The following interview is reproduced here with the kind permission of Jesters Comedy Club in Bristol. It originally appeared on their site in early 1999.


Interview with Steve Best

Man of many mannerisms, master comic, master magician and he toured with Frank Skinner for 3 months.

Steve Best is unique. There is no other act like his on the circuit. He mixes a strange concoction of appallingly good one liners, low quality magic and playground humour into a set that has to be seen to be believed.

Steve played the whole corporate Christmas season at Jesters and simply put, blew it away, encoring at five of the six gigs.

During the Autumn of 1997 he toured for three months as Frank Skinner’s nominated support act, culminating in a massive gig at London’s Battersea Power station. So how does a man with a few gags, a bag of props and a very juvenile sense of humour manage to be so funny?

We point the camera, fiddle with the dictaphone and ask some questions....


Where did your comedy career start?

My comedy career started in Cyprus. Loads of years ago I used to do kids theatre. I bunked off my A- levels to do kids parties, so I was a very studious student, very brilliant, no I wasn’t, err yes I was, cos I used to get A grades all the time, but I cocked up in the end cos I was always off school doing this stuff. I spent about three or four years touring around the big theatres with a really bad children’s show. The big move came when I moved to Cyprus. At that time I studied the guitar doing classical and flamenco for about 8 hours a day for about 2 years. I did guitar work in a restaurant doing close up stuff at tables with a three minute act at the end of the night.

When was this?

Must have been about 10 years ago.

So what made you want to get into comedy then?

Well I’m not sure. There was no real natural progression, cos when I came back I was still doing kids stuff, but I had lost the feel for it really. My agent at the time got me gigs at holiday camps. So I ended up performing to adults with some quite original stuff. I had a ten minute routine for that. So I was asked to do a season of 18 weeks. But I still don’t know what made me want to carry on from there.

Where do you get the ideas for your madcap showpieces?

I used to do a lot of prop stuff and I was really heavily into magic. I used to buy tons of magic stuff from joke shops and kids shops and have a massive collection of props. To form a routine I would go to the cupboard where I kept all of this stuff and string bits of it together and a routine would sort of form itself.

Where do the ‘Elvis, man of food, man of magic’ routine come from then?

Well I used to do a lot of prop stuff anyway, but I had a toilet seat I bought in Dundee years ago, an arse which I bought in a toy shop, I put the two together and formed a routine. I can’t really remember how the Elvis angle came about. It could be a bit risky doing that routine to begin with because I didn’t realise that Elvis had actually died on the toilet, it was a coincidence that I used him, but it seemed to work. So the whole routine came about from three almost completely separate things.

Have you ever formally trained as a magician?

I was a finalist in young magician of the year when I was 17 and joined the magic circle round about then. So not trained for it as such but I used to practice tricks and juggling.

Give us a quick resumé of your comedy career to date.

It’s a bit kind of blurred really. I guess it started about 7 years ago.

Did you go through the whole open mic procedure?

Well yeah, but I had a really strong five minutes so the open spots I could just waltz though, so I got bookings on the back of that. Then for a bout three or four years I just worked with a really strong 20 minutes that I didn’t really move on. It is only recently in the last year or so that I have developed the set beyond that.

What has been your best ever gig and why?

Best ever gig was probably one of the nights when I was touring with Frank Skinner. We were doing a ten night run at the Birmingham Hippodrome which is only about 50 yards from the Glee Club (Birmingham’s biggest comedy club). After finishing my set as support to Frank, I gathered my stuff together and ran over to the Glee to do a set there. I went on second and it is really difficult to describe, but suffice to say that something kind of magical happened that made that gig incredible. It was amazing. There was a connection between me and the audience that is really hard to verbalise. Sounds a bit poncy I know, but it was very real. From the moment I got on stage it was difficult to even get a gag out, because they were so into the mannerisms. Just fantastic. Every performer’s dream.

What was the worst gig then?

(Laughs) There have been a few where you just don’t make the connection I mentioned just now, and then ones where you only last two minutes, although luckily, I haven’t had many of those in my career. I have never walked off and I have never been booed off, although I do remember some Christmas gigs about three years ago. They were in big rooms in hotels, were really badly set up, badly paid and full of people who were completely uninterested in comedy. As soon as you walked on stage people just started to chant ‘F*** off’ in unison. I did three nights of those and left feeling completely demoralised.

Tell us about the tour with Frank Skinner.

Well it was good, very good. It made me realise that you need to keep putting work into your act and not just sit around with a 20 minute set, even if it is very good. You need to carry on working at it and not be afraid to drop things and think of new stuff. It taught me a lot just by watching and talking to Frank Skinner. Most of these gigs were to audiences of 1500 - 2000 who had of course all turned up to see him and weren’t expecting a support act. So to go on first was quite difficult, but for the most part they were very giving, so you would walk out and it would be fine they would let you do your stuff. I generally got a good reception, so that was pleasing.

How did you get the tour?

By doing one gig for him on his first tour and I think he remembered me three years later when he was about to do his next tour. He had a few people on his list to do support and he came and saw me at a gig, which happened to go really well. Three weeks later, I got the official invitation to be the support.

So why do think he chose you above the many more conventional support acts available on the circuit? Acts perhaps more akin to his style?

Well for that exact reason. I suppose he wanted the contrast. Also I don’t think that there is anyone on the circuit who can touch him anyway in the sense of the crowd had come to see him and he is a brilliant stand up. I think also that the deal was that he would be spending a great deal of time with his chosen support act, three months together in hotel rooms etc, so he really wanted someone he could get along with as well. I think he thought I was fairly easy going, so maybe that was a factor too.

Where else do you see your career going from here?

(Puts on silly voice...) To the top, the very top!

(Resumes normal voice). After the tour and after writing a whole load more I would like to see the big time I suppose, but then everyone has that vision.

So what would you define as big time?

Erm...I don’t particularly want to do things like adverts and gameshows. Big time is to tour and have your own show.

Like Harry Hill?

Yeah. That would seem to be it.

Your balloon swallowing trick seems to attract a lot of female attention. Have you ever pulled as a result of that?

No. Not directly as a result of that, although I did meet my girlfriend at ‘Up the Creek’ (famous London comedy club - Ed) but not as a result of the balloon swallowing.

Which comedians, alive or dead do you admire?

Err. Steve Martin, doing stand up, Bill Hicks, obviously when he was alive and there are probably many others, but I would have to sit down and think of those.

What chance of touring with Frank Skinner again?

I doubt it. I think his thing is to tour with different people, I don’t know whether it’s his thing to tour with the same person again and again. We have stayed friends and gone out for a beer a couple of times and if he offered me the chance I would do it. But who knows?