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After We Are Klang’s sell out 2007 Edinburgh show was nominated for an If.comedy award they were specially commissioned by BBC 7 to write and produce a spoof radio series now available on BBC Audio. We decided to catch up with those crazy fools and see what was new in the world of surrealism and madness.
Ok we’ll start with an easy one, how would you describe We Are Klang?
Steve: We are a bunch of idiots trying to control barely controllable chaos. And we’re also the biggest losers the world has ever seen.
Marek: Three men, all slightly overweight, all slightly past their prime, desperately clinging on to a hope they can be normal. That’s a terrible description.
Greg: Puerile, shambolic and just sexually attractive.
You’re on TV quite a bit as We Are Klang but do you have any plans for any more separate projects?
Steve: Yes, it’s always quite nice for us to do stuff individually because it saves us from smashing each others heads in. So I’m currently in the middle of previewing my sort of first solo Edinburgh show.
Marek: I’m going to open up my own animal sanctuary. I’ve always loved cats so I’m going to do that, I’ve got two or three in my house now so I’m going to put most of my money into that. Every programme I do I can save between three and four cats' lives. They can have a peaceful and happy retirement. So basically just a sanctuary for lost cats.
Greg: I play a small part in The Inbetweeners which is on E4 at the moment and it is going for a second series, which is good. I should make up some things I’m going to do…I’m going to climb Everest faster than Brian Blessed and without making so much of a fuss about it.
How did the latest We Are Klang show for BBC 3 go?
Steve: It was the pilot we were filming, it was really good fun. It was one of those ridiculous things, we’ve worked together for about four and a half years and it was just ridiculous fun and it was lovely because the outpouring of good will we got was so great. Plus the special guest in the pilot was John Savident who played Fred Elliot in Coronation Street and it was lovely working with him. It was one of those pinch me moments where you’re working with a proper legend and again the love that was shown to him was really heart-warming. It was very exciting.
Marek: It was brilliant; it was the best bit of television comedy that has been produced in the last 60 years.
Greg: Yeah it was really exciting, a really exciting thing to do. I think none of us could quite believe that from us making up a load of rubbish that there were loads of people bringing it to life for us. It was great, the location stuff and the live stuff.
Do you have any plans to do any more radio shows?
Steve: Yes, the details I don’t know at the moment but we’ve had a six part series commissioned for BBC Radio 2. But it was one of those classic things where the first thing I heard about it was at the BBC Radio party last year. It was announced by the Head of Radio in his speech rounding up the projects they had for next year. That was the first I heard about it so I was sort of spitting my tea out in surprise that this had happened. That might not happen for a while but it’s pencilled in, maybe December.
Marek: I don’t know if we’re doing a Radio 2 series or not.
Greg: Yeah we’re planning to do a radio 2 series in the autumn.
Why haven’t you gone to Edinburgh as We Are Klang this year?
Steve: Quite simply we’ve done it so many times. I think there are certain things that you can achieve through Edinburgh and I think we’ve sort of done what we’re going to achieve. There’s kind of nothing constructive to gain from doing another run in Edinburgh and we’ve spent four years working out how to make the show work in a live environment that we’ve got that pretty much covered. We’ve got an archive, we’ve got pretty much four hours of stuff we could do live if we tour it around. So the next thing for us is to work out how to make it work on radio and how to make it work for telly. In a sense because we’ve had so many other things going on such as doing the pilot if we’d have put together a new live show it just wouldn’t have been up to the standard that we want it to be.
Marek: Last year Greg got himself into a bit of a difficult situation with this married woman and her husband said if you ever step one foot inside this city he’d sort of rip his face…I don’t remember it exactly because he was talking in Scottish but he sort of threatened Greg and they wouldn’t let him back.
Greg: Just sheer arrogance. No, I just think we’ve been working really hard on the pilot and we thought we’d have a year off from Edinburgh and you know we may well go up again.
Why hasn’t there been a We Are Klang DVD yet?
Steve: Well it’s funny you should say that, it’s hopefully, possibly being recorded sometime soon. I think the thing is we’re in an odd position where we’ve been around a long time and yet, outside of Edinburgh not that many people have heard of us. So purely from a business minded, boring point of view with demographics and number crunching and other jargon, nobody would buy it at the moment. We’d sell it to the people who have seen us loads, so I think the idea would be to sort of get a TV series or something and then the people who knew about us years ago could say they got on board the train a lot earlier.
Marek: We’re going to be making a live DVD, hopefully we’re going to be filming it in October and obviously if we get a series hopefully that will go onto DVD as well.
Greg: I suppose we’re just waiting until a few more people know who we are, but there will be a Klang DVD.
Do you think you have to be a special kind of person to enjoy your special kind of comedy?
Steve: It depends how you define ‘special’. We’ve actually been quite pleasantly surprised. We were worried that only a certain sort of person would enjoy us. And then the more we’ve done it the more we’ve kind of realised that it’s actually fairly universal. And so much stuff has turned up in comedy with issues of status like who’s the higher and who’s the lower status that we established very quickly that we are the biggest idiots in the room so nobody feels threatened and as a result hopefully you know there’s something for everyone, even if it is just people deciding which one of us they fancy the most. Which is usually me.
Marek: I think one in every 17 people will like our comedy. That’s what we’re aiming for, if we can make one in every 17 people like us. Those people with neurosis’s and mental illness we appeal to, and luckily in this day and age far more people have mental health problems so far more people are willing to enjoy We Are Klang.
Greg: No, I think it is accessible family fun for everyone. Well I say that but any children watching it would have to have fairly irresponsible parents.
What is your favourite We Are Klang sketch?
Steve: I think the one which always surprises us is the World Insult Championships and the thing with that is not only can it change, and we’re always finding new insults to direct at each other, but because one of the specific rounds in there is the audience nomination round you just never know what you’re going to get and you get some truly wonderful surprises coming from people. It’s the most organic and sort of fresh bit because you just never know what someone is going to say so there are times like when an 80 year old woman said that Marek looked like a dead Gollum so just times like that when you expect someone to say something completely weak and then she just slammed him.
Marek: I quite like the dancing horse one. Even though I have to put a mask on and dance about.
Greg: I quite actually enjoy performing a really beautiful and gentle love song we do live called ‘Love’s Young Dream’. It’s the more sensitive side to Klang. It’s just moving.
