The Big Interview: Simon Bird

By Philippa Green

Simon Bird OG 2003, star of The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner, talks about his film directorial debut, Days of the Bagnold Summer, and shares his thoughts on life at the RGS, comedy, acting and the world of film.

After leaving the RGS, Simon gained a double 1st in English from Queens’ College, Cambridge and went on to complete an MA in Cultural and Critical studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. At Cambridge he was president of the Footlights comedy society, where he met future co-star Joe Thomas. They subsequently took a number of shows to the Edinburgh Festival and were eventually cast in The Inbetweeners. For his performance as Will McKenzie, Simon won British Comedy Awards for Best Actor and Best Newcomer and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Comedy Actor. He has also starred in six series of Friday Night Dinner. As a writer Simon created The King Is Dead for the BBC and co-created Chickens, which was nominated for Best Sitcom at the Broadcast Awards. He recently set up his own production company with Studiocanal and has a number of TV shows and films in development. Simon spoke at the RGS Senior Prizegiving Ceremony in 2010 and narrated the original RGS promotional film, Always Part of the RGS. ➧

What particular memories do you have of RGS? Most memorable RGS moment? Well, I have lots of fantastic memories, but if pushed I think the pinnacle of my RGS career, and potentially of my life so far, and I include in that my wedding and the birth of my two children, was the Charity Day Assembly we staged in the upper sixth. I think it was assumed we’d just rock up and do some perfunctory impressions of the senior management team. But we spent genuinely weeks preparing for it with an almost military focus and absolutely no staff oversight. I mean, we took it very seriously. We treated it like the Olympics opening ceremony. We pre-recorded segments, we pored over the script, we choreographed elaborate song and dance numbers. We even released it on DVD complete with deleted scenes, Easter eggs, and a blooper reel, which we then sold to the lunch queue. The ambition of that was totally driven by Tim Rothwell, and then seen through by Mark Lambert, James Clark, Jake Goodman, Michael Mullin, Tony Richardson, Rich Sears, et al. I’m sure it was truly terrible but it was my first taste of live comedy, and of devising something from the ground up, and it was just intoxicating and certainly fed into my desire to try stand-up. We couldn’t believe what we were getting away with. That’s the sign of a great school I think, one that allows, and encourages, their students to be a bit disruptive and mischievous and generally question authority.

I understand you had to push to get drama onto the agenda at RGS after a year out at an American School. How did you do that? Acting/Comedy and directing may not have been not very ‘RGS’ in 2003… Yes, I had this very strange RGS experience in that I took a year out between my GCSEs and A-levels while my parents went on sabbatical in the US. So I was very lucky to have a second bite of the cherry. I came back older, wiser and battle-hardened after a year in an American high school with the jocks and the geeks, and it really was that stereotypical. There was a varsity football team and a glee club. It was like spending a year inside the film Grease. But obviously that experience shook me out of my comfort zone and I came back determined to do all the things I’d been too nervous to try first time round, chiefly drama. So I petitioned the school to start a Theatre Studies A-level, and they, I think just out of pity at the idea of me joining the year below with no friends, acquiesced.

What is it that you love about comedy? Oh wow. I have no idea how to answer that question. I guess I don’t really see comedy as something distinct or separate that you can either love or hate. I mean, who doesn’t love laughing? I guess to my mind life is inherently pretty absurd, and I appreciate people who are able to draw out and highlight those absurdities. It’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever said. I mean, I instantly regret saying that.

Was a career in drama always the dream for you? What drove you to make it happen? Oh no. No, I never thought about it in career terms until I was very far down the line. That world felt entirely remote and unobtainable and sort of magical to be honest. TV shows and films felt like these perfect nuggets that materialised fully formed out of nowhere. It never crossed my mind that they were made by real people. It wasn’t really until I started meeting agents and producers and commissioners after university that I understood that it’s just an industry like any other, comprised of very normal, scruffy, shambolic people.

Tell us about the film, Days of the Bagnold Summer. Ah right, yes, let’s talk turkey. Days of the Bagnold Summer is my directorial debut. It’s a feature film based on a graphic novel of the same name by Joff Winterhart and it’s about a fifteen-yearold metal-head spending the summer holidays with his long-suffering librarian single mum. It’s a sort of melancholic comedy and it’s out now on all your favourite digital platforms.

