Comedian John Tothill finishes his debut UK tour with a date at Komedia, Brighton on April 22 under the title Thank God This Lasts Forever.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Gray Parts Editor at Sussex Newspaper. It's lovely
00:06to speak to John Tothill, comedian John Tothill, and you are on your debut tour, which finishes
00:11in Brighton. Last night is in Brighton, The Comedia on April the 22nd, debut tour. And
00:17how's it gone? Are you enjoying it? It's a big moment, isn't it?
00:21Yeah, it's been great so far, thank you. I've really, really enjoyed it. And I'm excited
00:25that it's going to end in Brighton because I love The Comedia so much. I've been there
00:30a couple of times. I love it. Yeah, I think Brighton's, I think Brighton's one of the
00:33best cities to gig in, in the UK, definitely. And you've got some great tales to tell on
00:38this tour, haven't you? Not least of which is rather self-inflicted. You came up with
00:42a, well, an ingenious way of funding your first visit to Edinburgh. Not the most comfortable.
00:49Yes. So I, well, you know, yeah, it wasn't great. I signed up for a clinical trial. And
00:57I decided in order to fund my first year at Edinburgh, which is, the Edinburgh Fringe
01:02is ridiculously expensive. So everyone needs to come up with their own way of funding it.
01:06But I thought I'd sign up for what's called Malaria Camp, where they give you malaria
01:12for money. And then they harvest your antibodies and see if they can figure out how to come
01:18up with a vaccine for it. Yeah, a slightly unusual way of making the money, but it did
01:23the job. It took me to Edinburgh. Yes, but you got it rather worse than most though, didn't you?
01:29Slightly, yeah. We were supposed to have about 500 parasites per milliliter of blood,
01:34which sounds like loads, but actually amounts to feeling like you've got a sort of nasty
01:39case of flu or something. Unfortunately, the malaria reacted with me slightly weirdly. And
01:44so I went up to something like 28,000 or so parasites per milliliter of blood. I was still
01:51fine. I was completely fine. And the doctors were very nice about it. But it did mean that I was
01:56maybe a little bit sicker than I should have been. I started hallucinating and stuff like that.
01:59But anyway, it gave me good material for the show. So that's what this show is about.
02:03So you have truly suffered for your own content, haven't you?
02:06Absolutely, yeah.
02:07And tell me about some of the other things you were chatting about in the show. What
02:11was on your mind for this show?
02:13Well, the show, I mean, the show is just a stand-up show. So it's about loads of stuff.
02:19You can't say just a stand-up show, right? For 10, surely.
02:24It's gloriously just a stand-up show.
02:25That's good.
02:27So yeah, it's about the malaria trial, but it's also about other stuff. It's a couple of stories
02:31about things that happened to me on a night out, which is kind of vaguely relevant to the malaria
02:35trial. And I'm very interested in a scientific experiment from the 1950s about a rat that
02:42orgasmed to death, which I talk about, but some reviewers have said slightly too long on stage.
02:49And so, but hopefully it all kind of ties into one sort of central theme. But it's,
02:53you know, it's, it's a, I hope more than anything, I hope it's a funny,
02:57silly show where you probably won't learn anything, but you might forget something.
03:01That's quite nice.
03:03Never gone out to learn anything in my life. I just want to be entertained, to be honest.
03:07So it sounds...
03:08Exactly. Yeah, yeah. What a treat. Yeah, absolutely.
03:11Well, good luck with the rest of the tour and congratulations on the Brighton date,
03:14which runs it all off, Brighton for Media, April 22nd. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
03:20Thank you so much.