Obsessions | David Stubbs & British Comedy

“British Comedy at the moment is representing life as actually lived, by the people actually living it and what that means... is a more naturalistic approach… people talking like they actually do, not some sort of hack sit-com writers idea of the way people talk. This is what you notice from clips of the 60’s and 70’s… more and more, you just think… no one talks like that…”

David Stubbs is a journalist and author whose work covers music, TV, film, sport, comedy, and cultural commentary. He has written for, among others, NME, The Wire, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, New Humanist, Uncut, The Quietus, When Saturday Comes and The Daily Mash.

He was formerly staff writer at Melody Maker between 1987 and 1998, where he divided his time between extolling the virtues of avant-rock and electronic music and writing the comedy section, Talk Talk Talk, creating the Mr Agreeable character. He also wrote scripts for Alan Davies and Bill Bailey at this time.

He is the author of numerous books, including Fear Of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen (Zero, 2010), The Prince Charles Letters (Aurum, 2011) and Future Days: Krautrock And The Building Of Modern Germany (Faber, 2014). Mars By 1980, his wide-ranging study of the history of electronic music, is his latest book and is published by Faber.

Obsessions is presented by John Robb and produced by Andrew Paine & Sophie Porter.

The full unedited version of this interview can be see on John Robb’s Youtube page.