Klangers are out of this world (From Surrey Comet)

Klangers are out of this world

4:57pm Thursday 30th November 2006 in

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Stand-up comedians are a needy bunch according to Marek Larwood.

All that love-hate relationship with their audience. The longing for heckles, then complaining when they get them. Very attention-seeking. Very high-maintenance.

Which is why Larwood is more than happy with his current menage-a-trois, otherwise known as the award-winning We are Klang.

"You can have more fun as a trio," he says. "You get three different personalities and lots of interaction. For us, it's all about the spectacle. We enjoy it so much.

"Lots of stuff out there is cynical. What's special about our humour is that it's not clever-clever - it's just stupid jokes. And we are our own main target."

Larwood met co-Klangers Greg Davies and Steve Hall on Logan Murray's Amused Moose comedy course. Like his new buddies, he had always fanced himself as something of a comedian but needed a helping hand to make it.

They must have been good because all three started collecting awards, Davies and Larwood winning The Laughing Horse New Act of the Year in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

Their first collective show came in December 2003 and in the best traditions of British bottom humour was, in Larwood's delicate phrase, "regarding our arses."

"I have made a living out of playing different levels of retarded people," admits the Crouch End native, whose slightly boggle eyes do have a bit of the village idiot about them.

"Can I say retarded? Mentally challenged, then," he goes on. "Greg's the authority figure. He's 6ft 8 and 20 stone - tall enough to qualify as a proper giant. Whereas I'm 5ft10, which isn't exactly short but I look like a dwarf in comparison. And Steve is the dry, laconic front man."

The Klang Gang (to borrow the title of their latest show) do not live together but spend an inordinate amount of time in cars and motorway service stations en route to gigs. "It's where where we get most of our ideas," says Larwood."

Future plans include a TV version of Klang and for Larwood, the new sketch show Rush Hour, for which he is picking out wigs as we speak.

"It's nostalgic going through different hairstyles," says the less-than-hirsute comic.

"I was a bouffant at 19, and before that I had the a wedge. But it's nice to get to the point where you mum no longer dictates your hairstyle, even if is because you are bald."

We Are Klang with Charlie Pickering, Al Lubel and MC Ed Dewson, GJ's Bar, High Street, Colliers Wood, 0845 838 5191.