Norman Lovett
Monster Mad For The Funny

Norman Lovett’s face is instantly recognizable to millions as Red Dwarf’s sardonic computer Holly. His voice too is unmistakable (even if you mainly associate it with being told that ‘you’ll go monster mad for the honey’ in Sugar Puffs adverts), so having riotously chuckled all the way through his latest show it’s a joyously bizarre experience to be having a conversation with it!

He’s a very proud family man, admittedly a bit of a late starter in procreation, he revels in the achievements of his wife and teenage daughters… his talented daughters have achieved critical acclaim in acting, impersonation and comedy, and his wife has just opened her third shop. Norman himself has just completed his thirteenth or fourteenth season at the Edinburgh Fringe (he’s lost count so isn’t quite sure) and is preparing to take the same act - Norman Lovett’s Slide Show on a national tour.

“I always liked photography and taking odd pictures, I built up a collection and I did it up at a Red Dwarf convention and it went down really well. And from then on I just sort of kept it going,” explains Norman in his characteristic dawdling tones.

“It’s a bit of a weird thing to do. I think someone’s done it before, there was an Irish guy who did something like this years ago at the start of alternative comedy, I can’t remember his name now, but it just suited me.”

During the show, with his clunky old slide projector Norman eagerly flicks through loads of snaps he’s captured in recent years. The images, ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous, provide an intriguing glimpse of life through Norman’s eyes and the kind of stuff that amuses him. He shows, amongst other things, his dog taking an uncomfortable nap, pregnant trees that he’s found, cheeky parking, dodgy signage, snow (he does like snow), bad living statues and the potential nightmares for a transport company when some of the letters fail to work on the front of a bus heading to Scunthorpe (work it out for yourselves); all the while adding comments and asides in his typical wry manner.

Drier than a Jacob’s Cream Cracker, Norman Lovett was born to be a comic, but didn’t begin making people laugh for a living until he’d passed thirty, having meandered through life up until that point doing “dead end jobs” and satiating his obsession for football.

“I love football really; I just love my football… that’s all I thought about really, I just love playing football… I didn’t get anywhere, I did play at an amateur level, good standard, but there was no way I was going to make a living out of it.”

Norman began his comedy career supporting punk bands; the scene that would eventually be dubbed ‘alternative comedy’ was inextricably linked in its evolvement to the punk movement - as a rejection of the norm (sorry Norm) and a step away from punch-line conformity. His work at punk gigs memorably led him to support, amongst others, 999, Bauhaus and on one night; The Clash.

“I did a gig with them at Derby Assembly Rooms which was unforgettable because I went down well, which was, you know… No spitting in Derby, they were a great audience… I went down really well and then I watched The Clash afterwards and they were fantastic. I got a lift home from one of their roadies, back to London. That was good. The roadie was moaning about Joe Strummer ruining all these microphones ‘cos of the way he sings. I thought ‘that’s a small price to pay’.”

Having supported a number of bands during the growth of punk, Norman became one of the regular faces at the first home of London’s now legendary Comedy Store, which at that time was situated above a strip club in Soho.

“It was the late seventies… it was in a basement… well it wasn’t in a basement, you went up in a lift to the third floor, you went in and then you went down some stairs and it felt like you were in a basement but you weren’t. That was the first Comedy Store and I can’t remember where it was and that’s terrible. But that’s where I first went up but before that I’d done gigs with bands, with punk bands. I suppose it was the punk thing that actually got me started in a way.”

"So why don't you have a computer that you can see, that looks like me - that's funny isn't it."

Soon, television began to embrace the performers from The Comedy Store and The Comic Strip and Norman also benefited from TV’s eagerness to showcase the nation’s emerging comic talent. He eventually became part of Red Dwarf, the ‘cult’ television behemoth that stemmed from a sketch within Radio 4’s Son of Cliché penned by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, otherwise known as the ‘gestalt entity’ Grant Naylor.

“In my early days of doing stand-up, there was only a few of us around really, Rik Mayall and all that lot, there wasn’t a lot compared to today. All of a sudden Paul Jackson started getting The Young Ones off the ground and I did something in an episode of that and I knew Rik and everybody. And then I did Don’t Miss Wax. Ruby Wax, she used me as a sort of stooge in her show, it was a chat show on Channel 4, late on a Friday night, and that went very well for me, a lot of people really liked that… I scored a few points in that… I was a stooge floor manager that butted in between her and the guests sort of thing… and that went well, and then Paul Jackson did Red Dwarf and they asked me to read for Rimmer believe it or not and it didn’t work out at all… I could see that I wasn’t a Rimmer. And then a couple of days later they said, ‘can you read for this Holly part, it’s just a voiceover for a computer’ and I went and read it, and as soon as I read it… You remember ‘they’re all dead Dave?’ Well that’s the thing I had to do and I just made everybody laugh in the room it was so funny... it was so totally me.”

