14 Sep 2024
St Albans is no stranger to conspiracy theories. Ideas bandied around various social media groups include the notion that the Charter Market is to be scrapped in favour of large-scale booze-fests in St Peter’s Street, contemplations on how we might be barricaded into sections of the district to conform to the fiifteen-minute city vision, and the belief that the Liberal Democrat administration is run by a cabal of humanoid lizards (OK, not the last one, but I wouldn’t put it past some people to argue a case for it…).
So legendary comedian, travel writer and columnist Dom Joly – the creator of acclaimed hidden camera show Trigger Happy TV – should feel right at home when he brings his Conspiracy Tour to the Alban Arena next month, especially as he’s been here plenty of times before.
“I went to school in Hertfordshire, so I’ve been to the Fighting Cocks a couple of times and I think I’ve done a gig at the Alban Arena a long time ago. I like St Albans, and I’m not just saying that, honest.”
You have to believe him really. Dom Joly is not known for holding back when it comes to airing his opinions – good or bad – as I discovered first hand over the course of this interview.
Born in Beirut, he moved to England when the civil war broke out in 1975, and was later educated at Haileybury College, which he locates “in between the triangle of terrible Hertfordshire of Hoddesdon, Hertford and Ware”.
He added: “I’m doing Hertford [on this tour] actually, and I’ve already admitted I hate that place because it takes me back to those horrible times.”
As long as he’s positive about St Albans, we don’t mind what he thinks of the rest of the county…
“You know, I find it very difficult to lie – although, maybe I’m lying now? – but I just speak the truth, and I then get publicists asking, ‘What the f**k are you saying that for?’
“Of course, social media is a nightmare for me, because I drunk tweet and say what I think. So I could never do anything serious now, because if anyone did any sort of archaeological dig into my social media, there’s no racism or sexism or anything like that, it’s just that I’ve called a lot of people c***s.”
Dom is a man without a filter, which makes his current exploration of international conspiracy theories even more unrestrained in his analysis, as he really holds very little back. He describes himself as “a pathetic rebel”, which is probably less kind to himself than he should be.
The tour is to promote his latest travelogue – The Conspiracy Tourist – Travels Through A Strange World – a delve into of some of the planet’s most out-there conspiracy theories which either involved a spin around the globe or a journey across a flat Earth, depending on your mindset.
“This is essentially a book tour rather than a stand-up tour, and so I wanted to make the whole concept of talking about a book and flogging a book, frankly, more interesting.”
His initial interest in conspiracy theories was reserved to more traditional ideas like the assassination of JFK, but this changed as he started researching.
“I entertained the idea that maybe we didn’t get to the Moon, because it kind of makes sense, although we obviously did go to the Moon, but there was definitely a moment in 2016 when Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s spokesperson, used the term ‘alternative facts’, and I think everything literally went from conspiracies being quite fun and sort of eccentric to being really much more dangerous and sort of infecting the body politic.
“Suddenly, you went from a situation where even if you disagreed with people you all argued around a central truth to a state where everyone had their own truth. How can you have alternative facts?
“I think a lot of it is to do with the internet because the internet basically doesn’t do nuance. I think most of us are in the middle, most of us don’t really care about all these things and we don’t really like extremists on either side.
“But on the internet, you can’t do that, you can’t be an ‘I don’t know’, you can’t be an ‘I’m not sure’. In the end you have to pick a team because it’s all about polarizing people and getting clicks, and so you have to pick the least worst team which is not a great way to deal with stuff.”
“The term conspiracy is so overused, because it’s only a conspiracy if people know about something and they’re keeping it secret.”
Even the mainstream media has got behind a lot of these ideas, fuelling a sort of counterculture that is so inherently dangerous: “Mainstream media is dying and now relies on clicks. Therefore even big, big newspapers rely on their online clicks, and for online clicks you need clickbait. There’s nothing more clickbaity than conspiracies.”
What about the anti-vaxxer movement? In preparing for this interview I read about how a lot of them actually died from Covid.
