Marcus Brigstocke; ‘500 people adore you, then you're alone for 22 hours'

Times

4 days ago

I live in Balham, 'Gateway to the South', as Peter Sellers called it in a sketch. Pleasingly, at the top of Balham Hill lies the Gateway Hotel, which is a nod to Sellers. When I first moved here and sent out my change of address, I added Gateway to the South in brackets after Balham. One of the utility companies incorporated this into my address when billing me, which was delightful.
Nothing in particular. I gigged at the Balham Banana quite a lot. Every single comic living in the bottom half of the country has probably played the Banana on their way up. It took about six months before I realised what a gem I'd found. It's a village. I know the local grocer, the butcher, a couple of people who run the cafés. I think that's rare in London, but it's beautiful and very important for me.
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Fourteen years. I confidently predict that I will never leave. Rachel [Parris, also a comedian] and I have moved around in that time. Until a year ago we lived a little further along in Balham. With the arrival of our baby boy, Billy, we wanted a slightly different shape of house. We're very close to Tooting Common. With a child and a very small garden, it's the ultimate gift.
It's a four-bedroom Victorian terrace, but modernised. The room we spend most time in is open-plan, opening out to our rear garden. I really like open-plan living because I spend a lot of time on my own, moving around the country on tours, so I appreciate a big communal area. We're also fortunate to have a studio at the top of the house, where we record the How Was It for You? podcast.
With a three-year-old, and with the nature of our work, we didn't want to do a lot. The guy who lived here before us was an architect with amazing taste. A lot of this house is his design. For example, the doors out to the garden are arched, which is really unusual because most people in this sort of set-up have Crittall doors, or big glass doors with a steel frame.
The biggest change we've made is to the front room, which is separate from the open-plan area. We painted it a bright green, with panelling and green wallpaper. It's like living inside a mojito, but with a Jane Austen vibe, mainly because Rachel is mad about her. It has a sofa, two armchairs, loads of books on bookshelves, a record player, but no television. It's what people used to call a 'withdrawing room', a quiet room for reading, writing and working on show ideas.
When you first become a comic your first show is usually brilliant because they're the jokes you've worked on for years. You've probably got plenty of ideas for your second show, but by the time you've reached your third, you have to write something from scratch. I found that unless I cared about the subject I was talking about, I couldn't really sustain it. So I take a subject that matters to me, such as masculinity and the modern man in the show Vitruvian Mango, and make it funny.
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There was a wine cupboard here when we moved in. I don't drink, so I had it converted into a vinyl-storage cupboard. When I open it up the lights come on and I can see all my records. I'm an active listener, in that I'll have the sleeve in my hands while playing the record. I love the ritual of carefully placing the needle on the record, standing up and turning it over halfway through. I like noise. It's music and cheese for me.
That's another way of relaxing. I don't eat sugar — no puddings, cakes, ice creams, biscuits. Years ago I noticed that even really good restaurants serve bad cheese badly. You know, brie that's been cut hours before serving, and then served straight from the fridge? I got interested in this and started learning about cheese. I got qualified with the Academy of Cheese and now I'm a level 1 cheese associate, which is good enough for me to judge in the World Cheese awards.
It's taken 30 years to learn. Tours are bad for you because you're on your own, then 500 people adore you for two hours, then you're alone for another 22 hours. I swim in the sea if convenient. I go on long walks, and I ring home a lot. Rachel has to put up with very, very long phone calls and WhatsApps.
Tickets for Marcus Brigstocke's Vitruvian Mango tour are available from offthekerb.com