Dom Joly

If the sight of a man shouting “HELLO!” into a giant mobile phone doesn’t ring any bells, you obviously never stumbled across Joly’s televisual baptism, Trigger Happy TV, a low-fi, 21st century spin on the hidden camera show that was eventually broadcast in over 70 countries worldwide, including Lebanon where Joly was born. The self-proclaimed polymath has since gone on to become an eminent writer and broadcaster while continuing to make a unique brand of TV that’s as rooted in anthropology as it is comedy, and as he told NOX, provided he can lay his hands on $6 million, 

 

Dom Joly: That’s a really good question. I get called a comedian. But I’m not really a comedian – I only ever did one comedy show, really. And then I get called “prankster” which I’ve grown to hate. Pranksters sound like tw*ts. So I really don’t know. I’m a kind of comedian-writer-journalist-broadcaster, but that makes me sound like a c*nt. “Polymath” I like. But I’m like a trainee polymath. All the stuff I wanted to do when I was younger had nothing to do with comedy. But then comedy happened, opened lots of doors and allowed me to try lots of different things – and be good at some but completely sh*t at others.

 

DJ: I think so. There’s a part of my humour that’s more European than British as it’s quite black, quite dark. Lebanon was a French colony so all the stuff I read as a kid – Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin – they were all really funny but they were really dark, too. And as most people do in terrible situations, the Lebanese seemed to learn to make the best of it. Growing up in that chaos, you learn to kind of ignore it and I was used to weird, dark stuff happening, but people laughing and trying to have a good time amongst all that. I’ve also always been something of an outsider. When I was in Lebanon I was English, and when I was in England everyone thought I was Lebanese. So I’ve always floated and watched things from afar, which is where the observational side of my TV programmes comes from.

 

DJ: Yeah, I got suspected of being a potential suicide bomber outside MI6 [Britain’s CIA – Ed]. We were doing a piece about the number of CCTVs we have. I turned up at MI6 with a big sandwich board on me saying “Watchers” and before long all these armed police turn up and I’m face down on the ground – someone in the building had radioed to say they thought there was a suicide bomber outside. But it was one of the rare occasions when the police actually showed a sense of humour. “Oh, it’s you,” said one of them, “listen, there’s a load more on their way so you’d better f**k off before they arrest you!” Of course, it didn’t help when they found out I went to school in Beirut with Osama Bin Laden...

 

DJ: I only found out when I went back to Lebanon for a TV show. I went to my old school to do some filming and the head mistress appears and says, “Who’s this idiot?” So I explain that I’m a kind of comedian in England and that I went to the school years ago, and she starts saying they’ve had much more famous people at the school than me, so I’m like, “Who?” And she says, “Osama Bin Laden”. I didn’t believe her at first but we asked around and it turned out that he was there for a year when he was 17, 18 and I was about 6 and had just started. What I really want to find is an old school picture with him sitting there grinning next to me. It was the first time I’d been back to Lebanon in eight years, and I also took a trip to the Syrian desert that we used to do as a family to try and find this cave in which I wrote my name as a kid. We actually found it too and it was an excellent expedition…!

 

For a full version of this article, see NOX32.