Harry Hill

01/03/2010

From TV Burp to Gauguin and Fairtrade peanuts.
Fight!!!

Words: Daisy Greenwell

It’s a wintry Monday morning and Harry Hill is sitting in The Big Issue’s reception area. A member of the finance department walks past, notices him and asks if he needs help. “I’m here for an interview,” smiles Hill. “Great,” says the finance guy. “What job are you going for?”

It’s all in a day’s work for three-time Bafta award-winning Harry Hill – who, despite regularly raking in seven million viewers with his show TV Burp, can walk unnoticed down London’s bustling streets. “The thing is, if you want to get recognised, it’s easy. You walk down the street all, ‘Look at me!’,” he says, punctuating his comment by flapping his oversized collar,pinging his braces and staring
madly into the imaginary eyes of members of the public.

This somehow has the effect of making the paparazzi-hounded celebs whose lives are played out, apparently against their wills, in the red tops seem silly. “I don’t get recognised,” he admits, which is strange for someone with distinctive looks who’s constantly on TV.

Today his bald head and batwing glasses are set off by a loud, stripy shirt, braces and a badge reading: “I heart buy one get one free.” 
This is a pared-down version of the uniform that transforms him from the 46-year-old former doctor and married father-of-three Matthew Keith Hall into his alter-ego, the absurdist comedian Harry Hill. But it’s not comedy Hill is here to talk about.

His pockets are stuffed with bags of nuts – Harry’s Nuts!. Since the early days, Hill has supported Fairtrade. He’s also a “very keen” peanut eater. “I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating but I do eat a lot of peanuts, so I thought to myself – would it be possible to combine the two?”

He approached Liberation, a fledgling Fairtrade peanut company, and the concept for Harry’s Nuts! was born. Hill flew to Malawi with his brother, an organic farmer, to visit the peanut growers and was instrumental in developing his nuts’ distinctive taste and packaging. So what constitutes a good peanut? “Well-roasted nuts, so they’re darker. Pale ones tend not to have much flavour. Not too much salt, but not too little. And oddly, I don’t like the big peanuts as much as the mediums,” he says.

He’s become, he admits, Fairtrade’s “friendly celebrity” – wheeled out annually holding an inflatable Fairtrade banana. But he proves
himself a sharp-thinking and well-reasoned advocate when challenged on Fairtrade’s credentials. Does it encourage market inefficiencies and over-production, as critics have accused?

“There’s actually a shortage of peanuts being grown at the moment, so far from it – we’re filling a gap in the market,” he replies. Is the Cato Institute think-tank right that Fairtrade is “a well-intentioned interventionist scheme… doomed to end in failure?”
“That bunch have got a vested interest in it not working,” he hits back. “It’s against everything they stand for as a right-wing capitalist group. I wouldn’t describe myself as left wing, but…”

Over the past two decades Hill has risen imperceptibly from random comic to one of the most important hosts on TV. Described by the Financial Times as one of commercial television’s four assets (alongside Simon Cowell and Ant and Dec), the upcoming end of his contract with ITV has reportedly sparked a bidding war, with Sky 1 offering a £400,000-per-show budget – doubling Hill’s weekly earnings to £80,000. 

Accepting Sky’s offer would make him the highest-paid comedian on TV – pretty good going for a “skinny kid with NHS glasses” from Kent.

Growing up in a cramped cottage with his four brothers and sisters, his small stature and the fact he was “a total nerd” had more than a little to do with the development of his multi-million pound wit. Fulfilling the stereotype that comedians use humour as a shield, he admits: “There was a defensive element to it. With a large family, that’s how you keep your place in the pecking order. We’re all witheringly sarcastic.”

He fantasised about being in comedy even as he graduated as Dr Matthew Hall at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London. Although he quite enjoyed the job, he was aware he was “never going to be brilliant”. As he got busy with the stethoscope externally, internally he was working on gags. His spare time was spent in comedy clubs, seeing his favourite “dead-pan” comedians such as Stewart Lee and Jo Brand.

