Hal Cruttenden is pretty insistent that he is not as nice as people think he is. However, when you are confronted with a twinkly, smiley, posh-but-not-irritatingly posh, charmingly self-deprecating bloke, it is what I believe they call “a big ask” to see him as anything other than just lovely. And a bit of a worrier.
Mainly he worries that people think he is lovely when he is, in fact, not. “I think I’m edgy” he insists. It is, of course, possible that there is another Hal Cruttenden locked in a cellar somewhere in a leafy part of suburban London who is bitter and twisted and looks like a comic who has fought through going on 27 years at the hard and pointy end of a microphone. This Hal Cruttenden just doesn’t.
Even his divorce – which has been more or less his fairly charmed and charming life’s one major trauma – has turned out not to be so bad. Certainly material-wise.
“I spoke to Al Barrie when his wife got cancer” he remembers, “and I kind of went “You know, one day this will make a great … ”, and he just said “Already thought of it mate””
“I think you should look at the absolute worst moments of your life and find something funny in them.” In his first post-divorce show “It’s Best You Hear It From Me”, he certainly did. And now that he has hit the singles scene again (and in some cases it has hit back) he is finding more laughs.
He has not been entirely unsuccessful at the dating game either, given that he was last single and mingling in 1999. “I have left almost everyone I have been with” he says “I think you get pickier as you get older”. However he hates the idea of being alone, of having no one.
Luckily for Hall, he has his children, now grown up, and a fount of helpful advice on not just dating, but comedy.
He was talking to his daughter about current issues and social media, “and I said “ I don’t think I am sure where I stand on the whole trans debate” and she said “well back””. Her father’s daughter.
If it is possible for a divorce to have come at a good time, professionally, this one has. “I am a much more interesting, more insightful comic than I was when I was younger” he muses “You have to become self-aware – you have to see your weaknesses – I’m a bit posh, I’m a bit camp, I’m a bit chubby – and make your weaknesses a comedy weapon – that is a wonderful thing.”
At one early point in his career, he modelled himself ever so slightly, he reveals, on Dame Edna Everage. “You can be much nastier, much more cynical with that kind of persona”. And get away with it, I suggest. “I can be surprisingly foul”, he says.
Most comedians can, I point out, but not necessarily to hilarious effect.
“I think being a comedian makes you a bit unstable. I mean we have huge but fragile egos”.
But he loves what he does. “I wish I hated my job” he says. “I have no concept of the feeling of just waiting to retire”. Not only that, he loves Edinburgh. “It is like being at work full time!”. And he loves his show.
“Of course, no show is ever finished” he says. “I used to have this fantasy of getting to the point where I had the perfect show. But what would you do then?” So every night of his full month long run there will be tiny differences. You, the audiences will make most of those tiny differences. That is the joy and the jeopardy of live comedy.
We very nearly fall out when he reveals he is about to be tested for ADHD which – the way he describes how it came about – sounds more like the result of a game of ‘who is more pointlessly neurotic’ played with Ronnie Ancona, with whom he is doing a one-off live podcast of Hal and Ronnie In Pieces. So maybe it is infectious. “I don’t think I’ve got it” he says, looking worried. “I don’t think so …”
If all Hal’s fretting and fussing and fun and comedy vulnerabilities turn out to be nothing more than symptoms of this year’s must-have acronym for professional comics I will be so disappointed. Go and see for yourself.
Hal Cruttenden: Can Dish It Out But Can’t Take It, 21.30, Cabaret Bar at Pleasance Courtyard, until 24 August
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/hal-cruttenden-can-dish-it-out-but-can-t-take-it
