VIC REEVES
The award-winning British comic on birds, Bob and domestic bliss in the countryside
Fowl Play
OFF SCREEN BRITISH FUNNYMAN VIC REEVES IS A DICHOTOMY. HE’S A TWEED-JACKET-WEARING AC/DC LOVER, WHO LIKES MASS ADULATION, GROWING HIS OWN RHUBARB AND HAS AN ODD FONDNESS FOR BIRDS
interview: damon syson photography: david ellis
CONSIDERING Vic Reeves’ appreciation of birds – the feathered variety – not to mention his taste for the surreal, it seemsfitting that our interview is interrupted by a marauding chicken. We’re sitting on the patio of the comedian’s idyllic Kent home, discussing his upcoming autobiography, when the aforementioned fowl jumps onto the table and starts pecking at my tape recorder. “That’s a superhen,” he informs me, deadpan. “There were eight of them originally but the others got killed. Somehow she always manages to evade death.”
Reeves, who grew up as James Roderick Moir in Darlington, County Durham, has been fascinated by birds since childhood. His recent art exhibition at the Opus Gallery in Newcastle was entitled Birds and Their Interactions with Humans am/pm and included portraits of rooks, lapwings, curlews and other species of bird – as well as more dramatic avian activity, such as A Kestrel Having Sex Above a TV Set.
His autobiography, Me:Moir, includes a number of references to birds, from the pet budgie which flew around the family home pooping in people’s tea, to the memorable concert he once attended by 1970s prog-rock band Camel. The band had just released an album entitled The Snow Goose and the gig climaxed with a roadie pulling a stuffed goose, suspended on a wire, over the heads of the bemused audience. Spinal Tap, eat your heart out.
You can tell a great deal about a person with a glance around their house, and Reeves’ home speaks volumes. The £800,000 converted Victorian schoolhouse, which he bought from Dr Who actor Tom Baker in 2003, stands in a secluded spot, with only the occasional lamb bleating in a neighbouringfield to break the silence. Inside, the décor has touches of the macabre: a ram’s skull leaning against the wall; a stuffed woodpecker in a glass case; and a statuette of Dali’s Elephant with long legs. On the walls, art-work ranges from rustic oil-paintings of horses to showbizzy portraits of Reeves, 47, and his model/actress wife, Nancy Sorrell, 32. On the lawn, barely yards from the Norman church that abuts the property, there’s a raised hot-tub – with space enough for four people. What does all this say about Reeves? Well, to paraphrase The Osmonds: “He’s a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock ‘n’ roll”. Even his wardrobe reflects this dichotomy. Today’s apparel consists of a tweed jacket, waistcoat, green cords and brogues – with an AC/DC badge on his lapel. “I get called a country squire because of the way I dress,” he says, “but I’ve always dressed like this. I’m not really of this age. I’d be better suited to being around 100 years ago. Or maybe in the Thirties.”
To most people, it seems as though Reeves has kept a low profile in recent years. The last time he made headlines was in 2004, when he and Nancy appeared together on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here – an experience he dismisses as “a camping trip”. Does he regret doing it?
“Not at all. People seem to think it’s got a terrible stigma attached to it, like you’ve failed and you’re desperate for cash. I did it because they paid us enough money to pay off a chunk of the mortgage and it was a bit of an adventure. They didn’tfilm much of what I was doing because it wasn’t what they wanted – which was people having afight. I spent most of my time building a big shrine up the river but they never showed any of that.”
Writing his autobiography took him a year, waking daily at 6am and writing solidly for four hours. The early morning habit should stand him in good stead over the coming months as Nancy is expecting twins. And they’re also moving house. The current property isn’t big enough for the expanding brood, which includes two children from Reeves’ former marriage – Alice, 12 and Louis, eight. So, a busy time ahead with twins on the way?
“Yeah but I love it,” he grins. “It’s great. It’s no stress because I don’t mind getting up in the night and all that; I was brought up a stoic. I think of it as an exciting adventure. When you see your baby’sfirst smile, that’s just the best moment.” A newspaper recently claimed he wanted his children to have Cockney accents. “That was invented,” he says. “They won’t, anyway. They’re going to be two girls but no, I won’t reveal the names we’ve chosen. They won’t be poncey names but more than that I can’t tell you.
You can say they’re going to be called Crosse & Blackwell if you like.”
