Mark Watson: Marathon Man
Tom Hackett speaks to Mark Watson about Fringe fatigue and what's next for Edinburgh's busiest comic
| 22 Aug 2007
Mark Watson has built a reputation in the last few years for being the busiest comedian on the Fringe. His endurance-testing, day-long shows are now legendary, having become increasingly ambitious each time they’ve happened in the last four years. They’re all the more impressive when you consider that they’re sandwiched right in the middle of a regular Fringe run. This year, the only break in his run was, conspicuously, Tuesday 14th, the night that he was gamely trying to keep a bunch of sleep-deprived strangers awake and entertained in a white marquee. On top of that, he’s been “winding down” most nights presenting a quiz called We Need Answers with fellow comedians Tim Key and Alex Horne.
You could be forgiven for assuming that he sleeps for the other 11 months of the year. But turn on your telly and you’ll find him on Mock The Week, patiently trying to get a word in edgeways with the likes of Frankie Boyle, and you might well catch him trying to 'make the world substantially better' on Radio 4. Go to your local comedy club and you mayl find that he’s coming your way, as he restlessly tours the circuit. At home, he may well find time to put his feet up and read a good book, but he’s just as likely to be putting his feet up writing a good book, such as Bullet Points, his first novel, released in 2004 to rapturous applause from the likes of Steven Fry (who called him ‘the bastard lovechild of Woody Allen and William Boyd), or the just-released A Light-Hearted Look at Murder, which looks set to secure this reputation with its caustic satire on the entertainment industry.
His on-stage Welsh persona is famously high-spirited, good-natured and energetic. These qualities are all abundantly present in Watson himself, but are understandably a little on the frayed side by the time I catch up with him in the final week of the festivities. This time last week, we were standing in a field mulching, which basically involves ripping up grass and putting it down again, as part of our bid to save the planet during the 2007 24-hour show. Has he recovered from that particular full rotation of the earth around the sun? “Well, pretty much, yeah, I did manage to get a few good nights' sleep after that. But it’s always difficult to catch up, here, with the amount of stuff I always do.” Has this been his busiest year? “I think last year was more strenuous, probably. We did the 36 hour show, which is that all-important extra day! That was hard, it wasn’t so bad this year.”
As well as having half a day less to fill this year, Watson got a lot of help from various quarters, from big names like Simon Amstell and Tim Minchin, to the nice people at Craigmills who let us make a hash of planting some trees on their land. “It did take some of the pressure off of me,” he says. “I think the best bits of the show are where everyone pitches in, and it does help avoid that situation where there’s just a roomful of tired people staring at me and waiting for something to happen.” So did we save the planet? A pause. “It’s too early to say,” he says, cautiously. “I think we had a pretty good stab at it, but we might have to do some more stuff to finish the job.”
It’s not as trite a question as it sounds, because the green theme to the 24 hour show this year was no token bid for moral superiority. It’s part of a project called Crap At The Environment (CATE), which Watson has been involved in organising for the last few months. It takes the form of a small community of people who feel themselves to be manifestly ungreen, but who are interested in getting better. They are connected chiefly through a MySpace group, on which they “write blogs about their experiences, swap tips, stuff like that.” Among the huge and ever-growing number of groups and organisations encouraging greener lifestyles, CATE stands out for its complete lack of piety. Everyone in it freely admits to being crap, including its main organiser. “I think it’s easy for a lot of people to get on their high horses, but it’s not for me. I’ve got no horse to get on, at all. And that’s why I came to it, really, I wanted to come to it fresh.” The project will culminate in a CATE book, due for publication in April next year, which will be “kind of a narrative about what it’s like to try and get better at these things.”
Meanwhile, Watson’s career in non-fiction continues apace, with the recent publication of A Light-Hearted Look At Murder. Fans of his stand-up who casually pick up the book may find its dry, semi-serious, satirical tone a shock. “I tried to get away from the voice I speak in as a comedian” he explains. “Nobody wants to read a book by a comic that’s just a re-working of what they do on stage, so hopefully it reads quite differently from watching me.” Is the process of writing very different between the two genres? “You find out very quickly if something’s funny in stand-up. With a novel, the feedback is very slow in coming, so it takes an enormous amount of patience.” But ultimately, he says, the two processes are “complementary.” “It’s nice to have different projects to work on at different speeds” he says, suggesting that the slow-burn project of novel writing is perhaps a refuge from the fast-paced, non-stop treadmill of working the comedy circuit.
Not that Watson is becoming at all reticent about his stand-up work. Watching his triumphant show at the Pleasance Courtyard, it’s clear that he relishes the chance to play to bigger audiences that his ever-burgeoning success has afforded him. “I think everyone would like to play theatres if they could instead of tiny box rooms”, he ponders. “Obviously it’s quite gratifying to play to more people and it’s kind of easier to generate an atmosphere.” So is he likely to push the boat out even further next year, or is it time for a rest? “I think at some point you have to get off the treadmill of doing the Fringe every year. I’ve no idea but it could be that I don’t do it at all next year, or that I do a shorter run, or do a different kind of show. I could well do another long show next year, but I wouldn’t like to bet on it.”
