Funny record

THERE are two main challenges after promising to attempt a world record by performing 200 sketches in an hour (with added comedy skits and an interval)… you have to have a previous record to beat and you need a script. Yet trio Pappy’s admit that neither were in place when they dreamed up the idea last year.

Matthew Crosby, one third of the London-based comedy act with Ben Clark and Tom Parry, says: “Basically, you have to come up with these titles early on. The Edinburgh Festival do the brochure in April but the shows are not on until August.

So we come up with the idea and then set to and try and write the show. That’s not necessarily the best way to do it.

“We then realised that 200 sketches in an hour is quite tricky. We are not doing 200 18- second sketches because that would be unwatchable. Part of the enjoyment has been working out all this.”

While there is a hint of the high-speed comedy of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, he says that the Bard didn’t have 200 plays which means that Pappy’s put themselves under even more pressure.

“Every sketch has a starting point and we feel it’s quite accessible rather than pure weirdness, but surprising as well. We are using the theme of record-breaking and throughout the show we use a time machine to visit record holders of the past and we get advice from the world’s tallest man and the smallest women. So rather than the sketch-blackout-sketch format we like to tell a story as well,” he says.

Someone has contacted Pappy’s from the Guinness Book of Records and the trio are considering inviting the book’s representatives along on the final night of the tour – April 30 at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. “There is no official world record and we could do five sketches and set the record, but we’ll stick to 200,” Crosby says.

Pappy’s have started a massive 50-date UK tour which reaches Whitby on Saturday and Darlington on Sunday plus York on March 21, Harrogate on March 29 and Scarborough on April 12.

Crosby says the sketches are a joint creative effort and admits that the tidying up work happens on stage when they see which jokes work the best. “You can rehearse something for ages in your room and when it goes on stage it’s not that funny. So we like to see what works with the audience. I suppose it is a little bit of a scatter-gun approach to comedy, but it’s the system which works best for us.

“We’ve been going to Edinburgh for four years and in 2007 we were nominated for best show in what was the Perrier Award (now the If award). Tom and Ben are from Wolverhampton and I’m from South-east London, but we love going up North because people are really receptive particularly places like Whitby which doesn’t tend to get a lot of shows,” says Crosby.

“We were originally called Pappy’s Fun Club and late last year we went from a four-man to a three-man act. So we changed the name slightly. Part of the act is that we are supposed to have a rich benefactor called Pappy who would send us out on missions, a bit like Charlie’s Angels – only not as goodlooking – and that’s where the idea came from,” adds the performer. Brendan Dodds was the comic who left the act, which started as a hobby at university, in November.

“He’d been with us for five years and he left because of practicalities surrounding the show. But he left on good terms,”

says Crosby.

Asked about the ever-growing power of the comedy club circuit, he says: “What a lot of people do, who never make the leap to the arenas, is tour the clubs. Up In Edinburgh we play a fairly big room, but we like the intimacy of comedy clubs. You can’t beat it, particularly where, like us, you involve the audience. We don’t get people up on stage but we like to make them think they’re part of something.”

Asked about the act he identifies himself as “the one in the middle wearing his tie in a conventional fashion and the picture represents our relationship within Pappy’s. I’m there trying to hold things together and Tom and Ben are there trying to mess things up.

I’m, for want of a better term, a parent figure while Tom and Ben are the naughty kids who can’t help but mess around.”

Pappy’s are currently writing a script for the BBC and have fingers crossed that it will get commissioned having already aired pilots on C4 and BBC Radio 4.

“Ultimately, just to keep touring is the main ambition.

For the BBC all we’re doing is adapting what we do on stage,”

says Crosby.

■ Pappy’s tour dates: Saturday, Hilarity Bites @ the Coliseum, Whitby, 01947-603-475; Sunday, Hiltarity Bites @ Inside Out, Darlington, 01325-381-238; March 21, The City Screen, York, 0871-7042-054; March 29, Harrogate Theatre, 01423-502- 116; April 12, The Otherside, Scarborough, 0845-838-1558.