My Comedy Hero: Stevie Martin
The comedian finds inspiration and laughter from a classic 1950s sketch group
I have so many comedy heroes (going to the Fringe every year and just watching shows always inspires the bejesus out of me) but my overarching main heroes have to be The Goons. My parents would play cassettes of their shows in the car and it was my first proper introduction to comedy. Seagoon and Bluebottle were personal favourites (I would shout ‘he’s fallen in the water’ every ten seconds); just so silly, so wild, so inventive. Although, of course, at the age of eight I didn’t think that; I just laughed until I nearly threw up and listened to it on repeat a quite frankly violent amount of times.
The general vibe of those shows led me to believe you can do absolutely anything; when I found out some people didn’t like The Goons it also taught me about the subjectivity of it all. My dream of creating a mad sketch show that is very much my own remains constant and I credit The Goons with that. Can the film Airplane! be a comedy hero? If so, I’ll chuck that in. Funniest film ever made and I watch it whenever I feel a bit bleagh.
I’m going to also say something that sounds very glib and trite and other words of that ilk; but on this tour I’ve had students open for me as much as I can, and seeing young comedians go out on stage in sometimes quite big rooms is wildly inspiring to me. It gives me hope amid funding cuts and venue closures and AI slop. We’ve got to keep trying stuff, being told there’s no way anyone would ever make that and making it anyway. We’ve got to put as much silliness in the world as we can.
Stevie Martin: Clout is touring the UK until Friday 30 October.