The Funny Garrett Millerick

Group Editor, Andrew Palmer, meets up with a comic heading north on a UK tour, which hopefully will not be as bad as facing 800 UN peacekeeping troops, starved of alcohol for two months and denied watching the end of an Arsenal football match!

I am on my guard. Garrett Millerick voraciously observes and listens to people looking for the absurdities of life as it’s a terrific way to collect material for his stand-up show.

The affable, “clichéd, bearded, white suburban dad and nerd” who likes Pink Floyd, The War on Drugs, and grew up in the greatest decade known to man - the 90s world of Brit pop and early 2000s Indie rock, tells me he enjoys finding something comic in everyday life.

Watching, studying, and commenting on the preposterousness of life is, after all, what makes us fall of our chairs in fits of laughter. And, looking at the plethora of accolades he has received, it’s obviously a successful formula.

The Scotsman said of his Edinburgh Festival show: he had the room erupting with laughter, clever and funny.

Steve Bennett from Chortle said: he is smart, playful … devastatingly funny and it’s a travesty that he’s not much better known outside the comedy cognoscenti.

I can attest to his skill and am looking forward to hearing him in York this month.

Millerick continued: “There is absurdity absolutely everywhere. If something piques my interest or things happen, then I take out my iPhone and write little notes. It could be what someone may have said and it all forms ideas which I then use on new material nights in clubs around the country to see if it resonates with people.”

I feel confident that I can let my guard down a little bit because I trust Millerick to anonymise any little quips he may hear from me. I have been caught out before.

Testing out new material on an audience is important. “I will often write down loads of things and an audience will tell me in in the initial development stages if the idea works. Sometimes it will be a case of I hadn't thought that is how it would be received and then I will refine it. Communication with the audience is essential. That was one of the horrendous things about the pandemic. We couldn’t all go out.”

Every comedy club in the country has new material nights where performers preview their concepts and despite it being a cheaper night out for the audience you get to see really good people testing the water so it can be an interesting place for people to go.

Mention of the pandemic has given him material; he believes it's completely changed the psychology of the country and a lot of his new show is about how angry everything feels now.

“I'm trying to find shared experiences that creates the ‘we’ in the room and although it is not about the pandemic, I reference the fact that we've changed a little bit, we're not the same people we were in 2019.

As we have been chatting away, I am beginning to see how he puts his shows together and before we get on to his tour, I want to know what makes him laugh. What does Millerick find funny?

“Oh, lots of stuff make me laugh. One of the great things about being a comedian is that I get to hang out with a lot of comedians. I thought Glen Moore’s show last year was one of the best hours of comedy anyone's ever produced – fantastic. I recorded a special double bill a couple of years ago with Pierre Novellie, we did kind of ‘best offs’; he is on YouTube and is phenomenal; I love the way his mind works, and it is absolutely hilarious.

“Other than that, mundane stuff like my daughter, she makes me laugh a lot and the news I've got very dark sense of humour.”

Mention of his daughter is a nice segue to chat about the tour: Just Trying to Help, is the hilarious conclusion to his Fatherhood trilogy that began with his 2018 breakout show Sunflower and continued with 2019s Smile. Having worked through his fears about the state of world, his own maturity, what happens when fate gets in the way of your plans, and how to deal with having an opinion on everything… he says it’s time to stop fretting on the bench and get out on the field because the game has well and truly started.

He is performing across our patch and having already appeared in Newcastle and Manchester he is looking forward to Leeds, Liverpool, and York.

I asked whether audiences differ across the UK and he tells me that audiences all over the world are fairly similar - at the end of the day everyone's out for a laugh.
cq[...the remarkable thing about comedy is that it’s a really unifying thing...
]
“Perhaps playing the Edinburgh Festival people are seeing five or six shows a day and depending on what time slot one is allocated they could be a bit weary, but across country generally, and I've been out as a club comic for a long time now, I find the similarities more striking than the differences.”

“People are not specifically coming to see me, they want a release, to laugh and you know Andrew, the remarkable thing about comedy is that it’s a really unifying thing; in terms of material and in things that I am writing about I am always looking for as I mentioned earlier, the ‘we’ to bring everyone together to the same understanding.

“There is a great communal shared experience about it which is the same wherever you go.”

cq[With stand-up it's just you and a microphone and an audience and the possibilities are endless.]

Millerick started out as a writer and theatre director which he had been working at for a while but the monotony of doing lots of stuff that he wasn't really interested in, coupled with writing funding applications, so feeling the spark begin to diminish he knew it was time to do something different. He suddenly had an idea giving him a new passion and enthusiasm.

“I had lost the audience connection so I thought if I write something for myself and go out and stand in front of an audience, I may be able to re-discover the point of the thing and not have to marshal teams of people or raise money.”

His lightbulb moment was reading Stewart Lee's book, How I Escaped my certain fate about Lee returning to stand-up after a period as a commercial director.

A particular phrase resonated with Millerick: “With stand-up it's just you and a microphone and an audience and the possibilities are endless.

“I thought that was a good line and that’s what I did. It snowballed from that point - it was a real connection from the very first time, a case of this is this one thing I should be doing.”

I suggest it must have been daunting, but he’s been doing stand-up now for about eight or nine years and enjoys it and you learn out in on the road playing the clubs. He makes an interesting point: “It’s been described as learning a musical instrument in public because you have to do it with an audience.”

There was a news story today that said about two thirds of the population would like to try being a comic and I tell Millerick I think I would be hopeless. Not necessarily finding material or dealing with nerves but the banter in the form of heckling from the audience and despite it being part of the performance, it would see me running a mile, despite being president of my university debating society! He pauses and says it is what toughens you up. He recounts an hilarious story when he was performing to 800 UN peacekeeping troops at the Ledra Palace Hotel in Cyprus, in the middle of the demilitarised zone, the hotel where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor spent their honeymoon.

“I arrived with a musician and another comic, and we were supposed to be performing in the ballroom where the troops were watching an Arsenal game. We were fine with them watching the match first and went backstage for a while but five minutes later a gruff military man walked in and told us the television had been switched off and everyone was ready to enjoy the comedy.

“We were also told that there had been a regimental booze ban for a couple of months, but it had been lifted with no restrictions on how much the troops could drink.

“Well, it was one hell of an evening. We got there in the end with 800 frustrated trained killers drinking who for the first time in two months were drinking and denied knowing the score of the football game they were watching. We earned our money that night!

“I flew back from that gig and was straight in to a Friday night performance in a comedy club with six stag dos in that evening. I just said to the manager if they’re not armed, I don't really have a problem.

“Performing in front of 800 troops removes any fear from doing the job again because you know, the sun came up the next morning, everything is fine, I am alive and well with a good sense of humour.”

It also helps with nerves. Millerick tells me that basically his heart rate goes up before he goes on stage, and he views it as just his body preparing for what it needs to do before a performance.

“Somebody gave me a tip a couple of years ago to see it as necessary preparation and stop viewing it as nerves.

He’s looking forward to York and Leeds and he adores Liverpool, it is one of the best places in the country with a really vibrant comedy scene. He is on at the Hot Water Comedy Club.

Talking of hot water, I think I am fine and can let my guard down. I am fickle as I’m a little disappointed that I may have been too much on my guard and boring and not given Millerick an opportunity to write notes in his iPhone.

But judging from his press reviews it doesn’t really matter - he already knows how to make us laugh.