From God and Politics to Captain Hook!
Comedian and actor Marcus Brigstocke doesn’t shy away from controversy. In fact, he thrives on it. While in Gibraltar to talk to interviewer Paul Blezard about his book, God Collar and to appear in a special edition of Just a Minute at the International Literary Festival in November (2015), Marcus chatted with me about his faith and what inspired him to put pen to paper about a difficult subject.
‘Making a serious subject stupid is what I aim to do,’ he told me.
Marcus won BBC New Comedian of 1996 at the Edinburgh Festival and has since established himself as one of the best-known comedians working in the UK with numerous television appearances including Have I Got news For You, Would I Lie to You and QI and on stage where he played King Arthur in Spamalot and Mr Perks in the award-winning production of The Railway Children at Waterloo Station.
He performs his stand-up shows on tour and also on the comedy circuit and is a stalwart panellist on BBC Radio 4 shows such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and Just A Minute.
Growing up in Guildford, Marcus developed an eating disorder when he was just seven years old and suffered from alcohol and drug problems in his early teens. Now 42 and 25 years sober in December, his 6ft 2in frame is slim, very different to his teenage self.
“I was in the grip of addiction – at the age of 15 I weighed 24 stone and was a Goth.”
Marcus was sent to rehab where he managed to shed half his body weight in seven months. “I want to do a show called Pro Celebrity Relapse,” he joked.
Food was his drug of choice, but it was when he stopped indulging in alcohol and drugs that Marcus says he ‘got God’ before becoming an atheist.
God Collar, based on his Edinburgh and West End show of the same name, was inspired by the ‘God-shaped hole’ that opened up in his life following the death of best friend James from a heart condition.
“I wrote the book five years ago and haven’t read it for a while, so I am not totally sure what’s in there,” Marcus told me, hopefully tongue-in-cheek, a few hours before he was due to talk to a sell-out audience about it.
Marcus was an atheist and quite happily so.
“When James died I didn’t really know what to do with how much pain I was in and wanted there to be someone or something magical to make it feel better,” he said.
Writing the book was his way of dealing with it. “I wanted my friend to be somewhere rather than just in my memories, so the book really came out of my struggle with that.”
Not caring whether he remained an atheist or not, Marcus looked for that something else, but it wasn’t comforting. “I could see that faith would be, but I couldn’t get there and so it became an examination of what is it then about faith that means it is no good for me,” he said, continuing “and it is politics that is wrong with it.”
“Who knows about the existence of God?”
“If you want there to be one you can certainly find one, but I don’t want there to be one, certainly not the one that is on offer – it is awful.”
Marcus went on to say that he wrote God Collar first as a stand-up show and then he extended that into a tour length show.
“The show was two hours in length so when the book came out I could deliver chunks of stand-up that looked like I was able to talk about the book with great fluency.”
In it, he explores his own faith, his lack of it, his need of it, people’s waste of their own faith, and what purpose faith might serve if he had it. “Theology is a subject that really never tends to go away for me,” he said.
The tag line for the book is ‘there’s probably no God… but I wish there was. I’ve got some things I need to ask him.’
Marcus said that the idea was to try and divide up where atheism had gone at that time, which to him was a very mean place. “I thought there is a lot that I don’t like about that because I see great value in faith,” he stated.“That really is the best way of explaining it. It’s saying, I’m an atheist but I wish I wasn’t. I wish I could find a religion that I could get involved with without finding they are politically atrocious and offensive, but so far I haven’t done so.”
“So much of the things that happen that are important are influenced by religious ideology,” Marcus said, commenting just a day after the Paris atrocities. “Sometimes for good – more often for not, so because I am fascinated by social and party politics – religion has a very strong link.”
“I can always find humour in it as well – that is the idea – I have always taken the view that I like very serious subjects and find what is funny about them rather than find what is funny and talking about that,” he observed.“It’s quite good for people to be offended from time to time and realise it won’t kill you and you can still hang on to your beliefs.”
Sent off to boarding school at an early age and then going on to be expelled from 3 schools, Marcus is concerned that many prominent politicians were, like he was, removed from family and feelings and affection and physical contact at the age of seven.
He is strongly opinionated and liable to offend, so would he therefore consider entering the political arena himself? “Does Westminster need another straight, entitled, privately educated white man?” he remarked. “There are enough of those!”
However, he is an active campaigner, fighting against global poverty with War on Want as well as being involved in the Campaign Against Arms Trade and raising awareness about environmental issues, going on two trips to the Arctic for Greenpeace. The project, named Cape Farewell, put a group of musicians and comedians together to experience the effects of global warming first-hand, trusting them to take the message out to others.
Marcus is also a fanatical snowboarder and with fellow comedian Andrew Maxwell he founded the annual Altitude Festival of Music and Comedy in Meribel in the French Alps raising money for the World Wildlife Fund.
So what is next for Marcus Brigstocke?
Not such a typical angry young man anymore, he is soon to make his panto debut at the New Wimbledon Theatre playing Captain Hook alongside Verne Troyer in Peter Pan. When I met him he was sporting a very fine moustache in which he took great pleasure in twirling through his fingers. “We start rehearsals on Monday so I am excited as I have never done that before, then after than I am writing a play and I have got a new stand up show that I have just written that I will extend,” he told me. I felt exhausted just listening to him but a part of me wondered if he had just replaced his old addictions with new ones.
From God and politics to Captain Hook… controversial!
(Note from the editor: Many thanks to Jo Ward for her contribution as a Glass House Girls house-mate. Jo is a freelance journalist living on the sunny Costa del Sol in Spain. To read more about her you can find her author page here.. To become a house-mate and contribute articles to The Glass House, click here)