He remembers approaching Jack Dee after a gig and saying: “I think you’re marvellous.” An event, according to Hill, that Dee “doesn’t remember, fortunately”. At 25, he finally took the plunge and “escaped” medicine for the terrifying unknown of comedy. His first gig was an open-mic night in a Mexican restaurant in London. As the punters wolfed fajitas, Hill took to the stage shaking with fear. “I had all my jokes written on my hand. I did the first, it got a laugh – and it completely threw me. I’d rehearsed it in front of a mirror – bang, bang, bang – and hadn’t allowed for any laughter,” he recalls.

A comedian’s first 20 gigs are the most important, says Hill. “That’s where you learn everything,” he affirms. “Every night I’d come back thinking, ‘Yeah!’ I couldn’t sleep, coming up with another 20 ideas – it was a really, really exciting time.” But it wasn’t all plain sailing. “There were terrible deaths too,” winces Hill. “And I’d be thinking, ‘What have I done! What were you thinking? What a fool you’ve been’.”

His first paid job in comedy was writing gags for BBC Radio 4’s Week Ending, and in 1993 the station commissioned his own show, Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner. Having now been immersed in the business of professional joke-making for nearly 20 years, what, in his mind, is the secret?

“Surprise,” he answers. “That’s what comedy is – surprises. The punchline is just an, ‘Oh! It’s that!’”

There are, he admits, a series of comedic devices every comedian uses. The problem is that once you know them, it’s not funny. “It does kill it a bit,” sighs Hill. “You know all the tricks – I don’t watch comedy on TV. My best friend from school is the funniest person I’ve met. He really makes me laugh. He’s an art teacher.”

He also claims not to have any celebrity friends. Red carpet parties? They leave him cold. “A very hollow thing to chase,” he pronounces. “I don’t like going out at all. I like going to the pub with my funny friend, but I don’t like… it’s the idea of getting to know other celebrities that seems a bit… not very organic. The fact is, if you’ve got three friends and three kids, you don’t have time. I don’t even have time to see the friends I do like, let alone celebrity ones.”

Time, it seems, is a big issue for Hill. Currently immersed in making his ninth series of TV Burp – a satirical look at the week’s television – he’ll be almost entirely underground until the show finishes in April. The work involved is astounding.  Just one show represents 10 hours a day of TV-watching, for an entire week – all of which Hill does himself.

No surprise that he has admitted to feeling “trapped” by TV Burp. “There are fun aspects of it but they don’t make up for the…” he trails off. “I don’t even sleep well when I’m doing it, I’m a nervous wreck. But the money’s good.”

He’s become renowned in the business for his almost forensic attention to detail. It’s something of a “curse”, he admits, and he’s hugely envious of comedians such as Phil Jupitus, who never writes anything down. “It does my head in!” he exclaims. “I have a little book and I write jokes down. Then I write a shortlist – it’s a bit like revision.”

If Hill has his way, TV Burp will be canned and the film script he’s written will become his raison d’etre. His creative output is astonishing – he has written seven books and a number of film scripts alongside presenting TV Burp and You’ve Been Framed. “I’m very excited about this script, it’s the closest I’ve got to getting one off the ground,” he smiles. “It’s an emotional sort of road movie.” Would he ever completely change tack career-wise? “I’ve always admired Gauguin,” he says tellingly of the 19th century French stockbroker-turned-painter. “Alright, yeah, he did leave his wife and family to while away the rest of his days in Tahiti painting natives. But they’re great, fantastic pictures.”

In his Wandsworth townhouse, he has an ever-increasing stack of his own oil paintings. What are they like? “Eclectic, a bit like my act I suppose,” he says, making his imminent departure to spend the rest of his days painting the peanut farmers of Malawi seem ever-more likely.

With his restless creativity, sharp intellect and penchant for dramatic career changes, it seems we shouldn’t take Hill’s presence on our TV for granted. “I think that’s probably the highest calling, isn’t it, a painter?” he asks, before smiling
enigmatically and trotting out of the building.

Harry Hill’s TV Burp is on Saturdays at 7.15pm on ITV1. For more information about Harry’s Nuts! go to www.chooseliberation.com/harry