Foot In Mouth

“I haven't tried to be different. I do what seems most obvious to me and then it turns out to be different to everyone else,” Paul Foot explains, trying to understand people's natural need for definition. “A couple of years ago, I had an academic who came to one of my shows who said he was doing a masters in comedy, and there were parts of my show that he was not able to intellectually and academically explain why they were funny.”

At first thought, it would seem that Foot avoids pop culture references but he has never pursued the knowledge of the now. “I don't really know anything about pop culture as a human being. I don't listen to modern music after about 1958 and I listen to classical music. I don't even go to the cinema very much so I don't really know who any of these movie stars or reality stars are.” Foot's comedy, instead of discussing Facebook dilemmas and text conversations, delves into subjects such as the demise of shirt horses, county fetes and the lack of vans in his recent life.  

Foot's subjects are a lose mould around what he really is passionate about: his craft. “Picking the inane, the not worth saying and then taking it as far as it can logically go,” Foot says, “it tends to be the idea behind the subject rather than the subject itself.” In Foot's current show Kenny Larch Is Dead!, which has only got a bit more time in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth until it's onto the next one, he successfully tests the boundaries of his material. One part of his show involves Foot picking a couple from the crowd and creating bizarre scenarios around who they are. “The scenario is arbitrary but it's the journey that is slightly interesting. I'll have a rant about something that I'm not necessarily that concerned about but I like the idea of a rant that goes off on to some preposterous conclusion.” Another part of the show that Foot is particularly proud of is a part called 'My Madness'. “It's funny and no one really knows why. It's sort of like comedy alchemy, I put words together that ought not to go together and create funny and interesting images. People are laughing at different things. Nobody knows who is laughing at which bit.”

Foot has been in Australia a few times now, and his influence down under has seen a character created for Virgin Mobile. “I was in Australia two years ago, and they saw things I did on YouTube and they thought I'd have a funny slant on this character they invented, Robin Da Hood. It was great fun, really. A normal advert can often be quite corporate and dry, and I just made up silly things, improvised and created a silly accent that the character had.”

At 17 years on the scene, he loves being undefinable and a bit of a mystery. “In recent years that's been what's interesting to be in comedy, in that you can't explain what is funny so eventually nobody will be able to explain, even journalists. So there are no articles written about me ever. It will be just pictures of me and that will be all that is allowed.”