It was 1986; the production had found lucky ground absorbing the budget assigned for the second series of a Ben Elton show called Happy Families that never came to be. Norman’s delivery was perfect for the role of the senile artificial intelligence, but at this stage Holly was planned as just a disembodied voice with Norman never actually appearing on screen. He soon set about trying to convince Red Dwarf’s creators that his face could be put to good use.

“I was dismayed at going and doing a television voiceover, I wasn’t happy about that but at the same time I was pleased to have got the job anyway… and then I changed that, I managed to moan and whinge and say that he should be seen, this Holly character… because Hal the computer - which I think they got the idea from - you didn’t see Hal did you? So why don’t you have a computer that you can see, that looks like me - that’s funny isn’t it. That’s what I told them, and I had to tell them a few times before it came to fruition.”

Norman’s enthusiasm for the funny runs through his life like the words in a stick of rock. It’s a trait that still clearly inhabits his markedly untraditional live stand-up today as his recent prop filled Bags and Biscuits show saw him returning occasionally to the concept of what is funny. Is it the spiritually exuberant flight of a wafted polythene bag (“I wanna get my bags out… have you seen my bags?”) or the precise yet graceful results of a Granny Smith apple undergoing the rigorisms of a Rotato (“this is a two apple show”). He’s happy in the knowledge that if it makes him laugh then “that’s funny”.

Having appeared in 21 of the 52 episodes of Red Dwarf (voted 18th in the BBC’s Best British Sitcom in 1994), Norman Lovett’s Holly is adored by legions of fans and his likeness and dulcet tones are synonymous with that character and the brand itself. His voice, behaviour and delivery having become irrevocably associated with Holly and Red Dwarf… Even when he wasn’t in it… The character of Holly with clearly identifiable mannerisms continued for several seasons in the form of Hattie Hayridge, a likeness of the blonde bobbed Holly from a parallel universe. In fact, as I write this article and put our chat into the form of a feature… I find myself coming over all Norman Lovett myself… so to speak! I want to fill it with timely pauses for comic effect, little knowing glances, deadpan comments and subtle raised eyebrows… maybe I’ll find an opportunity to do that in a moment.

“They promised me when I left, that they would replace the part, they’d change the part completely. You know, that they’d have a completely different look at it.”

… They didn’t... [timely pause… knowing glance]

“And so they went for the safe option, Hattie had done it before in an episode, Parallel Universe, so they went for the safe option. I know that Kathy Burke went up for it.”

“She said ‘this is Norman, this isn’t me’. She’s such an honest girl, I haven’t seen her for years but I can hear her saying that, I can just hear her laying into them ‘no this isn’t me.’ It is me though, I mean a lot of it is from my stand-up, my persona onstage at that time. You know they’d seen me, Rob and Doug had seen me do my stand-up a lot and they took a lot you know, they thought oh yeah he can do this; this is what Norm’s good at. You know that comes from my stand-up as well. There’s a lot of the actual characters in Red Dwarf [that comes from] from the actual characters of the people that played them, and they weren’t slow to sort of see that you know. Craig was a bit of a slob, Danny was the only one that had to sort of say ‘oh I wanna be like James Brown,’ and he had to do an American accent, but he was great. He’s a dancer, a singer you know, so that was right for him.”

"I've got the movie script in my loft... I could flog it and make a bloody fortune..."

For Red Dwarf fans there is always now one lingering question that they want to ask… one that now haunts the stars of the show, perpetually destined to be asked this question forevermore… Knowing how tiresome this may be, I risk it, take a chance and see if I can get away with asking it myself. My question is amiably welcomed with hearty chuckles but I’m assured that I’ll get the same answer that everyone else has got recently.

“I don’t think there’ll ever be a film unless the two writers got back together and they got somebody else to direct it and not themselves, ‘cos I think that was the reason it never got off the ground.”

