2 weeks ago
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There’s something deeply unsettling about answering the front door to a giant bear. Even more so when it’s cheerfully informing you that your electricity bill has tripled.
Welcome back to the wonderfully absurd world of Dom Joly and his latest TV alter ego, the relentlessly optimistic Good News Energy Bear, who apologetically explains that soaring energy bills are actually excellent news, before rewarding bewildered householders with a balloon.
It’s vintage Dom Joly: surreal, gloriously pointless and just the right side of ridiculous. A quarter of a century after Trigger Happy TV first exploded onto our screens with that very same formula, Dom is returning to the anarchic hidden-camera comedy that made him a household name with a new show called Mugwuffin this autumn – complete with a fresh set of bizarre characters – along with a 100-plus-date UK tour and a retrospective Trigger Happy TV book.
‘People kept saying there’s no way you can make Trigger Happy TV now. People are too woke. You’d get stabbed,’ he chuckles. Instead, what happened with Mugwuffin surprised him. ‘People are still just as nice.’
Of course, no Trigger Happy character became more iconic than the man with the giant mobile phone, who Dom, 58, resurrects in the new show but with a smartphone. Long before mobiles dominated modern life, his 6ft handset would ring at the most inappropriate moments – in libraries, restaurants and train carriages – prompting him to bellow, ‘Hello?’ before launching into the most ordinary of conversations.
Trigger Happy TV was never about humiliating members of the public. More often Dom made himself the butt of the joke. Whether it was a giant snail inching across a zebra crossing while traffic patiently waited, a morris dancer suddenly launching into a routine in an ordinary street or an officious traffic warden issuing ludicrous parking tickets, the comedy came not from cruelty but from how calmly people accepted the utterly ridiculous.
Trigger Happy TV character 'the man with the giant mobile phone'. The handset would ring at the most inappropriate moments prompting him to bellow, ‘Hello?’
'I’ve lost 15kg and I just feel much better. But I do nothing to earn that because I’m lazy,’ says Dom Joly of taking weight-loss jabs
The public were – and still are – good sports. The challenge, he says, came afterwards when the team needed permission from them to broadcast the footage. ‘The biggest problem wasn’t that people were cross, it was that a lot of them were with somebody they weren’t supposed to be with,’ he chuckles.
Like Trigger Happy TV, the characters in Mugwuffin again lampoon the trends of the day. There’s the Crypto King of Dubai, an idiot who went there once on holiday and now tries to pay for everything in fictional cryptocurrencies, Godbod 200, who’ll try every ridiculous treatment available like the (entirely fictional) blood blending and eco skeletons in the hope of living to 200, and a chap with a smartwatch linked to his smart home that keeps bossing him around.
Rediscovering the joy of making people laugh has unexpectedly led Dom back to something else entirely. After years spent travelling the world, writing books and engaging in political debate on social media, he’s been asking what it is that truly makes people happy.
His next book project, In Desperate Pursuit of Happiness, out early next year, took him from yoga retreats and meditation classes in India to conversations with psychologists, neuroscientists and spiritual teachers, all in search of the formula for joy.
‘Part of my pleasure is eating and drinking,’ he says. ‘Before, I was someone who’d been starved for three weeks and then let loose on an all-day buffet’
His own secret for happiness is simple. ‘My dogs,’ he says. ‘And I’m always happiest when I’m making things. Whether it’s writing a book, making TV, painting or coming up with stupid ideas with Sam [Cadman, his comedy partner].’
The same no-nonsense attitude extends to weight-loss jabs. Unlike many celebrities who carefully dodge the question, Dom is gloriously upfront when asked about it. ‘The moment it came out, I was straight on it,’ he laughs. ‘And it’s absolutely a game-changer. It’s allowed me to do what I want, which is to make no effort whatsoever and lose weight.’
He says the biggest change isn’t that he no longer enjoys food – quite the opposite. ‘Part of my pleasure is eating and drinking,’ he says. ‘Before, I was someone who’d been starved for three weeks and then let loose on an all-day buffet.
‘All Mounjaro does is make me really enjoy a meal, but halfway through, I think, “I’ve had enough.” I’ve never had that feeling before. I’ve lost 15kg and I just feel much better. But I do nothing to earn that because I’m lazy,’ he laughs, ‘which is probably why I was fat.’
Self-deprecation has always been one of Dom’s trademarks, but so has honesty. He has always been candid about the panic attacks that first struck in his twenties and the periods of depression that followed.
‘The reason I talk about it is that I hope people think it shouldn’t stop you. If anything I think it happens to interesting people. I think it’s the price you pay for having a weird brain. You can access an area of your brain that maybe does interesting artistic things, but you also access its dark side.’
Perhaps the biggest surprise of making his new series was rediscovering how much joy there is in making people laugh. ‘It made me realise I’ve spent my new reality for a long time on social media. Everyone is their worst self, including me because I’ll take people on. But there’s just something beautifully silly about Trigger Happy. We need more random acts of pointless funniness.’
For more information about the Trigger Happy TV book and tour, visit awaywithmedia.com.
English (US) ·