Eight things we learned from Harry Hill’s Desert Island Discs

With his trademark oversized collar, surreal jokes and array of quirky character companions, Harry Hill has become one of the most recognisable and popular comedians on television. Before turning to comedy, he trained as a medical doctor.

In 2001, after starring in several absurdist sketch shows including The Harry Hill Show on Channel 4, he wrote and presented the multi award-winning TV Burp on ITV which lampooned British pop culture and featured some of the most daft and memorable moments on British television, like a slapstick fight between EastEnders’s Phil Mitchell and Mr Blobby.

Here are eight things we learned from Harry Hill’s Desert Island Discs…

As a child growing up in a busy house in Kent with four siblings and not a lot of money, television became the focal point of family life. “It was that window on the world,” he says. “That’s how you found out about things.”

Alongside Doctor Who and The Generation Game – whose theme tune he picks as his final disc – Harry remembers being captivated by Spike Milligan’s Q series. “I remember watching it and thinking: Yeah, he’s talking to me. It was like an awakening… like some people get with music.” Milligan had a true anarchic spirit, Harry reckons. “I don’t really have that. I fake it.”

He admired Bruce Forsyth’s rapport with audiences and saw something strangely modern in his old-school variety approach. “He didn't come on and tell gags, he worked with the crowd, he worked the cameras. He would do that thing where he'd turn to the camera and look directly at you at home.”

2. He co-founded a dubious chemical company in the back of a shed

Not all of Hill’s early ventures were above board. As a child, he and two friends, Adam and Patrick, created a ‘business’ called Staplehurst Chemical Industries from a garden shed. “We used to make stink bombs and smoke bombs and sell them to the other kids at school,” Harry recalls. “Innocent times.”

They charged five pence for a smoke bomb and seven for a stink bomb, but their downfall came when it came to sales and distribution. “Patrick was the sales guy. After a while we were saying, ‘Where's the money?” It turned out that Patrick had been selling the smoke and stink bombs on credit.

“In fact, we made 60p, so we decided to wind up the business. The pressure was getting to Patrick and that didn't seem fair,” Harry jokes.

3. He became a doctor because of stink bombs and spite

Harry’s childhood stink bomb and smoke bomb ‘company’ indirectly inspired his medical career. “In those days you could buy most of the ingredients in the chemists.” But they could only get them by convincing their local chemist they were serious about science. “So, I had to have a kind of cover story, that I was interested in biology,” he said.

Harry did genuinely enjoy biology and was smart enough to make the grades for studying medicine. But the final push came at a parents’ evening when a teacher told his mum there was no way he’d get into medical school. “I thought right, I’ll show you. So, I went into medicine out of spite.”

He qualified in 1988 and began work in orthopaedics without, he admits, much of a clue. “I didn't know anything. I just felt out of control. I learned most of what I needed in the first six-weeks from the ward sister. I just blagged it.”

4. His mum was a comic storyteller with a knack for a tight two-minute set

Harry credits his mother, Jan, with giving him his natural sense of comic timing. “We’d go down to Lipton's supermarket and on the way, we'd bump into Mrs Harmer from a couple of doors down, and mum would start telling her a story about something that happened at the school or some local bit of gossip. And then we'd walk on a bit further and she'd see someone else and then she'd start the story again.”

By the time they got to the supermarket, he says, she’d worked the routine into a finely tuned piece of comedy, “completely ironed out, with a punchline. So, I guess you pick all this stuff up subliminally.”

5. His first double act died a death in front of a hostile crowd

Harry’s first foray into live comedy was as one half of The Hall Brothers alongside his school friend Rob.

Harry Hill in the Desert Island Discs studio.

I don't look back at those years particularly fondly because of that stress. I would start the week with no show, knowing that on Saturday morning I’d have to sit down and write a show.

Harry Hill on the pressure of creating TV Burp.

Their first gig was at the notorious Tunnel Club, in south London, run by the late comic Malcolm Hardee. “He was this sort of anarchist who gave people their first breaks.” The duo handed out printed flyers before their set. “We went on and got silence. Then they started rolling up the flyers and throwing them at us. Malcolm faded down the mics and faded up the music. That was that.”

Still, Hill insists it was easier with a partner. “We laughed about it afterwards. Given the choice, I’d rather have been in a double act. It can be quite lonely otherwise.”

6. He became Harry Hill by accident, and the collar sealed the deal

Before he was Harry Hill, he performed as Harry Hall, a name chosen partly for the double "ha ha" it contained. “I liked the alliteration,” he tells Lauren Laverne. “I liked the throwback to those old comedians, Arthur Askey, Max Miller… that old variety feel.”

But when it came time to get an Equity card, he hit a snag: there was already someone called Harry Hall. “She was an actress called H-A-R-I Hall, I think it was short for Harriet. I wrote to ask if I could use the name.” She refused, so he settled on Harry Hill.

His outfit – the black suit, big glasses and massive collar – eventually became the uniform of his Harry Hill persona. “When I put the outfit on, I know I’m Harry.” He likes the separation between himself and his persona. But that persona takes time to inhabit. “I have to have an hour to myself; I have to pace up and down and work myself up. If I don’t, it’s not as funny.”

7. TV Burp was a triumph but a weekly high-wire act

Harry Hill’s TV Burp ran for 11 series, won multiple awards and became a staple of Saturday night telly. But the pressure of writing a new show every week never got easier.

“I don't look back at those years particularly fondly because of that stress. I would start the week with no show, knowing that on Saturday morning I’d have to sit down and write a show.”

Harry and his team of writers would have to watch countless hours of TV just to find the funniest moments. “There were no shortcuts. That was the problem. You did actually have to watch the full two and a half hours of Emmerdale.”

Even though recording day was always a highlight, Harry would return home feeling the stress of the week. “Ask my wife, every time I came back from a recording, I'd go upstairs, she'd be in bed, and I'd say, ‘I've got to get out of this’. Then I'd watch it on the Saturday, and I’d think it was great.”

8. David Byrne from Talking Heads inspired a culinary comedy routine

Harry’s fifth disc choice is Life During Wartime by Talking Heads, inspired by seeing David Byrne perform. “I was up out of my seat because I wanted to be closer to it. I thought, here’s a guy who’s 65 or something, he could have just played the hits and we all would’ve gone home happy. But he’s pushing it and pushing it. And I came away thinking, this is how you need to approach stuff. You need to raise your game. So, I’ve tried to do that.”

That burst of inspiration led to a routine that, on the surface, had little to do with David Byrne, but in Hill’s mind, they’re forever connected. “It was about the difference between traybakes and tear-and-shares. And how all people can be divided into one or the other.”

For the record: “David Byrne? Total tear-and-share.”