Where does Bono end and Paul Hewson begin? What divides Michael Caine and Maurice Micklewhite? Johnny Vegas – star of Ideal, scene-stealer of panel shows and sitcoms and lachrymose, splenetic, heavy-drinking stand-up – has been considering personas recently. Born Michael Pennington, he is on jovial, thoughtful form over Zoom while discussing Quest’s Johnny Vegas’s Little Shop of Antiques, in which he turns a lifetime habit of collecting bric-a-brac into a fledgeling business by opening a pop-up shop in Cheshire.
Like Channel 4’s Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping, his new series depicts the establishment of a genuine enterprise, telegenic charm and ballast provided by Vegas’s inquisitive, acquisitive nature and his double act with long-suffering assistant Bev Dixon. It came about as Vegas was considering thinning out his own collection, and the production company all but dared him to do so. By way of demonstration, he’s speaking to me from his home in St Helens, seated in front of a Star Wars pinball machine, a neon champagne-bottle wall fixture and some faintly terrifying dolls.
“I’ve only ever bought to keep,” he explains. “I’ve traded with other people and I’d started befriending other dealers, but would anybody out there share my taste? It was exciting to go shopping for a living without getting into trouble for bringing another bizarre item home.”
Nonetheless, he acknowledges, there is also a psychological reasoning behind his acquisitions. “Alzheimer’s has been rife in my family, so having constant memories is something I find important. I know the story behind every object. My house is a visual diary of my life.”
“Personally, it made sense of a lot of things,” he explains. “Talking to other people about it, as well. There are behavioural traits I now understand around timekeeping, tidiness, hitting deadlines, not getting overwhelmed at the start of the day and being motivated in the direction you need to be. ADHD is like having a head full of butterflies, and sometimes you’ll catch one. It’s good to share and not beat myself up about not doing something, but I don’t want to trade off it or use it to make excuses.”
One such idea is the stage revival of Ideal, Graham Duff’s cult 2005–11 BBC3 sitcom, in which he’ll reprise the role of Mancunian weed dealer Moz two decades after its launch.
Vegas’s own story began in St Helens, but a happy childhood was scarred by a difficult time at secondary school and then a violent attack in his late teens. “For a while, I became quite agoraphobic,” he recalls. “It really sent me into myself. Getting to college and working behind the bar gave me a new confidence in myself. I knew I could entertain people, singing and messing about, then I saw Dominic Holland doing a gig in St Helens and comedy made sense to me, that whole notion of: how can somebody be so consistently funny for so long? I understood it, became obsessed with it, realised I’d been absorbing it for years – all my VHS tapes were comedy shows recorded off the telly. Johnny awakened at college and I started sneaking out to do stand-up – you only find out you’re funny when you start gigging.”
The occasional compering gig aside, it has been three years since Johnny went on tour – he’s in no great hurry to return. “Has Johnny had his time? I don’t know. I’d have to wake up and really want to do it, because if I planned it, I’d be anxious about it. You only ever want to do stand-up when your heart is completely in it.”
“Art is a part of my life again, thank God. Like stand-up, it’s not done by committee, it’s you and your idea, and I don’t mind standing or falling by those. There’s also a permanence, that this will outlive me, this will be in somebody’s home. The feedback from the Walker has been incredible, people saying it affected them, sharing details about their mental health. I take real pride in that.”
“Good luck to her! Not to Monkey, though. We’ve had words. I’ve sat upstairs with my Monkey, just shouting at him: how could you do this to me?”
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