Interview: Dom Joly, star of new show Fool Britannia

WITH a new prime-time TV show and a book about his quest to find the world’s legendary monsters, which included a visit to Loch Ness, there’s just no hiding the talents of Dom Joly, says Lee Randall

Boredom is an anathema to Dom Joly. He’s not one for sitting around navel-gazing – not if he can be whizzing through the skies en route to his next great adventure. The last time we spoke, he’d just published Dark Tourist, about his travels to blighted countries that most of us swerve to avoid. Directly after that he broke his foot while filming Total Wipeout – it’s still giving him gyp, he says – forcing the cancellation of a longed-for month in Antarctica.

But he wasn’t grounded for long, as his new book, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps proves. It recounts six trips he made to destinations as far flung as the Himalayas, northern California, and – of course – Loch Ness, on a nutty monster hunt. No sooner had he wound that up when ITV approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse: would he like to film a hidden camera show to run in the “golden” Saturday night slot vacated by Harry Hill’s TV Burp.

Would he?! They didn’t need to ask twice.

The format differs from Trigger Happy, which put Joly on the entertainment map, because the format is more akin to a sketch show in real life, he says. And there are disguises. “I did three hours of prosthetics every morning. The first day I turned up there were 26 people on set, on the street, and I was like, this is hardly hidden camera! It was crazy. But it did work much better. I had to relinquish some of my control freakery and just go out there and be funny. I found it so enjoyable. It was the best 15 weeks and the best shoot I’ve ever done. I think I’ve got some really good stuff.”

What are the constituents of the perfect prank, then? “I hate that word prank. Call it a joke. Prank, to me, is part of the problem of the hidden camera, which definitely feels the lowest rung of comedy – certainly in Britain. That’s because most of the time it is just pranks. Setting someone up, doing something and watching their reaction. The stuff I do is more – without sounding poncy, it’s improv really. It’s going up to people with a character and setting up a premise and talking to them.

“As to what makes it work, I have no idea, to be honest. What I like is doing characters that people have a vague idea [about]. My Town Crier is one example. The point of Fool Britannia was to turn the whole of Britain into an area I could tease. Even in my local town of Cirencester there is a Town Crier, but I’ve no idea who pays him, or what he really does. Obviously I know what the point of him was 300 years ago, but now I’m not quite sure. Is it just a local eccentric, or does he have an official status? When I turn up as a Town Crier, people feel that here’s a guy they know exists – but when he behaves oddly, they’re not quite sure whether that’s OK or not.

“It works really well when the character has a certain level of status. So I have a vicar. Everyone’s comfortable with a vicar wandering around, but when he becomes incredibly eccentric and starts pushing old ladies off bridges and stuff, there’s an element of surprise. It’s also about knowing how far to push it, so if you go in straightaway with something extraordinary, then it is clearly a joke.

“I like gauging people’s reactions and building and seeing how far you can go, can you take it a stage further? It’s about getting more and more ludicrous and almost saying, ‘For God’s sake, can’t you see this is not real?’ That’s what I enjoy.”

Asked to pick a favourite joke from the new series, he describes Britain’s unluckiest man – played by Joly in a full bodycast, being pushed around in a wheelchair and then abandoned alongside people sitting on benches. “They stare at me and I stare at them and the catchphrase is, ‘You’re probably wondering what happened to me’. And I launch into some ridiculous story, my favourite of them being that I went to the Chelsea Garden show and got beaten up by Alan Titchmarsh. With a terracotta pot.”

Apart from the chance to have fun doing what comes naturally, the Saturday night slot was incredibly alluring, he admits. With a son and a daughter, aged 11 and seven, he was keen to make a show that entire families could enjoy.

Since the underlying question is “What does it mean to be British?”, I wonder what, if anything, Joly – who’s British, but was born and grew up in Lebanon – discovered about national identity. “I thought Fool Britannia would be about an homage to Britain and about having a pop at British characteristics. I loved the idea of different accents – one minute you’re arguing with a Geordie and then someone in Glasgow. We went to Loch Ness, Penge, Land’s End, and Clacton-on-Sea – before the lion. Everyone thinks that was a PR stunt for my book, and I’m just nodding wisely, as though it is.” He actually hatched the plan of bringing the telly programme to the Highlands while hunting for Nessie during the writing of his book. “Being there made me realise that it was a good place to film. There are a lot of people wandering around wanting to be entertained.”

Did he find that people enjoy being teased about their distinctly British habits, such as queuing at every available opportunity? “After we do the filming we have to get people to sign releases, and I’m always astonished by why anyone would sign a consent form. A lot of the time they’re just quite relieved that what’s just happened has a logical explanation. But as long as it’s good-natured, I do think people like being teased.”

Was his perspective on national identity altered by making the show? “Only in the sense that I spend my whole time travelling, and always think that I don’t really like Britain, but actually it did genuinely make me realise how many extraordinary places there are that I don’t bother going to visit. And how I continually knock Brits for being rude and surly and grumpy, but actually we’re incredibly tolerant. Over and over, people go out of their way to help when we’re filming. Essentially we’re quite a decent bunch, which is not the most extraordinary revelation, but it was for me! I thought the British were a bunch of curmudgeonly haters. Overall, Brits are really rather nice. It was a nice surprise.”

If the British are secretly cuddly, what, then did he discover about monsters? Can Joly explain our fascination for these creatures? Every country seems to cherish a myth about one that, it’s fair to say, is also an element of its national identity.

Joking that he doesn’t want to become a David Icke figure, rung up for a sound-bite whenever there’s, well, a “lion” loose in Essex, he tells me, “I think we grow up with that feeling that there’s something out there, the unknown, and you’re frightened by stuff as a kid. But nowadays, everything’s explained and everything is scientifically proven.

“I think the idea that something has eluded modern science and still hides away is kind of appealing to people. They’re almost like, ‘Yeah, well done you!’ I always thought there’s just no way something like Bigfoot could exist in America, of all places. But when you get to that area, in northern California, it’s insane, and so backwards, and the vegetation is so thick that you think yeah, something could live in here.”

Of all the monsters he chased – which include the Ogopogo, in Canada’s Lake Okanagan, and Mokele-mbembe, in the Congo – were there any he now thinks, well, maybe? “I thought the Yeti definitely maybe, because the sort of people that report sightings are more credible. They’re serious, well known climbers and Sherpas – not people who are looking for TV rights. And it’s usually pictures of footprints, with an ice axe alongside for scale. Bigfoot – I didn’t think that would be believable, but I came across people who’d seen things and didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t know, though. That’s what I love about this book. I went to all these places and I don’t know whether I believe more or less having been there. There are no answers. On my first day in Canada I did have a sighting of what I think was Ogopogo. There was something big in the lake that disappeared when I went out and no-one can explain what it is.”

Going back to the question of why people are interested in monsters, he says, “For me it’s Tintin. Dark Tourist was about Tintin going around the world and being an explorer. Tintin in Tibet was my favourite book when I was growing up. So I was fascinated by two things: seeing that famous footage of Bigfoot taken in 1967, and Tintin and the Yeti. Tintin is entirely responsible for my career!”

To which I suppose the only adequate reply is, “Great snakes!”

Fool Britannia is on Saturday on ITV1 at 7pm. Scary Monsters and Super Creeps is out now in paperback from Simon & Schuster UK, priced £12.99.