Jon Richardson and Matt Forde interview

8 September 2014

The following interview is available free for reproduction in full or in part.

 

In a new series for Channel 4, Jon Richardson Grows Up, our eponymous hero and his best friend, comedian Matt Forde, take to the road in a 1972 orange VW Campervan (called Florence) in search of answers to some of life’s biggest questions: Can money make you happy? Is marriage the source of contentment or discord? Who’s a better driver, Jon or Matt?

Today, huddled in the back of their campervan, Florence, incongruously parked in a central London square, the pair explain the thinking behind the series, how it has led to Jon being a changed man, and what Matt was doing there in the first place.

 

Jon Richardson Grows Up. That’s a big statement. What’s it about?

J: When we started it, me and Matt were living together, with another mate of ours who’s a comic. And we were sort of… not living hand-to-mouth, in terms of poverty, but you’d earn a bit of money, pay your rent, and go out and get drunk. It’s not in my nature to live that way for very long. I was very aware that I had to start making some decisions that were going to last a long time. Living with Matt, he sort of softened me up for the first time to the idea of relationships. I’d previously always decided I’d never do anything like that. But as I started to think about it, I realised that 30 was about the age you need to start making those decisions. So as I was thinking about whether I’d get married and have kids, I thought that the best way to figure it out was to go out and meet people and see what they were doing. Not just people who were living the conventional way. My fear had always been that everyone gets married, has kids, works, retires, and I don’t think many people are happy doing that. Most marriages fail. A lot of people have kids who aren’t ready, or haven’t thought about it properly. And most of the unhappiness in the world is probably down to people not thinking about their decisions. So I wanted to spend time looking into it all, meeting people who had had kids, people who hadn’t, people who had got married and wished they hadn’t, people who had never married and wished they had, people who got married and had been together ever since, that sort of thing. I wanted to be able to have an almost mathematical solution, to come back and be able to say definitively what the best way to do things was. Meet someone at 24, get married at 27, have a kid at 31, adopt another at 32, earn £60,000-a-year, that sort of thing. And I needed Matt there to stop me being pessimistic about everything, just going into everything saying “No, they’re lying, they’re not really happy, they’re deluded.

 

So Matt, you’re the positive yin to Jon’s yang, is that right?

M: Yeah, I’d say so. You’d admit that, wouldn’t you?

J: Oh absolutely. I inherently believe the worst. I assume most things will end badly.

M: I think most people are good, and I think, overall, things end well. And even if they don’t, you just have to think: “That’s life”. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be a hermit for years. You just have to be philosophical about it. I always found it ironic how wise Jon was at a very young age, and how intelligent he clearly is, and yet how he’s had these hardened views since he was quite young that are a bit immature. I genuinely worried about him for a while – we talk about this a bit in the programme. People often ask me “Is he really that OCD or is it an act?” And I think a lot of the time it was actually worse than you made out on stage. It was really bad, really tragic, and there were specific times when I was really worried.

J: I had a lot of growing up to do, that’s true. My attitude was “If everything’s not going to be perfect, I’m not going to do any of it. If you know that most marriages fail, and yet you get married, you are welcoming that misery into your life.” It’s like you’ve chosen for it to happen, in spite of the facts. But that’s a childish attitude, a bit like: “Unless I can play with these toys all day every day, I’m not going to do anything.” In reality, life isn’t like that. You make decisions, you do your best to make them work, and then you adapt if things go wrong. But it’s taken me 30 years to work that out – that things don’t have to go badly, and if they do, that’s not the end, it’s just part of the journey. But the people we met really helped me change my views.

 

Like who?

J: We went to the marriage of two people who’d been married before, her three times, him once. And going into that, I was so cynical. I just felt: “You’re going to get divorced, and it’s going to make you both miserable.” And actually they were such upbeat people, and they’d responded so well to things that had gone wrong in their lives. And they are happy. They were happy with the decisions they’d made.

 

Do you think it’s a male thing, to worry about the idea of settling down?

J: I don’t know if it’s a male thing to worry about it. I think it’s just that men have more time to waste thinking about it. For women, biologically there’s a time-limit on when they can have kids, while men have another 20 or 30 years. And the way the world is set up, it’s easier for men to do certain things, so the option is there not to settle down and have kids. Rightly or wrongly, it is different for women.

 

Matt, were you looking for answers to the sorts of questions Jon was asking, or did you feel like you already knew what you wanted?

