Joe Lycett: ‘I don’t think Labour politicians would like being made fun of... the Tories didn’t care’

A few years ago, Joe Lycett would have insisted he wasn’t a political comedian. Sure, the stand-up comic had caused havoc in Conservative HQ after reportedly tricking senior figures with a parody Sue Gray report he’d shared online. And, yes, he’d made a name for himself offering sarcastic messages of support to scandal-hit Tory ministers (one sample message to Suella Braverman after her Rwanda deal was blocked: “@suellabraverman ignore the haters babe (by haters I mean the royal court of justice)”. But in interviews, Lycett denied it.

Fast-forward two and a half years, and the 36-year-old is one of the country’s most prominent Tory teasers. I’m meeting Lycett, and have to know: does he really still think he’s not? “Nah, I basically am, aren’t I?” he scoffs, playfully. “I didn’t start out with that in mind, and I’m not trained in that way... But I can’t deny that I’m politically motivated these days.” Lycett chuckles. “But it was the previous government that did that. Which was nice of them.”

For all his loathing of the “really horrible, nasty group of people” that make up the Conservative Party, the Birmingham native can thank the Tories for much of his fame. For years, Lycett was a mid-tier name on the British stand-up scene and panel-show circuit, fighting corporate injustice on his consumer rights programme Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back. But his political stunts were getting more traction.

Things reached a head in 2022, when, during an appearance on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Lycett deadpanned that he was a big supporter of newly appointed PM Liz Truss. Simply by claiming to be “very right-wing”, he gave the conservative commentariat a collective aneurysm, and secured his spot as a future national treasure for his fans.

Lycett clearly loves attention, and admits as much. We’re meeting in a central London coffee shop; Lycett is dressed in a Timmy Mallett-like ensemble of white shirt and trousers, both of which are covered in huge, colourful prints of paintings. A pair of garish, Elton John-esque blue sunglasses are perched on the table in front of him. On closer inspection, I realise his shirt is actually covered in his own portraits: the kind of scratchy acrylic paintings of celebrities Lycett frequently shares with his 1 million Instagram followers. “You can imagine people at Birmingham New Street looking at me wearing this thing,” he says, brows raised.

The outfit might suggest otherwise, but Lycett is far more subdued in person than the fast-talking, prank-playing whirlwind he’s known as. The coffee he orders, for one, is decaf. Nowadays, he admits, his comedy persona is “almost entirely different to what I’m like in real life”. “I live a quieter life than I used to,” he says. As a bisexual man who spends most of his evenings at home watching TV shows such as Severance with his girlfriend, he sees his work as his “outlet for campness”.

It’s not the only way in which Lycett differs in person from the onscreen, onstage version of himself. Despite building a career by taking shots at everyone from politicians and footballers to banks and oil giants, the Late Night Lycett host is remarkably willing to criticise himself throughout our conversation.

He’s aware, for instance, that his steady stream of pranks – from leaking fake news stories to the media to launching a pretend podcast called “Turdcast” – means that everything he does is now treated with “suspicion”, and admits that “it’s become a bit of a problem”. He’s been trying to get in contact with culture secretary Lisa Nandy to discuss a campaign about improving conditions for arts sector workers, and “her team have, quite understandably, been going, ‘Don’t go anywhere near him, because he’ll do some f***ing stupid thing and make us all look silly.’”

In order to circumvent this, Lycett reckons working anonymously is the answer. Weeks after we meet, banners bearing the words “Stop the Arts” appear over Shakespeare’s Globe. Lycett later reveals himself as the culprit, and addresses Nandy directly in a corresponding Instagram video. “I know you care passionately about the arts, and have done ever since you were given this job about 17 minutes ago,” he ribs.

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Lycett is still figuring out how he’s going to approach Labour now they’re the ones in power. “I don’t know yet, really,” he says, admitting that it’s hard to “analyse” so far when so little has happened (we’re talking pre-Freebiegate). “But I think there’s a chance that people like me will have more of a chance of getting stuff through, because the last government were sort of soulless. They didn’t care if I made fun of them, because who gives a s***.”

He’s a friend of Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips, and Lycett has met other Labour ministers and MPs over the years – although, he says, “I don’t think they’d like being made fun of, in a way that the Tories didn’t care.” In theory, Labour should be “more malleable”, he notes, before adding: “But I think once you’re in power, power is just a corrupting thing.”