For anyone who has been a fan of Reeves’, and his comedy partner Bob Mortimer’s, televisual japery, meeting Jim Moir instead of Vic Reeves is a surprise. Like many comedians, he saves his clowning for when he’s being paid. In person, the so-called “original Dadaist” of prime-time TV is measured and serious, almost bordering on the dour. He’s more at home growing onions and rhubarb in his allotment than propping up the bar of a Soho private members’ club. It annoys him about showbiz that: “As soon as you’re in the public eye, people assume you spend most of your time at night-spots and galas. I never have done. Most of the people I know avoid that type of thing like the plague.” Surely the same doesn’t apply for his partner in crime, Bob Mortimer, who seemed to be a regularfixture in late-night hangouts at one stage in the ‘90s? “That’s the thing,” Reeves counters, “you go out once and it looks like you’ve been out every night of the year. Bob doesn’t leave the house.” Mortimer lives a few miles down the road and the duo see each other regularly. Reeves hopes they will continue working together: “We bounce off each other and work so well together it would be a shame not to.”
The only time Reeves lapses into trademark silliness is when we discuss his brief foray into pop star territory. “I had a number one [with Dizzy] and I had two number threes.” He pauses before sniggering like Muttley from Wacky Races cartoons. “But I’ve never had a number two.” It’s a rare moment of lightness. It’s odd because his autobiography, which is accompanied by cartoon illustrations by the author himself, is full of quirky humour. Reeves comes from a family of printers and clearly has a relish for words – something he puts down to his grandfather’s influence. “My grandad had a dictionary that he’d owned since he was a kid,” he recalls. “I’d go into his study, open it up and randomly put myfinger on a word, which I would have to use in context in conversation the next time I saw him.”
Reeves started writing the memoir for fun. It was only when he realised the pages were mounting up that he took it to his agent, who struck a deal with Virgin Books. He grins: “Theirfirst reaction was, ‘We really like it; who would you like to write it?’ I said, ‘I’m doing it, it’s an autobiography.’ I naively assumed that everyone who releases an autobiography writes their own. Apparently not so.” The book painstakingly details the teenage Jim Moir’s inept dealings with the opposite sex. Is he still shy with women? “Yes. I always will be. Not just with women, with anyone. I’m not horribly shy but I was never particularly bold with women on a romantic front.
But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that – and I’m not alone.” One of the funniest chapters describes the glorious period in the late 70s when he was “the loudest bassist in Darlington”. At the time, Reeves was one third of Trout: “a prog-rock power-trio with songs about elves and alfresco dining”. Overall, the young Jim Moir that emerges from the pages is a dreamy, imaginative lad whofills his time with creative activities and money-making schemes. Hisfirst part-time job, for example, was as a labourer on a pig farm. On thefirst day, he had to help the farmer castrate a herd of piglets. To his horror, the fruits of the day’s labour ended up in a “ball soup”, served to the aghast young narrator by the kindly farmer’s wife, who, seeing the look of disgust on his face, asks:
“Is it too salty?” Even to this day, Reeves hates not being busy and divides his time between acting, writing, art and music.
“You should have 10 good ideas a day,” he announces. “I love making things and inventing. I can’t just sit down not doing anything.
I’m an early riser. I wake up with good ideas and they have to be put into practice early on, otherwise they fester and stagnate. I’ve started a detailed journal with photographs for the twins. I’ll give it to them when they’re 21. By then it’ll be a big thick tome. They canfight over who keeps it.”
Me:Moir ends when Reeves turns 20 and moves to London with three friends who form a band together. This was in 1979 and the foursome hung around in Notting Hill trying to get signed while doing various day jobs. Reeves spent six months in the civil service, before working in a factory for two years, and then at the Our Price record shop on Charing Cross Road. “After that,” he recalls, “I decided I was never going to work for anyone again. So I started making tapes and selling them in the back of the NME.” What kind of tapes? “Experimental jazz,” he says, with the barest flicker of a smile.
In 1983, Reeves, whose name unconfirmedly comes from his favourite singers, Vic Damone and Jim Reeves, enrolled part-time at a local art college and became such a proficient painter that he ended up selling copies of Van Gogh and Rembrandt paintings for £50 each.
By the late ‘80s, as well as performing with bands, he’d arrived on the alternative comedy circuit. It was when he compered a weekly night at Goldsmith’s Tavern in New Cross that he created the character of Vic Reeves, “The North-East’s top light entertainer”. One evening, a solicitor from Middlesbrough called Bob Mortimer started heckling him from the audience, andfinally ended up on the stage. The pair soon discovered that they had a lot in common – including, it transpired, both having attended the legendary Snow Goose gig in Middlesbrough Town Hall back in 1975. From then on, Mortimer was part of the show, which gained a cult following and was then picked up by the BBC and broadcast in 1990 as Vic Reeves Big Night Out. The remainder of the ‘90s saw the duo reappear in a range of guises: The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer; Shooting Stars (which won awards at the British Comedy Awards and the Baftas); Bang Bang! It’s Reeves and Mortimer; and Randall and Hopkirk (deceased).
