Kevin Eldon: The Man of Mystery Speaks

You may not know his live work, but if you're a comedy fan you'll know his face. From Lee & Herring vehicle Fist of Fun to surreal sketch show Big Train, to the recent, pitch-black sitcom pilot Lizzie & Sarah, Kevin Eldon has popped up on many of the most boundary-pushing TV projects of the last two decades. Eldon normally shuns interviews, but makes a rare exception to tell Tom Hackett about small-minded TV programmers, fake poets and his first solo show in many years.

You've rarely performed as yourself on stage. What made you want to do it this year?

Ah, well actually now you see you're wrong there. Don't want to start on an adversarial note but I did do a few years' standup as myself in the '90s – doing jokes about John Major and imagining that mobile phones were smaller than a brick. Anyway, I decided to do it this year out of sheer bloody-minded masochistic bedevilment.

What appeals to you about stand-up as a form? What do you think the pitfalls are?

It's immediate and live. It's a very individual mode of expression. In its purest form none of the TV zombies have got hold of it and turned it into marketable pap. It's still got the potential to be genuinely challenging. Not that my show is particularly, and I should point out that it's not stand-up as such. It's a bit of a mixture of stuff. It's called Kevin Eldon is Titting About and the title says it all really. The pitfalls? Over the last few years some of standup's bastard mutant TV offspring have taught lots of people to believe that it's just a cosy giggle, with a cosy little jester making cosy little observations.

What's your previous experience of the Festival? Do you see it as a beautiful creative melting pot or an unsavoury showbiz meat market?

Terror. Joy. Over-indulgence. Unwise social intercourses. Mostly, I've thought it's a brilliant place to meet up with your pals and new people. Second part of the question, it's both. Depends on your objectives and motivations, innit.

The version of you that appeared in Fist of Fun insisted on being called an "actor", rather than a comedian. Which do you see yourself as?

Mixed race.

Tell us about Paul Hamilton

Paul Hamilton is a false poet I've been doing on and off for about 15  years. His poetry is almost good, which I find quite a hard thing to get right when it comes to writing his poems. He is a man who wishes to improve the world. He is a man who knows that if we all join together, and sort of think the way he does... it's going to be allll right.

A poet called Tim Clare suggested to me that comics who do deliberately bad poet characters have a secret desire to be (good) poets themselves. Is this true of you?

I have a secret desire to be a (good) plumber. Don't we all? Think of the savings!

You're a Soka Gakkai Buddhist. Is there any relationship between your beliefs and your work?

Very much so. When I'm working I never kill.

You clearly choose your projects carefully

Well, I try to. The way things are going telly-wise, less and less is going to be made and I fear what will be made will be generally of a lower calibre, so it will probably get harder. In five years time I could well be in something that makes Big Top [recent, awful BBC sitcom] look like The Office. Though I doubt it. Maybe I'll retrain. Could do plumbing.

In the brilliant pilot for Lizzie and Sarah, we leave your character running naked down a country lane being pursued by two crazed middle-aged ladies in a car. Would he survive to a full series?

You see my ass? My goddam ass? The idea was that each episode was to be a self-contained piece with an ensemble cast playing different characters each week. However, the BBC hated how the pilot came out, bunged it on at four in the morning or whatever it was and washed its hands of the whole project. Tutting all the while, I shouldn't wonder.

Anything in the pipeline for after this?

Pipeline? You're making me think of plumbing again. I dunno. There are a few sweeps up the chimney. We'll see. Blessings upon the noble festival and all who sail in her!