Angry Beards: "It’s a Neapolitan kind of thing"

“One of my favourite things about Glasgow is the quantity and quality of beards,” says Richard Brown, one third of the aptly named Angry Beards, also composed of fellow beardy men Keiron Nicholson and Australian expat Geoff Gawler, who shows up clean-shaven to the interview.

“Geoff shaved off his beard pretty much when we named the show Angry Beards. I regard it as an act of insubordination,” warns Nicholson.

“I turned 30 in December, so I wanted to look younger, like Danny Glover at the start of Lethal Weapon,” explains Gawler.

There’s a refreshing kind of power to interviewing three relative newcomers – they’re very honest, worried about the questions I’ll ask and after a two hour discussion, during which Brown relates his extensive knowledge and hatred of Twilight, Nicholson claims that he’d “respect politicians more if they would kill themselves,” and Gawler expresses his opinion on Scottish politics (“I just like the idea of Salmond and Sturgeon. I like being governed by fish”), they ask me if anything they said is at all usable. Of course guys, it all is.

They met when  performing at the same comedy nights in Glasgow, with Gawler drunkenly giving Brown performance tips after a gig and also, drunkenly, “blessing the union” of Nicholson and his girlfriend at Nice ’n’ Sleazy one night.

“Geoff lives a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence where he has to answer for what his drunk self has done,” says Nicholson.

Hopefully, they have better luck at this festival than at the Fringe, where Brown and Nicholson put on a show together for the first time to “no or hostile audiences,” according to Nicholson. “By the end of our run, I was dead inside and I didn’t have it in me to say ‘come to our show, it’ll be good,’ so I was standing on the side of the road saying ‘come to this car crash of a show,’” laughs Brown.

Angry Beards promises to be a hilarious hour of new and refreshing comedy, split up in three 20-minute sets from each performer. “It’s a Neapolitan kind of thing. I like to think I’m chocolate,” claims Gawler. “I’m strawberry,” chimes Nicholson. “You’re definitely vanilla, you are one of the whitest people I have ever met,” says Gawler to Brown.

Chocolate promises “pseudo-intellectual ideas with some kind of arc;” Strawberry suggests “hilarious jokes and advice to Disney characters;” while Vanilla offers a set revolving around “popular culture, self-image and melancholy,” according to the respective flavours, or as Nicholson also puts it: “Richard will be bringing the clever humour, I will be doing stupid humour and Geoff is Australian.”

One thing’s for sure; these Beards definitely seem more jovial than angry. “I think we missold the show when it comes to the title. People expecting angry comedy are not going to get it,” assures Brown. “I think I was quite an angry young man, now when I hear younger people going on about what pisses them off, I’m like ‘well, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Compromise is key, you have nothing to live for,’” says Gawler, prompting Nicholson to suggest “Relatively Chilled Out, Slightly Suicidal Beards” may have been a better title.

“Or ‘Apathetic Dudes,’ but that doesn’t sell tickets, does it?” suggests Gawler. “If you look at the flyer, we look happy. We are fundamentally happy people and we will make you happy, audience,” is Nicholson’s final selling point, while Brown responds that that “sounds like a prostitute selling themselves and lying to themselves in the same sentence.”