Ten Things We Learned About Vic Reeves

The latest star of Only Artists is comedian “Vic Reeves” – he made his name with a series of surreal TV panel shows, but he's an accomplished straight actor and visual artist. So who is the real Vic Reeves, and what do we know about him?

The BBC TV comedy panel game Shooting Stars was created and presented by Vic Reeves with long-term collaborator Bob Mortimer. © BBC

1. His real name is Jim Moir, but his mum called him by his middle name, Rod. His dad was also called Jim but his mum called him Nick. His granddad was also called Jim, but HIS middle name was Gatherer. And they all had the same birthday.

2. Once he had to flee town on the Isle of Wight, having spent the evening pretending to be the drummer out of UB40.

3. In Darlington Jim and his mates formed the “Fashionable Five”. They dressed identically in yellow jumpers and black drainpipe jeans and would stalk people “enforcing déjà-vu’s” on them.

4. Jim applied to art college but was rejected. Undeterred, he just went anyway.

5. While working in a branch of Our Price Records, he signed all the copies of Reggatta De Blanc by The Police to cheer people up.

6. Jim had never seen comedy before he started the Big Night Out in a club in Deptford. He had a cardboard box on his head with a picture of Sylvester Stallone on the front and couldn’t see the audience.

7. Jim’s first passions in life were painting and bird-watching.

8. Dropping cutlery on stage never fails. “It’s a winner.”

9. Jim is a fan of Francis Bacon, and says that the point of the artist is “To Deepen the Mystery”.

10. Leave the corpsing in. It makes everybody happy.