Comedy
Stuck In A Lift
Dom Joly lied about his house being haunted by an opera singer
Chatting to the Trigger Happy TV star about inventing ghosts and being a better chef than Gordon Ramsey
Twenty-five years on from Trigger Happy TV, Dom Joly is still reliving his near-death experiences.
“The one that comes to mind is crawling across a road dressed as a giant snail and thinking that, yes, this is going to be very funny, but what if a motorcycle comes up in between the two cars that stop and run me over and that’s the end?” he says. “It didn’t. But actually, we did it again, and the second time I nearly was hit by a motorbike. I used to think that in England, that joke worked really well, but if I did it in America, some redneck would have got out of a pickup truck and probably beaten me up and accused me of being an immigrant Mexican snail or whatever.”
The show brought a fresh approach to the hidden camera format, Joly pranking the British public with a range of zany characters, including The Traffic Warden, The Scout, and of course The Giant Snail. The TRIGGER HAPPY TV – LIVE! 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR offers audiences a chance to catch up with these characters – but, as Joly reminds us, those in attendance shouldn’t get too comfortable in their seats.
“I think when everyone used to watch the show they obviously watched it at home, and recently we did a retrospective where we watched it in a cinema with a lot of people. It’s amazing how infectious that is,” he says. “We’ll be watching some of the great old clips with me talking about things that went wrong, how they came about, and then actually having some of the characters from Trigger Happy live on stage, telling you what they’ve been up to since. Of course, it’s Trigger Happy, so you’ve got to expect surprises and stuff happening to you in the audience. You’re not safe.”
Ahead of the TRIGGER HAPPY TV – LIVE! 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR visiting Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and London this October, we got stuck in a lift with Joly to talk about secret hot air ballooning, bitcoin regrets and lying on TV.
Who would you most want to be stuck in a lift with?
This is like your dream dinner party thing. I’m going to go – currently Lola Young, because I’m obsessed with her, as everyone is. So, Lola Young, John McEnroe and David Bowie, if I can have people that are dead. And Robert Smith from The Cure. A very crowded lift. It’s an industrial lift.
Who would you least want to be stuck in a lift with?
I can’t do that because I always slag someone off and then I find them the next day… Do people answer this one?!
A lot of people go safe.
So, Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump or Elon Musk are the two. I’d actually prefer they met in the lift and then the lift smashed down to the bottom of the lift shaft. I think Donald Trump would be an absolute nightmare. Then weirdly, I worry that when I met him in the lift, I’d actually quite like him when he’s not like performing for the crowd. I’d probably prefer, frankly, to be in a lift with Donald Trump than Elon Musk, because I think at least Trump would be entertaining. Elon Musk is just 100% weird on every level.
What’s the last gig you went to?
The last live show I went to see was The Waterboys, actually, and very weirdly, I’ve loved The Waterboys since I was 18, and they came on my show when I was at the BBC. I think they’re one of the few bands that’s still going from the 80s – they’ve literally just released a new album. They’re still amazing live.
What’s on your rider?
It’s very complicated, because I kind of hate having a rider. My first big show I did, they asked me for a rider, and I thought, I wonder if they’ll do it. So I asked for an ironed copy of The Daily Telegraph, two bananas and a plastic toy. They did produce it for me, and then I felt like I was being a twat. But I don’t really ask for a rider really – just some water, something really boring. The joke about riders is that you’re supposed to ask for really tricky things, like take all the blue M&Ms out and stuff, and that’s supposed to show that you’re a really tricky person, but actually it’s a really clever thing Van Halen used to do. They did it because they had very complicated setups, and they knew that if got somewhere strange and went into the dressing room and the blue M&Ms had been taken out, that there was an attention to detail, and all their other stuff would be perfect. So there is a method to being a bit demanding.
What work of yours would you say didn’t get the attention that it deserved?
World Shut Your Mouth. When I finished Trigger Happy TV, I went to the BBC and I did some other stuff, but then I made another hidden camera show where I went around the world, and actually it’s part of my current tour. It went on BBC One in the end, but they put it on very late and buried it because it was a disaster. I still think it’s the funniest show I’ve ever made by a long time. I persuaded the BBC at one stage to fly me around the world with a camera crew to go to all seven wonders of the world in one journey, just to stand in front of the Taj Mahal, The Pyramids, The Great Wall Of China, wait for someone to come up and then go, “That is shit”, and that’s how every show started. I still think it’s f*cking brilliant. But BBC One disagreed.
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t buy bitcoin.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
So the worst job I ever had was I was delivering colostomy bags to bed bound people in flats around Shepherd’s Bush. It was a temp job. I was a van driver. It was terrible, because you get there and these were people that would never see anyone, and they just wanted to talk to you, which is fine, but you just felt really guilty when you left. It was like, I couldn’t do it. It was heartbreaking.
If you had to have a song playing every time you walked into a room, what would it be?
That changes all the time. I think it would be ‘One Hundred Years’ by The Cure. I actually use it before I come on stage. I find it incredibly upbeat, and it really irritates some people, like my wife. She hates the song. It’s a really good way of judging whether I’m going to get on well… that’s not right, because I do get on with my wife. But it’s a good way of judging whether I’m going to enjoy the audience or not, as to whether they’re getting into that song or not.
Who do you often get told you look like?
Well, I’ve had really bad and good. When I was younger, I had the lead singer of the Thompson Twins, which dates me, and I did briefly have a Johnny Depp period, but then I put on a lot of weight, and I became the Go Compare guy, which was really bad. But now I’ve lost weight again. I don’t know who I look like now.
What’s your most controversial food opinion?
I’ve got so many opinions on food. Gordon Ramsay sucks. Like, I think Gordon Ramsay can’t cook. I would say that is my main one. I went on his show, and I beat him. I made something that I’d never cooked before, and then he made the same thing after I told him what it was, and then we took it to a restaurant, and I won. They thought mine was better. I thought, “Are you bluffing here?” I don’t know, mainly because I hate his chain restaurants.
What’s your most rewatched film?
I’ll probably go with This Is Spinal Tap, which everyone must see.
Do you rewatch films much?
No, I don’t. My daughter rewatches films so many times. It’s like her comfort blanket. She just has about ten films, and they’re awful things like Pitch Perfect, real comfort rom coms. I don’t really but there are certain films I can rewatch a lot. Dirty Harry, Man On Wire… I can watch documentaries over and over again. But Spinal Tap I’ve seen too many times.
Do you have any superstitions?
No, although I did just lie to a television program and told them my house was haunted by an opera singer, because they were paying quite a lot of money to come and film my house, and then I had to get my son to lie as well and say he’d heard this opera singer. So I don’t that’s a superstition, but it paid off.
Is there a skill that you have that no one else knows you’re good at?
I’m a hot air balloonist, which no one knows. I bought a hot air balloon at a book club from some quite elderly woman who was selling a hot air balloon because she’d had a heart attack. I thought, how much could a hot air balloon cost? Actually it wasn’t as much as you think. So I just bought it and I tweeted about it, and the world champion hot air balloonist lives half an hour away from me, and he said, “I’ll teach you to fly.” So I went to Italy and he taught me to fly a hot air balloon.
What did your 12-year-old self imagine that you’d be doing now?
Because I grew up in Beirut, there were very limited career options, so I thought I’d either be a foreign correspondent, a travel writer, a diplomat or a spy. I might have been all four. I’ve definitely been three.
