the Fountain At The Centre Of The World in the USA was so much better than here because I was a blank page over there and the novel could be taken on its own merits. Here I will forever be seen as a counter-jumper whenever I try to do something that isn't stand-up."
Stand-up is where Robert's talents flow. "I love doing stand-up, and writing the Fountain made me more confident to write concept shows and more theatrical shows."
Indeed, what has become of the ukulele? Has it been burned for fuel, a victim of these grim times in 2016? Does Robert still have it? He does.
"People round here are against burning carbon-tastic wood. So I'm all right. They may burn it just to stop me playing the thing. Music is necessarily acoustic nowadays unless you are near a big generator in the summertime.
He goes over to a bag and fetches it, explaining that the ukulele and reggae is all he listens to now. I'm treated to a brief performance and then the ukulele is put away and it's back to the plough. Much work is to be done.
Robert explains, "I'm afraid marauders came last night to steal our vegetables. Luckily none of them recognised what was a swede, a savoy cabbage and what was a runner bean, and so they just ended up doing our weeding for us and then nicking the generator."
I'm shocked and begin asking who would do such a thing. Robert looks at me patiently. I ask him where the police or military are to stop gangs like these, and he looks at me knowingly until I get the idea: the marauders were the police or military.
"The new idea is micro gardening. A widely dispersed network of camouflaged root crops. Then again, as in the second world war and Britain's dig for victory plots on brownfield sites, in most areas - rural and urban - most people muck in and are respectful and cognizant of the principles of the commons, of this being everyone or no-one's food, and as in WW2, only the value-added rarities like bananas, coffee and pork have a black market cash value."
Hunger does funny things to people. They can behave in all sorts of strange ways as it slowly drives them mad. I wonder what people do here when they are hungry.
"Well, for a while, before the peak, many people were trying to tell anyone who'd listen that Britain had for years been only ever two days away from food shortages. We carried on living in this just-in-time way for ten years or more, but like a drunk walking on the edge of a cliff at night, never knew we were on the edge until we fell."
I'm aghast. How can this be? What about money? Where has all the money gone? Are there no rich people who can help?
"Ah, you still have the thinking of the Old Days. Come with me, I must take you to the Compulsory Thought Re-Alignment Shed. Now, put this helmet on your head while I crank up the generator."
I'm handed a metal colander used to separate stones and debris from the soil. I hear the others laugh.
I hand the helmet back. I try to think quickly. I will be returning to 2006 to write this for Pop Cult. I can use it to warn people that this can be averted, or can it? What do I say?
Robert laughs. He is here with a plough and a goat. It is 2016, for him there is no going back. "Using the solar-powered net, you can click on a free download MP3 of the Peak Oil riff I was doing back then in my Apocalypso show. Were they listening? Well, it's like they say, those that have ears, let them hear. You know what I mean?"
I nod.
"Messages for people back in 2006? Well no, whatever reached their ends back then clearly never sunk in. Then again, it would be handy if they had left a big dry underground cache of thick winter coats and warm furry moonboots somewhere, because these post Gulf Stream winters are really long, dark and cold and you can't see the puddles until you are up to your middle in them. But far be it from me to distract anyone from their shopping for last week's must-have item; for hopping on a subsidised carbon-tastic plane to transport their ignorance and blank incomprehension to another sunny destination, nor from their passive belief that 'leaders' would help them.
"Or from staring slack-jawed over magazine collections of celebrities shopping and transporting their ignorance, gaping at these celebs like 18th century Russian peasants gathered in the snow to watch the aristocrats arrive at the ball and hear the music from the windows. Ironic as we now live like Russian peasants - but without the farming skills, alas - since our winters are like Kiev's nowadays."
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