As Trigger Happy TV takes to the stage, Joly reflects on satire, social media, and life’s surprises

I was a massive fan of Trigger Happy TV back in the day. It’s wild to remember having to wait a week to see each episode whereas now you can binge an entire series in one sitting. But I’d be ready and waiting – quite possibly stoned – to watch the show every time.

So sitting down to interview Joly all these years later was a bit of a thrill. The man himself is now in his fifties, like me, and the conversation kicked off with the inevitable talk of age (he’d said he thought the idea of Silver Magazine was “a bit sad”). I’d just come back from a festival where my brain had been having fun, but my knees told a different story. I said I’d decided my body might be too old for festivals.

“I always think I’m 21,” agreed Joly. “It’s pathetic, but there you go. Festivals are just full of people our age acting like 21-year-olds, whereas the 21-year-olds are just sitting there getting really embarrassed.”

He isn’t wrong about GenX, behaving like kids where many younger people behave more like adults than we do. But Trigger Happy transcends, apparently. I mention how my daughter, who’s in her twenties, and her friends are obsessed.

Her reaction when I told her I’d be interviewing him? “Oh my fucking God, we all love Trigger Happy TV,” she said, and promptly messaged all her mates.

I wondered if he knew he has an army of younger fans

Joly seems nonplussed. “I had no idea at all,” he said. “Even my own children don’t know who I am.” I assured him this new audience is real. For younger viewers, part of the appeal is the jump-scare quality, the surreal surprises, the ‘cringe’. But most of all, I suspect, it’s the authenticity.

Joly agrees the landscape has changed. “When I did Trigger Happy, the whole point was to make hidden camera cool. I grew up on Game for a Laugh and Beadle’s About, which were just naff. I think I did make it cool.

“But hidden camera has always been the lowest rung in comedy. If you’re smart in comedy, you’re supposed to go and write sitcoms. In America, improv goes on to make Curb Your Enthusiasm and Spinal Tap. Here, improv has a terrible name.”

Two and a half decades on from the show, you realise just how much the world has changed

When Joly filmed those original sketches, nobody else was standing on the street with a camera. Today, everyone is – and they’re all uploading to socials before he’s even finished the gag.

He found this out the hard way when he revived his old traffic warden sketch. “I put on the old outfit, parked a car in the West End with forty tickets and four clamps. Before I’d even done the sketch, there were a hundred people around me filming. I got angry! It felt like I was providing content for their Instagram.”

Some things still work though. “One of my favourites was going into a builder’s yard with a crazy list: bag of MC Hammers, a forty-foot bastard, soggy chimps. That yard’s still there by Paddington. We did it again, new list, and it was even funnier. That’s going out and I’m really excited.”

He hates how fake much of the genre has become. “Hidden camera is the biggest format in the world because it’s everywhere online. But it’s almost entirely faked, and that really irritates me. Real people tend not to react weirdly. In fake ones they always overreact. You can smell it a mile off.”

I asked how he copes with the awkwardness of putting strangers in surreal situations. “I thrive on awkwardness, actually. People have called it cringe, and I hate that. The Office is supposedly cringe comedy. I don’t cringe. I positively encourage awkward situations because I like weirdness. I’m most alive when that’s happening.”

This attitude spills into his online life too…

Joly is notorious for sparring with trolls on social media. “It’s a war I’m never going to win,” he admitted. “But it just makes me… I think people don’t realise how toxic online is. I love an argument. If you wouldn’t say something to my face, don’t say it on here.”

He knows he’s not converting anyone. “I’ll kill one online, and another hundred pop up. It’s like whack-a-mole with wasps. I call it whack-a-cunt.”

For him, the internet has destroyed nuance. “Most of us are in the middle, with nuance. And nuance doesn’t exist online. Basically, you don’t get clicks for saying, ‘Well, on one hand, but on the other…’ The internet is a fucking nightmare. If I didn’t have to use it – and I do, it’s part of my job – I’d go offline in a second.”

What irritates him most is the online commentary that comes with resurfacing old clips. “Every time I show an old clip, half the comments are: ‘London, back when it was British. You do that now, you’d be stabbed.’ Total bollocks. I’ve just been and done it, no difference at all.

“The problems aren’t that people don’t have humour. The problems are things being stolen, or people assuming you couldn’t do it because it’s all ‘woke.’ What was un-woke about Trigger Happy? It’s ridiculous.”

We circle back to Trigger Happy TV

The show ended in 2002, but its legacy is everywhere. “Every day I get people going, ‘All you’ve got is one joke, shouting into a phone.’ And I’m like, wow, there were forty jokes in each show. I’m proud of it. Then suddenly I thought – fuck, it’s 25 years old!”

The prompt to create a new show came from a reuniting with his co-creator Sam Cadman, who had returned from years working in LA. Over a drink, the pair decided it was time to mark the anniversary. “It’s like my wedding,” Joly reflected. “I’m still married to Stacey and incredibly happy, but I didn’t enjoy my wedding. It just happened. I didn’t realise how big [Trigger Happy] was. I loved making it, but I never really celebrated it at the time.”

