STACK #146 Dec 2016

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that and made him desperate for all those things. And that’s what we see in him. We see all those things that we care about. You always seem to be working on something. Where do you find your inspiration? Does it come to you in the supermarket? Does it come to you in the middle of the night? Yeah, you just don’t know. You can’t help your thoughts. I never sit down and think what am I going to write about, what am I going to tell a joke about? It happens when you’re not thinking about it. It happens when I’m going for a job, or I’m on a plane where I haven’t got my phone. Most of my day is probably admin. When I do get a little bit of peace and quiet, I sit down, I relax, I can have a day off, and in that day off I go, ‘I’ve just had a great idea.’ It’s fun. I still think of it as fun. I try and rule out anything that’s not fun. I’m doing comedy. This should be the best, most fun job in the world. I try and make sure it is. Are you critical of your work? When you sit back and watch it, do you think, “I could’ve done that better”? Yeah. I don’t think I’ve always hated that, or I wish I could go back and change it. I think if I did it now, because I’ve changed, and the world’s changed, I’d do it differently, because I’ve always got my own way, so it’s not like I look back and think, ‘I knew that was wrong, why did they make me do that?’ At the time that’s what I wanted to do. I only think differently now because I changed, and not because I think I made a mistake. Hopefully I’m getting better, so I should look back on my work and think I could do better now. Did you write Life on the Road in its entirety? Yeah. Although the raps – Doc Brown, who plays Dom, he did the rap, so they really are his raps in the songs. And there’s ad-lib of course. You make up little bits and pieces. I wrote the

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well, because I had to acknowledge that a man would’ve changed in 15 years a little bit. And I decided to make him just a little bit more broken. I wanted fame to have broken him a little bit over the 15 years. I gave him a nervous laugh. I made him slightly more honest, because that reflects how documentaries change as well, because a documentary is much more intrusive these days. 15 years ago, you wouldn’t have talked about a man’s breakdown. But now documentaries start with it. You know, things on TV or film, they start with people at their lowest ebb. It’s an unwritten contract. It’s like, ‘you want to be in a documentary? You’d better give us everything then. You want to be in Big Brother ? You better run around like a maniac and make a fool of yourself.’ ‘Okay. I promise.’ You know, that’s what happened. People live their life like an opened wound to be famous these days. What’s nice about Brent is we realise he wasn’t that sort of person, actually. He’s not the modern person who would do anything to be famous. He wants to do something to be famous. He wants to be a rock star, bless him. It’s really quite sweet, I think. I think the most uncomfortable part of watching David Brent is the realisation that there’s a little bit of him in us all. I think that’s absolutely right, and it’s the same for everyone. I think you watch David Brent, and the first time you watch it you go, ‘Oh my God, what a prat!’ Thank God I’m not like that.’ Then you realise, actually I’ve done that. We’re all a bit like Brent, because what I put into Brent was the things that we all care about. We all want to be loved, we all want to be popular, and we all want to think we’re making a bit of a difference every day. I just magnified

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