Tim Vine reckons he’s the new Pat Boone (From Bournemouth Echo)

Tim Vine reckons he’s the new Pat Boone

9:00am Saturday 6th February 2010 in

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IF comedy is the new rock ’n’ roll, one liner merchant Tim Vine reckons he’s the new Pat Boone. “My act has got nothing to do with rock ’n’ roll, Pat’s more my style,” says the quickfire mirth maker.

“When you pay to see a band in a huge arena the one thing you’re desperate for is to hear their hits – but the one thing you’re desperate for with a comedian is that they don’t do old material.

“Mind you I thought I’d try a bit of it on this tour. You know like Robbie Williams does when he’s on stage? He sings a bit of a line then holds the microphone out for the audience to finish it … I might come on and go, ‘Black Beauty!’ then hold the mic out for the audience to go, ‘He’s a bit of a dark horse’.

“Or there could be, ‘Velcro’ followed by ‘What a rip-off!’ I don’t know, what do you think?”

We’ll be able to find out if Tim’s gone with the notion when he plays Bournemouth’s Pavilion Theatre on Tuesday (February 2) as part of his Joke-Amotive tour – the idea being Tim’s on a train going, “Chug chug joke joke, chug chug joke joke’ until it pulls into the station. This train Timinates here!

“It’s been a tall order to learn this show.

“ I’ve been doing panto in Richmond and I worked out it takes about 45 minutes in a taxi from my house to the theatre, so I’ve been going through the show with the cab driver.

“Luckily he’s from Sri Lanka so I wasn’t worried I wasn’t getting any laughs out of him!

“So I’ve got these clumps of one-liners, plus some other bits and pieces. I do silly songs and I’ve got a bag of props – like the garden shears.

“I bring them out, look at the audience, then go, ‘Shears!’ and put them back again.

“I also do this game called Pen Behind the Ear where I try to catch pens behind my ears – I’ve got five minutes out of that sometimes!”

Timing’s important to all comics, but never more so to Tim than when he broke the world record for telling the most jokes in an hour a few years ago. He managed 499 in 60 minutes, and held the record for eight months.

Does he fancy getting his record back?

“No, I’ve got a certificate, and, if I did it, I’d have two certificates.

“I don’t think having two is any better than having one in that situation, so no.

“The rules were pretty funny for it though. It has to be in front of a paying audience and every joke has to get a laugh to count, so how the current record of 676 worked as a gig I don’t know.

“Also, every joke has to have a beginning, middle and end.

“I spent ages working out where the middle of ‘Black Beauty – he’s a dark horse’ is.

“It must be the bit where you visualise the horse. Perhaps it doesn’t do to think too hard about it!”