Standing up for a laugh;
TV & radio: Is Simon Pegg the great new hope for comedy on television? Phil Gould talks to the star of Spaced and Big Train
by Phil Gould
IF YOU haven't yet heard of Simon Pegg, you soon will. The 29-year-old, peroxide-haired actor and writer is being hailed as one of the new wave of talents taking television comedy into a new era.
He has recently brought some much-needed comic relief to television screens with Jessica Stevenson in the Channel 4 comedy Spaced and was part of the much -praised off-beat team effort Big Train.
And now he is looking to score a hit with Hippies, a comedy written by Father Ted writers Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan, which delves into the surreal world of the underground press in the late 1960s.
The story centres on the trials and tribulations of a group of rebellious bohemians producing a magazine called Mouth.
Walking into a trendy Soho bar, it would be easy to mistake Pegg for his Spaced character Tim Bisley. He is sitting at the bar nursing a glass of coke, his blond hair is spiked up, he has a messy goatee beard and is wearing a scruffy sweat-top, T-shirt and jeans.
His expression makes him look both forlorn and slightly puzzled by life, so it is something of a surprise to find out that he believes a great deal of his current success is down to the encouragement from his parents, who still live in his home town of Gloucester.
"My dad, John, has always been in bands since I was a kid, and the reason I got into this business was because my mum, Gill, was interested in acting - she was the star of the local drama group.
"It was her passion for acting that sparked my interest in the first place. They both played a huge part in inspiring me to go on and do what I have done.
"I think Mum takes vicarious pleasure in the fact that I've done ok. She knows she could have done it if she was given the chance. But she wasn't given the encouragement or the opportunity.
"They never frowned or made any noises against my ambitions. They did make me aware of the difficulties but never once said no or don't do that."
His younger sister Kate is currently studying special effects at college and is getting ready to go to drama school.
Pegg moved to Stratford-upon-Avon at the age of 16 to study A-levels, and that was followed by a film, theatre and television course in Bristol.
"I've always been interested in acting," he admits. "I studied a course in drama but that put me off the idea of being an actor because I couldn't stand the thought of jobbing and doing things I didn't really like.
"So stand-up comedy was a way of performing and keeping it on my terms. My stand-up act was sort of surreal observation - there are elements of it in Spaced."
"I was working in Bristol to begin with but doing stand-up there wasn't really sustainable as there are only about three clubs, so I thought I'd come up to London.
"Stand-up is a handy way of getting into comedy acting. It removes the grind of having to appear in stuff you don't want to be in. So fortunately I didn't have to go through that whole process of dressing up as a spicy sausage in a supermarket just to get money."
Pegg admits that both he and Stevenson have been a little taken aback by the critical praise heaped on their Channel 4 show, a sitcom centred on the nightmares of two twentysomethings sharing a flat, which also has Ally McBeal -style flashbacks and pastiches of films.
"It's been phenomenal - Jess and me are really thrilled that people have been so forthcoming with their liking of it," says Pegg enthusiastically.
"We wanted to revamp the whole notion of sitcoms, making one which started off looking conventional but turned into something different - which doesn't often happen in the genre.
"In Spaced there's that late-'90s cultural awareness going on - which people just seem to have picked up on. We've made lots of different references to films and TV shows which people seem to like."
Although it would be easy to speculate that the couple might be an item in real life, Pegg insists they are just good friends.
"It's not the first time we have worked together. We worked on a sketch show called Six Pairs Of Pants, back in 1995, and got on immediately.
"Then two years later we did a show called Asylum, after which we were approached about doing our own show. We agreed but only if we could write it.
"But because of us being involved in different projects we didn't actually get round to writing it until last year. There's a lot of us in the show both emotionally and in terms of flat-hunting.
"As a writer I think you have to cull the truth from your life because that's the stuff you can transmit with the most honesty. Write what you know - always."
He believes the current crop of comedies breaking out of the old sitcom mould has happened more by chance than design.
"I think comedy writing does come in waves and you do get generations of writers. You get a bunch of like-minded people who are striving towards the same thing - I'm good friends with The League Of Gentlemen boys, and Jess is mates with Caroline Aherne.
"But, of course, there will be another new wave next year!"
Hippies is on BBC2 from November 12 at 9.30pm