Interview
Interview
Horatio Gould is (probably) on Google Maps while talking to you
Get to know the rising comedian ahead of the autumn tour of his new show Return Of The Space Cowboy
Looking back, one of the tonics that helped the lockdown era go down a little smoother wasn’t just furlough, bread making or Beer52 subscriptions, but an influx of burgeoning comedians using social media to broadcast their ‘bits’, skits and sketches. Several years on, it’s rewarding to see so many of them now filling out venues at the Fringe and touring the UK with their own shows.
“It was a great opportunity for young comics,” says Horatio Gould, a sardonic and moustachioed comic who, along with his girlfriend Bebe Cave and friends such as Ed Night, Paddy Young, Dan Tiernan and Andrew Kirwan, owe a lot of their rising buzz to their engagement during this time. “I think because it took away the circuit and live gigs, where less experienced, younger comedians who are not as good on stage yet or don’t have the same expertise, would normally take a lot longer to work their way through. Suddenly it had all gone online, a place where we all felt more comfortable. It gave a really good opportunity to be creative and excel. We were all made in lockdown.”
When I speak to Gould he has just moved in with Cave and Young, who are in the next room writing new material with Night, and he tells me how pleasing it is that his peers are finding their success in different ways: “it feels like a very like positive friend group, where everyone is really trying to push for the everyone to do as well good as possible.” But he is soon to embark on a UK run of his second stand-up show, Return Of The Space Cowboy, which may or may not include a nod to the show’s namesake, Jamiroquai.
Return Of The Space Cowboy pays “homage to the millennials and giving life lessons to Gen Z,” say Gould, who at 28 finds himself at the cusp of the two generations. “It’s about what it does to you growing up with the internet, having found my first girlfriend on RuneScape, Chat Roulette, all those experiences, and also trying to think about what we have to believe in, reaching a point of trying to find something more meaningful.”
Before jumping on his cosmic steed for his UK tour, we got to know Gould a little better.
Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?
It’s not a funny answer, but it would probably be Paul Thomas Anderson, if I’m being really honest. Okay, that would be the person who I’d most like to have forced to talk to me for a long time. I’m a big fan of all his films, and I think what he does, being someone who writes and directs his own films and that whole process, to be able to guide a film through that entire process maybe takes the most varied skills. So I probably would just be really nerdy about his films, and he’d have nowhere to go. He’d be stuck.
Do you have a favourite of his?
It changes quite a lot. It’s probably The Master, but the one I really like that everyone thinks is a flop is Inherent Vice. It’s complete nonsense and it doesn’t really make sense, and when I watched it the first time in cinema I fell asleep it was so boring. And then I saw it for the second time and it clicked, I felt like I really got it. It’s about a detective who’s paranoid about the government and this big kind of conspiracy, but is also constantly high and already paranoid, so it blends into one. Being a detective who’s high on weed at the end of the 60s, when the hippie age is coming to an end, I think he captured that feeling in such a funny way.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
We’re thinking of scrapping this question, because we’re getting a lot of Putins and Trumps…
I’d love to get stuck in a live with Trump or Putin, are you kidding me? I mean, what, you get 20 minutes with Putin?! What an insane story to have. Of course, I’d like to get stuck in a lift with Trump. You out of your mind?! They’ll be right near the top. It would have to be someone who’s really dull, because anyone of notoriety, you feel like there’s something to be gained from a conversation with them, even if it’s unexpected. So someone who you’d least like to be stuck in a lift with would probably be, I don’t know, someone who just feels like we’re going to have absolutely nothing to talk about, but then I also don’t want to slag anyone off that I might run into, so you’ve sort of snookered me here. Everyone I think of who’s considered naughty or bad, it’s like… yeah, I’d get in a lift with Huw Edwards. I’ll have some questions. There’s even the biggest grifter of the lot, Russell Brand, yeah, I probably would like to get stuck in a lift with him as well. It’s a hard question.
What’s the weirdest interaction you’ve ever had with a famous person?
