A Bromantic Comedy

A joint appearance at last year's Fringe sparked a firm friendship between Mike Wozniak Henry Paker. This year, the pair have written a comedy together and, as Catherine Sylvain finds out, a new double act seems well-and-truly formed

Feature by Catherine Sylvain | 16 Jul 2010

There is surely no one in a lonelier position than a scomedian failing to amuse an audience. So it’s fortunate that the double act is more conducive to comedy than any other artform. At least one other person in the room finds you funny – and better still if they’re your best friend. This year’s festival finds Time Out Award-winning Mike Wozniak and accomplished cartoonist and stand-up Henry Paker teaming up for the first time in their chaotic comic quest The Golden Lizard, but are they the comedy Clegg and Cameron or Brown and Blair?

As it turns out, neither. "It’s like I’m Tom Cruise," Wozniak announces, "and Henry is my long lost autistic brother." Paker has different ideas. "I think that actually we are both the autistic one. Imagine Rain Man without Tom Cruise, just two Dustin Hoffmans bumbling about on a stage."

I speak to the two separately but neither strays far from the other in conversation. "We met through stand-up," Wozniak explains in his typical rambling manner. "I definitely knew about Henry long before he knew about me, so I had the edge on him in that respect." He pauses sinisterly. "The first time I laid eyes on him at a gig he had no idea I was there. But I was there, in the shadows, and I liked the cut of his jib."

Paker of the well-cut jib had also wanted to work with Wozniak for a while: "We were in the same show last year in Edinburgh, Superclump. That got a four star review – thanks, thanks." Eventually, Paker found he spent more time with Wozniak than with his wife.

The Golden Lizard is what emerged from their time together – an adventure story about a librarian from Reading on the trail of eminent rogue scientist Floyd Vernon and his eponymous tome. Paker says it was inspired by the oddly asexual man-child that is Tintin, but he adds, "It might be Tintin with sex – though it is an all-male cast, we do play women."

The show mixes adventure with some of former Wozniak’s trademark amateur science. "Mike’s got a background in science," says Paker, "and I’ve got your average Radio 4 listener’s knowledge. It’s respectable. I actually just bought a book about science. Not the Bill Bryson one – that’s for non-experts. It’s another one."

Homework notwithstanding, don’t expect any factual accuracy from the show. As Paker insists, "It is certainly not ‘info-tainment’. If anything it’s entertain-info. The entertainment eclipses the info."

But The Golden Lizard still takes something of a mercurial form, as Wozniak summarises: "There’s bits of costume. It varies, we both play everyone, sometimes we forget who is playing who when, where and how. It flips and turns and surprises itself a bit and that’s the bit I most enjoy – details change. We’ve created a little world and we want to pull the audience into it. It’s quite fun and weird and has left audiences a bit confused."

Amused, certainly; this brand new show has already won Best New Show at the Leicester Comedy Festival and is tipped for a radio adaptation. It seems pair lucked out in teaming up, as Paker admits: "Finding a good partnership is great. It’s quite a lonely business by yourself."

"With solo stand up, you always have a day at the Fringe where it goes wrong," continues Wozniak. "But if you’ve created something with someone and you love it, and the person you really rate loves it, then it’s a joy regardless."

Perhaps this is the year of the double act if politics are anything to go by. Is Wozniak and Paker’s Golden Lizard really an adventure story or is it that definitive sub-genre of the last few years – the bromantic comedy?

Mike Wozniak and Henry Paker: The Golden Lizard
Pleasance Courtyard
4-30 Aug, 4.45pm, £7-£9.50