John Robins: Master of the tragi-comedy

Anyone who has seen John Robins perform his live stand-up material will know how well he succeeds in painting a devastatingly sad-yet-at-the-same-time hilarious image of certain aspects of his personal life that most of us would rather not share.

And it turns out that as exaggerated as these stark confessions may seem (who could forget John’s hilarious Live at the Apollo set that dealt with his girlfriend moving out following a break-up?), they are actually grounded in reality.

“I’ve lived on my own for so long that you have to look to your interior monologue for humour,” he explains, “because you spend all day sort of talking to yourself in your head.

“And those quite bleak vignettes, they happen quite a lot when you live on your own, so it’s interesting to try and make them funny, try and make the bleakness of a scene amusing, whereas actually at the time it can be quite sad.

“But stopping drinking’s been a big part of that change from the first half of the show to the second half of the show, because a lot of those problems were quite heavily related to alcohol.”

The stand-up comedian, broadcaster and podcast host (50 million podcast downloads and counting) is to embark on his biggest live tour to date in 2023 with his new show, Howl.

When we spoke, John was busy preparing for the Edinburgh Festival and for the tour – which comes to Cambridge in September and then again in October, due to the first date selling out.

“So it’s like switching from podcast mode to stand-up mode,” he notes, adding: “I’m doing two shows at Edinburgh; I’m doing Howl, which is an hour because obviously Edinburgh’s slightly shorter than a tour show duration, and a work-in-progress, and I’ll put those two together and that will be the tour show.”

How is the work-in-progress coming along? “It’s going really well,” replies the 41-year-old, who cites Jordan Gray and John Kearns as two of his favourite comedic talents on the circuit.

“It’s interesting because Howl the first half, which was written last year, I guess is quite doom-laden, angry, a lot about anxiety, and then the second half is more about moving on from that and finding a way to live with that, or live through it, so it’s quite an interesting process. Progress not perfection is the mantra of the day.”

Elaborating further on Howl, John, winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier Award) in 2017, says: “I talk about some ailments in there, because I’m in my 40s now and your body starts taking you by surprise a bit.

“I’m talking about anxiety – and especially during the pandemic how I think everyone’s anxiety was very heightened, but mine was really quite intense.

“I sought some help from various different people for that… and then it’s talking about how successful or unsuccessful those attempts were, to treat anxiety really.”

The Scotsman says of John: “Robins exploits his misery for every single possible laugh – transforming his pain into one long existential comic howl against the human condition”.

Unsurprisingly, John is a fan of Alan Partridge, who is well known for eliciting laughter through his misery and failure.

“Growing up, it was always sitcoms – Bottom and Alan Partridge were big for me,” he recalls, “and The Day Today as well, and I didn’t really discover stand-up until I started doing it. And then I hung around a lot with Russell Howard and Jon Richardson, and Daniel Kitson and Sarah Millican were quite big influences on me.

“So you pick up loads of bits; I think when you first start out you’re often just imitating people you’ve seen that have really impressed you. Then throughout the years, you eventually come to a point when you start getting rid of those influences and just finding out what your voice is.

“I’d say the way that, for example, Alan Partridge speaks has been quite an influence on me, the way he will stretch an analogy or a metaphor to the point at which it just sort of breaks, I find quite funny.

“He’s talking about quite tragic things in actually quite a light way. But he’s not really a very emotional character, so I guess it’s interesting to apply that sort of delivery to a character who’s not emphatic – because Alan’s big failing is he has no empathy.”

John, who says he’s never been desperate to be famous (“it’s more about the projects and communicating ideas to people”), followed winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award with two sold-out national tours: The Darkness of Robins and Hot Shame.

Alongside friend, comrade and “under-DJ” Elis James, he rewrote the rule book for commercial digital indie radio broadcasting on Radio X, before the pair moved to BBC 5 Live.

Every Friday, they tackle the big issues, like what foods give you gas and what’s the weirdest place you’ve done your tax return.

As well as this, Elis and John host a podcast called How Do You Cope? where they talk to guests about the challenges and hurdles they’ve faced in their own lives.

Television-wise, John has appeared on Live at the Apollo, Celebrity Mastermind (he is one of the world’s leading authorities on the rock band Queen), Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, and Stand Up Central.

See John Robins live at Cambridge Junction (J2) on Tuesday, October 31 (the September 15 date at the same venue is sold out). Tickets, priced £25, are available at junction.co.uk. For more on John, go to johnrobins.com.