“Anti-vax is such a toxic issue that I don’t even want to talk about it. I didn’t really mention it in the book because it’s just so f***ing ludicrous, it’s so full of inaccuracies and yet is so prevalent.
“And that’s one of the reasons I have a problem with conspiracies because if you believe in something crazy that doesn’t affect anyone else, then who cares? That’s your thing. But when you disseminate lies that then get people who maybe need a vaccine not to take it and they get in trouble that’s a real issue for me.
“But I don’t want to become this anti-vax guy or this anti-conspiracy guy, the whole point of this book was to write a funny travel book and have a look at this weird world of conspiracies and you know I think I’m pretty generous frankly. I feel quite sorry for them. I think they’ve gone down rabbit holes. They’ve been hit by the algorithm.
“Some of them are mentally ill, frankly. And these things happen a lot when you have things like lockdown and you get isolated and your only source of information comes from other people.
“But the real people I have issues with are not people that believe in conspiracy theories. They’re the grifters.
“They’re people like [American far-right radio show host] Alex Jones and Donald Trump to an extent, David Icke… These are people that don’t even believe the rubbish they’re touting, they’re just doing it for money.”
So how did he decide where he was going to go for the book? Did he find the theory first and then visit the place where it originated?
“I did. Well, I found this amazing diagram by this woman called Abbie Richards, and she looks a lot into conspiracy theories.
“She did a pyramid where at the bottom are conspiracy theories that might have some truth in them, and then as it goes up they become increasingly mental. She included most of the conspiracy theories that are in general circulation, so that was a really good thing.
“So I had a look at those and I kind of did a sort of pick and mix basically from each bit. Obviously, because my books are essentially travel books. I was looking for ones with interesting destinations.
“I kicked off the book with Does Finland Exist? which is a real conspiracy. Then I went to Fogo, which is an island off Newfoundland which, if you believe in a square flat Earth, is one of the four corners. “No conspiracy research would be complete without a road trip through America, because for whatever reason, America tends to be ground zero for conspiracies. I think mainly because America’s DNA is built on revolution, mistrusting of authorities and not trusting the federal government.
“I love America, I really do, but there’s a sort of anti-intellectualism, anti-expertism… They were born a rebel nation and they still think of themselves like that.”
One of the most outlandish theories he included was actually based on Denver Airport.
“Denver Airport is quite the most extraordinary thing I came across, anywhere. Denver Airport has layers and layers of conspiracy theories about something seemingly innocuous, and that’s where it kicked off.
“I saw Denver International Airport on this pyramid thing and I thought ‘What the f**k is Denver International Airport doing there?’
“Essentially Denver’s quite small, it’s not a massive city, but it has the biggest airport in the United States. And the conspiracy kind of started because it went over budget and took too long to build. It’s very near other things like NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain [a United States Space Force installation and defensive bunker], so there’s a lot of military activity there.
“The theory was that someone, the New World Order or the Illuminati, whoever, had built layers of tunnels underneath this airport as a kind of panic room, so when something terrible happens they’re all going to fly there and be safe.
“But then there are other layers, like people point out to the quite sort of apocalyptic scenes in the artwork at the airport. I think that’s because people smoke a vast amount of marijuana in Denver but according to conspiracists not only have they built this thing but they also want to let you know did, so they’re showing off.
“There are many more layers to this but the icing on the cake came when some Uber driver said to me ‘Have you seen Denver Airport from the air? Have you looked at it on a map?’
“If you really sort of slightly stretch your imagination, they claim that Denver International Airport’s been built in the shape of a swastika, which seems an odd thing to do.
“Like, if you are building a panic room, why would you do that? But again, it’s part of this, they’re so confident, whoever these people are, that they don’t care. You know, they’re almost showing off.”
It’s always ‘these’ people isn’t it?
“It’s always these people. Everything’s always a bit cryptic, you know, so there’s always a get-out clause. Chemtrailers have now segued to geoengineering and geo-weather. There’s always a way out. I mean, it’s just bollocks, it really is.
