Jack Whitehall on tour in Cambridge: ‘My man-baby days are over’

Comedian Jack Whitehall is all grown up now - or at least he’s trying his best to be mature.

In his new show Settle Down - coming to Cambridge this week - he will talk about his relationship with long term partner Roxy, being a dog daddy to a spoilt toy poodle, going to dinner parties and listening to Magic FM instead of dancing to the Chemical Brothers at Glastonbury and “being a bit of a tit”.

Shortly after speaking with the Cambridge Independent, he and his girlfriend Roxy also announced they were expecting a baby, so his self-described “man-baby” days definitely have an expiration date.

“This whole show is about struggles to commit to being a fully fledged adult,” says Jack.

“Having seen my peer groups and friends and family who have seamlessly transitioned into that period of their lives, and I wonder why I’m being reluctant to do so.”

The star of Bad Education and Travels with my Father explained that the last time he toured was four years ago and life has moved on quickly since then: “I’ve got a house, a dog and I’m in a very long term relationship now and that’s where I’m drawing my inspiration from with this tour. I think I’ve definitely exhausted my parents as fodder. So, now I’ve turned my gaze toward my very, very patient, girlfriend. And there’s a lot of material about our relationship and our home life and that’s kind of where I’m drawing my inspiration from this time around.

” I go to bed much earlier. We go to dinner parties now. There’s a lot less binge drinking - when I was just having a glass of red wine at the end of every day to take the edge off I could see these things creeping into my life. And it’s definitely been a gradual process. But I’m kind of down for it now. I kind of love that I’ve really embraced using coasters. I kind of like listening to magic FM from time to time. I think there’s nothing wrong with that.

“Within a year it went from going to Glastonbury and when i came back all I was talkin g about was the Chemical Brothers set and how amazing it was going and seeing Calvin Harris. And then the following year, I was like, I think Diana Ross was one of the most magical live performances I have ever seen. Wow! Life comes at you fast!”

This show promises to be his last hurrah for tales of youthful excess. He explains: “I definitely have man-baby tendencies but I’ve started to realise that they can’t go on forever. And I don’t want to forever be in a state of arrested development. I hear myself now telling these stories about drunken and hijinks being a bit of a tit - basically, the type of material that I was proudly doing in my 20s - and realising that the older I get the more tragic those kinds of anecdotes become and having this realisation that I probably need to get some of that material out of my system. This tour might be the swan song for those types of jokes.”

Girlfriend Roxy does have a veto on the content of the show, but he has still baulked at doing his full set in front of her family.

Jack says: “The parents did come and see it but I actually wimped out of doing a couple of the routines because I could see them in the audience. And the minute I saw the whites of their eyes and her aunt’s face staring back I didn’t have the heart to commit fully to some of the more raunchy routines. And so I realised that even I have a filter which I thought had dissipated long ago. They have yet to see the fully fledged show.”

There has been some disappointment that being the girlfriend of a comedian comes with much less appealing baggage than dating a pop star. “It’s the first time that I’ve done a show since we’ve been going out so it has been a little bit of a baptism of fire for her,” he says.

” Unfortunately, I watched the Ed Sheeran documentary the other night with her, and the whole first episode is about his wife, how amazing she is and how she’s his muse. And she inspired him to write this song called Perfect. I was watching it with Roxy and she was like, I want to be married to Ed Sheeran. I guess the downside of dating a comedian is that if you date a musician like Ed Sheeran he will use you for inspiration and write a song called Perfect but if you date a comedian he will use you you for inspiration to write a load of jokes about your sex life that he will tell a room full of strangers.”

Together they have bought a toy poodle called Coco, who has a celebrity groomer and has taken over their lives. She keeps them up at night and is even about to go on a photo shoot with Jack.

“I hate to use the phrase dog daddy, but looking after a very high maintenance toy poodle, I would say that was probably one of the biggest changes in my life,” he says.

“I wanted a guard dog. I wanted the kind of dog you see tattooed on the arm of the Millwall fan. We ended up with a dog that looked like it came out of the Kinder Surprise. I have to walk around with that dog on the end of my lead. I feel intimidated walking around certain parts of London with this ridiculous accessory - I don’t think it is doing me any favours.”

As well as sell out tours, Jack has been busy with TV shows Good Omens Bad Education and Travels With My Father as well as a new Hollywood career.

new Hollywood career. He most recently starred alongside Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Disney’s Jungle Cruise, and in Clifford The Big Red Dog for Paramount, with both films in development for sequels. He will next star alongside Shailene Woodley in Robots, an independent romantic comedy directed by Academy Award nominee Ant Hines, which is out this month.

However, the ork with his dad, Michael Whitehall, may be less frequent these days as the comedian is a little wary of his dad’s on screen banter and the fact that his dad’s career has its own momentum now.

“The impediment there would be his schedule; he seems to never stop working now,” says Jack.

“He very much cut me loose after he finished doing Travels with my Father and he went behind my back to do a podcast. He’s just relentless, he can’t say no to a job every time I turn on my television, he appears.

“He’ll probably get himself, and probably by proxy me, cancelled before we can do anything else together. Most comedians have to worry about something coming out of their mouth cancelling them and I’ve got this geriatric human hand grenade there, careering around with the potential to cause terminal damage to his and my career.

“We were worried about him on Twitter. But thankfully, he doesn’t actually know how to access his Twitter so my mum has to type out his tweets for him, which is a great filter system. But she’s not capable of filtering what’s coming out of his mouth. There is always a slight worry and a little bit of tension in the air every time we find out he is doing something, especially on live television. But I think he’s had the talk enough times from my brother and sister and me that he needs to be careful about what he says that we are probably going to be okay.”

Jack Whitehall: Settle Down is on Wednesday, May 24 at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Tickets, priced £43, are available from the box office on cambridgelive.org.uk