{"id":938726,"date":"2026-05-05T06:19:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/938726\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T06:19:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T06:19:16","slug":"michael-spicer-monty-python-taught-me-that-authority-figures-must-earn-our-respect-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/938726\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Spicer: \u2018Monty Python taught me that authority figures must earn our respect\u2019 | Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

How did you get into comedy?
<\/strong>I was submitting sketches to Spitting Image when I was 17 and making my own sketches pre-internet. But I guess in terms of my actual break, that didn\u2019t happen until [online political sketch series] The Room Next Door<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Was that an overnight success?
<\/strong>I was watching a particularly bad interview with Boris Johnson and jotted down the concept of an adviser next door who was pulling his hair out over what was being said. I then filmed it after dinner, posted it before I went to bed and the next morning it was in the millions. So that is literally an overnight success, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

There were other disastrous interviews taking place that week which got highlighted on social media and I realised the character could be in the room next door to literally any situation at any point in time, anywhere. There was some longevity in it, as opposed to other sketches I\u2019ve done in the past that went viral.<\/p>\n

Have you ever had any indication that a public figure has enjoyed being the subject of your sketches?
<\/strong>I get very sneaky follows. For instance, if I\u2019ve criticised somebody in the cabinet, I\u2019m often then followed by somebody else in the cabinet. As if to say: \u201cYes, she\u2019s awful, isn\u2019t she?\u201d People like Keir Starmer follow me because of what I was doing several years ago when the Conservatives were in charge. But these are all sort of surreptitious, never engaging with me. And I must admit, it annoys me that I haven\u2019t got to them because to them it means that it\u2019s just a game. But it\u2019s not because, you know, lives are at stake sometimes. And I just want people to be held to account, not to be joshing with them in some sort of weird celebrity fantasy.<\/p>\n

Room with a strong view \u2026 Michael Spicer in character in 2021. Photograph: Michael Spicer<\/p>\n

Have you always seen yourself as a satirist?
<\/strong>Not really, no. It\u2019s a bit like the way Peter Cook was labelled a satirist \u2013 that\u2019s unfair because he just found the whole world funny. But it always seemed to me that satire was a very fruitful place to go for comedy.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best piece of trolling you\u2019ve ever experienced, if such a thing exists?
<\/strong>It doesn\u2019t. I find trolls so absolutely abhorrent. They are motivated by their toxicity and their poisonous behaviour towards you. It\u2019s what makes them get up in the morning. I once did a sketch where I spliced two public information films together – one was \u201cBe careful on a boat with your petrol\u201d and the other was \u201cDon\u2019t over-boil a kettle\u201d. I spliced them together and made \u201cDon\u2019t boil a kettle on a boat<\/a>\u201d which was a kettle boiling over and then a boat exploding. It went viral because people thought it was real. Two people got into a really heated argument about why you shouldn\u2019t actually boil a kettle on a boat. And they went back and forth for the best part of 24 hours, always CCing me in on their argument. I had nothing to do with it. Eventually they started attacking each other about their education, their upbringing. That\u2019s when I thought that internet commenting has really contributed nothing to society or culture. It\u2019s just dragged it downwards.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Do you have a comedy hero?
<\/strong>I have lots. In terms of comedians that shaped my view of the world, I would say watching repeats of Monty Python<\/a> in 1987 on BBC One after Match of the Day just changed my whole life. It made me look at authority figures and realise that they need to earn our respect. They shouldn\u2019t be respected just because they\u2019re wearing a tie and a suit.<\/p>\n

What can audiences expect from your <\/strong>forthcoming show, Hope All\u2019s Well?
<\/strong>Hope. I thought that it would be an interesting spin on things if I actually addressed all the terrible things that are going on in the world and found some light at the end of the tunnel. So it\u2019s quite a positive and uplifting show \u2026 as well as being a funny one.<\/p>\n

Any bugbears from the world of comedy?
<\/strong>This is probably grumpy old man speak, but I don\u2019t like how comedians, when they get their break, don\u2019t do comedy. They present TV shows or they appear on panel shows. They don\u2019t do sketch comedy and they don\u2019t really do standup. A lot of the opportunities are to bake cakes or answer questions on Mastermind. I find that uninspiring and boring. When I was a child, if somebody was a big success in comedy, they would usually get their own comedy show.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?
<\/strong>Making sure my travel is booked for an upcoming episode of Father Brown which I\u2019m appearing in. I\u2019m being murdered. I\u2019m looking forward to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How did you get into comedy?I was submitting sketches to Spitting Image when I was 17 and making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-938726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116520522604138605","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}