Welcome to Dom Joly's world (From Croydon Guardian)

Trigger Happy star Dom Joly talks about being a paparazzi, travelling the world drinking and Total Wipeout

11:40am Tuesday 26th April 2011 in Comedy By Helen Barnes

It won’t be so much stand-up as sitting down when Dom Joly sets off on his UK tour.

“I will probably have a mobility scooter,” he says after having his foot pinned to repair four broken metatarsels, the result of an appearance on the celebrity version of Total Wipeout.

Joly made his name in Trigger Happy a decade ago. The show became a worldwide phenomenon with the trademark sketch of Joly shouting into a giant mobile phone.

Does that still haunt him?

“It doesn’t haunt me,” he says, “but generally what people shout at me is ‘hello’. I prefer that to people hurling abuse at me.

“To me it’s my least favourite piece of Trigger Happy because it was in your face and obvious.”

Following the success of the offbeat comedy sketch show Joly worked as a paparazzi, turned into Tintin, travelled the world drinking and most recently survived living in the jungle, where he was holed up with Gillian McKeith, in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.

But he’s about to embark on his first live tour and admits he finds the prospect of public speaking daunting.

“I’m very nervous. I‘ve never done a live show before, but I am excited as well.”

It’s not stand-up, Joly professes that’s not his thing, but it will be a journey through his career accompanied by some peculiar holiday snaps, of which he’s got about 10,000.

“As a kid, I always wanted to be a photographer. That was why I wanted to be a paparazzi.

“I obsessively take photos while I’m away. I come home and my wife doesn’t want to see them because of all the fun I’ve had.

“I like taking odd photos of mullets. I will follow one for two hours to get a proper photo then upload them on to a website where they can be ranked.”

He’s even compiled his top three mullets (which he talks about in the show) in Denmark by a Viking boat, Kiev, ‘which has a community of mullets’ and his all-time favourite in Tel Aviv - “that was on a kid.”

Aside from mullets, there are photos of some of the more unusual places Joly has been on holiday, including North Korea and Chernobyl.

Travelling is a bug, and he is always looking for the next place to go. Grounded, after his injury scuppered a trip to Antarctica, he flicks through his career highlights but picking his favourite show is easy.

“Happy Hour. If someone had told me and my best friend when we were 17 that we would go around the world getting drunk when we were 35 – you just couldn’t make it up.

“The best place I have got to drink is Iran because it’s the most unlikely place.

“In Tehran people make their own moonshine, they call it pizza. If people are having a party they call the pizzaman.

“It was a bit like getting drunk at school, it felt wrong as well as right.”

Welcome to Wherever I Am - An Evening with Dom Joly, Richmond Theatre, May 1, 8pm, 0844 871 7651, ambassadortickets.com Epsom Playhouse, Ashley Avenue, May 3, 8pm, £19.50, 01372 742555, epsomplayhouse.co.uk