Dom Joly states that he has lived his life the wrong way around, having done the sensible, careerist things as a younger man before finding his way into more comedic waters and reinventing the hidden camera show, taking it into a surreal and altogether more interesting place.
In conversation with BBC Wiltshire’s Abigail Mobbs and taking his latest book “Here Comes The Clown, A Stumble Through Show Business,” as a guide, he began at the point when he realized that he was famous, on a train journey hearing people paraphrasing his famous mobile phone routine and then how his accidental career ran from there. But it was his early life that I was most intrigued by. His formative years in Lebanon, (and later finding out that contrary to the notion of being his primary schools most famous old boy, he was actually eclipsed by Osama Bin Laden) his unexpected break into a career as a junior diplomat then a TV producer to that light bulb moment when as Mark Thomas’s political advisor he found himself to drive a tank through a McDonalds.
Although it is difficult to pin down where Joly fits in the scheme of things, he hates the word prankster, admits to being not that interested in British comedy and certainly doesn’t see himself part of it, he does make a reasonable raconteur. His remarks regarding a number of English towns which have sparked controversy, including Swindon, are more forgiving when you get to grips with his reactionary style and if the likes of Jeremy Clarkson or worse Richard Littlejohn are allowed to pass off controversial comments by saying that it is just a joke, then you can certainly forgive Joly for a bit of town planning criticism.
His tales take in meeting hero Robert Smith of The Cure, why he isn’t invited to showbiz parties anymore and reality TV unravelled from “I’m A Celebrity…” to working with “Bearly There Grylls.”
These days he is more of a travel writer, a career he always hoped would become part of the longer term plan and having read some of his work in this area I think he has really found his calling, blending his usual irreverence with a very humane approach to telling, often heart rendering stories, from the most unlikely corners of the world.
I wasn’t sure that this talk was going to be of massive interest to me, having dismissed Dom Joly as being merely Candid Camera for generation x-box but was pleasantly surprised to find him engaging, funny and self-deprecatingly aware of how lucky he has been.
