Matt Forde

August 2012

THE show is called Eyes to the Right, Nose to the Left, which is a parliamentary term. When they have a vote in parliament they have to say yes to one side and no to the other. It also means that I can do a poster with my eyes pointing to the left with my nose pointing to the right.

It’s a political comedy without being preachy; it’s a bit daft and upbeat.

It’s about me being a Labour man with a few Tory tendencies. I used to work for the Labour party but I’d say I’m politically around the centre these days. A lot of people don’t like to admit that.

They say you move more to the right the older you get but I don’t think that’s been the case with me. Things are just classified wrongly. People say that I’m right wing on crime because I think that people should be punished if they persistently terrorise other people in their homes. I was pro-war and I think that we do have a responsibility to remove rotten dictators, when the opportunity arises.

So things like that could probably influence people to say that I am a little bit right wing.

It’s not going to be a very funny show so far, is it? Honest, there is a lot of comedy in it!

I think that it’s probably the only show that would feature an impression of Ed Milliband.

People who aren’t into politics would still enjoy it.

There is a fad for a lot of comedians who talk about politics now but I don’t know any who do really get it. It’s why the idea of political comedy can seem quite dry. You don’t want to go to a comedy night where people preach and moan and whinge. You go to have a laugh and I think often comedians forget to try and make it funny.

I’ve been doing talkSPORT for about two years, every Friday night from 1am until 6am. It’s a great station to work for because you can muck about and you have a free reign.

I love talking about sport and with what’s going on with Forest, it’s a very exciting time.

I think that the new owners have good intentions but it’s a matter of whether they are effective. You just hope that they know what they are doing.

No offence to Sean O’Driscoll, the football he was playing at Doncaster was very good and the players are clearly very taken by him, but they said they were going to have an iconic manager. It just felt like, ‘oh no, they’ve failed at the first hurdle’.

And they have never really said that they love Forest for any specific reason. It just strikes me as odd.

It’s frustrating that a lot of Forest fans didn’t really appreciate how good a chairman Nigel Doughty was. He spent over £100 million in ten years. He was a genuine fan who really cared about the club.

So I’ve been talking about Forest quite a lot on talkSPORT. And out of all the texts and e-mails I’ve been getting on the show a lot of people say they still have a soft spot for Forest.

Doing the radio show does help with the stand-up. Being able to rabbit on for five hours once a week really is good training.

I have played Nottingham a couple of times in the last year at Just The Tonic. I think the new venue is superb. When it’s packed it’s a phenomenal room.

In terms of future plans, I’d really like to make a political sitcom. I have a few scripted things in development at the moment for radio but I would love to make a political TV sitcom based in local government. You get some proper characters, people who are berserk, people who cannot believe that they have been elected and people who have questionable records.

I was really in favour of Nottingham having an elected mayor.

Paddy Tipping would have been great. He’s a politician of rare distinction.

Either him or Su Pollard.

Matt Forde: Eyes to the Right, Nose to the Left runs at Udderbelly in Edinburgh until August 26. For more about Matt visit www.mattforde.co.uk.