“I’m a bit at odds with it, to be honest”, says Johnny Vegas, which is not a sentence you hear when a celebrity is promoting their next project. “It was my idea, initially. But TV borrows ideas, doesn’t it? And then thinks it’s had a better one.” The idea has become Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD and Me, a two-part Channel 4 documentary, and the final product isn’t quite what the comedian had in mind. “The title embarrasses me,” he sighs. “The one thing it was never meant to be about was me.”
The programme follows Vegas, a trained ceramicist, as he attempts to create a large piece of public art for his beloved home town of St Helens, Merseyside. Vegas wanted the programme to create a “conversation about art” – why it’s so devalued in society, why we fund it so poorly, why working-class children are squeezed out of it.
In reality, it could only ever be about him. Not only is he still, at 54, a charismatic figure, but his approach to the project is magnificently chaotic. He bounds into St Helens Town Hall and tells the council he wants to make a piece of public art – only he doesn’t have any ideas.
As well as his successful comedy career, Johnny Vegas is a trained ceramicist (pictured with sculptor Emma Rodgers) – Channel 4
Then, after months of filming, and a few weeks away from opening an exhibition that will fund the proposed work, Vegas disappears and isn’t heard from for 18 months. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD and needed time to “get well again”. While Vegas doesn’t want the film – or this interview – to be about ADHD, it adds a fascinating layer to the story.
From glass blowing to booze-soaked standup
But, before that, art – Vegas’s first love. Today he’s best known as a wild-eyed, chaotic, booze-soaked standup – part Henry VIII, part Bez – and for a successful TV career that has encompassed Shooting Stars, Benidorm, sitcom Ideal, the Murder on the Blackpool Express comedy-dramas and every panel show going. There are also those adverts for ITV Digital and PG Tips (“Monkeh!”) which hang around him like the proverbial albatross. But what he wants to be is an artist.
School for the man born Michael Pennington was a struggle until a glass sculptor introduced him to ceramics, and Vegas “found his tribe”. He went on to study for a BA in art and ceramics at Middlesex University. But upon leaving, he began a 30-year career in comedy.
Now, he is rediscovering his inner artist and making his focus his beleaguered home town, which has been in decline since the coal and glass-blowing industries died off. “St Helens was cited as one of the places in the UK most lacking in artistic content,” says Vegas. “That was a shocker. It’s almost as if, when industry goes, the national consensus is that art is the last thing we can afford. But it’s the first thing we need.”
After school, Vegas studied for a BA in art and ceramics at Middlesex University – Channel 4
The initial idea for the programme was a travelogue in which Vegas visited his favourite examples of public art, but instead, he decided to create his own. “I think there was a point of just coming out and going, ‘I am an artist’.” That coming out is revealed to be a difficult process in Eddie Stafford’s documentary, which in many ways is an exploration of the burden of artistic creativity. Vegas struggles, constantly wracked with doubt about whether he can pull it off or even can call himself an artist.
A meeting with Emma Rodgers, a Liverpudlian sculptor with whom he now shares a studio, gives him the confidence he needs. It was Rodgers who convinced him to produce his sculptures under his stage name rather than Michael Pennington. “Her argument was, if people can see that you’re capable of this when they think you’re only one thing, you might inspire them to be greater than the perceived sum of their parts.”
‘Coming out’ as an artist
Allowing “Johnny Vegas” to take credit for the art is something of a surprise, as Vegas seems desperate for Michael Pennington to get his dues. Pennington doesn’t, for instance, get any kudos for the comedy career. “It was my alter ego. It was Johnny. He did all that and I could never take credit for his endeavours. I would write all week. Johnny would look at it and say, ‘That’s awful’. And just before going on stage, ‘I quite like this idea, I’m going to riff on that’. And I’d go, ‘OK, what about the rest of it?’ ‘Bin it.’”
Wasn’t “coming out” as an artist the perfect time to shed Johnny Vegas, as Jim Moir has done with Vic Reeves? “It’s a process,” says Vegas (though at this stage of the conversation, I am not sure whether to call him Johnny or Michael). “Johnny Vegas took ownership of the identity of Michael Pennington, but with art I am regaining Michael.”
Emma Rodgers, a Liverpudlian sculptor, convinced Vegas to produce his artwork under his stage name – Channel 4
Throwing himself into the art doesn’t necessarily mean turning his back on showbiz, although he admits he’s “probably burnt some bridges in TV” by rejecting ideas he deems not original enough and appearing, at times, as an uncontrollable, chaotic talent.
“In that industry, I’m a rescue dog, the kind you see in a pub and you go to stroke, and they say, ‘Don’t. He’ll bite you.’ And then, ‘Oh, but he’s got a lovely nature, he’s just been mistreated.’ That’s me. ‘He’s just been creatively misunderstood his whole career.’ The reason I loved standup is that it’s not run by committee, and you stand or fall by your own actions. What I don’t want to be is the face on the tent where you have no say on what’s going on inside. Like the title of this film – I’m not driving that car.”
‘ADHD isn’t a goldmine, it’s my life’
As for that title, Vegas says he’s not ashamed or embarrassed about ADHD, but he didn’t want it to hijack the programme. “For me, it’s not something I have any interest in cashing in on. But if you’ve got a director who sees it as a gold mine… ‘Wow, didn’t we do well? We found him at just the right time.’ It’s not a gold mine, it’s my life.”
The part of the film Vegas was most passionate about – uniting art students with technical students from the local college – has not made the cut. “It’s really upsetting,” he says. “I’ve got a lad up the road who’s made gates his whole life, and he contributed to this incredible piece of art [Vegas’s piece for St Helens ends up being a steel structure, housing ceramic tiles, which stands in the town’s World of Glass arts museum]. It was meant to be about those people, not me.”
Vegas wants his documentary to create a ‘conversation about art’ (pictured with comedian Ruby Wax and her partner, Ed Bye) – Channel 4
Nonetheless, Vegas talks about his ADHD in illuminating terms – he describes his mind as an enormous ranch, “and I don’t own a horse, so I can’t get around it”. He is also keen to normalise the condition. “Having ADHD doesn’t embarrass me, what embarrasses me is people who think, ‘Oh, everybody’s got to have something these days’. That really p—-s me off. It’s not like I’ve joined a book club. I haven’t suddenly made new friends. It’s just something that explains how and why I process things.”
‘I can’t afford to walk away’
Despite not wanting to be the centre of attention, there is a sense that Vegas – or Pennington – would like us to start seeing the real him. On camera he describes his comedy career as “a mound of dirt” and wants to leave behind a different legacy. One of the first pieces he made with Rodgers was Jester, or what Vegas calls “the broken jester”, a sad, squat little figure, sat lost in thought, wearing a wilted crown.
Vegas says we don’t need to overthink it. “Celebrity does ask a lot. I’m not whingeing; you get well paid, but it’s just a fact. I remember my dad quoting, ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ And that notion was haunting me. If you set out to be famous, you’ll more than likely fail. I’ve been in a career that has been blessed, but I think I’ve got unfinished business. There’s part of me that yearns to be taken seriously as an artist.”
Despite finding his wings – flight and the inability to fly is a recurring theme in his art – and starting to sell his work, Vegas is not about to give up the day job. “I’m working class and a pragmatist, there’s no way I can afford to walk away from it,” he says.
Upcoming work includes voicing Mr Twit in Netflix’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits and an Ideal stage show, but Vegas is “always in the [artist’s] studio – in my head and in my heart” and would like to see a time when it is his day-to-day reality. “Getting up, being on that train of thought, it’s lovely. That would be a beautiful commute.”
Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD and Me is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Wednesday 6 August