Mitch Benn is an English musician, comedian and author known for his comedy rock songs performed on BBC radio. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s satirical programme The Now Show, and has hosted other radio shows.
What is your brand new 2017 tour about?
Death and mortality. It’s the one thing that unites us and yet the one thing we don’t want to talk about. So I thought I’d crack a bunch of jokes and sing some songs about.
What was the inspiration behind the name, ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’?
Aside from the obvious (if you’re an old rock bore like me) Blue Oyster Cult reference it was the fact that the slew of famous people dying last year got me thinking about my own mortality and mortality in general.
Was music all around when you were growing up in Liverpool, do you come from a musical family or were your influences external?
Very musical if not professionally so, with a couple of exceptions. Don’t think I’m related to anybody who can’t play something. And I grew up in Liverpool in the 70s, wading through the debris of the Mersey Sound and Beatlemania.
When was the moment you realised you could combine music with comedy?
I first did stand up at the age of 21 in Montréal, Canada and incorporated music and songwriting right from the get go as it never really occurred to me not to.
Tell me a little bit about your books Terra and Terra’s World.
What are they about, what prompted you to write them, will we see any more?
They’re about a human child who is abducted by a well-meaning alien and grows up on another planet. They’re mainly inspired by my relationship with my kids, and there WILL be a part three but I don’t know when.
When did you first think ‘Comedy - that’s the job for me’?
After I’d already been doing it for about a year. In my generation you don’t find many comics who always wanted to do this when we grew up; most of us seem to have gotten side tracked into it while trying to do other things. Younger comics will have grown up in an era when comedy was seen as rather sexier so maybe more of them will have wanted to be comedians when they were kids.
Which comedian first piqued your interest, and why?
My comic ‘awakening’ definitely came during the aftermath of the alternative ‘explosion’ at the end of the 70s and its subsequent takeover of TV comedy (The Young Ones etc.) but weirdly the first stand up I remember admiring was Billy Connolly, who belonged to a slightly earlier generation. In fact I’ve always thought that artistically I’ve got more in common with his generation, the early 70s ex-folk club raconteurs, than with any subsequent comedy ‘movement’.
If you weren’t working in comedy what would you be doing?
If you mean day job, not a damn clue. I’ve written books though; if I could make a living doing that I’d be happy.
Tell us about your worst gig so far
Did a Christmas gig in Romford once. Once….
...and the one which still send shivers for all the right reasons?
Maybe the first time I ever played the big comedy stage at Glastonbury in 1995.