“No one’s saying that governments don’t lie and corporations don’t behave badly but often that’s just a crime, it’s not a conspiracy. The problem is that the real conspiracies like medical companies covering things up or governments doing bad things kind of get hidden because these idiots completely get the wrong end of the stick.
“A lot of these people are not very smart, but on the other hand, a lot of them actually are quite smart and they’re over thinkers. They think too much and form patterns that aren’t there. As humans, we don’t like chaos, and life is basically chaos. There’s a great quote, ‘history is far more the product of chaos than conspiracy’.
“But we want order, and that’s what conspiracy theories give to people. They give them sense that random acts are not happening, that there’s a reason for it, and that somehow reassures them.
“Frankly, I’d be more worried if things were happening because there was a conspiracy than if it was random, but each to their own. It’s fun talking about it but it sounds like I give a shit, whereas I’m not setting myself up as a conspiracy debunker, I just want to look at the craziness and the funny sides, but unfortunately you can’t avoid the serious sides as well.”
His previous book, The Dark Tourist, explored travelling to some of the world’s most unlikely holiday destinations, and saw him skiing in Iran on segregated slopes, spending a weekend in Chernobyl, touring the assassination sites of America and journeying back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden.
“I find all my books are very similar, I’m travelling to places you probably wouldn’t travel to, so you can travel vicariously with me, but they’re about finding the funny and the weird, and I really hope is that once people finish reading they’ve probably learned a lot of random facts because that’s how my mind works, and I love that.
“I never want people to read my books thinking that I’m giving them a lesson or trying to teach them something because I don’t know about it in the first place. I just have very weird stores of general knowledge and I’m fascinated by travel.
“The whole idea of dark tourism for instance is interesting because people think of it as being quite morbid and I’m not morbid. I was trying to work out why I genuinely get excited when I’m standing in Dealey Plaza, where JFK was shot.
“I’m thinking, I’m here in this place, and obviously I’m interested in the Kennedy story, but why is being there so interesting? I do sort of think that it’s a way of touching history. I do think places that have had something historically interesting happening, maybe, I don’t know, it’s a bit hippy-dippy, like something stays in the stones there.
“I suppose it’s the same reason that people go on religious pilgrimages and touch the Turin shroud, or people go to World War I or World War II battlefields
“You know, before it was somewhere you’d read about, then suddenly you’re there, and you can picture it a lot more.
“I’m quite obsessed with assassinations actually, and I did an assassination vacation road trip around America, and I went to Sarajevo on the centenary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and again that was just fascinating to have read about this thing that kicked off World War One, and then to be standing on that spot.
“Maybe I would have been a train spotter in another life, but this is what I do. I’m a history nerd I suppose, but I only love 20th and 21st century. Anything pre-1900 I have almost zero interest in apart from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I went to the theatre where he was shot and across the road to the boarding house where he died and there was a pillow with his blood on it. Well they told me it was his blood! I just was really excited about that and I thought what is wrong with me? But there you go.”
His next book will be a very different prospect.
“I’m very proud of The Conspiracy Tourist and the tour but I hate being in the world of conspiracies, so my next book is called Happy Hunting and the subheading is In Desperate Pursuit of Happiness. Basically the premise is that can this middle-aged grumpy ex-goth find happiness?
“But it’s more a piss-take of all those things like wellness and [Dutch motivational speaker] Wim Hof and Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop.
“I’ve already been to Denmark, which is the world’s happiest country, supposedly. And I’ve just been to Rishikesh in India, which is where the whole sort of Eastern mysticism thing started with the Beatles, and also where yoga started. You know what, I’m going to be slightly cynical, but what if I just come across something that makes me happy? Well, that would be brilliant. So it’s kind of self-serving as well.”
Back to the tour, and the forthcoming Alban Arena gig will actually form part of a second leg of dates: “Now I’m going to all the places I didn’t go on the first leg.”
So how has it been so far?
“To be honest, I expected quite a lot of nutters, but the nutter count was not that high, which was nice.