One feels, though, that this might just be the third-week Fringe fatigue talking, for there’s still a strong glimmer of Watson’s inexhaustible creativity lurking just beneath the surface. “If I do it again next year, I’d have to find another way of approaching it, to avoid just trotting out the same old thing again.” With his record, it would seem that finding new approaches isn’t something Watson finds difficult. There may well be something quite interesting in store when he returns, full-strength, in 11 months time.
You could be forgiven for assuming that he sleeps for the other 11 months of the year. But turn on your telly and you’ll find him on Mock The Week, patiently trying to get a word in edgeways with the likes of Frankie Boyle, and you might well catch him trying to 'make the world substantially better' on Radio 4. Go to your local comedy club and you mayl find that he’s coming your way, as he restlessly tours the circuit. At home, he may well find time to put his feet up and read a good book, but he’s just as likely to be putting his feet up writing a good book, such as Bullet Points, his first novel, released in 2004 to rapturous applause from the likes of Steven Fry (who called him ‘the bastard lovechild of Woody Allen and William Boyd), or the just-released A Light-Hearted Look at Murder, which looks set to secure this reputation with its caustic satire on the entertainment industry.
His on-stage Welsh persona is famously high-spirited, good-natured and energetic. These qualities are all abundantly present in Watson himself, but are understandably a little on the frayed side by the time I catch up with him in the final week of the festivities. This time last week, we were standing in a field mulching, which basically involves ripping up grass and putting it down again, as part of our bid to save the planet during the 2007 24-hour show. Has he recovered from that particular full rotation of the earth around the sun? “Well, pretty much, yeah, I did manage to get a few good nights' sleep after that. But it’s always difficult to catch up, here, with the amount of stuff I always do.” Has this been his busiest year? “I think last year was more strenuous, probably. We did the 36 hour show, which is that all-important extra day! That was hard, it wasn’t so bad this year.”
As well as having half a day less to fill this year, Watson got a lot of help from various quarters, from big names like Simon Amstell and Tim Minchin, to the nice people at Craigmills who let us make a hash of planting some trees on their land. “It did take some of the pressure off of me,” he says. “I think the best bits of the show are where everyone pitches in, and it does help avoid that situation where there’s just a roomful of tired people staring at me and waiting for something to happen.” So did we save the planet? A pause. “It’s too early to say,” he says, cautiously. “I think we had a pretty good stab at it, but we might have to do some more stuff to finish the job.”
It’s not as trite a question as it sounds, because the green theme to the 24 hour show this year was no token bid for moral superiority. It’s part of a project called Crap At The Environment (CATE), which Watson has been involved in organising for the last few months. It takes the form of a small community of people who feel themselves to be manifestly ungreen, but who are interested in getting better. They are connected chiefly through a MySpace group, on which they “write blogs about their experiences, swap tips, stuff like that.” Among the huge and ever-growing number of groups and organisations encouraging greener lifestyles, CATE stands out for its complete lack of piety. Everyone in it freely admits to being crap, including its main organiser. “I think it’s easy for a lot of people to get on their high horses, but it’s not for me. I’ve got no horse to get on, at all. And that’s why I came to it, really, I wanted to come to it fresh.” The project will culminate in a CATE book, due for publication in April next year, which will be “kind of a narrative about what it’s like to try and get better at these things.”
Meanwhile, Watson’s career in non-fiction continues apace, with the recent publication of A Light-Hearted Look At Murder. Fans of his stand-up who casually pick up the book may find its dry, semi-serious, satirical tone a shock. “I tried to get away from the voice I speak in as a comedian” he explains. “Nobody wants to read a book by a comic that’s just a re-working of what they do on stage, so hopefully it reads quite differently from watching me.” Is the process of writing very different between the two genres? “You find out very quickly if something’s funny in stand-up. With a novel, the feedback is very slow in coming, so it takes an enormous amount of patience.” But ultimately, he says, the two processes are “complementary.” “It’s nice to have different projects to work on at different speeds” he says, suggesting that the slow-burn project of novel writing is perhaps a refuge from the fast-paced, non-stop treadmill of working the comedy circuit.
Not that Watson is becoming at all reticent about his stand-up work. Watching his triumphant show at the Pleasance Courtyard, it’s clear that he relishes the chance to play to bigger audiences that his ever-burgeoning success has afforded him. “I think everyone would like to play theatres if they could instead of tiny box rooms”, he ponders. “Obviously it’s quite gratifying to play to more people and it’s kind of easier to generate an atmosphere.” So is he likely to push the boat out even further next year, or is it time for a rest? “I think at some point you have to get off the treadmill of doing the Fringe every year. I’ve no idea but it could be that I don’t do it at all next year, or that I do a shorter run, or do a different kind of show. I could well do another long show next year, but I wouldn’t like to bet on it.”
One feels, though, that this might just be the third-week Fringe fatigue talking, for there’s still a strong glimmer of Watson’s inexhaustible creativity lurking just beneath the surface. “If I do it again next year, I’d have to find another way of approaching it, to avoid just trotting out the same old thing again.” With his record, it would seem that finding new approaches isn’t something Watson finds difficult. There may well be something quite interesting in store when he returns, full-strength, in 11 months time.