Geoff Norcott says 'I Blame The Parents' in his new show at The New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth | Interview

While this may not seem radical in the wider world, in the world of comedy it has made him something of a rarity, as he frequently holds forth on his political views in his sets.

And with appearances on the likes of Would I Lie to You?, Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, Question Time and The Mash Report/Late Night Mash, he has become a regular on our screens.

Last year he also released his first book, Where Did I Go Right (How the Left Lost Me).

But on his latest tour, I Blame The Parents, he will be talking less politics and, instead, will mostly explore personal responsibility, parenting and who should take the blame when things go wrong.

Geoff asks: whatever happened to the idea of personal responsibility? As it now seems like whatever is wrong with your life can be blamed on someone else.

So where did it go wrong? It has to be the parents.

Delving into his own life for answers, Geoff has also realised that he’s a bag of contradictions. Raised on a south London council estate by maverick parents, there’s plenty to sift through. His dad was a trade union man obsessed with stocks and shares. His mum was a closet chauvinist and far too frank on the subject of sex.Geoff says: ‘It's the kind of show that I've always wanted to, in that it's got a balance between some political stuff, a lot of observational stuff and a lot of socio-cultural things – the sort of things that affect us all, and that's the kind of comedy I've always wanted to do rather than just leaning into one thing or the other.

‘It's good to have an ongoing mix where you might talk about Kier Starmer one minute, and that might trigger an anecdote about your dad, and then maybe an observation about how husbands and wives relate to each other.’

So is this show intentionally more personal than in the past?

‘I'd written the book, and in the process of writing that I reminded myself of a lot of anecdotes and basically how mad my parents were. Neither of them are with us any more, but what they did leave was a treasure trove of anecdotes.

‘There's certain things you grow up with, when you're a kid, in relation to your parents that you just presume are normal.

‘Then hitting 40 and losing them both, you realise, that wasn't normal at all!

‘My mum came up to my school once and hid in a cupboard to see whether a teacher was victimising me, so she could hear for herself. If you can't make something funny out of stories like that, then you probably should give up comedy.’

Regarding his mum’s attitude to sex, he recalls how she was raised in a convent, ‘and on some things she was very conservative, but on others she was way too liberal, really. And she had a certain philosophy about boys – you know, “boys will be boys, and here's your first condom, son”. And I was like, that's all well and good, but I am 12...’

When it came to naming the show, Geoff explains that he used it because the title is an expression which resonates with everyone, regardless of your politics.

‘We've had a lot of us all retreating into cultural bubbles with other people we agree with, but I thought that this was a phrase that whether you're left or right, you've probably used. It's a small “c” conservative phrase in a way, but it's a bit judgey and I think we are a bit judgey.

‘The great thing about being a comedian is that it's one of the few places where you can just say exactly what you think about people and their conduct.

‘There's certainly a bit in the show where I try to reconcile why I might have ended up thinking certain things.

‘We all like to think that our politics are this objective view of what we've come from, but then you trace it back and so much of our politics, is an embodiment of a world view we have because of our upbringing.’

With a show that looks closely at the influence of parents, Geoff also turns the lens on himself – he has a five-year-old son.

‘One of the things I talk about in the show is that, obviously in terms of gender identity at the moment there's a focus on thinking of it as fluid, and I’m trying to prepare him for a very liberal progressive world, but also trying to be honest with him at the same time.

‘So I end up saying things to him like, “son there's no reason why a woman shouldn't be a mechanic, but in truth most of them aren't.”

‘I can't lie to him, but I would also be doing him a disservice by just saying these platitudes if I didn't give him some idea of the statistical likelihood of these things at the same time.’

Having been tagged for so long as The Right-Wing Comic, is that a label he’s tired of?

‘I think it's good that in comedy there's a variety of opinions and voices on subjects not just on Conservative/Labour, but on all sorts of socio-cultural issues, and I think that there are more of us now with differing views – it's not just me anymore.

‘But what I am doing at the moment is broadening that world of view in terms of the things that I talk about, because a lot of people will only just becoming aware of me or still won't know me at all, but I have been talking about these things for quite a while and creatively you just broaden it a bit.

‘I think most normal people are tired of the echo chambers and the infighting and social media, I think that "funny" is more of a priority than it's ever been.

‘It certainly is for me – I've got sillier bits in this show than I've had for quite a while, I mess around a bit more. There is obviously an underlying world view in there, but one thing I've never done is take my own point of view very seriously. I know that with some political comics, there is a “high status” element, where they're “dropping truth bombs”. I'm more likely to drop stink bombs.’

Rather than seeing himself as a delivering profound truths via comedy, Geoff explains: ‘I see my job as a political comic to keep an eye on things and if something funny occurs to me and it's to the detriment of the Tories, I will definitely go with that joke because I've always been a comic first and foremost.

‘I will always have a bit of a right-of-centre bias, but that should not get in the way of a joke.

‘And I've never particularly believed that political comics have the power to change anyone's opinions on anything anyway, so you might as well say a funny joke if you think of it, no matter who it's about.’

Geoff was also a regular contributor to the BBC’s The Mash Report, the satirical news show which became a lightning rod for the corporation's perceived left-wing bias.

‘It was a great thing to do because I'm not "edgy", really, in the wider spectrum of British political opinion, but if you put me on a show like that, I'm suddenly: “Wooh, he's a bit out there”.

‘It's quite funny to me to think that's what I am.

‘I don't imagine that most of the audience at home would think of me that way, but certainly on social media, some of them think I'm this far-right guy. It's fun to play with that, and comedy has been good to me in that respect – it's made somebody with fairly mainstream opinions look edgy, and long may it seem so.

‘But my job is always to comment on what's in front of me, and the truth is that I've always had jokes about the Conservatives from time to time, but under Corbyn, there were funnier things to say about Labour.

‘Now, the Tories are writing most of the good set ups themselves...’

Geoff Norcott is at New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on Saturday, April 2, 7.30pm. Go to newtheatreroyal.com.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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