Why did you choose that particular story? How pertinent does it seem right now? There are a lot of reasons why we settled on that particular story. Primarily because I was obsessed with the book, which is just brilliantly funny and poignant, not to mention very perceptive about the humiliation and agony of both adolescence and parenthood. Also, I felt

Below & opposite top: Monica Dolan (Sue) and Earl Cave (Daniel) on set of Days of the Bagnold Summer Opposite bottom: Simon with Rob Brydon on set

Photography © Rob Baker Ashton

like there was a niche in the market for a British coming-of-age comedy-drama. I didn’t really feel like there was a British equivalent to American films like Juno or Boyhood or Lady Bird. But then there were a range of other more cynical considerations as well. The story is contemporary, it’s a two-hander, and it is miniscule in scale, which is all to say that, in the scheme of most films, it was phenomenally cheap to make. I knew that as a first-time director it was going to be an uphill battle raising the finances so I wanted to make sure I was pitching a package that was affordable and represented good value for money. And just to loop back round to your other question, yes it seems bizarrely pertinent, in that it’s about a mother and son whose summer holiday plans are suddenly cancelled and so are forced into a sort of quasi-lockdown. I promise I didn’t orchestrate a global pandemic to make my low-budget indie film feel more compelling.

Why directing? What is it like being the other side of the camera? I’ve always secretly wanted to direct. Which is not to say that I don’t love acting, because obviously it’s a total joy. But I’ve always found it a bit creatively stultifying. You have no sway over the words in the script, the shape of the story, or the ultimate look and tone of the project. I think I was drawn to directing for the same reason I was drawn to live comedy, in that it affords you much more control over the material and allows you to communicate in a more direct fashion with an audience. The whole thing lives or dies by your decisions, which is obviously stressful and terrifying, but ultimately very rewarding when, or if, you make something you’re proud of. Big if, that one. Absolutely colossal if.

I read that Guildford was considered as a location for the film – why? And in what way does the town resonate with your vision of the setting for the story? Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that. We scouted various houses and locations in Burpham and Merrow. One of the great qualities of the book is that it’s sort of anonymous, it doesn’t specify a time or a place so it encourages you as a reader to put yourself in the character’s shoes. So when I read it, I immediately pictured Guildford, and then, when the film looked like it might be happening, betraying a worrying lack of imagination, I thought we should just film it in Guildford! Ultimately it didn’t happen because if you shoot outside the M25 you have to pay the cast and crew’s accommoda— sorry I just fell asleep halfway through that sentence I was finding myself so boring. We filmed it in Bromley. I’ll leave it at that.

Could you recommend three films for budding filmmakers? Oh, great question. There’s a 7-minute short film on Youtube by the Duplass Brothers, called This Is John, which is an object lesson in the entrepreneurial spirit required to get a film made. They shot it on their parents’ video camera for a total budget of $3, and it ended up winning the Sundance Film Festival and launching their careers. The message being, I guess, that production values should always be secondary to an original idea, a good script and relatable characters. I know it’s going to sound like I’m obsessed with film-making brothers but another set of brothers, the Dardennes Brothers, also demonstrate that and everything they’ve ever made is brilliant. And then as a wild-card, the totally left-field and indescribable Songs From The Second Floor by Roy Andersson shows you shouldn’t feel constricted by genre or precedent. It sometimes pays to take risks and make something totally idiosyncratic. Oh, and American Movie is a great documentary about how not to do it.

What message could you offer to pupils and OGs wanting to do something less traditional? Oh wow, I don’t think I’m in any position to be giving advice to be honest. I think anyone who is treating me as a guru is in serious trouble. All I can share really are some facts about my career which might potentially be illuminating. One is that I have never got a job I’ve auditioned or interviewed for. Everything I’ve done has either been material I’ve generated myself or has come through contacts I’ve made off the back of material I’ve generated myself. So for instance I was cast in The Inbetweeners because the writers saw a live show I put on years before and then hired me to write sketches for a radio show they produced. Then when their sitcom was commissioned I essentially hounded

I’ve always secretly wanted to direct. Which is not to say that I don’t love acting, because obviously it’s a total joy. But I’ve always found it a bit creatively stultifying.

them into giving me a part. So it was pure, unadulterated nepotism, but I was only in the position to benefit from that nepotism because I’d wormed my way into their lives. So I guess the moral of the story is two-fold. You’ve got to be a self-starter and then once you get in the room you’ve got to be nice, and someone that people want to help out. The other thing I’ll say because it is just true, is that my path into doing something less traditional was pretty traditional. I did my A-levels, went to university, did a Masters. And each of those very conventional stepping-stones really helped my extra-curricular activities in different ways. The comedy society at university introduced me to a lot of like-minded people and provided the structure for me to develop as a writer and performer. And then I received funding for my Masters, which basically supported me to live in London while I found my feet on the live comedy circuit. Of course I’m fully aware that I’m speaking from a position of massive privilege and that lots of people aren’t able to access the sort of institutions I’ve been lucky enough to take advantage of. And it goes without saying there are any number of other ways to break into the industry but for better or worse that was my route.

Days of the Bagnold Summer was released in June 2020 and stars Monica Dolan and Earl Cave, with Rob Brydon, Tamsin Greig and Alice Lowe also in the cast. A great soundtrack by Belle & Sebastian accompanies the film and the screenplay is by Lisa Owens. Available to watch on Amazon Prime, BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema, Google Play, iTunes & Sky Store.