British Comedy Royalty Phill Jupitus Talks Punk Poetry And Audience Intimacy

British comedy royalty Phill Jupitus has a story for damn near every occasion. Even when the phone line cuts out two seconds into the interview, the Never Mind The Buzzcocks star has a ripping yarn when he's reconnected.

"I once interviewed Howard Stern for the radio, and we used minidisc players back in the day. We used minidisc machines, and we got into the taxi and my producer's listening back and he goes 'oh my god, we've junked the interview.' So we had the ten seconds of us saying hello to Howard Stern and that's all we had for a 20-minute feature!"

Jupitus' illustrious career has spanned over three decades, traversing stand-up, musical theatre, radio and his humble beginnings as a performance poet in the early '80s, under the moniker Porky The Poet. "When we started, there were a few of us poets, and oddly enough, the three of us who originally did Buzzcocks all started as poets. So Sean Hughes, Mark Lamar and myself all started as poets. And I think that was very much down to John Cooper Clarke." Jupitus says of his initial encounter with the infamous punk poet, "I saw Clarkey in Chelmsford in 1982 supporting Siouxsie And The Banshees, and so that idea that someone like that could gig with a band; that appealed to me. I'd been to gigs loads and seen these support acts, but then a bloke got up and started reading poems, and it was just this split in the audience where we all dug it, but half of the audience was confused. People just standing around going 'what, is he just reading poems now?' next to admiration and then a minor amount of disapproval because it didn't feel like a normal gig, you know? There was this bloke who'd come out reading poems, but we were at a rock show."

"To me a comedian was a guy who would stand there in a bow tie and tell jokes one after the other."

A couple years later, Jupitus began to seek out the poetry itself. "In about '84 there was a movement called The Ranters — and that was people like Seething Wells, Joolz Denby, Benjamin Zephaniah, Atilla The Stockbroker, and these were like the bastard children of Cooper Clarke. It was very pointed political stuff, and again they were working very much in tandem with bands, because loads of bands started to realise that a poet was a really easy support act because they worked in a similar form but they didn't need a sound check." At the same time, the alternative comedy boom was well and truly underway, as Jupitus discovered a new form of entertaining. "I remember I auditioned for a show called New Variety along with Jeremy Hardy, so you're there seeing other people who are doing stuff quite like what you are doing but with no structure to it. There's no rhymes, they're just talking about ideas, and I didn't realise you could do that. To me a comedian was a guy who would stand there in a bow tie and tell jokes one after the other. Whereas this was more like storytelling, fantasy building, and it was a different skill set at work.

When he did eventually move to the stand-up circuit, it wasn't the smoothest of starts: "[A friend] said 'you should do The Comedy Store. You need to get on the comedy gigs because you're really funny.' So I phoned The Comedy Store — and I spoke to a guy who became a very good friend of mine, but when I very first spoke to him it wasn't the case — a man called Kim Kinney who used to book the acts at The Comedy Store. So I went 'uh, hello, um, my mate gave me your number and said I should phone for an open spot.' And he said, 'What's your name?' and I went 'Porky The Poet,' then he went 'We don't book poets,' and he hung up the phone."

On finally breaking into comedy after those first speed bumps, Jupitus says, "I decided to build it up more, and literally just each gig I would take a poem out and chatted more. So you can transition like that and that is literally what I did. But then, of course, fifteen years later you start to miss the poetry and you write poetry again, and that's where I find myself now — doing both again."

Jupitus' new show, Juplicity, will see the multi-talented performer delighting Aus crowds in a multitude of ways. "There'll be a couple of songs, there's some music, so, you know, if I can throw a poem in it's not going to hurt. And I like that variety of it because it is me. People are always asking stuff like 'why should people come and see you?' and the answer is just: there's no one else like me!"

More than anything, however, Jupitus says his favourite aspect of performing is looking forward to connecting with new crowds. "If you are all complicit in a notion or idea, when you and an audience, in an unspoken way, agree 'right, we're going to do this,' and you start having a laugh — I imagine it's like a threesome when it works well. You don't talk about it before hand, but it starts really getting a groove on. Not that I've ever indulged myself, I can say, hand on heart, but that must be what it's like. It's the complicity, like there's an unspoken something between you and the audience that you're all going to take part in." He chuckles heartily before adding, "The idea that you would put yourself in the position of vulnerability for entertainment; it's a laugh, man!"

Phill Jupitus presents Juplicity 28 & 29 Apr at the Factory Theatre, part of the Sydney Comedy Festival