‘The Ass End of Showbiz’: an interview with Ross Smith

As the Edinburgh Fringe approaches, I interview Ross Smith, a playwright and director who found both opportunity and experience in the festival. Ross’s recently published book, See you at the premiere: Life at the Ass End of Showbiz, aims to demystify the apparent glamor surrounding show business. Brilliantly engaging with its humor and narrative, the book entices would-be artists to face the mundane realities that await them in art.

We begin by reminiscing about past interviews, a topic that comes more easily to Ross than to me. “This is my first,” I admit sheepishly. Ross recalls his own first interview – a conversation with director and producer Michael Relf – and how the opportunity was originally suggested by a friend of his: “My friend Grant said, ‘I just talked to my dad and he wants you to interview Michael.’ .” And so Ross’s interviewing career began with the question, “Who the hell is your father?”

“The Fringe gives people a chance to really see what they’re made of”

His father, it turned out, was Barry Littlechild, head of film at BBC Radio Two. Over the next four years, Ross worked for the BBC, writing programmes, producing documentaries and conducting over 300 interviews. “Everything happened because of that one interview,” he reasoned: “It’s not science. Anything can happen to any creative person at any moment.

But alongside this potential, the creative industries involve great uncertainty. Did Ross ever feel settled in his “struggling artist” lifestyle? Or was he always restless? “You never fucking stop. It affects every aspect of your life. When you look at the media, the only people who get interviews are […] generally perceived as successful. So everyone – the public and really ambitious creative people – think that everyone in art is successful because that’s all they see.”

Afraid that I might resort to terms like “struggling artist” again, I change the subject. Did he ever worry that by adapting his writing to the feedback, he was losing his innate style? He gives two answers: on the one hand, it is good to take practical advice – become more concise, edit. But there is also the content of the writing. “Do you,” Ross asks, “write the stories you want to tell, or what you think the public wants, or what the industry wants, or what the market wants?” His own answer is clear from the number of the slurs hurled at the public, the industry and, indeed, the market: “That’s you. You are the artist, you are the voice, you are the one who decided […] they want to tell a specific story. You have to be true to yourself. Because if you do, you’ll want to get up every morning and work on that project.

“Comedy more than any other genre is usually a product of its time”

What about the current trends in comedy? Shows like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s a bag of fleas? Do they reflect a move toward more personal storytelling? “Hell yeah! Back in the day, stand-up comedians were blacksmiths. They had writers who wrote their material and once told, those jokes were picked up by any other comedian who wanted to use them. And then what happened in the early ’80s, when alternative comedy came along – you’re talking about people like Alexei Sale, French & Saunders – they said, “We want to do personal stories. Comedy is almost wasted on just making people laugh.”

He tells me that there are two types of writers – those who see the world as it is and those who see it as they want it to be. Who is he? “Oh my god! I have a big mouth, but when I have to support him… “As he would like it to be.” I’ve noticed that my work seems to focus on “fighting against the odds” narratives. Greyfriars Bobby, One small step, The Wright Brothers and the current theater project I’m working on is about getting the outsider out.”

After a digression in our respective affections for Greyfriars Bobby, we move on to another of Edinburgh’s cultural bastions: the annual Fringe. Ross presented three shows at the Fringe. One of those one small step produced by Oxford Playhouse, went on tour in the UK and became the most toured British play in the world in 2010 when it was performed in 22 countries.

“[Edinburgh] it gives people a chance to really see what they’re made of. It disciplines you and makes you realize, “Do I really want to do this for a living?” This year we have Ian McKellen as Hamlet. Ian McKellen doesn’t need to play the Edinburgh Festival, but he does for the experience. That’s what you get when you pick up a show [to] Edinburgh. You gain life experience. Everyone really should [go], if they want to do art. It is a rite of initiation.

We go on to discuss aliases – an aspiration to sound like a working-class hero, the reality of sounding like an SAS fanatic and a hidden desire for hermitage – before ending with the most poetic end to the interview: an ode to the immortality of an artist. In his book, Ross describes the impermanence of art. But is this true of comedy, known for its cultural specificity?

“Comedy, more than any other genre, is usually a product of its time. But what I meant was: the work itself that will live forever. Someone in their silver spacesuit walking into… well, you won’t be walking into the British Library in 300 years, that will be something that will be beamed into your brain…[they can] I’m looking for See you at the premiere and will tell you what it was […] for many artists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. And you’ll learn about Soho in 1995, when young filmmakers were popping up everywhere, you’ll learn about going to the Edinburgh Fringe, you’ll learn about going to the Cannes Film Festival.

“If you create art, you can communicate with people a week from now, a year from now, a century from now, a millennium from now. If you release now, you will find immortality.