FOUR GAY friends, a piano, sing-alongs, comedy, cabaret, and all the laughs you can squeeze into an evening is on the cards when Four Poofs & A Piano strut their stuff on the stage of the Town Hall Theatre this month.
Four Poofs & A Piano - as the name suggests all four are gay and one of them plays a piano - will make their Galway debut at the Town Hall on Sunday October 30 at 8pm as part of the Bulmers Galway Comedy Festival.
The quartet - David Roper, David Wickenden, Ian Parkin, and Stephen De Martin - are best known for being the house band on The Jonathan Ross Show from 2001-2010, but they are keen to emphasise they offer far more than that.
“We’re very excited about coming to Galway,” Stephen De Martin tells me during our Monday morning interview. “Our live show is completely different from what we did on Jonathan Ross. It will be an hour of pure, mad, variety song and dance show. People will be surprised when they come and see us and what we can do.”
Stephen says the show will include a ballet homage to Michael Born’s Swan Lake, entitled Swamp Lake, musical parody numbers, and references to Elaine Paige, Denise Van Outen, and Michael Crawford.
“I’ll be doing some stand-up comedy and the other boys will have solo numbers,” says Stephen. “David Roper will do an improv song with the audience and get them to sing along. He will ask them to shout about something, an emotion, or an implement, and compose a song on the spot with the audience. I just hope Galway is ready for this.”
A night of quality entertainment is assured as the boys come with impeccable musical, theatre, and entertainment backgrounds - David Roper conducted The Sound of Musicals for BBC1 and has been musical director for numerous programmes on British TV; David Wickenden worked in Paris’ Moulin Rouge; Ian Parkin performed in musicals in London’s West End; while Stephen has worked with British Stage Productions theatre company and performed his acclaimed one man show Poofloose at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Across the sea
Stephen is originally from Sydney, Australia, where he grew up in a musical family. “My father played piano, my mother sang, and I had a cabaret act with my bothers and sisters,” he says, before laughing, “We were like the Von Trapps!”
Stephen’s comedic influences included French & Saunders, Alan Carr, and Jimmy Carr, while his musical inspirations ranged from Frank Sinatra to Billy Joel to Shirley Bassey, and in particular ABBA, with the Australian reserving a special affection for Agnetha Fältskog.
“I would love to sing with Agnetha Fältskog and meet her,” Stephen declares. “She is definitely a huge influence and ABBA’s music has stood the test of time. ‘Dancing Queen’ is their most popular song but my favourite would be ‘The Winner Takes It All’. It’s an Agnetha solo performance, it’s a simple but beautiful melody, and a poignant lyric.”
Given his interest in divas like Dame Shirley, etc, should we be surprised that the British Theatre Guide has described Stephen as “a diva and perfectionist”?
“It wouldn’t be too far from the truth,” he says, roaring with laughter. “I am a team player and I don’t like to upset people. I have learned to calm my diva ways down.”
Stephen today lives in Britain where he has been resident since 1996. “I came there by boat,” he says, before adding, “I’m the Jane McDonald of the sea!” in reference to the singer who first came to notice on the BBC docusoap The Cruise. “If I can’t get to sing with Agnetha, an alternative would be Jane McDonald.”
In Britain, Stephen joined an amateur choir in London where he became friends with David Wickenden and Ian Parkin. They decided to get together on the weekends to sing and perform some shows. Within six months they were playing London’s famous Groucho Club where they were spotted by The Jonathan Ross Show.
“We were in the right place at the right time and The Jonathan Ross Show wanted something different,” says Stephen. “Later on David Roper joined on piano. Even though we don’t do the show anymore it was important in giving us a name and letting people know who we were, and now the name is established.”
Post-Jonathan Ross, the quartet have enjoy touring their shows to great acclaim and they have become regulars at the Glastonbury Festival. “We have done it four times,” says Stephen. “We’re regulars at the Cabaret Tent and it’s great performing before 2,000 people, it’s worth it driving through all that mud and rain and portoloos.”
Stephen says Four Poofs & A Piano have many “great memories” from The Jonathan Ross Show and “learned a lot about TV” from it and from the show’s presenter.
“Jonathan Ross is a great raconteur and comedic interviewer,” says Stephen. “We worked very closely with him and he’s very clever at his job and we got to meet many great stars. It was a great opportunity.”
So what were some of the highlights for the quartet during their time on the show?
“Jonathan is a huge fan of David Bowie so it was great to get to see him in action as he doesn’t do many live shows anymore,” says Stephen. “We would do the introduction for the guest and do a version of one of their songs as they came on. Normally they didn’t know what we were going to do but as we went on guests would ask if we could do this song of theirs or that song of theirs.
“Julie Walters was great fun to work with and Peter Kay. He came and stood over by the piano with us and we sang a number with him. He’s a really good sport, and we got to meet Benni from ABBA when he was on.”
Aussie comic Tim Minchin was so impressed with the boys that he wrote the song ‘Five Poofs and a Piano’ in which he begged to become a member of the group. Tim will be in Galway for two dates at the comedy festival so might he be persuaded to join Four Poofs for a duet?
“We hope so!” says Stephen. “That’s a terribly good idea, you should put that in the article that we would love to do a duet with him. We’re coming in on the Sunday so hopefully we’ll see him then.”
Come a long way
Camping up songs and delivering them in a cabaret style is part and parcel of a Four Poofs & A Piano show, but Stephen is resistant to the stereotypical image of gay men’s musical taste extending no farther than trashy pop.
“There is some truth in it but you can’t pigeon hole people like that,” he says. “I know gay men who are into heavy rock’n’roll and Iron Maiden. Not all gay men are hairdressers or have Tupperware tea parties. They can be builders and come from all different walks of life.”
It is 20 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in Ireland, and last year saw the introduction of civil partnerships. Homosexuality was made legal in Britain in 1967 but was only decriminalised in some US states as recently as 2003. Tolerance and acceptance of gay people has come a long way over recent decades but there is still progress to be made.
“I’d say we’ve come a tremendously long way from when I was at school,” says Stephen. “We’re much more aware of name calling and bullying nowadays. Most people no longer see being gay as a medical condition from which they have to be cured; you don’t choose to be gay, you’re born that way; and see it as an acceptable way of life.
“However it’s not like that in all parts of the country. When you go out to the regions it can be a lonely, challenging, place. You need to have safe ways of coming out but there are certain countries where that is not acceptable and that’s very difficult for gay people. So we have come a long way but there is still progress to be made.”
Support is from Willa White and Gearoid Farrelly. For more information, tickets, and booking contact