The second half of Reeves’ memoirs might not arrive for some time as his next project is a novel. “I stopped the autobiography there because I think thefirst 20 years are the most exciting. The rest of it is pretty much what people already know: doing TV, which I don’t think is that exciting.” You can’t help feeling he’s being disingenuous, given that the latter part of his life includes certain dramatic episodes. Hisfirst marriage, to Sarah Vincent, became tabloid fodder when she had an affair with a builder called Keith. Subsequently, said wife fell in love with her female personal trainer and the couple eventually divorced in 1996. Reeves later announced his engagement to actress Emilia Fox, Randall and Hopkirk co-star, but they split up within a year. All rather delicate material, no? Still, I put it to him, wouldn’t describing these events from his own point of view be an opportunity to set the record straight? “I don’t believe in setting records straight,” he states. “That makes it sound like I’ve got something to hide. I don’t read tabloid journalism but I’ve heard what they write and that’s up to them.” We talk about his views on the tabloids that have been harsh to him. “It [tabloid journalism] doesn’t seem to be that upbeat any more,” he sighs. “Wallowing in created despair seems to be the order of the day.”
The only time he loses his cool is when I bring up the events of last year when he was convicted of drink-driving. While being over the limit, Reeves had driven down the road to buy cigarettes. En route, he hit another car with his vintage Jaguar, didn’t notice and drove off. He was banned for 36 months, ordered to do 100 hours community service and Churchill Insurance cancelled his lucrative advertising contract as the voice of their nodding dog. I ask him how he feels about the incident now. Ashamed? Foolish? “I’ve said all that,” he snaps, with an air offinality. The atmosphere is momentarily frosty, but soon thaws when I ask him if he feels like a pop star manqué, having spent a large chunk of his life playing bass in unsigned bands? “I was a pop star,” he counters. “When Bob and I were on tour with Big Night Out, there were thousands of screaming girls all trying to grab hold of us. It was like being in the Beatles. We played in Bristol the night we went to number one with Dizzy and that was probably the highlight of my career. I was about 32, so a bit past it but it was still fantastic.”
Although he clearly misses the roar of the crowd, Reeves hasn’t toured for eight years and has no plans to do so. You get the sense, looking around the peaceful property, of a man in his estate, comfortable, prosperous, content with life. The best thing about getting older, he says with a chuckle, is winding up teenagers: “I’m very abreast of what’s happening in the pop world and what’s happening in youth culture, but it’s fun to act completely naïve in their presence. So if they mention George Michael, you say, ‘Oh he’s a footballer is he?’”
After all the tempestuous times in the past, you get the sense that his relationship with Nancy – a former podium dancer and Ann Summers model – is pretty rock-solid. Apparently, they’ve not even had a row. “It really is domestic bliss,” he gushes. “We just love each other’s company and we don’t go anywhere without each other. It’s the way my mum and dad were, and the way her’s were. I think you look at parents and get a pretty good idea of what it’s going to be like in the future.” They met whilefilming the TV show I love 1991. Nancy had been hired as a model and they hit it off instantly, chatting non-stop for the entire day. “Three months later,” he recalls, “we were doing Shooting Stars and we needed a model so I asked for Nancy, just so I could talk to her again. I asked her out and that was it.”
Reeves’ last foray onto the small screen was last year’s Monkey Trousers, the sketch show he co-wrote with Bob Mortimer. These days television is becoming a different beast, increasingly relying on reality shows and docu-soaps rather than edgy, risky comedy. He sighs: “It’s so much cheaper to shove a camera through someone’s window and show them getting fat or thin or changing their haircut.” At some point in the future, Reeves hopes to make a piratefilm but at present he’s writing a sitcom which he describes as “a bit like Midsomer Murders”. Other than that, he’s not quite sure what the future holds. “I’ve pretty much done everything I wanted to do,” he muses, “so I need tofind another goal. At the moment it’s the novel. I feel very content as long as I can keep working. I want to do more writing so I can stay at home and watch the kids growing up.”
I ask him what the novel will be about. Birds, perhaps? And will it be surreal? “It’ll be whatever it is when it comes out of my mind,” he grins. “Who knows, it might even be metaphysical. As long as you love what you’re doing, the enthusiasm comes through. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”
Me:Moir, Volume One 0-20, (Virgin Books), is published 8 June
