Bob and Jim have definitely been one of my favourite Edinburgh Fringe shows; I have genuinely been to see ‘Two Stars‘ 3 times over the course of the month I enjoy it that much. As the festival draws to a close, I caught up with Bob and Jim to discuss how their shows have been going, the gossip on the impending cage fight, and if Bob ever did find his gnome.
SF: Hello Bob and Jim how is your festival going?
Bob: it’s going really well, we’ve enjoyed this year as always.
Jim: And we’ve only got 4 left to go, so there is that sadness that we won’t be doing it for a while.
SF: How are your shows going this year?
Jim: Oh yes, very up and down, but mostly up, people enjoy it and they come out happy as Larry don’t they, they have a lovely time.
Bob: The venue can get quite warm, if we’ve got a slightly older audience member, it throws their mind back to sitting in a library and they dose off at that point. So we shout in their faces to keep them awake.
Jim: We are on the PG rating, so the kids come in and they don’t know what’s going on! But they do like to laugh along with Mum and Dad, like we did back when we were young.
SF: Your show is called ‘Two Stars’, can you sum up what it’s about?
Bob: Well, there are two of us, and after the amount of time we’ve spent in show business, you could probably call us stars.
Jim: Absolutely, no messing about it, it seemed like a no brainer for a title. Some people have become confused, haven’t they, as a reference to some kind of review, but nah that’s not it. You’ll notice that this is the first time we’ve been interviewed out of character. We are Bob and Jim, we play Bob and Jim in the stage act, but this is the real us!
Bob: When we stop acting you can really see the change.
Jim: So yes, the title has filtered out quite a lot of people because they think we only gave ourselves two stars. And if they don’t get that, they won’t understand the highbrow comedy that we do. Don’t worry, there is a lot of low brow stuff, and some silly songs as well. You may have noticed there are no fart jokes in this year’s show? Last year how many were there Bob?
Bob: 7, that was a conscious choice.
Jim: Some acts would spread them out over the years but we like to go all or nothing.
SF: So how different are Bob and Jim the characters to Bob and Jim sitting with me here?
Bob: We are a lot younger I suppose.
Jim: Oh yeah, we are about 3, 4 years younger than them. And also the Bob and Jim on stage often appear more entertaining than in real life, and Bob doesn’t always have a beard.
Bob: The readers won’t be able to see that but I do have a beard on today, and it’s rare I have one. Bob and Jim on stage are a bit more happy and upbeat, whereas we are more…
Jim: Dour and miserable. Don’t get me wrong, we do enjoy watching other people have fun. But you don’t really though, do you Bob?
Bob: It makes me very angry, which is why in a couple of days the rumour is, I will be involved in a cage fight with the Underbelly bouncer.
Jim: Oh here comes an exclusive…
Bob: It’s been brewing up all month. He was putting up some fencing and I was like, so eh when’s the cage fight, he’s taken it deadly serious, and it’s on. I’ve been out training for it, well just today.
Jim: Is that where you were, I thought you were buying me a birthday cake?
SF: Other than the cage fighting, what shows have you been involved in?
Bob: We’ve been doing quite a lot of cabaret shows, we did one with the lovely Des O’Connor, we got on very well with him.
Jim: you seem very keen on Des, you’ve never brought this up before.
Bob: I hang around his flat quite a lot, he runs like the wind when he sees me.
Jim: That’s maybe enough time on Des now…
Bob: We did ‘Spank’ as well, which is always a good bit of fun getting drunk people to laugh at 2 o’clock in the morning.
SF: What have been your highlights from the Festival?
Jim: I think that’ll be when you bought your Dad some bagpipes?
Bob: Oh yes. Mum was furious. He collects musical instruments but he can’t play any of them, he has a good go though so I thought I’d buy him something special.
SF: Bob, did you ever find your gnome?
Bob: Sadly no, it’s still out there. Which is good because I can still tell people about it.
Jim: We are still hopeful, we won’t give up on him. The tabloids are not taking as much interest in it as we thought they would.
Bob: No, but they have tapped my phone.
SF: What is next for Bob and Jim?
Jim: We’ve got a lot in the pipeline, we might do our own podcast if we can figure out how to do it.
Bob: We’ll be doing a lot of residencies at monthly shows in London, then probably start writing up our next Edinburgh show and dabble in a bit of radio. And of course there will be the Hollywood film to get off the ground.
Jim: But that does take a lot of time we appreciate that. Bob and Jim’s Christmas show is probably the best festive show in the Cavendish Arms. We’ll do a live stream just for you at Punchline, maybe Skype it too all of you?
words by Susan Ford
Find out more about Bob and Jim at bobandjim.co.uk
Punchline 