“I thought I was going to be constantly interrupted by people screaming ‘You lie!’ although I had a couple of ufologists in Kings Lynn and I had a flat earther in Norwich that got a bit excited. East Anglia seems to attract that kind of thing but generally it was okay and the reaction has been really good.
“I think people don’t quite know what to expect.
I have two very different fan bases: I have my fan base from Trigger Happy TV and my comedy and then my fan base from books and the Venn diagram is probably not that big a mix.
“The people who read my books probably don’t watch too much telly and the people who watch telly probably wouldn’t read a book on going to North Korea, so what I’m trying to do is combine both those fan bases and say ‘You know what, if you like my books, you’ll enjoy my comedy because my comedy’s a big part of the books, and similarly, if you like my comedy, but you’re not a book reader, listen to the audio book, and I think you’ll like it because it’s still got that slightly absurd sense of humour’, and that’s what I try and do in the shows.”
Back in the day, Dom had a real fear of performing live: “Even though I can crawl across the road dressed as a snail, I found it very frightening to stand up as me and I’ve forced myself to get to a situation where I know I can stand up and not be dying of nerves.”
He made Trigger Happy TV, the hidden camera show which included said sequence with a giant snail, a staggering 25 years ago: “I only know because my daughter was born the same year I first made Trigger Happy, which is terrifying!”
Perhaps the most memorable sequences involved Dom screaming into a massive mobile or having a brutal fight while dressed in an oversized animal costume, but it was the soundtrack which really set the series apart from other similar shows.
Featuring the likes of Shine On by the House of Love and Gene’s Speak to Me Someone, all of the song choices came from his own music collection.
“Deep down most comedians want to be rock stars and most rock stars seem to want to be comedians. I was in a band before I did Trigger Happy and music is my big, big love. I wasn’t a comedy geek at all as I don’t really like sitcoms, although I was a fan of the very early Candid Camera, which was very surreal and innovative.
“But in the ‘80s when I watched hidden camera shows they were terrible, like Game for a Laugh or Beadle’s About, and hidden camera as a format in the comedy world was seen as the lowest run; it was done by idiots and was kind of frat boy humour.
“I wanted to show that it could be an art form, and I wanted it to be beautiful, which sounds really poncy, but I’m an ex-goth…
“Most of Trigger Happy was made in the edit. I spent four months just editing it perfectly, and I wanted the whole thing to be a sort of hyper-produced album that you just couldn’t turn off and had to watch. And a lot of that was to do with the music.
“When I took it to Channel Four they just left us alone, they had no idea what was going on, and it became the first comedy show with a soundtrack, so much so that they were freaked out by it. They put us in a focus group and these f***ing idiots watched it and said, ‘Oh the music’s a bit sad, can you put some cartoon music on it?’
“I just refused in the end, I just knew it was right, I cut Trigger Happy to the music, so whatever tune I wanted to use, I’d extend the joke. But whereas Channel Four had a blanket agreement which meant you could use any music, I never anticipated it was going to be such a hit, and when it was sold to 80 countries the cost of licensing the music I used to even one country would have been more than making the whole show. So only one country in the whole world bought it with the original music, and weirdly that was Germany, nowhere else has seen it.”
The show brought him sudden, overwhelming fame, something he never anticipated.
“There was way too much fame in my life. I probably thought I always wanted to be famous. I didn’t. There are elements to it I love, you know, it’s opened all these doors to me. It’s allowed me to travel. It’s given me an incredible life pretty much for the last 24 years. But I’m just not very good at being famous.
“I think certain people just take to it like a duck to water and can become a national treasure. And I think my problem is I’m essentially a sort of pathetic punk. I’m a kind of shit rebel. And I’m happiest when I’m napping at the heels of something and sort of having a go at things. I’m not very good at suddenly becoming earnest.”
The Conspiracy Tour comes to the Alban Arena on October 4 and features special guest Dr Julian Northcote who is apparently the world’s leading conspiracy theorist. For tickets visit https://everyonetheatres.com/whats-on/dom-joly-the-conspiracy-tour/
