INTERVIEW
www.icenimagazine.co.uk
ISSUE 83 2020
ANDY PARSONS Healing The Nation Interview By Brian Donaldson Andy Parsons is on a mission with his new stand-up tour. In one simple nutshell, he’s looking to heal this divided nation. The man who was a fixture on Mock The Week for years, has been in a very successful double act (alongside playwright Henry Naylor), worked on Spitting Image and brought us sell-out tours and unit-shifting DVDs such as Britain’s Got Idiots and Gruntled, is calling time on the negativity that reverberates on this split island with his new show, Healing The Nation. “On my Twitter feed currently it says ‘Initially upbeat. Often disappointed’,” says Andy. “The general thrust of everything I’ve ever done has an optimistic note to it, and there is always something in the glass rather than there being something missing from it. Life can get extremely frustrating and your optimism can fade, but I retain the faith and I’m looking forward to getting out there and meeting people in some nice theatres.”
Credit: Andy Hollingworth
Happy to be known as a political comedian, Andy has never shirked from putting the opinions he expresses on stage into full practice, having hosted People’s Votes rallies, including one in Parliament Square to over 100,000 people and fronted the Independent Age’s most recent Campaign Against Loneliness. Plus he created the Slacktivist Action Group podcast in which he chatted to the likes of comics Josh Widdicombe and Angela Barnes, politicians David Lammy and Peter Hain, and commentators Suzanne Moore and Miranda Sawyer. “I think we’re a nation desperate to be healed, in the sense that people would rather come together than diverge,” believes Andy. “In the current media analysis, everyone is in the centre of their own social media bubble, and everything is kicking off left, right and centre. So the idea for the tour was that rather than being incredibly one-sided and partisan and throwing stuff at the opposition, it’s nice to see both sides of the argument. I’ll be taking on viewpoints that wouldn’t normally find a natural home in
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