Band Ade

ADE EDMONDSON sounds like a man who’s got his life in order. “I kind of do what I like and if I don’t like, I don’t do it,” he says. “But there are things I’d like to do that people won’t let me do.”

Making music makes him happy and he’ll be doing that with his band The Bad Shepherds at the Willowman Festival, in North Yorkshire, tomorrow.

“Music is my hobby, in the same way that comedy used to be my hobby until it turned into a job,” he says.

He became known in the Eighties and Nineties for two very comic roles – Vyvyan in The Young Ones and with Rik Mayall in the anarchic, often violent, slapstick-driven Bottom.

These days, he’d rather be playing Bottom in Shakespeare and also owns up to a desire to be in EastEnders. He’s already been a regular on BBC1’s Holby City, spending three years in the hospital series.

It becomes clear during the course of the conversation that these past roles weigh heavily upon a man who likes variety, as comfortable directing pop videos as performing with the Comic Strip or presenting TV documentaries.

But being famous, he carries a certain amount of baggage around with him – not least the fact that people constantly make reference to Vyvyan and Bottom.

He says he got used to carrying around this baggage ten years ago. “It was annoying for a long time but I discovered it’s half and half – good and bad,” says Edmondson.

“I don’t worry about it. We do the music because we like doing the music. What I really like, especially playing festivals, is people drifting into whatever stage we are on out of curiosity.

They wonder if it’s going to be a onejoke wonder but after one song, they get it. I like that.

“You see them start to think it’s quite nice. I have very brilliant people playing with me, but it’s the spirit of it that gets them. We’re not doing it as a joke. It works for us.”

He’s done lots of different things in his career – “a scattergun approach” he calls it. “I spent a lot of my 20s doing pop promos and stuff like that. I’ve always thought I was an accidental comedian.

I’m not really a comedian, I don’t do gags. I’m a character actor who writes as well,”

says Edmondson.

Now, in common with a lot of comedians, he’s branching out into presenting. Born in Bradford, his return to the area where he spent much of his childhood to front ITV1’s The Dales helped make a ratings winner of the series, in which he met people and visited places in the region. He reveals a second series is planned, with filming set to begin later this summer.

He was in the Dales when we first spoke – only briefly because of the dodgy mobile phone signal – because he’s currently filming another series is which he goes around Britain looking at traditional food and customs.

His busy schedule means he’s not available for the first in the new Comic Strip Presents TV series announced this week, although wife Jennifer Saunders will be in it. He says he will be doing the second episode in the revived series.

The Bad Shepherds – Troy Donockley and Andy Dinan are his fellow band members – is taking up more of his time, although this year they’ll be doing fewer than the 100 gigs a year they’ve done in the past.

He does vocals and plays mandolin in the band, which sells itself with the slogan “Punk songs on folk instruments – genius”.

Music has always been an interest. He had “a little band” as a teenager. That played rock, although, he adds, growing up to be a teenager in the early-Seventies a lot of pop at the time was folk music.

He seems unclear what his ambitions were.

“I kind of fell into comedy by accident,” he admits.

“I think if there had been a dossers’ course for music rather than drama when I left school I would have done that.”

His music record includes playing the Monsters of Rock and Reading Festivals with Bad News, Hootenanny with Jools Holland and Hyde Park with The Who. He’s toured with The Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band and also had a No 1 single with Cliff Richard. As director, he made music videos for the likes of The Pogues, Squeeze, Elvis Costello and 10,000 Maniacs.

Now he’s up for anything. “I just like working, that’s what occurs to me in the end,” he says. “I don’t like doing one thing all the time.

It makes for an insecure life and the older I get the more I hate the insecurity.”

THE WILLOWMAN FESTIVAL

THE Willowman Festival akes place over the summer solstice weekend from today to Sunday at Lenthor Farm, situated on the A684 between Osmotherley and Brompton, Northallerton. It promises “panoramic views with a fun family friendly atmosphere” – trade stalls, international food stall, a healing area and a large children’s area. Plus, of course, music.

TODAY, from 7pm

Funky Reggae Pre Show Party in the beer tent.

Featuring Instrument of Jah – DJs, MCs. PA sets from Peter Spence. Special guest star Adele Harley

TOMORROW

Main Stage: The Pyratz, Black Sun, Winter in Eden, Saint Jude, Here and Now, System 7 Second Stage: The Indian Postal Service, Monster Ceilidh Band, Endless Knott, Ade Edmondson & The Bad Shepherds Hedfone party – Instrument of Jah Reggae Sound System Tent

SATURDAY

Main Stage: The Middens, Be Quiet Shout Loud, Tankus The Henge, Mercedes, Subsource, Toploader, Alabama 3 Second Stage: Sophie Watson, Neeb, The New York All-Stars, Marner Brown, Chased by Wolves, White Negroes, Banco de Gaia Hedfone party – Instrument of Jah Reggae Sound System Tent

SUNDAY

Main Stage: Elaine Palmer Band, Bonzo Dog End Band, Vices, Goldheart Assembly, Pauline Black’s Selecter, Easy Star All-Stars Second Stage: TJ & Murphy, Nick Harper, Sparrow and the Workshop, Subgiant willowmanfestival.co.uk