Rory McGrath talks stage fright, Footlights, and three men in a huff

Rory McGrath is in a jubilant mood when we talk, bubbling over with enthusiasm for his show Bridge Over Troubled Lager and exactly as you’d expect. Which is so refreshing in the current climate of grumpy comedians and celebrity egos.

He loves Oxford, can’t wait to come here, it’s his partner in crime Philip Pope’s home turf, and his children came to school here. “It has the most expensive schools in the world,” he says happily.

The show — “I know it’s a laddy title but I can’t change it now, and anyway, the show isn’t laddy so the lads who come along are always disappointed” — is a great mix of comedy and music, a well-honed vehicle, the tour a constant, gigs interspersed with other things, for Rory mainly TV and writing.

The 57 year-old is currently enjoying a dry February — “it’s the shortest month” — so is racing through his third book.

“I’ve done the first five chapters. I just write all day and then go to bed so it will be nice to get back out on tour again.”

His comedy partnership with Philip continues to be enjoyable. “Phil is great. He’s a great musician and if you are going to do comedy songs in public, he’s the man. He can sing, harmonise and play the piano. He’s not a wingman, it’s just a two-person thing. He’s the music talent, the straight man, he gets things done. But overall the most important thing is that I want it to be fun, so if the audience comes away and thinks it was a good laugh and the music was good too, then we’ve done a good job.”

And yet Rory always seems to have a wingman, whether on the quiz show They Think It's All Over, on a boat with Dara Ó Briain and Griff Rhys Jones, or with Paddy McGuinness in Rory and Paddy’s Great British Adventure. He’s never alone.

“Well, I get on well with most people and that helps,” he says unapologetically.

In fact, everything looks so rosy it’s slightly nauseating, until McGrath lets slip that despite everything he’s thinking of going solo — that he can’t ignore the itch to get back out on the stand-up circuit and go it alone.

“Don’t tell Phil,” he says, “but it’s ages since I’ve done stuff on my own. So yes, I’ve started jotting things down because the older I get I the less I remember — which doesn’t bode well for the show,” he laughs.

“And if I can’t do the songs without him. I will just have to chat more.

“Either way, it won’t make any difference to my nerves because I always feel sick before I go on stage, but as long as people want you to appear, you want to appear.”

Rory also wants to continue fronting the history TV shows. “I loved History Quest, The History Fix and Pub Dig, unearthing things buried under pub car parks, or Bloody Britain, about our killer queens. It was so much fun being in a programme you want to watch, and I love being outdoors. I don’t want to watch my comedy but the Vikings? Yes, I want to see that, so we are just waiting for Channel 5 to recommission us because it’s so much more interesting than Time Team which is like watching paint dry — and you can quote me on that.”

But then Rory is an old hand in the world of TV presenting, having cut his teeth on They Think It’s All Over. “I did 200 of those panel shows and they were jokey, sporty and great fun, although you are confined to being in a studio with five other mouthy men. It was manic, but I prefer being outside. I like that a lot.”

A Cornishman through and through, then? “Well I live in Cambridge now, very close to the river, so maybe.”

Cambridge is, of course, where Rory’s comedy career began, along the well-trodden route of the Footlights. “It was easy to feel like a pariah then because the Footlights were all in smoking jackets doing the satire thing when we turned up. It wasn’t until the year after when Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery came up, and it became hip again. Now it’s having another renaissance because of Miller & Webb and it worked for the Pythons and Peter Cook (who was a good friend of McGrath’s).

“But there are there are no advantages in comedy now. There are so many other outlets, that anyone can turn up and do an open mic. There are billions of comedians out there.”

McGrath’s gift is making it look easy, whether he’s in a boat or onstage in front of thousands of people, meaning he lands all the nice jobs. He shrieks with laughter. “You think that was a nice job being stuck in a boat with those two, in that tiny space for week’s on end? At least Paddy tried to hide his animosity, but Griff Rhys Jones didn’t try to hide it at all. “And it’s still not easy. Even though I can do this in my sleep, an hour before I go on it’s ‘Oh Christ’. I never jump on stage with glee. but once you are up there and talking, it’s what I enjoy the most.

“The art is to make it look easy, or as the Footlights motto puts it, ‘The art is to conceal the art.’ If you want, I could give it to you in Latin,” he smiles, before finally ambling off to tweak a few more dashing ripostes and finish that damn novel.

Bridge Over Troubled Lager
Mill Arts Centre, Banbury
Saturday, February 21
Box office: 01295 279002 www.themillartscentre.co.uk