Robert White talked to STV after he won The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality at the Edinburgh Fringe, revealing why he struggles in front of the camera even if he’s funny onstage.
The comedian, whose show Robert White's Outrageously Peculiar Organ was on at the Gilded Balloon, apparently won for his enthusiastic unconventionality and for being - in his own words - “the only gay, Aspergers, quarter Welsh, webbed-toed, dyslexic pianist debuting this Fringe”.
He explained: “What I do onstage is, I’m a characterisation of myself, so it’s all about puns and eccentricity and stuff.
“So it’s good, on the side of the originality to be recognised - I understand with Malcolm Hardee it’s sort of a double-edged sword, because as well as being original he was a complete nutter and a pisshead - so, on that side it’s a bit ‘Woah.’”
Apparently uncomfortable at not being in ‘funny mode’ at the weekend’s awards show, interviewer Kate Copstick soon brought the comic side out of him, after he responded to a heckle of Tintin from an onlooker.
White responded: “It’s not Tintin, it’s just my hair. I was in Tony and Guy today - well I wasn’t, Tony and Guy was in me - and I asked if I could have my hair in the same way as a nun’s, but apparently a nun’s hair is particularly flat due to force of habit.
“Because my hair’s very good, in fact. That’s why I’m playing the Fringe. Ah, see, not very funny... But I’m a very musical person. I live in A Flat, and if I move house I change key.”