M: I’ve always kept a fairly open mind, but I’ve pretty much known that I’ve always wanted to get married and to have kids. I’ve not got the same approach to it all as Jon has. For me, the joy of it was introducing Jon to these people and trying to prove my point to him. I wanted to open his mind and make him chill out a bit more. But having said that, meeting the sort of people that we met, who were very personable, and had often been through really big things in their life, you can’t fail to learn stuff from them.

 

So tell me a little bit more about the people you met. Each programme had a different theme, so you had relationships, children and money. Who did you meet for each one?

J: Well, in the relationships one, as we’ve established, I felt that most conventional marriages don’t end well. So the starting point was meeting a couple who had been married for 54 years and are happy. And they are clearly happy. But that may not be the reality for most people. So we met couples who are married but don’t live together…

M: Madness!

J: It’s the only thing we did on the whole road trip where I went in open-minded and he went in cynical.

M: And I came out just the same. “You know what, you’re nice people, but this cannot continue. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He’s got a bachelor pad down the road.

 

Did they have kids?

J: She’s got kids from a previous relationship, and they’ve had a kid together. And he takes their kid home with him most nights. They’re sort of respite care for each other. It’s not right for everyone, but it works for them. I wanted it to work for everyone, because that would be great for me. Get married, but don’t live together. As someone who fears they’re difficult to live with, because they’re difficult to live with, well… Lucy’s happy to live with me, but if she turned around and said “I really love you, but you’re doing my head in, can we stay together and I’ll live next door,” I’d love that to work. In their situation, it works. He’s a fireman, so he works shifts, so they can see each other during the day a lot. The kids are all at school, and they can hang out. They probably spend more quality time together than a conventional couple. They go out shopping, they have sex in the afternoon, they close the curtains and watch horror movies. Matt was obsessed with how much they had sex in the afternoon.

M: I thought it was amazing! And they still get excited about seeing each other. It’s like they’re still dating. That was the one bit that made sense to me. If it’s keeping things fresh, especially in the bedroom, there’s definitely a boon to it. But the whole thing only worked because he did shift work.

 

And you met some swingers as well, didn’t you?

J: I went to meet them. He bailed.

M: I didn’t bail. It was the one night I couldn’t be there, because I had to do a gig. I was livid that I missed it. Of all the things I could have missed out on. Oh my God, it sounded hilarious. I dropped him off and then rang him later.

J: It was terrifying. The most nerve-racking thing we filmed.

M: I’d have been straight in there!

J: There was a couple who ran these parties from their house. Friday night was singles night, Saturday night was couples night, you paid something on the door and that was it. You pay more on exit, in my opinion! I didn’t think I’d get anything out of it, but it taught me a lot. Specifically about trust, and how much your own insecurity drives your lack of trust. As a couple, they’d seen each other do things that would end most relationships immediately. But not only are they okay with it, they endorse it. Once you cross that line together, that you can do anything, you know that your relationship is beyond all of that. One night a month, they can do whatever they like, and when they wake up the next morning, they know their relationship is intellectual and solid. His theory of swingers was that they are more intelligent, more successful and better looking people, because you need a level of self-security to be convinced your partner’s not going to leave. I’m not sure I agree with him, but that’s his view.

 

In the programme about kids, you had to look after a virtual baby. What is that, and how did it go?

M: It was hell. It screeches at such a volume and pitch. It’s like a real baby’s screams, it’s just relentless. It’s basically a baby doll, and it’s programmed to cry specific cries depending on what it wants – feeding, nappy, burping or rocking – and it’s very hard to discern between them.

J: And it’s sporadic. Sometimes it will go off twice in 20 minutes, and then it won’t go off for two hours.

 

Were you looking after the baby in the camper van?

J: We booked a hotel, because apparently the van was an unsuitable environment in which to be looking after a baby. So we stayed in a hotel in Croydon. It was interesting. It was a test of our relationship in a way which I hadn't expected. My fear was that he sleeps very heavily – some nights he’s been asleep in this van and I’ve stood on his head to go out for a piss and he’s not even stirred. I was worried that he’d sleep through the night and I’d end up doing everything. What actually happened was he got really competitive about being the one that got the point for touching the pad on the baby’s chest, so actually he ended up doing everything and I ended up sulking. I did end up getting really annoyed with him. There would be times when I’d be holding the baby and it would start to cry, and he’d be sprinting across the room, knocking pensioners over, just so he could get the point.

M: Yeah, I was knocking real babies out of the way.

