INTERVIEW: TALKING TO ROB AUTON
He strongly believes in incredible things, the (in no particular order) comedian, poet, writer, painter, podcaster, illustrator Rob Auton is heading out on a nationwide tour with The Time Show. We caught up with the man himself to talk about it.
YOU’RE ABOUT TO HEAD OUT ON TOUR ACROSS THE COUNTRY WITH YOUR LATEST OFFERING, THE TIME SHOW – Following on from an extended period of time not doing an awful lot, how are you coping with THE IDEA OF doing an awful lot?
To be honest, I’m looking forward to the challenge. But also I think like the vast majority of people in the country at the moment, from doing a lot to not doing a lot, and then doing a lot again, I can only speak for me obviously, but before the pandemic, I felt like I had quite a lot of momentum with my shows and felt like I knew how words would come out of my mouth. I did my first warm-up at the Bill Murray recently, and I loved it.
But I was well oiled before, and I’m looking forward to just getting back out there. It is an unknown, and it’s like going into the unknown. It’s exciting. I’m so pleased that I’ve got this tour and that we’ve been able to put the dates back in again so that I can get out there and do what I love most, which is live performance and just testing myself, putting myself out on the frontline of my own life really and going, ‘this is what I love doing, this is what I want to do with my life and just trying to carve out a space for myself. The only way I get to do that is by trying my best, preparing to the best of my ability and seeing what flies.
WHAT CAN AUDIENCES EXPECT FROM THE SHOW?
It’s the eighth show that I’ve done in a series. Every year I put a word in the middle of a spider diagram. First-year it was Yellow, called The Yellow Show, then I did Sky, then Faces, then Water, then Sleeping, then Hair, then Talking, and now this is Time. Basically, it’s just an opportunity for me to sit down with my pad and think about time. They can expect a lanky man from Yorkshire trying to get his head around time and celebrating that we have time in common. There are bits from the show about all the diverse opinions around at the moment. It’s surprising that people can still agree on what time it is because there are so many divisive opinions going on. It’s amazing that algorithms haven’t started to make people believe it’s a different time and things like that.
There are bits in there about anything from my favourite timescales, and there’s one about frogspawn that I love. There’s some more structured jokes in there, and then there’s a bit more of me just thinking about time. It’s an opportunity for me to go off on one and try and connect with an audience about this thing that we’ve got in common that we take for granted. I love that quote by Steve Jobs of him saying, once you realise that pretty much everything has been made up by man, It’s like it free’s you up, and everything’s so human. Sixty minutes in an hour. Sixty seconds in a minute. And you go…’ alright okay, this is how it is”. I’d love to see it in a million years of people looking back on us and going, ‘can you believe that this is what they used to do?’.
EXCITINGLY, GIGS ARE BACK ON THE AGENDA, BUT I IMAGINE LIKE Most folk, YOU had more time on YOUR hands than YOU might have expected. WITH A DISTINCT LACK OF GIGS UNTIL NOW, what was a typical DAY AND NIGHT like FOR YOU?
Well, last year, I’d started doing this daily podcast, called The Rob Auton Daily Podcast, and that was just a podcast every day that was anything from 3 minutes to 20 minutes. I was able to put so much more effort and energy into that than I might have been able to do if I had been travelling around the country and doing Edinburgh again, so I was lucky to do that.
We got a PS4, and I was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us. We would go out for walks around Victoria Park in Hackney. I tried to cook. More recently, we’ve started growing tomatoes on our balcony. I made some chutney the other day – but that’s out of lockdown.
YOU’VE GOT A NEW BOOK COMING OUT, WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT IT?
Yep, I’ve got a book coming out called I Strongly Believe In Incredible Things. It’s a book that I’ve been working on over lockdown, and it’s basically everything that I’ve got to offer so far… all my ideas in one place. It’s just a celebration of everyday things that we might take for granted, and it’s out on the 16th of September.
QUICK(ISH) FIRE ROUND…
WHAT’S THE TIME?
Twenty past two.
What’s your favourite thing about Time?
Probably the time 12: 34. I like it because it makes the most sense to me.
IF YOU COULD TIME TRAVEL – WHERE WOULD YOU GO?
Maybe early seventies and seeing my mum and dad meet. To be in the pub where they met for the first time.
Rob Auton brings his comedy/theatre/spoken word show about time, ‘The Time Show’, on his (rescheduled) biggest tour to date starting with a two-week run at Soho Theatre in London from 16th to 28th August and including performances at the West End Centre, Aldershot on 30th September and South Street Arts Centre, Reading on 2nd October.
For full dates and info, visit robauton.co.uk
I Strongly Believe in Incredible Things by Rob Auton (Mudlark, £14.99) is out on 16th September and available to pre-order now