{"id":308256,"date":"2026-03-01T17:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T17:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/308256\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T17:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T17:44:07","slug":"rufus-hound-looks-back-by-the-time-i-started-to-do-standup-i-realised-id-been-training-for-it-my-entire-life-rufus-hound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/308256\/","title":{"rendered":"Rufus Hound looks back: \u2018By the time I started to do standup, I realised I\u2019d been training for it my entire life\u2019 | Rufus Hound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rufus Hound in an orange life jacket and hat, whistle in his mouth, in 2026, recreating a boyhood photo from 1985<\/a>Rufus Hound in 1985 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Archive photograph: courtesy of Rufus Hound<\/p>\n

Born in Essex in 1979, Rufus Hound<\/a> is a\u00a0comedian, actor and\u00a0broadcaster. He left his job in PR in 2000 to work full-time as a\u00a0comedian, first in standup and then on TV. A panel show regular, including Mock the Week and Celebrity Juice, he has also built a substantial stage career, with roles in West End productions such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Wind in the Willows and One Man, Two Guvnors. He stars in The Mesmerist at Watford Palace theatre from 2-21 March.<\/p>\n

I was six, and on holiday. My dad was\u00a0an accountant who benefited, briefly, from the jobs boom of the 1970s. Suddenly, getting on a plane was an option for our family. We\u00a0spent our summers in Corsica, going on boat\u00a0trips. A few years ago, I would have said that boy was wide-eyed and innocent. Now I\u2019ve done a bit of\u00a0therapy, I know he was consumed by\u00a0anxiety and desperate for attention.<\/p>\n

According to my mum, my first word was \u201clook\u201d. My brother arrived 17 months after I was born, so most days Mum would have been pushing us around in a buggy, and I would be pointing at everything going, \u201cLook, look, look.\u201d What I was really saying was, \u201cEveryone, I\u2019m here!\u201d<\/p>\n

I was a huge fan of The Muppet Show \u2013 my favourite episode was the Rudolf Nureyev one where he sings Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. I\u00a0watched it enough times that I vaguely knew some of the words, so one day, aged three, I put on a silver snowsuit and sang it to my parents, who filmed it. It was the first time I realised, \u201cIf I do a special performance, I can win the approval of the folks that love me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every school report I had from four onwards said, \u201cIf Rufus spent less time trying to make everyone laugh and more time doing the work, he\u2019d be much better off.\u201d That all changed when I met David Proudlock. When I\u00a0was a teenager, I went to a\u00a0boarding school called Frensham Heights. David had a soft spot for kids like me, who financially struggled to be there, compared with kids who were the sons of Ghanaian princes and South African property moguls. He was firm \u2013 a no-bullshit teacher and the first person who said, \u201cYou\u00a0spend all your time showing off. But what are you actually doing when you get people\u2019s attention?\u201d He\u00a0taught me that I needed to be good \u2013 do the homework, take it seriously. Being charming and silly\u00a0is\u00a0not enough. After\u00a0a few years, my parents couldn\u2019t afford to pay the\u00a0fees at the school, but David managed to get me a\u00a0scholarship. For the next two\u00a0years I read fastidiously, studying the plays of Jim Cartwright, Willy Russell and Shakespeare. When I got into theatre as an adult, I inherently understood what to do, because David Proudlock had taught me decades before.<\/p>\n

Before I started doing standup, I\u00a0went\u00a0out with a woman who wrote about comedy. I had been in the house when she interviewed a\u00a0brilliant comedian called Boothby Graffoe, and\u00a0remember him saying, \u201cStandup is 70% confidence, and 30% material.\u201d A few years into my standup career, I bumped into him in a cafe and told him about how inspiring I thought that quote was. He\u00a0said, \u201cI\u00a0would never\u00a0have said that. It\u2019s 90% confidence.\u201d That was the point at which I became the comedian Rufus Hound. I\u2019d been doing material, and I\u00a0knew it worked, but the laughs weren\u2019t as big as I\u2019d expected. From that moment on, I approached the stage as if I was the world\u2019s funniest human. The clouds had parted, the mood in the room shifted, and from there on my gigs went better.<\/p>\n

If I ever got picked on by another kid\u00a0at school, Mum would say, \u201cYou can\u2019t fight them. But you are smarter than them, so you can talk your way out of it.\u201d All I had to do was make everyone laugh. By the time I started to do standup, I realised I had been training for it my entire life. The TV\u00a0panel show world was the same: you\u2019re\u00a0team A, you\u2019re team B, now duke it out. Who is going to win?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a very diverse career. I\u2019ve\u00a0done comedy, ballroom dancing, classical theatre and talkshow radio presenting. I always knew that if one thing went wrong, I had other skills I could lean on. When the pandemic struck, that all changed. I\u2019d spent the afternoon in dress rehearsals for Everybody\u2019s Talking About Jamie. I went out, got\u00a0some sushi and came back to the theatre, whereupon the stage manager called us all together and said, \u201cRight, the whole of the West End is shut down from now.\u201d At\u00a0that point, I had 18\u00a0months\u2019 work in\u00a0my diary, which as a theatre actor is absolutely unheard of. By the end of\u00a0the year, I had nothing. I had separated from my missus and I was no longer living in the family home. I\u2019d been diagnosed with ADHD and I was trying to process a lifetime of struggling with concentration and insecurity. A year later, I was working as a circus ringmaster because it was literally the only thing that meant I\u00a0could earn a living.<\/p>\n

Then came Dancing on Ice. That was a\u00a0transformative time. My partner Robin [Johnstone] would teach me how to do a move, and I\u2019d say, \u201cCan\u00a0you just leave me alone for five minutes while I go and practise this by myself?\u201d So I\u2019d go off and try to learn it. Until one afternoon, the camera guy called me over and said, \u201cYou have to stop.\u201d I asked what he meant. He said, \u201cI\u2019m over here with headphones on and you\u2019re talking to yourself all the time.\u201d I listened back to the audio, and it was five whole minutes of me going, \u201cCome on, you fucking idiot. Just do it. Not like that. Oh, you moron. Listen, twatto, do it right.\u201d I had no idea that was my internal monologue.<\/p>\n

Last year, I took a month off and went to a place in Thailand to get some help. I had realised I was always doing something to try to make painful feelings go away \u2013 using substances such as booze, sugar and vaping as a crutch. Before I went, I spoke to the people who ran the facility on the phone and told them I didn\u2019t want treatment as an addict \u2013 I wanted to help treat whatever is fuelling this reliance on drinking, eating or smoking. When I got there, they searched my bags and told me I\u00a0wasn\u2019t allowed to leave. A man started shouting at me about addiction. It wasn\u2019t exactly what I had asked for, but I did take away one thing \u2013 the ability to sit in discomfort, instead of reaching for something to soothe it.<\/p>\n

I could still do without waking up at 3am, feeling completely overwhelmed and thinking, \u201cFucking hell, can I pull off whatever job I am doing this month?\u201d I could also really do with somebody offering me a job that paid me the kind of money that I was earning before the pandemic. Or winning the lottery. But I also have so much to be grateful for. My children still love me. I\u2019m also engaged to somebody who is phenomenally wonderful. She has helped me deal with a lot of my nonsense. Over Christmas, my daughter sent her a\u00a0card saying, \u201cThe best present you could ever give us is a dad who isn\u2019t tearing himself to pieces all the time.\u201d So, really, what more could I want?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rufus Hound in an orange life jacket and hat, whistle in his mouth, in 2026, recreating a boyhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-308256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}