Andy Kind is a comedian, author and writer-for-hire. He started doing Stand-up on 23rd January 2005. By the September of that year, Andy had gone full-time as a comedian and has made a living from it ever since. He won Anything for Laffs in 2005 and in mid 2013 hurdled over the 1000-gig barrier. Described by The Scotsman as ‘Terrific’, Andy’s stand-up style can best be described as ‘the joyful rant of a post-30 chaos vacuum’, and he has been featured on BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and supported Tim Vine.
Andy, what’s your new book about?
It’s a comedy novel about a man who wants to be great at his job, but isn’t, and how he deals with that dawning reality. Tom Hillingthwaite has left his cushy lifestyle to become an urban evangelist. He wants to be the best Christian missionary out there, but he’s arguably the worst. His hopes and dreams and expectations of himself don’t match the reality of life – that he’s hapless and hopeless and utterly ridiculous.
The story isn’t about good things happening to Christians or God intervening in a frivolous, cheap way to wrap everything up in a neat little bow. There’s no Deus ex Machina – I’ve been very careful to avoid that. Some of the Christians in the story are horrible; most of the people who are non-Christian are really nice. The heart of the story is universal and could typically be about anyone. Ultimately, Tom’s main struggle is that he just wants to be the best at what he does, whereas in reality he’s actually the worst at what he does.
It’s a comedy novel, so it’s primarily a funny story – hopefully with heart and soul.
Why did you write Tom Hillingthwaite?
Initially, I wrote Stand Up and Deliver to branch out from stand-up, and then realised that I was actually capable of writing! The Gig Delusion followed naturally as a sequel. I was still finding my feet at that time – I knew about comedy but not lots about writing and it was the obvious starting point for an idea because you have to write about what you know.
One of the main problems with treating yourself as the main character though is that people have to either know you or buy into you. It’s not like when Martin Smith released his biography – everyone in Christendom knows who he is! I don’t necessarily have the profile for my autobiographical books to be that engaging to those that haven’t heard of me, so I wrote Tom Hillingthwaite to branch out and explore what I think is a much more universal subject. I’m now at a point where I think I can write funnily and cogently about subjects outside of comedy, and of course the experience of being a Christian in a hostile arena is one I relate to. And Tom Hillingthwaite was born.
What are your hopes for the book?
To reclaim Christian comedy from the idea of vicars telling crap jokes. Or rather, to make comedy such a quality, relevant aspect of the Christian world that when people hear the phrase ‘Christian comedy’, they don’t think about cheesiness and blandness. I would love for comedy writing in the Christian world to become a genre. Adrian Plass has been brilliant –he is fantastic, I love him and he is an amazing guy – but we’ve had nothing more. We have no culture of it. With Tom, I believe I have written something that is as funny as most secular models – I’ve been a pro comedian for 10 years on the comedy circuit, so I should be able to by now. These days, there are a lot of Christians who are professional comics or comedy writers, and so it’s time to make some waves.
Why so many references to Batman in the book?
You have to get to the end to realise what that is about. But basically, Tom wants to be a sort of spiritual superhero – he wants to save the world one soul at the time.
Who has influenced you?
I am a big fan of the Evelyn Waugh, David Nobbs and P.G. Wodehouse. You have to be influenced by the legends in your fields, otherwise you’re not taking it seriously enough. What’s interesting, as I’ve mentioned, is that there is no real culture of comedy writing within the Christian world, so there are very few shoulders to stand on. I’m talking about top-level comedy writing, not just people trying to be humorous.
But I suppose I hope to do what I’ve tried to do with stand-up. When I started in comedy a decade ago I didn’t do any church gigs for two years – I needed to cut my teeth on the comedy circuit and become a good comedian first. Comedy needs to be funny before it earns the right to be anything else. Along with the likes of Paul Kerensa, Tony Vino and others, we’ve slowly raised the profile of comedy performance within the Christian world. Ten years ago there was no comedy at Christian festivals, but there is now. When I did New Wine 2014 there were 100 people at the gig on the first night. By the last night it was 430 – 100 people over capacity.
I want to do the same thing in the written genre – to raise the profile and the expectancy levels. A key issue is where the jokes come from. Christian comedy in its unhealthy sense is simply jokes about Christianity that only Christians would understand. That’s not my remit either in print or on-stage. In Tom Hillingthwaite, the jokes don’t come out of the fact that Tom is a Christian. They come out of the fact that he is a human being – fallen and failing. The fact that he is a Christian is incidental.
What have you been up to since you published Stand Up and Deliver?
Since publishing Stand Up and Deliver I have been really busy! That book was, I suppose, a ranking up for my career. Most people who recognise me do so from the cover of the book. It’s become quite familiar and, certainly within the world of comedy, it’s been really well received. Professionally, I feel I’ve developed as an on-stage comedian as a result of writing it and I’ve realised what I am capable of, and all that I still want to achieve within comedy.
Writing the book also helped me realise how little effort I had put into writing my stand-up. Since then, I think I’ve started working a lot harder on my routines.
The main difference since SUAD is that I’ve lost the fear that comedy will be taken away from me – I don’t think I’ll have to get a normal job now! Instead, my fear has been replaced with resolve and discipline. It’s one thing feeling ‘called’ into something, but God isn’t going to do the work for you. Having a published book is an affirmation of what you are doing, which in turn inspires confidence. I want to remain confident about my work and write to the highest of my ability.
Since Stand Up and Deliver I’ve also done some international gigs and I’ve sort of become, in some people’s eyes, the face of Christian comedy, whatever that means. I remember one magazine describing me as the ‘golden boy of the evangelical outreach world’. That’s not quite how I would think of it, but certainly I’ve been intentional about raising a banner for comedy within the UK Christian scene. To reclaim and redefine comedy from ideas of naffness. Read Tom Hillingthwaite, and tell me if I’ve succeeded!
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