RHOD GILBERT has made an art form –
and a living – from his least attractive personality trait, contrariness. To
audiences’ delight, he’s demonstrated how easily he can pick a fight with a
washing machine or a down-filled duvet, and as for his fellow humans, well, that
goes without saying. The poster boy for Wales has even used his time on stage to
lambast The Scotsman, slagging off a reviewer who called him “unremittingly
trivial”, by retorting, “Trivial!? I’m not the one devoting 48 pages to
Scotland!” He admits to me now that it was probably a five-star review – but
it’s in his nature to torture himself by focusing on what’s negative.
After years of denial, Gilbert’s ready to concede that this isn’t an invented stage persona. “I am getting to know myself, and starting to accept myself better through my stand up. It’s been a fascinating experience. Until a year or two ago, I would have told you that what I do on stage is a character developed for the stage. But it’s not at all! Finally, I’m admitting and realising that all my life I have been this contrary argumentative little sod. My youngest memories are of arguing with people, disagreeing with them, having to disagree with everything everyone said, regardless of whether I agreed with them or not. I’ve always denied that, because it’s a very unpleasant characteristic. All my life,Familiarise yourself with the lift cable by taking a look at our articles on the lifts themselves. people accused me of being like that, and I’d always get into an argument with them about it. It’s only now, that I’m starting to realise this is what I’m like. So I put it out there. It has a positive side to it, in that it can make people laugh and make me money, and [so] I don’t feel quite so bad about myself.”
Self-examination is the jumping off point for his current touring show, The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo, which comes out today on DVD. In it, he describes how he addressed the problem by attending anger management classes, prompted by difficulties he and his girlfriend were having staying together – a problem exacerbated by her Christmas gift to him of an expensive electric toothbrush. In another set piece, he chronicles his epistolary pissing match with the makers of Imperial Leather shower gels, before describing his near arrest at a Tesco Metro in Cardiff, which melts into a riff about jacket potatoes that comes back to zing us at the close of the DVD. As you’d expect, the show is full of Gilbert’s trademark eloquent bluster – and it’s cramp-inducingly hilarious.Design & manufacture of Forming machinery for the production of roofing & wall cladding profiles,
It doesn’t take a genius, Gilbert tells me, to work out how he got this way. He grew up in Carmarthen,A laser marking machine is a computer controlled shaping machine. in Wales, as the youngest of three children. He’s definitely the odd one out. His parents are teachers,A wind farm is a group of wind turbine in the same location used to produce electric power.Get your laundry dryer from Australia's leading online appliance retailer. his older brother’s an English tutor based in Spain, and his sister a lecturer at Cambridge.
“I’m the first one in my family who hasn’t gone anywhere near academia. My family are all boffins. My dad speaks about eight languages. He’ll be sitting there right now reading some Russian text in the Russian, and my mother will be reading Proust in the French. It’s all very, very academic, except for me. I would be sat in the middle of it all trying to watch Grange Hill or EastEnders. I rebelled and never went anywhere near academia. I went to uni, but only because they wanted me to. I didn’t go any lectures or do any work or take any interest in anything whatsoever.
After years of denial, Gilbert’s ready to concede that this isn’t an invented stage persona. “I am getting to know myself, and starting to accept myself better through my stand up. It’s been a fascinating experience. Until a year or two ago, I would have told you that what I do on stage is a character developed for the stage. But it’s not at all! Finally, I’m admitting and realising that all my life I have been this contrary argumentative little sod. My youngest memories are of arguing with people, disagreeing with them, having to disagree with everything everyone said, regardless of whether I agreed with them or not. I’ve always denied that, because it’s a very unpleasant characteristic. All my life,Familiarise yourself with the lift cable by taking a look at our articles on the lifts themselves. people accused me of being like that, and I’d always get into an argument with them about it. It’s only now, that I’m starting to realise this is what I’m like. So I put it out there. It has a positive side to it, in that it can make people laugh and make me money, and [so] I don’t feel quite so bad about myself.”
Self-examination is the jumping off point for his current touring show, The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo, which comes out today on DVD. In it, he describes how he addressed the problem by attending anger management classes, prompted by difficulties he and his girlfriend were having staying together – a problem exacerbated by her Christmas gift to him of an expensive electric toothbrush. In another set piece, he chronicles his epistolary pissing match with the makers of Imperial Leather shower gels, before describing his near arrest at a Tesco Metro in Cardiff, which melts into a riff about jacket potatoes that comes back to zing us at the close of the DVD. As you’d expect, the show is full of Gilbert’s trademark eloquent bluster – and it’s cramp-inducingly hilarious.Design & manufacture of Forming machinery for the production of roofing & wall cladding profiles,
It doesn’t take a genius, Gilbert tells me, to work out how he got this way. He grew up in Carmarthen,A laser marking machine is a computer controlled shaping machine. in Wales, as the youngest of three children. He’s definitely the odd one out. His parents are teachers,A wind farm is a group of wind turbine in the same location used to produce electric power.Get your laundry dryer from Australia's leading online appliance retailer. his older brother’s an English tutor based in Spain, and his sister a lecturer at Cambridge.
“I’m the first one in my family who hasn’t gone anywhere near academia. My family are all boffins. My dad speaks about eight languages. He’ll be sitting there right now reading some Russian text in the Russian, and my mother will be reading Proust in the French. It’s all very, very academic, except for me. I would be sat in the middle of it all trying to watch Grange Hill or EastEnders. I rebelled and never went anywhere near academia. I went to uni, but only because they wanted me to. I didn’t go any lectures or do any work or take any interest in anything whatsoever.
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