He’s won the award for the best joke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival twice and once broke the world record for the most jokes told in an hour (499).
And now Tim Vine is bringing his newest show to York.
Sunshine Milk Idiot hits the Grand Opera House later this month and you can expect moderate to severe daftness as well as an excess of remarkable puns.
We caught up with Tim before the show to talk props, Tweets and why York audiences are better than London ones…
‘There’s a blackboard here with a bite taken out of it’
So I made the hat.
Then I went on and I didn’t really have a joke for it. So this thing was lying around my house and when they needed to take a picture for the Edinburgh show I took it along.
It looked great in the photo with the sunset thing behind.
And we were trying to come up with names for the show. Because my shows are not very themed. So you can really just say what the poster looks like.
I came up with a couple of puns, like ‘don’t milk it’ and ‘recycle helmet’. Then I said ‘I’ve got it – Sunset Milk Idiot’.
It was funny at the time because we’d done a lot of puns, but Sunset Milk Idiot just said what you saw.
I filmed this little sketch, which nobody’s seen – you know when you’re in a restaurant and the waiter comes up and he held up this blackboard and it says ‘apple pie’ on it.
And I go, ‘oh yes, I’ll have that please’. And then it cuts to me eating the blackboard.
Typical. A small bird has nested in one of my novelty reindeer slippers. pic.twitter.com/OWbwWEd5ub
— Tim Vine (@RealTimVine) May 15, 2018
The fact that my mum has got an iPad and I haven’t means I am either the uncoolest man that ever lived or I’m at the front of some sort of spearhead.
Every time I hear about people talking about social media – whenever it comes up on the news – it’s not getting a good press.
Saying it’s bad for your mental health and people get addicted to it. So I’m quite happy dipping in and out of those things.
And then once I started doing comedy in clubs, then I was transfixed by the proper acts – they were like the sixth formers.
I was doing something with Arthur Smith and Alan Davies the other day and I said to them, ‘In my eyes you will always be like sixth formers’. I will always feel that they are higher up the food chain.
It’s just like when you start school. You’re in awe of these people.
It’s just what I like doing. That sort of comedy must be the influence of that sort of joke-telling comedian who was on telly. It wasn’t very chatty.
Particularly somebody like Ken Dodd. When you start telling a joke about the Battle of Hastings as he does – Harold’s at the Battle of Hastings with an arrow sticking out of his eye and all his mates are going, ‘maybe try blowing your nose…’
Audiences in places like London might be a bit harder to please. Just because everything’s on the doorstep. You go to places like York and there’s less pretension up there maybe.