J: He did, however, register two catastrophic fails, by failing to support the neck of the baby. So he’s a good father, but to a baby who for the rest of its life will require round-the-clock care.

 

And what about the programme about money? Who did you meet for that?

M: We met this incredible guy…

J: Brian Burnie, from Newcastle, was the individual who mad the biggest impression on us.

 

What’s his story?

J: He was a self-made millionaire, and his wife got cancer. She became very ill, and he started to realise that for people who don’t have very much money, getting to and from treatment is worse than the treatment itself, either because they feel so rotten and exhausted or because they can’t afford the travel costs. So much so that some people even stop their treatment before they are better. So he gave literally every penny away. Sold their house, bought a building which he runs the charity from. And they now live above the charity, renting a flat from the charity with his pension.

M: And the place they were in before was a proper stately home. It’s not like a footballer’s house, it’s proper old, country land. We drove up the driveway with him, he’d not been back since. It was surreal.

J: It was the kind of thing you might hear about, or read about in the paper, but I will never in my life shake hands with someone again who has given away nearly £20 million to set up a charity. He’s said he wants to die penniless. It’s impossible not to be awed by that. We’re looking at the whole question of whether money makes you happy, or can you be happy without it. You meet him, and you want him to be the happiest person in the world, but obviously his wider happiness is still built day-to-day on his relationship with his kids and his wife. And that’s been damaged by what he’s done. So you don’t even get to come away from that concluding that everyone should give away all that they have.

 

So what have you concluded at the end of all this? Have you found any of the answers you were looking for?

J: I feel very lucky – blessed, really – that my circumstances are what they are. I think I was struggling with guilt that I have such a fortunate existence. I’ve got good friends, a good family and a job that I adore, that pays me enough to live comfortably. And I’ve now met someone who I love. I struggle with the guilt of that, and force this long-term doom on it, almost like saying “Well, you’re happy now, but it might all end.” What I’ve learned is that while those are your circumstances, you should be grateful. Appreciating it is the only thing to do, otherwise you’re being ungrateful. People who would kill to be in your position won’t thank you for being unhappy. I’m less worried about things going wrong. We’ve met people whose marriages have failed, or their relationships with their kids aren’t what they want them to be, and it’s just something that you deal with. You don’t get to just work life out and be fine for the rest of it. You just have to keep going.

 

What about you, Matt? Has it changed your perspective on anything?

M: Little bits and pieces, I think. I think maybe I’ve learned to be a bit more sensible. I didn’t feel like I needed to profoundly reassess my world view in the way that Jon did. I wasn’t carrying the same sort of burdens around. I think my favourite part of all this were my conversations with Jon’s mum. It made me realise where a lot of your stuff comes from, Jon. Not that you had a difficult upbringing or anything like that. It’s just that your mum is such an intensely thoughtful person, and I think that thoughtfulness is where a lot of your things have their roots.

J: And you learned that you can’t drive a campervan.

M: I can drive a bloody campervan. I can drive it better than you.

 

Did your relationship survive sharing Florence together?

M: Yeah. It’s difficult, because I was driving, and he was constantly holding the dashboard. I knew he was doing it because he felt unsafe, but I found it really distracting. I could feel him wanting to say “Oh, that’s the kerb.” “I know it’s the f*cking kerb.”

J: What do you expect me to say when you drive on the kerb? As much as I’ve learned to be happy, driving is a fundamental. You can either do it or you can’t. And driving on the kerb is incorrect. It’s not about interpretation. You can’t say “You know I’ve discovered that sometimes it’s right to drive on the kerb.” It’s just wrong. You also stalled it on a roundabout.

M: You stalled it loads of times.

J: I stalled it once, on the first day.

M: It’s a difficult thing to drive. I hadn’t driven for a few years.

J: He was banned.

M: I’ve got a clean license. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.

 

Were you having to wave goodbye to the crew, who were off to stay in a nice hotel, leaving you cooped up in the van?

J: Some nights, yeah. Although if we were filming in a city, we stayed in a hotel as well. But there were a few occasions when they disappeared off for the night and left us in the van.

M: But some of those places were wonderful. Especially the Lake District. It was the nicest campsite I’ve ever been to. It was right on the water, just beautiful. It was so much fun there. Oddly, although this was a programme about growing up, it also allowed us to be kids again.

 

Jon Richardson Grows Up is on Channel 4 on Mondays from 15th September at 10pm for three weeks.