I spent quite a surreal evening in a sauna with Frankie Boyle and his son. You know, I’ve
never won any competition. I’ve never had any sort of critical acclaim or awards. The only things that have really gone my way is that a couple of great comics have co-signed me. Frank has been one of them, and whenever I’ve gone up to Glasgow he has always really looked after me and we just have this quite funny, intimate relationship that feels normal. And then occasionally I zoom out and it’s like… this is just bizarre.
What work of yours didn’t get the attention that it deserved?
There’s a Boys Gone Wild sketch that was very stupid, ‘Man who can’t stop mistaking racial diversity with ‘Diversity’ the dance group’. Now, this did not get many views, but it’s probably our favourite one. The whole sketch is a serious meeting where we keep trying to talk about diversity in the workplace, and Andrew keeps thinking, I’m talking about the dance crew. And for us, that’s it’s probably the funniest thing we’ve ever made. And it might not be a perfect sketch, but it is. No one’s agreed. So if you could take one thing for this interview, it’s go watch that one.
What was the last show that you went to?
I went to the first night of the Oasis tour. I was singing ‘Champagne Supernova’ at my sister’s wedding, and one of her friends had somehow ended up with four tickets on the first night. He didn’t have any friends who loved Oasis, so I landed on my feet. Not only is it the greatest show I’ve ever seen – I was at Glastonbury the week before and it’s still better than all of that – it was the first one, so you didn’t know what the setlist was, you didn’t even know if they’d take to the stage.
But not only that, the opening act was Richard Ashcroft from The Verve. The greatest opening act I’ve ever seen. I mean, on the greatest gig of all time ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ is probably going to be on the running order, right? But he did a song called ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, which was on my dad’s iPod when I was about eight and it’s one of the first songs I remember, really lovely, even though I didn’t know what it was about. And he played it and tears – just floods of tears – started pouring down my face, because I had this moment of remembering that. Then I realised that I was high, so the drugs were actually working. Singing ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ and realising, to be fair the drugs work very well.
But yeah, I want to use this interview to promote Oasis, you gotta shout out Oasis. They’re a great band and I really recommend everyone to check them out.
What did 12-year-old you imagine that you’d be doing now?
Well, the problem is that 12-year-old me was pretty ambitious. I think when I was 12, in my head I was going to have made it by 20. So I think, to be honest, 12 year old me would be pretty disappointed. But no, I think 12-year-old me actually wanted to be an actor. I was in school plays and stuff, but then I realised it was probably more fun writing stuff, and now it’s like a mix.
Is that something you’d like to do more of? I do see you make the occasional cameo...
Yeah I would like to do it more. My girlfriend’s an actor and I live with Paddy [Young] now and he’s got a background of acting. I certainly don’t think it’s easy, and I don’t know if I could be a proper, proper actor, but it’s fun being in stuff. My instincts normally lie towards the writing and directing perspective and I’m still trying to work it out, because my natural thing is to come up with ideas, but a lot of the time I feel more comfortable telling other people how to do my ideas than doing them myself.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I used to work in a cheese toastie kitchen at festivals, and that was pretty brutal. Doing the late shifts there, like 10pm to 8am sometimes, well maybe not 8am, but all while trying to keep the festival going all night. I’d probably say that.
Was it the cheese toastie specifically?
No, to be honest, I’ve been doing things within this industry since I was about 18, so that’s the only thing I have to go off, my brief time working in a toastie kitchen.
If you had to have a song playing every time you walked into a room, what would it be?
Calvin Harris – ‘Summer’. I always thought that ‘Summer’ is maybe the funniest song to play at a funeral. You know that moment at a funeral where they’re like, “And now let’s listen to his favourite piece of music”? Obviously if it’s too ridiculous then that’s clearly the point, so you want something where people aren’t quite sure if it’s serious or not. It’s that or maybe ‘Pompeii’ by Bastille, and you’re all sat there like, “This might have been his favourite song!” It’s on that line where it’s like, yeah maybe he just loved ‘Pompeii’ by Bastille. They’re not even particularly bad songs but more like, “Wait, your favourite song is ‘Summer‘? By Calvin Harris?!”