The result is Trigger Happy Live, a stage show designed not as a reboot but as a celebration.

“Essentially, I get asked the same questions every day about Trigger Happy. So this is all the questions you’ve ever wanted to ask but were too afraid to. Showing clips, what happened behind the scenes, some old characters on stage, stuff happening to members of the audience. If you love Trigger Happy, come along.”

“People say, ‘Is that all you’ve got, 25 years on?’ And I go, I bet you’ve got Oasis tickets. What do you think Oasis are doing? They’re just playing their first two albums.”

He’s tested the idea by screening two episodes in a cinema. “Watching it in a communal setting is incredible,” he said. “Everyone laughed. Watching as a group really holds up, it’s still funny. It’s nostalgic.”

Critics who accuse him of laziness miss the point

“People say, ‘Is that all you’ve got, 25 years on?’ And I go, I bet you’ve got Oasis tickets. What do you think Oasis are doing? They’re just playing their first two albums. For me, it’s just fun. I’m proud of Trigger Happy, I’ve got all these stories, why not?”

I obviously asked about the giant phone. The official story has been that it was stolen but I said I suspected it was because he was sick of it. “I couldn’t possibly comment,” he says, looking mock shifty. Turns out I was right, as the phone made an appearance on Saturday morning TV a week after our conversation. I strongly suspect it will make an appearance in the shows – how could it not?!

The Trigger Happy Live tour begins in October, with four shows planned. Southampton was meant as a dress rehearsal, but Joly pulled it in favour of playing it properly. “If those go well, maybe I’ll do some [more] next year,” he said. “I don’t know if I want to. It is a retro show, and I’m not massively interested in doing retro. But if it works, if it’s funny, maybe.”

There’s a lot more to Joly than Trigger Happy, though…

The truth is Joly has never wants to sit still. “Yeah, I’ve always called myself a crap polymath,” he told me. “I think I have two skills. One comes from nowhere: the ability to be funny in improv. I don’t use a script, I don’t know where it comes from, but I’m good at it. But I do need Sam. He’s like the bass player in Coldplay – Chris Martin’s the face, but something about us working together makes it work.

“And [the other thing is] travel writing. I grew up obsessed with it, and Trigger Happy opened doors. I started with The Sunday Times, I’m now on my tenth book. If I could just live on travel writing, I’d do that. I’ve been to 108 countries. I love writing, love that no one can fuck with it. It’s yours, you hand it over.”

It frustrates him that people can’t reconcile the man in the squirrel suit with the man writing serious travel books. “People don’t like you jumping lanes. Trigger Happy was such a big hit, I’m pigeonholed. That’s fine, but I think some don’t take me seriously as a writer. I’ve done six serious travel books, a million words in print. What more can I do?”

Still, he loves the variety. “I like not being bored. It’s not a bad life. I’ve been lucky, but you have to keep working, keep reinventing, or you fade. Hunger is a creative drive.”

His new book takes him down yet another path

After immersing himself in conspiracy theories for his last project, he needed an antidote. “My new book is called The Soul Tourist: In Desperate Pursuit of Happiness. The idea being: as a late middle-aged, grumpy ex-goth, can I find happiness? Really, it’s me taking the piss out of wellness and happiness, but with the tiny hope I might stumble on something that works.”

His travels took him everywhere from India to Denmark. “I went to Rishikesh, where the Beatles went in ’68. I went to an Ayurvedic place in Bangalore. Drove around Denmark, supposedly the happiest country. Checked into a Benedictine monastery – didn’t last long. I went fly fishing, because my neighbour swore by it. It wasn’t for me. So yeah, I’ve been looking for happiness.”

…as a late middle-aged, grumpy ex-goth, can I find happiness? Really, it’s me taking the piss out of wellness and happiness…

I asked about comedy heroes. “Weirdly, I didn’t really grow up into comedy. I don’t watch much comedy, don’t go to see it. I was more into music. But Dennis Pennis was massive. I love Seinfeld. I’m obsessed with Larry David, and Spinal Tap.

“But the person that really influenced me, you’ll maybe never have heard of – Noël Godin. A Belgian anarchist. His philosophy was: there’s no better way of determining a person’s character than how they react when they’re custard-pied. He pied one newsreader twelve times because the guy kept overreacting. [And they never recorded it or screened it.] Totally pointless, gloriously weird. That’s what I love.”

It feels like a fitting influence. Before we wrap up, I asked what advice he’d give younger comedians today.

“When people say, ‘You couldn’t do this today,’ I don’t think that’s true. Whether something is funny or not is simple: if you’re punching down, it’s not funny. Punching up, it is. Absurd is just life. Don’t be frightened of stuff. It’s about intent.

“I say things that would probably get me ‘cancelled,’ but not because I mean harm. Some people think you can’t do things, but if it’s funny, it’s funny. If you don’t like it, scroll on. There’s no joke everyone finds funny – it’s subjective.

“So what I’d tell young comedians is: just start. Do it.”

Trigger Happy TV Live shows are in October
There are some Work in Progress shows too
Find out all the details at www.domjoly.tv/dom-joly-tour/