COMEDY: Hardy har har

IS Jeremy Hardy still funny at 40? His editor at The Guardian newspaper didn’t think so last year when he axed his column.

It’s been 14 years since he won the Perrier Award and Hardy is a rare visitor to Scotland these days. He hasn’t played the Fringe since 1989 and has no plans to do so ever again.

He rarely gigs, averaging only one a week down south, and unlike many of his colleagues who use the award as a platform to embark on huge money-making tours and lucrative TV appearances, Hardy has eschewed that in favour of the less high-profile confines of radio.

However, there is corner of BBC Radio 4 that will forever be allotted to the witty ramblings of Hardy – regular guest on The News Quiz, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and star of his own Jeremy Hardy Addresses The Nation. Which is just as well, since it would be criminal if one Britain’s sharpest comics didn’t have an outlet.

The diminutive firebrand speaks slowly following a night out with fellow left-wing comedian Mark Steel. So would it be fair to say that they were drowning their sorrows over England’s early exit from the World Cup?

“Oh no, we were just moaning about things,” sighs Hardy mournfully. “The state of the nation, mid-life crises, all that sort of thing. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not that life begins at 40, it’s just that it takes you 40 years to realise that it’s started.”

Unlike other more driven comedians Hardy seems uninterested in elevating his profile beyond the comedy cognoscenti. So it comes as a surprise to learn that he worked on Mike Figgis’ movie, Hotel, amid a star-studded cast that included Salma Hayek, John Malkovich, David Schwimmer and Burt Reynolds among others. This frankly bonkers-sounding slice of experimental cinema has yet to be released and concerns a British film crew trying to film The Duchess Of Malfi in Venice. Mainstream success seems unlikely, but it did give Hardy the chance to work with the great Burt Reynolds.

“I did a lot of scenes with Burt and he was very bright,” recalls Hardy. “It’s interesting to work with people like that because you realise that they’re are a lot brighter than they’re ever given credit for. He’s quite a big union man, so he’s got quite a good approach to working,” he says approvingly.

“We did work well off each other and what was nice about him was – because he didn’t know me from Adam, obviously – he approaches everyone he works with as an equal. Although he did pull a funny tantrum one day when he said: ‘I might be nothing now but I was big in the Seventies and you will listen to me!’” laughs Hardy. “But I thought that was quite a cool thing to say, actually.”

Much as he enjoyed the experience, Hardy says he’s not considering a change of career. “Even though my joints are fused and I can barely walk on stage, I shall carry on doing what I’m doing ’til I die – or I win a lot of money,” he says wearily.

If he feels old, he’s partially to blame. Hardy won the Perrier when he was just 27 and set a dangerous precedent for succeeding years. “I know, they’ve lost interest in anyone over 25 now,” he sighs.

HE wants to know: “Do they still give it anymore? I don’t know because I never do the Festival because it’s horrible. It’s a ghastly thing now, it’s just a trade fair. It’s interesting – if you don’t go and don’t read about it in the papers it’s like it never happened, but if you’re embroiled in it, it seems like the biggest thing in the world.”

Not that Hardy gives much credence to the kudos bestowed by the fizzy water types. “These awards are never based on any sort of merit, not really,” he says. “I didn’t believe in awards until I won one and then I thought: ‘Oh there must be some sense to them’” he laughs. “But they are inherently evil because you’re comparing things that can’t be compared. And what’s the point of giving it to someone when they’re 27 years old anyway? Hopefully they’ll probably do far more interesting stuff – they’ll mature and . . . fall apart,” he laughs.

It’s a little disquieting to hear that one of the best comedians of his generation now sees himself as “venerable” but Hardy’s sharp politicised wit is at odds with most of the assembly line of young comics making their way on the circuit today.

“I see some comics on the telly and I think: ‘I could be your dad’,” says Hardy, aghast. “Although, I haven’t asked any of them if they want me to be.”

He doesn’t sound like he has the energy for it anyway. A telling indication of the passage of time is that the last time Hardy appeared at the Fringe one of his routines was the stress that he and his wife American comedienne and actress Kit Hollerbach went through to conceive a child. Now they have a daughter, Betty, who he describes as “an angry, almost 12-year-old” that keeps the tweedy polemicist up to date with pop culture.

“She’s a good kid and she’s not too much trouble – yet,” says Hardy. “I like her taste in music because it’s all sort of punk marketed to people who are too young to remember it the first time. I’m now allowed to listen to her CDs if I put them back correctly. She listens to Sum 41, Wheatus, Green Day and Linkin Park – they’re too heavy for me – but I’d rather she was listening to that than . . . Will,” he spits out the name with a shiver of distaste.

And if listening to American frat-house rock strikes you as beyond the pale as a way to connect with your daughter, Hardy offers another, more palatable solution. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a very good bonding ritual because its something that both a pre-teen daughter and her middle-aged father can enjoy together – albeit for different reasons,” he says. “Although it’s a bit frightening when your child goes out of the room and you’re left watching it – you do feel a bit pervy.”

It’s clear that Hardy hasn’t lost any of his wit, but was the once angry – well, quite cross – young man of political humour slighted when he was fired from his slot as a Guardian columnist for being “not funny”?

“I wasn’t really trying to be funny,” says Hardy. “But I was trying to approach subjects as if I was a comedian. The column didn’t set out to have a certain number of jokes in it. I sometimes think levity belittles what you’re talking about and there’s a certain skittishness that has crept into British politics humour that I don’t trust. I never come on and say here’s the week’s headlines, now here are my jokes about it, because I don’t think there’s much value in being topical when the news is all about what some minister wrote in an email to someone else – that’s not news and it’s not really politics,” says Hardy.

Hardy maintains he was edged out of his column because he was seen as overly critical of New Labour. “It was easy when I started because we had a Tory government and it was easy to have a go at something that everyone hated anyway. But with the coming of New Labour everyone was: ‘Oh well let’s just give them a chance, hope that something good comes of it and not complain’, and I’m afraid mine was one of the voices going: ‘No, this is s***e as well’.

“I never trusted New Labour from the start but I’m still stunned by how appalling they are,” he explains. “I think their treatment of refugees has been abysmal and when you hear David Blunkett talking about them ‘swamping’ our schools, that’s just so deliberately calculated a term.”

Hardy is also disturbed by what he sees as a clampdown on civil liberties in Britain. “There’s the expanding email surveillance, phone tapping and the terrorism bill where you can get life if you break a McDonald’s window,” he says. “The terrorism bill defines violence as the destruction of property with the intention of influencing the government. So if you pull up GM crops that’s terrorism and you can get life. But if you do it because you’re pissed and on a stag night then that’s all right,” he chuckles bleakly.

Hardy’s still funny all right, but how would he sell this rare appearance in Edinburgh. “Oooh,” he moans wearily. “It’s just one old man whiling away his twilight years.”

Jeremy Hardy, The Traverse, tomorrow-Saturday, 8pm, 12 (8), 0131-228 1404