I guess the optimism of ‘Summer’ at a funeral is quite funny. “When I met you in the summerrrr”
“Oh I’m gonna be an optimist about this…”
Yeah! It’s quite grandiose, ‘Pompeii. Carrying the coffin down the aisle like “Ey ho, ey ho, ey ey ho, ey ho”. It’s quite moving, actually. But I guess it’s for the victims of Pompeii? I don’t know if he’s applying it to his own life or strictly feeling a sadness for the victims of Mount Vesuvius. I might do one of those crisis charity links for the victims of Mount Vesuvius.
What’s your controversial food opinion?
I don’t like mayonnaise, OK? I think mayonnaise is in everything. I think it’s overdone, even though I do like aioli, which is weird, there’s something about it, but I do think butter is nearly always better than mayonnaise, and every single cold sandwich that has been slathered in mayonnaise – because mayonnaise keeps better than butter – is bad. It’s an egg sauce. Makes me feel a bit sick, queasy, and I think we’ve just sort of accepted that it should be everywhere.
What’s the skill that no one else knows that you’re great at?
I spend an insane amount of time on Google Maps. Whenever I’m on the phone with my mum, I need to do something. I just stim somehow. So I just scroll around.
Have you been doing it while we’ve been talking?
I mean, to be honest, if this interview had gone on much longer, I probably would start going on Google Maps, but I wouldn’t want you to take it personally, I can do two things at once. It’s a completely different part of my brain, even though I’d probably be looking at a village in Siberia trying to imagine what the bloody hell it’s like living there. That’s most of it, I scroll through, because I think that’s kind of mad. The technology is just insane. There’s 3D models of these cities: imagine showing a medieval peasant this, or even the people who used to draw maps. You know those early maps they made, and then just showing them this. Like, it’s all of it?! It’s everything. It’s just all of it. And you can whiz around in seconds.
I like nosing around, I especially like going around Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, because no one really talks about them. I feel that there’s a lot of stuff going on there. I’d highly recommend looking up the Aral Sea disaster. I found that out just by scrolling through it. There is a sea that is now, I think, an eighth of its size, and it’s probably the greatest man-made ecological disaster of all time because of the Soviet Union’s water mismanagement, and it’s basically completely destroyed the entire region. Also in the Stans is a pit that is burning an eternal flame. This fiery pit that looks like hell and it won’t stop burning. I found that on Google Maps. I don’t know if that’s a skill? What do most people normally say? Juggling?
Do you have any superstitions?
I think I’m getting a bit more superstitious because everyone at the Fringe started getting into crystals, [Dan] Tiernan and Ed [Night] especially, and they both got nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. So I do think there’s something even just about the placebo or having good crystals, but I’ve yet to get into that. My personal superstition is, before a gig, it’s almost like a tick, I need to pace for about 20 minutes before I’m on stage. I pace like it’s the end of the world, and so people have seen me doing it, even if it’s a low-stakes gig, I look like I’m losing my mind. I keep drinking water and my mouth constantly goes dry. It’s not even that I’m that nervous.
It does sound a bit like you’re getting nervous?
I know it looks like I’m crazy anxious, but it’s more like it just gets my thoughts in order, and if I’m sat down, I can’t be sat down and then someone says my name and I get up and do stand-up. I need to get the motor going. I need to be walking in circles. Some gigs, especially in London, you know, you have nowhere to hide. If I have a Green Room, I can just pace in peace. If you see me in a cramped room above a pub with a low ceiling, hunched, I’ll still be pacing back and forth. And it’s like, yeah, he’s off. That guy, the most nervous man of all time. And then I come on and do stand up. I do need to be hidden. Basically, it’s like, opposite of aura farming. I don’t know what that is, like an aura drought? Aura famine?
Aura Sea Disaster?
