Comedian Rob Brydon on the joys of Australia and why The Trip Down Under is a long shot

COMEDIAN Rob Brydon has been looking for an excuse to come back to Australia and have someone else pay for it — and his acclaimed stand-up show is getting the job done

IF you happen to see a genial Welshman looking your way early next year and furiously scribbling notes, it might just be funny man Rob Brydon.

The comedian, actor, presenter — best known for his long-running comedy panel show Would I Lie To You and his three The Trip movies with Steve Coogan — is bringing his acclaimed stand-up show to Australia for the first time next March, and he’s determined to get some local content in.

“Ideally I’d come out about three years before the show just so I have got some time to get used to the jet lag,” says the affable Brydon, still in his pyjamas, speaking from his home office in London. “But I think I will come out about a week or ten days early just to give myself some time to adjust and in that time I will be observing, watching the telly, reading the papers, and seeing what’s going on because I think it’s nice to have something that relates to the audience.”

OLD FRIENDS MAKE A MAJOR IMPRESSION IN THE TRIP TO SPAIN

THE WORST SEQUELS OF ALL TIME

I HATE ROMANTIC COMEDIES

Brydon spent time in Australia more than a decade ago, while he was filming two seasons of the comedy Supernova in Broken Hill and his enduring impression of the local sense of humour was that it seemed to be entirely based around “ripping the piss out of people”. Ever since, he has been trying to figure out a way to get back — and have someone else pay for the flights — and figured his I Am Standing Up tour, which has been winning glowing reviews in his homeland would be the best way to do it.

Rob Brydon is bringing his acclaimed show I Am Standing Up to Australia next year. Picture: Ian Gavan/Getty Images

“When we came out last time about 12 years ago or whatever it was everybody said ‘my God, you’re going to love it, you’re going to love it — it’s this, it’s that’ and I remember coming in on the plane and I said to my wife ‘you know what? This can only be a disappointment after the way people had talked about it like it has this magical quality’.

“But honestly, within about two days — I remember I turned to her and said ‘My God, they were right!’ For a British person coming to Australia there is something very curious about it because so much of it feels like home — but it’s nicer. It’s like home with great weather. Home with incredible scenery. And home with very open, welcoming people. I mean I would say that, wouldn’t I? But that was the experience.”

Australia also has had a special place in Brydon’s heart as the home of one his heroes, Barry Humphries, a comedian to whom he has often been compared. After waxing lyrical about Humphries in an interview about eight years ago, Brydon was thrilled and humbled to receive a handwritten letter, and the two have since struck up a friendship. They first met at a charity function at the Royal Albert Hall and Dame Edna was also a guest on late-night chat show The Rob Brydon Show, which the host says was a special thrill.

“I have loved him for as long as I can remember,” says Brydon of Humphries. “I remember watching him as a kid and knowing that this guy had something else. There was a smartness to his humour, and something delicious about it and very subversive. It was something you could also enjoy on lots of different levels. You could watch Edna and she comes out waving gladioli saying ‘hello possums!’- anyone can get that — but the way that he skewers suburbia and suburban ways, I loved that. I tried to do that a bit in Marion and Geoff and Human Remains and shows like that.”

Brydon has had some of his biggest successes in recent years thanks to The Trip, the 2010 six-part comedy (later edited into a film) that paired him with fellow comedian Coogan as they travelled around some of the UK’s finest restaurants, sampling food and wine, bickering endlessly and trying to outdo each other with impressions of celebrities such as Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Mick Jagger.

Rob Brydon Steve Coogan in The Trip to Spain.

Brydon admits they were both nervous and sceptical when first approached by Michael Winterbottom — “it seemed a ludicrous idea that it wouldn’t have a proper script” — but the project was a runaway success, spawning two sequels, first to Italy and then to Spain. Brydon says that a fourth chapter is in its early stages — director Winterbottom hasn’t announced the destination yet, but The Trip Down Under would appear to be a long shot.

“I wonder if the scale of your great continent might put him off,” says Brydon. “Before we did the Spanish one there was some talk of maybe going to America and I remember Michael saying to me that just logistically that would be an issue — there’s a lot of ground to cover. And I suspect the same would be true of Australia.”

Coogan has described the version of himself in The Trip as “heightened” but based on “kernels of truth”.

“That’s true,” agrees Brydon. “The main thing that I would say is that the meals where we are sitting and sniping at each other, which is pretty much every meal, that wouldn’t happen in real life. We would not sit there doing impressions to each other and criticising each other. That’s a comic device that works for us. Some of the discussions we are having on the existentialist angst and talks about mortality — they are pretty close.”

Rob Brydon filmed two seasons of Supernova in Broken Hill with Kat Stewart.

After bit parts in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters including Cinderella and The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Brydon last year filmed Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s Holmes and Watson, playing Inspector Lestrade in the comic take on the famous fictional detective duo.

“Will was a big comic hero of mine so to get to meet him was wonderful and he didn’t disappoint,” Brydon says. “He’s one of the nicest people and one of the funniest — he likes to be funny when he’s not on camera, which is so nice. It was a joy from start to finish.”

Rob Brydon: I Am Standing Up, QPAC Concert Hall Brisbane, March 12-13; Crown Theatre Perth, March 15-16; Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, March 19; Palais Theatre, Melbourne, March 22-23; Canberra Theatre, March 26-27; Sydney Opera House, March 28, 30-31. Livenation.com.au

Originally published as Comedian Rob Brydon on the joys of Australia and why The Trip Down Under is a long shot