img, .hide-comment-buttons #singleCommentHeader .formContainer >.title, .hide-comment-buttons #loginButtonContainer display: none; /* Expandable MPU fix */ #side .x300 overflow: visible!important; /* Collapsing Skyscraper fix */ .ad div.skyscraper height:auto!important;padding:0px!important; .ad div#mpu.skyscraper height:600px!important; Comedy writer Dan Swimer: 'I'm in awe of Jack Whitehall and Sacha Baron Cohen' - Profiles - People - The Independent Friday 20 February 2015



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Amal Clooney and the Hooded Men Domestic Abuse in Fifty Shades The death of sex George Osborne Greece Michael Gove Comedy writer Dan Swimer: 'I'm in awe of Jack Whitehall and Sacha Baron Cohen' As a writer on 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' and 'Grandma's House', Swimer is the unsung star of some of the best TV comedy of the past decade. As his new sitcom, 'Crims', begins, he tells Alice Jones why he's still terrified of the spotlight Alice Jones Alice Jones Alice Jones is Deputy Arts Editor of The Independent.
More articles from this journalist Follow Alice Jones Wednesday 07 January 2015
Print Your friend's email address Your email address Note: We do not store your email address(es) but your IP address will be logged to prevent abuse of this feature. Please read our Legal Terms & Policies A A A Email You may not know Dan Swimer's name, but you will have laughed at his jokes. The unassuming 41-year old from Cheadle is behind some of the most popular television comedies of the past decade, his name lurking in the credits for everything from Bad Education to Catherine Tate's Nan. He's written speeches for Sacha Baron Cohen, sketches for Jack Whitehall, scripts for James Corden and any number of jokes for panel shows from 8 Out of 10 Cats to Have I Got News for You. He is best known, though, for his work with Simon Amstell, a collaboration that began on Popworld, carried on through the very best years of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and culminated in two series of the family sitcom Grandma's House.
With a CV like that, it's surprising to learn that Swimer never had any intention of going into comedy. Indeed, the idea of being in the spotlight still terrifies him. "I get nervous pressing 'Reply All' on an email," he says. "I'm not on Facebook or anything like that. I'm not really that comfortable being that person." Self-effacing to the point of sometimes not finishing his own sentences, he is not even, he says, the funniest person in his own home, which he shares with his partner and their two young children. "The general consensus is that my youngest son is the funny one in the family," he deadpans. "He says rude words."
Swimer's career began when, having studied French and Linguistics at Leeds, he fell into an internship at MTV. "I literally decided there and then, this is it. I'd never considered anything as glamorous", he says. "In a sense I'm still there, still holding on to living in London and not going back home to work in John Lewis." He started out as a runner and quickly worked his way up on MTV Select. "I was the person talking into Donna Air's ears. It was the best thing ever." Was it a good show? "It never went well. Not once. But we always had a lot of fun."
Crucially, it would provide the grounding for his partnership with Amstell. They met when Swimer was working as producer and Amstell as presenter on Channel 4's Popworld. Together they transformed the show from a safe stop on the promo trail for pop stars into something far more spiky and unsettling for the guests and far more entertaining for audiences. In its prime, Amstell asked Britney Spears if she'd ever licked a battery, interviewed Natalie Imbruglia with a paper bag over his head, and gave the homophobic reggae star Beenie Man a banana with his phone number on, then asked him for a hug.
"It was clear to me what Simon was trying to do. From my experience in that world I had felt some of the same frustrations and found the same things funny. I felt I was in a position to help him say what he wanted to say." So Swimer got more involved in writing the show and when Amstell was offered the hosting gig on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, he went too.
Elis James and Kadiff Kirwan star in new sitcom 'Crims' (BBC)
As with Popworld, they transformed Buzzcocks from just another BBC quiz into something more compelling - a show where guests might be driven to storm out (Preston of The Ordinary Boys, famously) or hurl glasses of water (Kelly Rowland) by Amstell's needling. Did they ever worry they were being too mean? "We never really saw it as mean at the time. In its most pompous sense, we sort of thought we were on a quest for the truth. In basic terms, we were just being cheeky. We only ever wanted to say what people were thinking."
Buzzcocks has not been the same since they left. Typically modest, Swimer ascribes its dip in form to changing times. "You see so little pop music on TV now. It's not like you're being force-fed it anymore. When you see people being rude to pop stars now, you feel like, give them a break. Most pop stars you see on TV are in a competition: they're already under pressure and could be forgotten by next week."
Leaving pop culture behind, the pair moved on to co-write Grandma's House, a brilliantly offbeat sitcom about a self-loathing, out-of-work television presenter called Simon and his over-bearing family. Neither had written a sitcom before: what was the main lesson he learned? "Never write anything that you're not prepared to watch 20 times