Madeleine Brettingham on Michael McIntyre: ‘I am slightly worried he thinks I’m crazy’
She may be making her stand-up debut but Madeleine Brettingham has a long history in the business we call show. The respected comedy scribe talks to Jay Richardson about stepping out of the writers’ room and into the limelight, and why she feels a need to apologise to Michael McIntyre
Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Paul McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’. Landmark achievements that came to their creators in dreams. And to this illustrious list you can now add Madeleine Brettingham’s Legend...
‘I had this dream where Michael McIntyre told me to do stand-up,’ the Kent-born comic explains. Slumbering, she demurred, batting away the floppy-haired entreaties. But, says Brettingham, ‘he looked really angry with me, he was arguing. Over the next couple of years I kept thinking, “why did I have that dream? What sort of deep, subconscious message was he sending me? Maybe that I should just try stand-up?” I honestly thought I’d do a couple of gigs and never tell anyone because I’d be crap.’
But instead, she flourished. Brettingham emerged triumphant from a succession of new act competitions, including last year’s So You Think You’re Funny?, and, like former winners Aisling Bea, David O’Doherty and Maisie Adam, she’s delivering her debut Fringe hour a mere 12 months later. She’s no ingénue though. Over the last 20 years, Brettingham has been a comedy writer for Harry Hill’s TV Burp, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and That Mitchell And Webb Look, as well as topical radio with The News Quiz, The Now Show and Breaking The News.
Still, as a seasoned Fringe punter, she admits ‘it’s so crazy to me that I’m doing this’. ‘Genuinely, if you’d told me two years ago, I would have been in a state of utter disbelief. It’s exciting and terrifying after being behind the scenes for so long.’ No ‘natural extrovert’, Brettingham says she doesn’t crave attention and has never felt envious of performers she’s worked with. ‘I’ve never made a decision that was less strategic or planned.’
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Nevertheless, at 44, she wonders if she might have tried it earlier. ‘It did go quite well from early on. And I get great satisfaction saying things in my own voice and not having decisions made by committee.’ Greater life experience than most newcomers means that she’s also less scared of audiences.
‘I really care about doing a good job. But if 50 people dislike me for one evening, it won’t ruin my life as it might have in my twenties. I’m more accepting of myself. If I’d started younger I’d be more contrived, more worried about being different. I’ve come to realise it’s not distinctiveness that makes you interesting. It’s about how much barrier between yourself and the audience you remove, allowing them to truly see you. Of course, some aspects are playfully exaggerated. But what’s funny comes from the truth, at some level, of who you are. The older you get, the more at peace you are with that.’
Legend introduces her as a ‘female geezer’. Before attending a ‘posh university’ (Cambridge), Brettingham had an eventful adolescence in Bournemouth, raised in a pub after her parents divorced, by a dad who liked a drink. That experience, as a girl in a man’s world, has prompted exploration of an ‘archetype of male bad behaviour that we pretend to disapprove of but slightly glamourise. I’m not immune to that,’ she acknowledges. ‘A lot of it is about how much I imitate him. There’s some quite serious and dark subject matter. But it’s got loads of jokes; it’s a show that’s funny above all else.’
Naturally enough, lively gigs in pubs and working men’s clubs don’t phase her. ‘Ten blokes being a bit gobby has familiarity for me,’ she insists. Similarly, her earliest TV writers’ rooms were fairly close to all-male environments, ‘some lovely and welcoming, though, inevitably, with some awkwardness and sexism. Most women my age didn’t want to get involved. But because of my background, for better or worse, I took it for granted.’
Pitching topical material proved a great training ground for stand-up, churning out dozens of jokes a day on sometimes unpromising topics. ‘Your ideas are not treated as precious works of genius. You learn humility. If an idea doesn’t bang quite quickly, put it aside and work on something else.’
Writing for comics as unique as Hill and Boyle was ‘the best escapism’, says Brettingham. But adding stand-up to a CV that also includes her own play, Dear Martin, and prospective sitcoms, everything fed into each other. ‘I really love the freedom that stand-up brings, the creative energy and confidence it instils. I want to keep doing all of it. I’m someone who has lots of ideas and needs lots of outlets.’
As a gagsmith for Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, could it have been his Midnight Gameshow and Unexpected Star segments mingling in her drowsy mind that suggested stand-up to her that fateful night? ‘I don’t know him well enough to discuss it with him. But I am slightly worried he thinks I’m crazy now,’ she admits. ‘Michael, if you ever read this, I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t make you feel weird. You did a great job of persuading me, I’m very grateful. But I’m also aware that I sound insane.’
Madeleine Brettingham: Legend, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 5–31 August, 8.20pm.