You're Kidding Me

Children usually ask grownups for help, but when comedian and grownup Owen Roberts had writer’s block he had to ask a kid, he tells Lauren Hunter (age 12) and Ben Venables (age 37)

feature (edinburgh) | Read in About 4 minutes
Published 05 Aug 2018
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Isabella is sitting next to him now. She is sassy and energetic, leaning into the camera on our Skype call. She dances into it; it feels like she's going to jump through the screen and into our lounge, where I'm sitting with my dad who thinks I need his “help” with this interview.

“I was really struggling to write a show,” says Owen, “I had too many disparate ideas.” Isabella giggles, not used to Owen’s use of a formal word: “Disparate?!”

Their collaboration started when Isabella was getting on with her school work, while Owen was struggling to get started on his Edinburgh show. “Isabella and me are often hanging about when she's doing homework,” says Owen. “She was always coming up with funny things, saying funny things, and messing around.”

Then he had his brainwave: “One day I asked if she'd like to write my show.” Isabella squeals.

Isabella is the opposite of writer's block. Crazy and creative ideas tumble out of her. She describes a character she's invented for the show: "Boss Stern is a police officer and is very clumsy," she says. "She goes to Africa and somebody tells her that there's a criminal who has committed 80 crimes. She keeps on chasing the robber but, because she's clumsy, she keeps on falling over."

“The show is aimed at adults," says Owen. As Owen speaks Isabella makes the chatterbox sign with her hand.

“But it is all of Isabella's writing,” he adds. “Although there are sections of standup aimed at slightly older people than six.”

Isabella explains she has recently turned seven. This takes the pair off on a tangent about if the show title is now "false advertising", and then on another tangent about what false advertising is.

During preview shows ahead of the Edinburgh run, Owen is finding Isabella's contributions get a better reaction from the audience than his own writing. Yet, writing is only a sideline for Isabella. On her seventh birthday, she used her big day to make the world a better place. “After school, I had my friends round for a sports party and we also did this money raising thing for UNICEF.”

My dad almost completely derailed the interview by asking the most predictable question in the whole history of adult-child interactions: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I lost faith in him as a journalist, wondering what he’d say next: ‘What did you do today?’, ‘What’s your favourite colour?’, or maybe he’d start talking about ‘how tall’ she was looking. Isabella humoured him though: she wants to be an inventor.

When Owen and Isabella first time met, it was clear who was in charge. “The first time I met you,” she says to him, “I called you Oval because you're head is shaped like an Oval.” While harsh on Owen, this is correct.

On writing with Isabella, Owen says, “I have a sense of an antagonist. If she says you have to do this, or that, I can't say no. There are bits of the show where I draw things on my feet and use them as a puppet, such as Mr Gobble.” Isabella corrects Owen: "It's just Gobble, no Mr."

Isabella could be a director or set designer as well as a writer. She is very particular when it comes to props. As Owen explains: “I've had to buy things because Isabella has quite specific instructions about what props there should be. I had to buy a morning star, which is a medieval weapon.” To find these obscure items he has spent countless hours online: “It's all on ebay.”

Yet again he is corrected. Not all of it, we got the tomato sauce from Poundland.”

Isabella tells us about one of her favourite books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, which they read together at bedtime. This leads me to ask if the show might be described as a series of unfortunate events for Owen. 

For the first time, she looks stern and tells me straight: “I think it's a series of fortunate events.”

With Isabella writing the show, I wonder if Owen is worried that she'll be upset if things go badly in Edinburgh. This is quite an awkward topic, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway. I ask: whose fault is it if the show goes wrong? 

Unfazed, Isabella replies: “I think it'll be Oval's fault because he will have acted it wrong.”

“So the script is perfect, it's just my acting that's wrong?” he asks her.

“Exactly,” she says, having the last word.