It doesn’t take long, after joining a Zoom call with Benjamin Alborough and Sean Morley, both halves of Terry Wogan Screams, before the topic of conversation turns to sandwiches.
“Sean’s burnt his dinner,” Benjamin explains. “It was a sandwich.” A passing comment (“that must have been a pretty fancy sandwich”) turns into an extended riff on butty complexity. The pair’s dynamic is clear from the off: it’s the sort of easy, improvised chemistry of two people effortlessly on the same page.
They’re here to talk Terry Wogan Screams, a live interactive gameshow coming to The Crypt on Friday 10th February as part of VAULT Festival. ‘Audience members join Terry Wogan (Benjamin Alborough) in his flawed attempt to innovate the gameshow format by combining every possible gameshow into rounds, then combining all possible rounds into one question (the answer to which is three), all while trying to flog minidisk players,’ reads the description. It feels like a show which is difficult to put into words.
“I think we’ve covered everything we need to do with sandwiches” Benjamin boldly proclaims after a few minutes. Another five minutes of sandwich chat later, I ask where the idea for Terry Wogan Screams came from.
“I didn’t know who Terry Wogan was until Benjamin introduced him to me via Ouija Board,” Sean admits.
“Sean does a community arts Eurovision stream every year,” Benjamin adds. “I’ve done Terry Wogan on stage, semi-professionally for a number of years (Benjamin is a regular at the alternative comedy group, the Weirdos Comedy Club). And we did a series of streams before that together as well.”
“So I contacted Sean and said, ‘I know you stream things on Twitch. Well, I can do an impression of Terry Wogan. Let’s combine our abilities.’ And the rest sort of followed on from there quite logically.”
I ask whether they think there’s much crossover between their Twitch-streaming and their plan for the live show. They largely reject the idea. Like most of their comedy, it feels like moving to a live format was more instinctive than anything else.
“They are extremely different mediums,” Sean says. “And it’s very difficult to conceive of coherent synergy between the two.”
“It’s roughly similar,” Benjamin admits. “The dynamic that might work, for example, on Twitch for three-and-a-half hours has to be very different to one hour on stage. So we’re sort of combining them in a way that’s hopefully entertaining. And solving the game show problem.”
“What’s the game show problem?” I ask.
“There are too many game shows,” comes the reply. Wogan-based necromancy aside, this seems to be the premise of the show.
But the pair’s Twitching has influenced the show in more ways than one. Last week, they used a Twitch stream to get 300 strangers to design the show’s poster. I ask whose idea that was.
“Both of us. Exactly at the same moment, independently. We messaged each other at exactly the same time,” Benjamin says.
“We both sent a text but they couldn’t go through because we were texting simultaneously.”
“I think what happened is that our producers realised that we didn’t have a poster. And we had previously committed to saying that we would design the poster. So I think I think the idea was that if it’s going to be on our work docket, we may as well monetize it. I had faith in the Twitch chat, that, you know, they’d be able to deliver something saleable. We had the six Vault Festival marketing tips up on screen—and it did technically meet all of those. But Terry Wogan is depicted as a Na’vi with four arms.”
“The decision we had to make was whether or not people could donate money directly to oblige us to include certain design elements,” Sean adds. “I was sceptical about granting that level of power for something that would need to exist in physical media and be used to promote a show that we would actually like people to attend. And in the end, we did allow it, and I guess time will tell if that was a mistake.”
I ask what they’re looking out for at the Vault Festival. Benjamin has recommendations.
“There’s lots of excellent comedy around. The Alternative Comedy Memorial society has done a little roundup on Twitter, which I’d recommend anyone go and check out their associated acts. Tomorrow I’m seeing a show called Mythos—Ragnarok, which is the story of the Norse legend taught by professional wrestlers.”
“I’m looking for friends,” Sean adds. “And also building my skillset as well. If I can make one friend and gain one new skill that’s two new lines on the CV.”
Terry Wogan Screams comes to The Crypt as part of the Vault Festival at 22:35 on February 10th.
Interview by James Harvey
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