Harry Hill says he was ‘absolutely merciless' in his determination to succeed

Leader Live

4 days ago

Hill, who gave up medicine for a career in comedy, was speaking as he appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
'I was absolutely driven,' he told host Lauren Laverne.
'I had gone from doing 80, 100 hours a week as a doctor, getting up at the crack of dawn. Suddenly I had all this time free during the day, so I really felt like I had something to prove.
'So I would get up and I would write jokes.'
Hill said he would make constant calls to get bookings when he started doing stand-up in the early 1990s.
'I would just bug them and bug them,' he said.
'I was absolutely merciless in my pursuit of it. It's not the funniest people that get on, it's the pushiest. And I was pushy.'
Hill, whose real name is Matthew Hall, said his first stand-up gig was at a Mexican restaurant in South Norwood, south London.
'My first gag got a laugh, and it completely threw me because I had been rehearsing it without laughs,' he told Laverne.
But he recovered and continued his routine, and even got another booking from it.
Hill, who won the Perrier Award for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1992, said being a comedian means 'I can get away with just about any silly behaviour'.
Hill, who created and presented Harry Hill's TV Burp on ITV from 2001 to 2012, said he takes time to prepare ahead of his comedy routines.
'I have to have an hour to myself,' he said. 'It's not a character, it is me. It is a persona, if you like.
'I have to pace up and down and work myself up, because if I don't do that it's not as funny.'
Describing how he felt about being a doctor, he told Laverne about an incident soon after he qualified, when he had to break the news to a man that his wife had unexpectedly died during an operation.
'I was completely out of my depth,' he said.
'I told him and he started crying, and I started crying. I thought this is – this isn't good. What it makes you do is bottle up your emotions.'
But he added: 'I wasn't a bad doctor.'
Among the songs he chose as his desert island discs were Hey Bulldog by the Beatles, Life During Wartime by Talking Heads, and Gay Bar by Electric Six.
Hill said a 'thick book you could use to kill small mammals' would be useful, and chose Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
He said his luxury item would be a bucket and spade, because 'where's the fun of a sandy beach without the ability to make sandcastles?'