Now best known for his role as resident panellist on QI, Alan Davies recently returned to stand-up and embarked on his first tour in many years, Life Is Pain. Why did he choose did this particular moment to return to live performance?
“I had the opportunity to do some of my old material from the ‘90s,” explains Davies. “I really have a total fear of having to do that, so I went up to a little studio theatre near my house, and did a work in progress for a few weeks to try and cook up the material. That process seemed to go okay – it was torment for the audience and really useful for me. Now I’ve got a show again, I can do gigs. It’s been a long time. I just didn’t have enough material to do a show, and then I couldn’t get material without doing shows, so I was in a bit of a catch-22.”
Is performing stand-up like Davies remembers it?
“It is, yeah,” he affirms. “I’m a bit less mobile than I was in my 20s – I tend to stand still a bit more. I’ve enjoyed it. I’m 46 now and I’m talking about different things. I’ve got a couple of children and there’s a lot of distance between them now and my own childhood. When I started doing stand-up there were no mobiles, no internet. It’s weird really, you used to pick up the answer-phone and that was it! There’s a lot of talk between how things are different between then and now. There’s a bit about being a parent and there’s a fair bit of filth at the end.”
What’s in the filth bit?
“There’s a bit about the end of the world, a bit about Facebook and some comedy gold about sex toys,” replies Davies. “Is it autobiographical? (laughs) I make a confession that I’ve always found sex toys far too amusing to actually use. There wasn’t any research – it wasn’t what you might call hands-on!”
Davies mentions the tour stopped off in Sweden at one point, although explains that the main reason he was there was to meet about a Swedish version of QI. Davies travelled in the company of the show’s creator Jon Lloyd, the legendary British producer heavily associated with the ’80s wave of UK comedy, including Blackadder and Not The Nine O’Clock News. Davies notes that a previous Dutch adaptation of the show wasn’t a success, although on the foot of the Swedish version, Lloyd is hopeful it might become a worldwide franchise. I thought Lloyd would have made his money already.
“He’s always pleading poverty,” laughs Davies. “They opened a QI club in Oxford, believe it or not – a restaurant, a bar and a club. None of them had any experience of running a club, and it seemed a massive money pit. It’s been a succession of ill-advised business ventures.”
With regard to the show itself, you couldn’t ask for a better host than Stephen Fry.
“Yeah, and it’s clever the way it’s done,” says Davies. “A whole team of researchers do it for months and get all this material. Stephen’s got fantastic recall; he can get the script and read through it and rehearse it. He seems to be able to absorb this stuff quite quickly. You never hear him say, ‘What’s the name of so-and-so, it’s on the tip of my tongue.’ Even if he’s wrong, he just keeps talking!”
Does Davies hang out with Fry socially?
“Not really, no,” he says. “I tend to see him a few weeks every year when we do QI, and I think by then he’s ready to kill me rather than going out for a drink.”
Does Davies have a favourite moment from the show?
“I like it when Stephen gets the giggles, when we incapacitate him,” he says. “He fluffed his lines when he was talking about the Parthenon at the Acropolis. I think Bill Bailey and Jimmy Carr were on. It’s on YouTube – we just take the piss out of him and he can’t cope.”
What did Davies make of the stories about Carr’s alleged involvement in a tax avoidance scheme earlier in the year?
“That was a bit awkward, wasn’t it?” he responds. “What I thought was interesting about it was that there were so many people in this scheme and he got picked on. I don’t know why.”
Because he always seems a bit pleased with himself.
“Maybe that’s it,” acknowledges Davies. “Gary Barlow is writing a bloody song for the Queen, so when you’re writing a song for Britain’s premier tax dodger, you can get away with it! I pay my taxes, that’s all I can tell you – and I will continue to do so after all the stick that he got!”
Davies himself – an Arsenal supporter – had a somewhat hairy moment earlier this year when, during his football podcast, he said he didn’t understand why Liverpool don’t play on the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. Following an outcry from Liverpool fans, Davies offered to donate £1,000 to the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, although the HJC turned it down. The comic was clearly rattled by the whole episode, as when Hot Press asks him about, he simply says, “No comment.”
I ask him about an incident from a few years ago – detailed on his Wikipedia page – in which he had an altercation outside the Groucho Club and subsequently made headlines.
“Oh, mate, I would like the burn at the stake whoever writes the Wikipedia page and chooses to put these things on there,” says a clearly exasperated Davies. “What happened was that someone started giving me a load of abuse, I had a go back and then he went and told the Daily Mirror about it. The thing is, some bloke like that who wants to try and make a few quid out of the tabloids, in the past that would be tomorrow’s chip paper, wouldn’t it? But now someone links it on Wikipedia, the go-to place for information, and that’s there permanently.
“I’d been at a funeral that day of an old friend of mine, I’d spoken at it and it was a very emotional day. Then someone has a go at me and I had a go back. You have to be a saint these days.”

Alan Davies plays Vicar St., Dublin on November 2.