This was supposed to be a time to work on his forthcoming show at the Edinburgh Festival, where he’ll be performing as part of the Free Fringe. “I’ve never done stand up in Britain – and I’ve never done it in English. I don’t speak English a lot any more at all, so it’s a challenge: can I converse with people who are living in a totally different environment? Which is why I’m going to Edinburgh this year – to get my arse kicked.”
Williams was born in Bristol in southwest England in 1954, and worked as an aircraft fitter at the British Aircraft Corporation, building Concorde. He moved to Belgium in 1976, where he worked in Mechelen then Antwerp, and that’s where something clicked. He opened a bar, took up comedy and in November 2000 won the Humo Comedy Cup.
He tours around the cultural centres of Flanders with themes such as a penis monologue, a show called Terrorist, and the current show called Geloof Mij! (Believe Me) in which he takes on religion. He’s clearly not one to shy away from controversy.
“The trick is, I mix it all up. I don’t say this first ten minutes is going to be about the Catholics, the next ten minutes about the Muslims. You can’t pick on one without the other; they’re all just as bad as each other. You can pick and choose as you go.”
He goes off into a flight of fantasy about Dicrocoelium dendriticum, a parasite which infests the brains of ants to make them basically volunteer to be eaten by sheep so they can grow in the animals’ gut, and how it might actually be something similar that’s attacked the brains of religious fanatics. On the printed pages of Flanders Today it doesn’t look like much. But this stuff is funny and challenging at the same time. “It’s like a mixture of stand- up and cabaret, more like spoken word. If you want to go and watch a comedian, go and watch one where you can come home and go, that guy interested me, I want to read a book now.”
As well as the show, there’s a less structured stand-up routine, which will form the basis of the Edinburgh show. It only lasts half an hour and doesn’t allow for the exposition and development of the main show. “In Edinburgh I’ve got this little half-hour set and that’s basically back to stand-up, just talking about what it’s like when you leave home and what happens when you come back, all that sort of stuff.”
Although he came to performing comedy late in life, Williams is a child of the Seventies. He used to watch the old-style comics at the working men’s club where he got paid for picking up skittles. He was around when the “alternative” comedi- ans like Alexei Sayle and the Comic Strip were turning comic attitudes on their heads – he’s of a generation not afraid to admit they used to like Ben Elton.
Watching him, what comes across is his political engagement, and beneath the cheerful exterior and the comic banter, his anger. Back in April, De Standaard accompanied him on a trip back to the southwest, where members of his family – he’s one of a family of nine girls and four boys from a council estate – still live. The piece is marked by his growing frustration and regret at what has happened to his beloved working class. Talking to him – we come from very similar backgrounds – you’re struck by the idea that he’s eternally grateful to have got out, but that there’s a sort of survivor’s guilt as well.
“A lot of the young comedians here, all they do is tell jokes about Moroccans and Turks and people with handicaps. They’re never shooting upstairs. Shoot up at the people who can defend themselves, they’ve got money to defend themselves, they’ve got enough money to laugh at you,” he explains. “Don’t laugh at the people who can’t defend themselves.”
“If you’re only getting up there onstage for the jokes, I’m not interested, mate; I’ve got books with jokes in. When I started doing comedy Ben Elton was kicking out at Thatcher, and I thought, this is great. Here was a guy making people laugh and giving them something to take home with them. In Belgium, if you say some- thing about politicians, they get frightened, they cower, but they’re quite happy to make jokes about mongols.
Just days before we spoke, the Flemish newspapers were reporting that the Ghent prosecutor has sent police along to a show called Circus Vangheluwe at the Gentse Feesten. The show took its name from the former Bishop of Bruges, who resigned after admitting sexual abuse of a family member. The work of comedians Gunter Lamoot and Piet De Praitere, the show provoked complaints from a group calling itself Art for Children before anyone had seen it.
“Sending police along is exactly what used to happen to Lenny Bruce. They would have policemen all along the back wall of the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco just in case Bruce said anything wrong. And that’s what happening in the comedy clubs as well – don’t mention this, don’t mention that ...”
Edinburgh will be an adventure. He’s performing nightly, splitting a one-hour slot with Adam Fields, a stand-up who was born in London but now lives in Amsterdam. The audience won’t have paid, but that doesn’t mean they’ll put up with any old rubbish.
“The way it works now,” Williams says, “I go around cultural centres and I’ve got my own sound and light technician, they’re there when I arrive, I go on stage and go blah blah, go home and everybody’s happy. I want to get an arse-kicking again, get up on stage and nobody laughs – they make you work, because that’s what comedy should be. You shouldn’t only be bringing the audience out of their comfort zone, the audience should be bringing you out of your comfort zone, pushing you to do something more than you’ve been doing.”
“That’s what I love,” he continues. “I love doing bars much more than cultural centres. You go to a cultural centre, the people have paid €15-20, they’re sat in a nice seat, they expect a night out, fair play to them. You go to little bars where they haven’t paid a penny and people are drinking all the time and that’s when you’re fighting. That’s what I love, I love the fight. I love the comedy combat, it’s cool.”
Nigel Williams appears from 16-29 August at The Newsroom (Venue 93) in Leith Street, Edinburgh, nightly at 20.45. Shows are free. The show Geloof Mij! returns to touring from end October.
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