Comic Justin Moorhouse: ‘Just revel in the fact that you’re not needed in your 50s: it’s quite nice’
Mancunian funnyman Justin Moorhouse will be on the bill alongside Reginald D Hunter, Hal Cruttenden, and Geoff Norcott at Burgess Hall in St Ives this Sunday (December 11) as part of Anglia Comedy, which organises comedy nights in and around the county.
Describing himself on his website as a “comedian, actor, dog walker, parent, undercover vegan and northern joker”, Justin tells the Cambridge Independent that he has “recently taken on a camper van” so he doesn’t always have to drive home immediately after gigs.
That didn’t quite work out the previous evening though – as he’d failed to buy a decent mattress topper for the van, so he ended up driving all the way home to Manchester from Didcot in Oxfordshire.
This summer, Justin, 52, was at the Edinburgh Fringe and is on tour at the present time with Stretch & Think, the show he performed there, as well as doing other gigs in between. “It’s also award season as well,” he notes, “so I do quite a bit of award hosting and stuff like that. It’s a busy time but really good.”
Justin, who cites John Mulaney, Mark Simmons, Spencer Jones, Seán McLoughlin, and Stewart Lee as some of his favourite stand-ups (he describes the latter as “pound for pound Britain’s best comedian”), will be hosting the comedy night in St Ives and says he’ll be performing material he’s doing currently “about being a middle-aged man and how redundant we are in the world”.
He continues: “You get to a certain age... and that’s what my show’s about really; it’s about not knowing where you fit in the world and what do we do about that sort of stuff – hopefully in a funny way. But it’s accepting the fact that when you get to your 50s, you’re finished really.
“And this is why men go off the rails and start having affairs or taking up cycling or jogging, because they still want to be important but really just revel in the fact that you’re not needed – it’s quite nice.”
Are northern comedians the funniest? Justin believes there are funny people everywhere, and that there’s no real difference regionally. “The only places I tend to struggle are those sort of satellite towns scattered around the M25 – they have an arts centre next to a Pizza Express and it’s all a bit homogenised,” he notes.
“Those people they think they’re London people but they’re not London people, they’re Hertfordshire people really. They’re just clinging on because they’re at the end of a very long tube line! But everywhere else you go, everybody’s the same.
“People have come out for a laugh and hopefully we’re going to give them a laugh, so they’ve come for the right reasons – you don’t have to win them over, hopefully.”
Growing up, Justin was a big fan of television comedy. “I wasn’t really aware of stand-up comedy when I was little,” he explains, “but I loved The Two Ronnies and I loved Cannon and Ball. I really liked Billy Connolly and Dave Allen, and I used to like Dick Emery...
“Anything that was on the telly I used to love, but my absolute favourite, without a shadow of a doubt, was Les Dawson. I’m still a massive fan and I think he was incredible. I think it’s obviously incredibly sad that he passed away too soon, but I think he would have been acknowledged now and he would have been accepted by everybody in comedy. There are very few that can straddle all the areas of comedy, and I definitely think he was one of them.
“We lost Barry Cryer not so long ago and he was somebody that loved comedy, and that’s why he got on with younger comedians and older comedians – people right across the broad spectrum of comedy in this country. I think Les would have been right into all that; I think people would have loved him still.”
Justin started doing comedy at the age of 29, having previously worked as a salesman. See him live on stage, alongside Reginald D Hunter, Hal Cruttenden, and Geoff Norcott, at Burgess Hall, St Ives, on Sunday, December 11. For tickets, priced at £20 (plus booking fee), visit angliacomedy.com. For more on Justin, go to justinmoorhouse.com.