Arrgh… That ol’ Red Dwarf The Movie issue raises it’s ugly head… my fault really…

“We went in to do rehearsals for the film, no-one had signed a contract, we didn’t get any money and then all of a sudden after a couple of week’s rehearsals, or a week and a half, it was all like, ‘ooh it’s on hold now’. And that’s how it’s been ever since, loads of talk and promises, and now I’ve got to the stage where I just think, I couldn’t give a shit, they can make the film, I don’t care whether I’m in it or not, I couldn’t care less. I mean I really don’t care, I don’t worship money. I’m not a money worshipper, I don’t care. I just think it’s a joke. The way we’ve been treated, the way the fans have been treated, is appalling, I just find it appalling.”

“There was talk about over 20 million pounds of American money, and then there was talk about going to have my skin and teeth looked at, and then talk about ‘you’ve got to have a star, a film star, in the film’. Not just the Red Dwarf people, they were talking about Cher and that Welsh girl who married the American bloke…”

Zeta-Jones?

“Zeta-Jones, yeah her… I’ve got the movie script in my loft right now… I could probably flog them all, do loads of copies of them and make a bloody fortune…”

Pause for comic effect… Timely dry addendum…

“I’d also get sued.”

Further pauses amidst other omitted banter…

“I’m not really bitter, but I’m cross about it and I’m a Scorpio and I don’t forget.”

So having become coupled with the character of Holly that quickly evolved to echo his own actual behaviour and performance style, are there a lot similarities to his Red Dwarf persona and his real life personality? Norman admits to being a bit of a moaner…

“My mother is Italian don’t forget, but yeah I do moan a lot I’m afraid. My daughters’ll tell you that, my wife’ll tell you that.”

And cause a bit of trouble?

“Yeah… and you know…”

Contemplative now…

“Then I’m alright.”

Once you get it out of your system?

“Yeah… I think life is… I dunno… It’s shit… and you’ve got to sort of make sure you don’t walk into any of it. And that’s just what I find… there’s less shit indoors, more shit outside.”

The 60-year-old Norman Lovett seems relatively content with his life, despite all the ridiculousness and stupidity life tries to annoy him with, he appears quite satisfied to plod on through with his ironing and his passion for making people laugh… He’s also gathering huge satisfaction through seeing his family succeed and achieve. Did I mention his wife now has a third shop? Although, and potential Norman Lovett huggers take note, he’s recently been through a period of doubt and difficulty.

“In my fifties I was reckoning with myself on whether I should be doing this job at my age, and all that. I was going through a lot of, I don’t know, I went through a bit of trauma about it, about whether I should be doing the job… with all these young comedians… [I thought] you know you’ve had your day, you’ve had your moment.”

Spurred on by fellow comics such as Daniel Kitson and John Oliver, Norman continues to experiment and play around with stand-up as a form and the things that he finds to be funny. In fact, as a member of what became called the ‘alternative comedy’ circuit he is one of the few performers who continues to experiment, pushing peculiar concepts and stretching the boundaries of live comedy form. Despite this, he portrays a trademark non-committal stance towards his continuing comedic innovation, like the doddery old chap tinkering in his shed he brushes it off as a mere (‘final third’) project that keeps him amused, and instead seems much happier and more comfortable to be talking of his family’s work and successes than his own. His wife has just opened her third shop don’t you know and he is a very proud dad of two talented daughters, one of which became the youngest stand-up to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe when she stole the show every night taking fifteen minutes of Norman’s act a few years back.

Refreshed with his current positivity, and perhaps that little dose of Prozac each day (unless he was joking about that!) Norman is on a roll once again. Funny stuff is everywhere to be found and he’s eager to dig it up wherever it may hide and display it to all and sundry like someone’s cheeky old dad who’s haphazardly taken over show and tell.

Norman Lovett’s Slide Show is touring the UK until the end of October 2007...
He’ll be visiting Northampton, Gainsborough, Norwich, Brighton, Redhill, High Wycombe, Blackheath, Hayes, Nottingham, Oxford, Worcester, Derby, Whithaven, Great Torrington, Dartmouth, Bridgewater, York, Billingham, Crewe, Bath, Monmouth, Cardiff, Bradford, Lisburn, Bristol, Petersfield, Brentford, Manchester, Bury, Epsom, Bowness, Selby, Leeds and Windsor... in that order!

His Bags and Biscuits DVD is available by mail order from his website...

normanlovett.co.uk
myspace.com/normanlovett