Best known for his appearances in The Fast Show, The Sketch Show and as prog-rocker; Brian Pern; Comedian, Simon Day’s antics have had us in fits for almost 25 years.
SoGlos caught up with him ahead of his appearance at Stroud Subscription Rooms on Thursday March 8 2018, where he’ll share the stories of four of his most famous characters.
Talk us through your new tour which is coming to Stroud next month.
It’s a brand new tour featuring four characters, four strange men! Billy Bleach, the pub know-it-all from The Fast Show, Geoffrey Allerton who is Yorkshire’s most famous unpublished poet, Tony Beckton who spent 25 years in prison and is out to talk about his life in jail and Brian Pern the prog-rock humanitarian superstar.
These characters have been with you for a while now, how do you keep them fresh?
You have to write new material for them, otherwise they get stale. But sometimes they’re based on real people. The guy, Billy Bleach, he’s just based on guys I used to see at the pub. Geoffrey Allerton is that sort of, Radio 4 intellectual, literary person, who is very easily offended, but takes himself very seriously.
Tony Beckton is based on all those gangsters that are always on telly and writing books saying that they were ‘really nice really’ and ‘didn’t hurt anyone other than their own.’ And Brian Pern, as we know, is loosely based on Peter Gabriel.
You’ve been on television as Brian Pern fairly recently, how does that differ to a live show?
It’s good to do it live because you can say what you want. When you’re doing stuff on telly, it’s BBC four now, it’s very ‘be careful you can’t say this’ or ‘don’t infer that’ so that’s another good thing, you can say what you want, which is really refreshing.
It’s great for people to be able to get out and go and see [the characters] who wouldn’t usually get a chance to see them in the flesh.
We get quite a lot of mad Brian Pern fans coming along, but I think they enjoy all the characters.
Tell us about the format of the show
Each character comes on and tells their story. Billy Bleach starts off by telling his story, then there’s a bit of film to explain the background of who each character is. We introduce Brian Pern with a song, and then he sits down and talks about his life. Everyone should come along. It’s very funny!
For more information about Simon’s Performance, call (01453) 760900 or visit www.subscrtiptionrooms.org.uk directly.
By Melissa Hamblett
