10 minutes with...Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin
Hannah Nathanson10 April 2012
How rock'n'roll are you?

Do you come here often?
No, it's just close to the BBC where I was singing 'Rock n Roll Nerd' for the Radio 3 programme The Verb. It's about me not having a damaged-enough past to write rock songs.

Are you a bit of a nerd yourself?
I hope so. I'm a nerd in the sense that all I care about is the clarity of ideas. I feed off nerds and I want to have friends who are novelists. And my audience are all nerds.

Do you tweak any of your material to suit different countries?
No, I write about sex, God, death and dead babies, stuff that everyone can relate to.

Do you think you can be funnier in song?
Songs are pretty structured animals. I like imposing discipline because it keeps me writing in my genre, which is fucked-up philosophy really.

Do you sing in the shower?
Not unless I'm warming up or finding out how sore my throat is. I don't take lozenges any more. I was getting holes in my teeth from popping Propolis.

Do you use your family as material?
I've talked about trying to get babies to sleep this year and written a lullaby that goes pretty dark. But I made a pledge that I wouldn't become one of those comedians who was edgy until they had babies and then started talking about poo and nappies.

Do you have any rituals before you go on stage?
I'll have a weird cocktail of uppers and downers: half a glass of wine and half a can of Red Bull. A lot of my shows are about rationalism and I very consciously have no superstitions.

So you're not religious or spiritual?
The one thing I hate more than religion is spirituality; I don't even know what it means.

Have you ever ripped off someone else's ideas?
I did borrow a joke for the first time this year. A fan offered me the line 'Love without evidence is stalking' and I'm using it now. It gets the biggest laugh in my show.

Do you have a stalker?
My vet, who's a girl from Brisbane, has followed me on tour around the world. She just wants to hug me. I used to come out and sign things after my show and she would want to touch my really hairy arms.

Tim Minchin and the Heritage Orchestra are at The Royal Albert Hall on 28 and 29 April (0845 401 5045)

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