Admittedly meticulous and labelled grumpy by critics, the twenty-eight-year-old feels his fussy and slightly eccentric disposition is reflective of his imbalanced lifestyle.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a bit meticulous, but the best moments you have are when you let that go. In the same way that you need to be really hungry to enjoy the best meal, if you genuinely try hard and are a bit meticulous, then you earn the right to let your hair down a little bit. I know certainly because I can pay a bit too much attention to detail, if I have a day when I’m just with friends, when I have a day when I get drunk I enjoy it all the more. It’s about balance.”
And it strikes me that Richardson is striving to achieve more balance in his often disproportionate world. He has been labelled as ‘grumpy’ but seems opposed, despite the fact that is act is majorly critical of others.
“It’s definitely what my stand up’s about. I wouldn’t ever want to think I was saying I’m right about everything. I discuss the discrepancies between how I would do things and other people tend to do them. It’s bled into it’s because it’s who I am. My life is what I talk about on stage, rather than the other way around. You have to let stuff go and accept that people aren’t the same as you and it’d be boring if everyone was. I tend to bang the same drum all the time. I think [being grumpy is] a British thing, but it’s also a global thing.”
Jon is confident in the therapeutic quality of such an attitude. “You can’t help but pick faults in what you see, and if you were trying to make your life perfect then you’re bound to talk about and think about the things that are wrong. In life generally, you learn more from the mistakes you make than the things that go right, so you talk about the thing that isn’t right in the hope of making it better. But you’ve got to make sure you get the balance right… maybe I’ve got the balance wrong. In the past, people have accused me of being grumpy. I don’t like watching comedians going on about how great everything is and how great their lives are. Everyone’s frustrated with things, and the more you can tap into that, the more you make people feel that they aren’t alone in being unhappy. If you can make it funny then that’s the joy of comedy; taking something that isn’t right and make it funny.”
Jon is open about his attitude towards relationships, and has reportedly been single for seven years. He struggles to accept other’s shortcomings and worries that his perfectionist attitude could spoil the friendships that he has.
“That was one of the theories of moving away to Swindon, to limit the time I spent around people, to feel like I wasn’t grating on them. If you see people everyday it’s impossible to maintain any sort of perfection in their eyes, and so if you limit the time you spend around them, the more effort you tend to make when you are with people.”
Jon’s latest show was titled ‘Don’t happy, be worry’, and he explains it is perhaps a reflection of his attitude to life.
“It’s an unfortunate life philosophy that I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to follow. I tend to sacrifice happiness to get things done. It certainly isn’t a sensible way of doing things. You can only talk about what you feel as stand-up, and that’s definitely how I feel.”
He performed the show at the Edinburgh festival this summer and received wide critical acclaim, despite feeling downbeat at times.
“I was a miserable sod [in Edinburgh] this year. I had a poker evening with some of my friends and ended up storming out at three o’ clock in the morning because it was taking too long! It’s so concentrated as you get reviewed on so many different levels by so many different people. It can make you a worse comic, if you’re not careful. You showcase what you do and if you aren’t careful you get so het up about what else is going on, you don’t enjoy performing anyone. You can see the stress behind [other comics’] eyes when they’re doing their comedy. You have to go there and prove yourself at the festival but it’s good to get away!”
Jon enjoys watching a whole host of comedians, but has his favourites. “My favourite comedians are the ones that are dead! I did Live at the Apollo last week and my favourites there were Lee Mack and Sean Lock. They are on incredible form at the moment. Lee Mack is one of the most naturally funny men, he just has funny bones and he’s infectious to watch.”
Jon recently appeared on ‘8 Out of 10 Cats’ and mentioned that on occasion,when he feels like he needs some TLC, he puts on a tighter t-shirt, as it feels like a cuddle.“It was an off the cuff remark that seems to have caught on! I remember going to say it and thinking I should possibly think twice about saying something like that. I don’t want to look pathetic or needy but it’s something I’ve done in the past… kept t-shirts from my childhood for a little bit too long and not stopped wearing them as they’ve become a bit more constricted.”
i have so many funny bones in myself that is why i would love to be a comedian ‘~.