Seriously funny
From working the bingo hall and construction sites of Woking to herding goats in France, Chertsey-born stand-up Sean Lock’s route to fame has been far from conventional, he tells Rebecca Gooch
A building site in Woking, and a man named Susie… As comedy training grounds go, it is not quite the Cambridge Footlights. But for comedian Sean Lock, a familiar face in fast-wit TV panel games such as QI, Have I Got News for You and Eight out of Ten Cats, his seat of laughter-learning was amid the scaffolding and cement mixers in his native Surrey.
Sean attributes much of his quick-fire comedy skill to having to stand his ground amid his wise-cracking builder mates. “You had to establish yourself as your own character, your own person,” he says, remembering the seven years he spent in the building trade. “I’d always been an attention-seeker, a bit of a show-off, and the building site was like my first stand-up. It wasn’t like going to Eton or Durham, but it was a good education.” It helped to hone his comedy craft, since acknowledged with such trophies as the British Comedy Awards’ “Best Live Act” and nominations for the Perrier Award and a Bafta. “Yes, it laid all the foundations for that.”
When I arrive at the London café where we’ve arranged to meet, Sean is nibbling a chicken salad and sipping coke, squeezing me in before a visit to his dentist, who is incidentally also a comedian on his days off.
The TV presenter Jonathan Ross recently told Sean that he looked a good 10 years older than his 45 years, but he looks younger—and less nerdy—than on the box. “I’ve got good skin. People come up and stroke the side of my face. I thought I looked like Fabio,” he says drily. I assume he means the England football manager Fabio Capello. Then Sean adds, deadpan: “After the goose hit him in the face on the rollercoaster.” A Google hit later, I realise he’s referring to Fabio Lanzoni, an Italian male model who was struck by a stray goose on a US theme park ride in 1999.
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