Craig Charles: “it’s gone brilliantly well” Features Posted by Jonsmad on 24th November 2015, 15:49 This article discusses Red Dwarf XI & XII whilst adhering to G&T’s spoiler policy. Please ensure your comments do likewise… This weekend, Craig Charles brought The Madness House of Fun Weekender to a close with his Funk & Soul Show. G&T regular Jonathan ‘Jonsmad’ Young was there, and shared a backstage area with Craig. At 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning, he was able to interrupt Craig’s search for cigarettes for seventy-six seconds in order to conduct a very brief interview about Red Dwarf XI so far. A huge thank you to Jonsmad for sharing this with us. Over to you… JON: Can I just ask you a couple of questions? Craig: Have you got any ciggies on yer? I haven’t, mate… Aw. [pause] Go on then, what do you want to ask me? How is it going, two episodes in? Yeah it’s good. Yeah, it’s good, yeah. Has the dynamic of having Baby Cow involved changed anything? Not really. I mean, they’re there to make sure we behave ourselves! (laughs) They are not doing a very good job! No spoilers, but one thing we can talk about is a rumoured episode where you are all dressed as Kryten. Has that happened yet? No, that’s not happened yet. We’ve all been… we went for our mask fittings and all that. How was that? It was alright. I’m looking forward to it. We can just show Bobby, like… “Bobby, what are you moaning about, you wuss? You soft southern duppsie! So it’s the normal bravado then, of get Craig to do a thing first and then everyone else has to follow? Like with your own stunts? Ha ha. Yeah. Honestly, we are all having a great, great time. The first two episodes have gone brilliantly well. They are so well written. The stories are so clever. I’m just amazed how much they can cram into a half hour. Cool. Thank you and good luck with the rest of it. Cheers man, brilliant.
Great, Jonsmad! :D Something I’m genuinely interested in is whether Craig has got the dreads weaved in like last time, i.e. him having them outside of filming as well.
No he was Fluffy haired no dreads in. I don’t think he could did his funk and soul and keep the dreads in really. He wasn’t playing reggae he was playing cool funk and his head movements aren’t the whip of reggae dreads in dancing.
There was a little snippet from Show 2. He’s contracted to wear them on set, but not outside of Pinewood. Also when he did wear them at home his wife hates them and says “You’re being him again (Lister). Take them off!” Nice report, thank you!
So 2016’s Madness Weekender happened and once again I was down in Minehead for it. Craig was hosting his funky stuff Friday of the event and once again we were able to pop in. I wasn’t DJing this year. But I was hosting an event (that was hopefully comedic in a game show sense) Which featured Paul Putner from Spaced/Its Kevin/Stewart Lee comedy vehicle/TMWRNJ/Rock&chips & many other shows. He’s a Madness fan and was showing me his 70s music years photos. So that got me myself artist entry pass to the dressing rooms this year. Anyway I couldn’t do a chat with Craig for typing up mainly as series XII is still in spoiler territory, but I can selectively recount our brief chat. He’s very happy that XI has been received well, particularly liking Give & Take. Of course XII is all filmed now so we spoke about the episode I saw recorded from the series and I was delighted when he chuckled along to be able to recount the show with someone that new and enthused about it and he then launched briefly into a re enactment of one moment from one scene (which I will mention post broadcast). Also having now filmed the kryten mask episode as previously discussed he admitted that its more of a nightmare when you’ve got to wear it longer and remember to perform in it, he then mimed to us all the action of how to pour sweat out of your ear hole when wearing the mask in a way that was somehow what you might expect if Lister the slob was truly a robot! I suggested that IF the red dwarf live show idea should ever emerge that maybe its opening line would be “oh look kryten has turned human again” to spare the aged bobby from wearing it every night of a tour. Craig replied “oh no we would make him wear it every single night.” We were treated to several verses of his next epic poem Scary Fairy: Hansel & Gretle.
Watching Queeg an episode packed with classic moments, so not surprising that this one joke has mostly slipped past me over the years. But now following minehead holiday camp madness weekenders and watching Mr Charles DJ there, I now see new irony in it. Rimmer: “We were 15 years old. We went on this survival course, sleeping rough, surviving on wild berries and rainwater. ” Lister ” Where did you go? Butlins? “
Craig interview in Metro today http://edition.metro.news/content/20170109.am/htmlpages/479642.html “Red Dwarf, what’s next? Red Dwarf XII is out next year. And Red Dwarf XI was quite a big hit — we even got good reviews! It’s the first time we’ve ever got good reviews. Fans have always loved it but the press used to hate it. See, if you don’t die and stick around long enough, you become a national treasure. Reckon you’ll keep doing Red Dwarf till you drop? Like the Keith Richards of sitcoms? Heh heh — but if I was Keith Richards that would make Chris Barrie Mick Jagger and I’m not having that! ” Also: “I’ve got a big TV project that I can’t talk about yet but it’s going to require me to be fit.” Fingers crossed for the return of Cyber Zone with Craig doing all the challenges.
