» Simon Fanshawe interview
Humourist, broadcaster and journalist Simon Fanshawe talks to Andrew Kay about the need to attract high value jobs to Sussex
What originally brought you to Sussex?
I came to university here. I had a place at Oxford to study law. I went up for an open-day and I was sat on a bone-shaker train to Didcot and it came to me that I shouldn’t do it. I don’t know why but it was possibly to do with sexuality. Sussex was my second choice so I came here. I arrived and there was a rent strike and I liked it. At Sussex I met my best mate, who now lives in California. For six months we were both Maoists, there was a bookshop on Gloucester Road run by a man called Alan Mitchell who was the sexiest revolutionary that I had ever met. Sussex has this incredible grip on ones life. It changed mine.
After university did you think that you had to go to London?
No, after graduation I was taking my hired gown back and as I left the shop it struck me that I had forgotten to get a job and had to move out of my flat. I went and had a coffee and then went to Manpower and asked if they had any jobs. I got a temp job at American Express then bumped into this nice woman that I knew who had a room to let in her house. I had also been volunteering at the Community Arts Project in Brighton. By accident I became a community development worker and fund raiser. That was 1978, Thatcherism was about to happen and oddly we had not been told. The Argus called us the home of Marxism when really we were doing play schemes and mother and baby groups. Funnily, in 2000, when we went for city status I met a lot of the same community leaders and they were still passionate about community.
You then went to War on Want?
Yes, they gave us some funds for a project and I just got drawn in. I became fascinated by ‘charitable status’. I met Laurence Harbottle and he helped me and the centre gain charitable status. Eventually I was on the board of War on Want and then became chairman in 1985 when I was about 30.
‘‘I became a community development worker and fund raiser. That was in 1978, Thatcherism was about to happen and oddly we had not been told’’
Were you already performing as a comedian?
Oh yes, the resource centre burnt down and I organised a benefit and booked myself. I performed with a troupe called the Last Resort with Kim Fuller who wrote Spice World and stuff for Lenny Henry. Vicky Pile who invented Green Wing and Martin Clarke who became a political journalist in the Far East.
Where you a success?
Yes, but the first gig is not a problem, it’s the second gig. You don’t know how to reproduce what you did. Bill Smith was the first person to really book me, at the Richmond. At that time unemployment in Brighton was 13.5 per cent, the city was full of addicts and beggars and there were very few viable businesses. It made me painfully aware of how we need to strive to maintain the economy. In Brighton the recovery was spurred on by a left of centre majority.
You seem to have always run parallel careers.Was it difficult to get people to take you seriously?
Yes, I have. And yes it is, or rather it’s difficult for them to understand what I am. I studied law so I see my self really still as involved in advocacy. I am happiest multi-skilling, applying the experience I have to the situation I face. My ability to speak publicly and cause a response as a political activist is not much different from my career as a stand up. I’m also not an outsider, I’m half inside so my skill is to stir it up. I am now a professional nonexecutive director and involved in training too.
I have seen you being booed on stage.
Yes, it happens. Sometime 3/5 people will applaud and 2/5 will jeer – but I am used to it and I see that as part of my role – as a provocateur. Again advocacy. Different people have different roles and one of the main is to throw up choices, you can’t just say what people want to hear, you can’t just behave like a green candidate all the time.
What is the next big challenge?
Brighton and Hove has a growing working age population, there are 10,000 more people living here who have jobs than 10 years ago and if that carries on there will be 14,000 in 10 years time. Unlike almost any other city in Britain, Brighton and Hove is getting younger. Of that working population 40 per cent have a higher education degree compared to 28 per cent nationally. The challenges are; we have a persistant group of people who are still living in a situation of mulitiple deprivation, these people are often at a very great distance from the labour market. We also have a low average wage but not at the bottom, at the top. The challenge is to raise the value of the economy at the top end and that is a question of ambition. Which is why I argue in favour of some of the major developments, in a city that depends on its reputation we need to attract the money and raise our level of ambition to stimulate these higher value jobs.
We haven’t talked much about gay politics which in part was how your career was noticed.
Being gay is one of the prisms through which I see the world – but then it makes me ask bigger questions. I have always had an ambivelant relationship with the gay tribe, that collective mentality, in part I accept that I am part of it but I also kick against it.
So given a choice: comedian, journalist, broadcaster or politician?
All of them – topped with an onion cappucino by Heston Blumenthal.
Simon writes on arts and politics for The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and The Evening Standard. He is also a regular on Radio 4 and is the deputy chair of the University of Sussex.
