Q&A With Jonathon Oldfield

You've broken your arm seven times, had meningitis twice and dealt with all sorts physically. Did comedy become a way of reclaiming confidence in your body?

I think it's actually the other way round. I didn't start doing comedy to reclaim confidence in my body - I started because I found it fun, but the confidence is starting to come along later on. A lot of my work is like that, a bit indirect. I do one thing, and it turns out to be a completely different thing in disguise. As I followed the fun of performing character comedy, somewhere along the way I ended up more connected to, and more confident in, this body that's given me a lot of trouble over the years. 

Do your characters arrive fully formed, or do some begin as one strange voice in your kitchen?

Almost never fully formed. Usually it's one stupid voice, or one stupid walk, that I do for my own amusement long before there's a character attached to it. The details of the character get built backwards from whatever’s funny first. I also have people in my life that I really like to make laugh, and when I’m thinking of something new, it sometimes helpful to imagine if they would find it funny. 

Which country gave you the strangest sense of humour growing up?

The UK. I lived in Mexico, Thailand, South Korea, then France before moving back here as a teenager and out of all of them, Britain is the one whose sense of humour properly baffles me sometimes, in a fun way.

How quickly can you tell if an audience is willing to go weird with you?

Within the first minute you can start to feel whether a room has decided to trust you or it’s still deciding whether you're a problem. If after a few minutes they aren’t fully on your side then you have a choice: feel ashamed, don’t look anyone in the eyes and get through it. Or, go weird anyway and do it for the few people in the room who are willing to come with you. I think it’s always worth persevering, but it’s not always easy.

Have you ever accidentally become one of your characters in real life?

In a way, I am all of my characters, and also none of them exist. Every character's got a bit of genuine me hiding in it somewhere. I’ve got a man who runs an allotment and he’s maybe the the clearest example: I find the idea of a grown man devoting his life to a shed deeply funny, and I also really love gardening. So technically I haven't become one of my characters. I just built one out of a thing I already was. Having said that, I co-wrote the Radio 4 comedy series Time of the Week, which is a parody of Woman’s Hour, and I play a series of (often) repulsive men in it. I hope that I don’t accidentally become those one day, but they are fun to play. 

Jonathan Oldfield: Exquisite Corpse will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from the 5^th – 30^th August (not the 17^th). For more information visit: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/jonathan-oldfield-exquisite-corpse