Jon Richardson: this guy's the limit

It’s not the easiest question to answer, but when Jon Richardson is stood before a camera, awkwardly brandishing two of your best yellow squashes, it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. “What are you?” demands a puzzled greengrocer, not recognising one of the more successful acts of last year’s Fringe. Richardson is an award-winning stand-up comedian, a radio presenter for the BBC and a 26-year-old Northerner with an endless stockpile of pet peeves. Today he is also quite hungry.

As we saunter along the stalls of the Castle Terrace Farmers' Market, he is piecing together a master plan. “Pie and potatoes and curly kale for lunch”, he announces, clearly satisfied with his decision. It’s a degree of anticipation you’d expect many comedians of his age to attach to the prospect of a three-day bender, but for a man who makes no apologies for favouring an altogether more civil pace of life, a quiet meal at home is as good as it gets.

While the previous night—the first Friday of the festival—most likely saw Edinburgh sodden in expensive beer and cheap laughs, Richardson spent the evening in, entertaining fellow comics Dan Atkinson and Lloyd Langford with a bottle of wine and his hometown speciality, Lancashire Hotpot. “It’s the best way to take your mind off the show,” he explains, pausing thoughtfully before pronouncing: “I nailed it last night – perfect, really good.”

At first I assume he’s being uncharacteristically self-assured about the strength of his current show, This Guy At Night. In fact, he’s talking about the hotpot. “It was spot-on. They didn’t seem to think so. Rude. I’ll just have to invite different people next time.”

Had he been talking about his gig, such confident self-congratulation would not have been misguided. Reviewers and audiences alike are already creating a buzz which hints towards a repeat of the success he found last year when Spatula Pad earned him the Chortle award for best breakthrough act. Now, returning with a newfound independence afforded by his first solo tour, he tackles the complexities of perfection. He insists, though, it’s not as lofty as it may sound. “Basically I get accused of moaning a lot, so I think it’s easier to say ‘I’m a perfectionist’ than it is to say ‘I’m a grumpy bastard’. That’s kind of the tack.”

Off stage, he’s slightly more subdued than the onstage persona at the Courtyard, but his self-deprecation, affability and sharp, sneering sense of humour are all genuine. As we work our way through the market, salivating and snatching free samples, he casually mocks anything that catches his eye, whether it’s a pie made with red wine and brandy (“It’s chicken, yeah, but it will get you shitfaced”), cannabis-flavoured crisps, (“You’ll eat the crisps and then get the munchies and then you’ll eat more crisps. You’ll just be found dead”) or some more unusual meats ("I get squeamish about eating cute animals. Mind you, I had venison the other day…but I though Bambi was a dick”).

While it’s not long before his trademark grumbling rears its head, the respite Edinburgh provides for Richardson suggests that here he is more at ease than usual. Working little more than an hour a day, sitting in bed watching Saturday Kitchen and spending an entire month in one city—"being a real person", as he puts it—are all precious luxuries to a man who finds himself "lonely" and "never quite relaxed" on tour.

Today’s particular grievance is certainly reasonable, and he is hardly alone in voicing it. The sweltering temperatures experienced in Fringe venues often prove a real test for comics, and this year the plight of performers like Richardson has even made the headlines. “The heat is ridiculous in my room”, he says, as we pass a smoking griddle stacked with buffalo meat. “They’ve got fans but they just move the hot air around, so if anything it’s just irritating. Five people had to leave yesterday. And they always walk out at the same point – when I get my penis out and start screaming.”

Anyone who’s endured a gig in one of the city’s stickier airing cupboards will appreciate Richardson’s annoyance, but as a comic whose career was founded on his OCD and harsh critical mind, it’s essentially his job to complain. To him, though, it’s more than just a shtick; it’s an entire day-to-day worldview that means he can’t help but pick faults both in himself and in those around him. He wasn’t always like this. “I was quite careless as a child," he recalls; "I was messy and didn’t really do a lot. But now I’ve become this fastidious, overly tidy adult and I think it’s sort of a response to that. I remember once leaving a mint Feast on a computer and it melted into the thing – I look back now and I can’t believe I ever did that kind of thing.”

Despite the success and the wealth of material his beefs and compulsions have brought, Richardson evidently has something of a love-hate relationship with his inner old man, an aspect of his personality that he speaks about with a resignation that one suspects is only temporary. “I got a review the other week that said: ‘If he’s this grumpy now then heaven help us when he hits his forties.' I think that’s probably a fair way of putting things but I’m hoping that by then I’ll relax a bit. I don’t think I could handle being like this for much longer.”

Richardson is already working on a new strategy for turning these grouchy, antisocial tendencies to his advantage: take his flaws, amp them up and mould them into the basis of a new television series. Spurred on by ambitions of a legacy that exceeds the short-lived impact of a gig, he’s already begun writing a self-parodying sitcom, though he’s vague about the chances of him actually putting it into production. “It’s a format to get my stand-up out,” he says, “so it’s based around a young character who isn’t into going out all the time and he’s slightly misanthropic and grumpy and compulsive about things. I just hope that there’s scope for something that doesn’t assume that everyone aged between 16 and 25 is a drug-taking tit.”

The popularity of Richardson's Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 6 Music bodes well for his chances in TV and, by extension, in the scary world of widespread recognition. I imply that he’s already the most famous man in his current home of Swindon, but he jumps at the opportunity to remind me that both Mark Lamaar and Melinda Messenger are from the same town (“But when my breast implants go in, she is going down!”). For somebody who likes his own company, Richardson is undaunted by the possibility of fame, so long as he can overcome his own insecurities.

Remembering the aftermath of a recent slot on Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, he acknowledges how the real pitfalls lie in the mind. “The day before it aired I was driving up to Leeds and there were these two guys in a car who pulled up alongside me and blasted the horn and flashed their lights and did ‘wanker’ signs. They were clearly just pricks – but the day before it airs I can know that they’re just pricks, whereas if that had been the day after, I wouldn’t want to be thinking, ‘Oh god, they’ve seen that McIntyre thing and they know who I am and they think I’m a prick.” And with that, Richardson takes his leave, toting his spoils for the day: a steak and ale pie and a tub of horseradish dip. The kale plan, however, is scuppered – out of season, don’t get him started. Never mind: he’s got telly to watch, a pie to eat and, quite possibly, awards to win.