Johnny Vegas

15/07/07

After we step off the bus from Interiors, we ask Charles, who lives in London and works in television and Lex, who lives in Manchester and works for an advertising agency, what they thought of Johnny Vegas's extraordinary little show.

A lot of the fun of the show, they decide, came from not actually knowing what to expect.

“I think that was part of the fun of it, not having a clue what we were letting ourselves in for,” says Lex. “I've seen the estate agent sign go up here over the last few days, it was a little bit tempting, and then getting the house particulars tonight, which were quite funny. Yeah, there was quite a lot of expectation as a result of that.”

How did you feel about getting up close and personal with this very large man in some very small rooms?

“He was very subdued, I thought, compared to what he usually does,” says Lex. “He was playing the part of Jeffrey, this kind of mild-mannered guy, and I really bought into that. It was great. It was funny, you got the feeling that he was a guy showing you round his house. A guy with a few problems, but a guy showing you round his house.”

“We've seen a lot of the festival, haven't we? Living and working up here, I wanted to make a real effort to see stuff so we've seen Il Postino, we saw Carlos Acosta yesterday, we saw Monkey. We went to Unknown Pleasures, we've done lots of different things.”

And the highlight?

“Barney,” says Charles, without a moment's hesitation. “Matthew Barney in Il Tempo Del Postino, definitely.”

“That one's going to live with me for a while,” laughs Lex.

Do you think the festival has worked?

“Definitely, says Charles. “I think it's had a really good breadth of things going on. It would have been nice to have a little bit more going on, on a daily basis, outside. But that's just unfortunate. You do something like this in the UK, if you don't get lucky with the weather, you don't get lucky with the weather. It didn't help.

“Living outside of Manchester, the visibility of the festival was really light. I don't think many people living in London would know that all this is going on, which I think is a great shame.
“I can understand you want to sell it to people around Manchester first and foremost, but there's so many people who would have loved to have come up and spent a couple of days here for some of those events. Monkey had really good publicity, but other than that, I haven't really heard much else.”

“The stuff that they've got on, it's really impressive and it's great for Manchester to be hosting something like this,” adds Lex.

“But you live in Manchester, and I've lived in Manchester, and we both know there's this incredible groundswell of people doing really interesting stuff,” decides Charles. “It's such an interesting city. I think the festival showcased that. It's nothing new, it's just given it a bit of an international stage. It's exactly what the city needs.”