For such a well-known jokester, Lycett doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in the rebel role. He’s impish, absolutely, but he’s also a hard worker, constantly juggling the various facets of his public persona: stand-up, showrunner, presenter, gardening influencer.

Raised in the leafy, middle-class suburb of Solihull, and attending a grammar school, Lycett says he was ultimately brought up “to be polite and not to be rude” – it was his “gobby” personality that got in the way. “I really hate being told to shush or any of that. I get a real flood of cortisol when somebody tells me to not do something,” he says. That seems like a catalyst for his entire career, I suggest, and he laughs. “Yeah, that’s it. There it is. I was rebellious, but always done in a nice way. I think.”

The son of two artists (his mum was a graphic designer who did illustrations for Cadbury’s, his dad a shop-front designer), Lycett was obsessed with graphic design as a teenager, and he pursued that career before committing to comedy. In recent years, art and design have once again become a prominent part of Lycett’s work. He featured in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition this year, and regularly posts his brightly coloured canvases of plants, animals, and Harry Styles.

Lycett attempted to sue Styles over an overdue payment of a KitKat Chunky he’d been promised in return for the artwork, though this was later revealed to be a stunt mocking the legal activities of an oil company. “Of course, threatening to sue Harry Styles is ridiculous, but Shell’s multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Greenpeace is all too real,” he said, as he encouraged his followers to donate to the environmental group.

Now, the best of Lycett’s artistic ability is on display in Art Hole, a compendium of the comedian’s funniest celebrity portraits and his fantastical writing about how they came to be. He shows me some of his favourites on his phone. There’s the “Mona Lisa Scott Lee”, depicting the Steps star posing like Leonardo da Vinci’s muse with a copy of Cheryl Cole’s seminal 2012 memoir Cheryl: My Story, as well as former deputy PM Thérèse Coffey, and Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford.

As he points out his portraits of the recently divorced former king and queen of ITV daytime, while mournfully interjecting: “RIP to that relationship”, I realise that it’s Holmes and Langsford who are emblazoned on his shirt, taking pride of place on his chest.

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Lycett loves art, but isn’t entirely confident when I ask if he identifies as an artist. “Yeah?” he asks, mostly questioning himself. “I think so. Yeah. It sounds haughty and wanky, but actually, I make art, so I am an artist.” He wants to encourage people to “have a go”, no matter their perception of their talent. “It’s just the joy of doing it,” he says.

So we have Lycett the artist, too, then. But when I suggest he’s only adding strings to his bow, he clarifies that “it’s more just they’re all frayed strings [already] on the bow”. What I do question is where stand-up comedy currently fits in his overstuffed bag of tricks. Lycett started performing when he was a drama student at university in Manchester, finding that comedy scratched “whatever that need in me is for praise”.

It’s been two years since he last toured, although he’s recently been hosting his own Joe Lycett & Friends new material nights in Birmingham. “Stand-up is an elusive beast of a thing, and I’m still nowhere near as good as I’d like to be,” he says. I’m surprised to hear those words, and tell Lycett as much. “Yeah, well, it is f***ing hard,” he says, with a dark chuckle. “But I’m glad it is, because otherwise everyone would be doing it.”

I first saw Lycett gig in 2018, and he was integrating large-scale stunts stretched over long periods of time into his work even then, two years before he legally – albeit temporarily – changed his name to Hugo Boss for a segment on Got Your Back, and the world really started paying attention. There’s been a plethora of pranks since, and the public has largely stayed on Lycett’s side. If there was a moment when Lycett got a glimpse at backlash, it came in November 2022, just months after that “very right-wing” Kuenssberg interview.

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To sum it up: in an online video addressing David Beckham, Lycett told the footballer that if he didn’t pull out of his role as an ambassador to Qatar at that winter’s World Cup in protest over the country’s LGBT+ record, he would shred £10,000. A week followed. Beckham dodged questions about Lycett’s threat (his team would later issue a paltry statement saying that Beckham supported the debate about “key issues” prompted by the decision to let Qatar host the tournament). Back home, people theorised that Lycett couldn’t go through with it. Surely not? But as promised, a week later, Lycett shared a follow-up video and put 10 big ones in a woodchipper.

Just kidding. Twenty-four hours after video No 2, Lycett revealed that it had all been a trick – surprise! – and that the money had been donated to LGBT+ charities. “I would never destroy real money. I would never be so irresponsible,” he said. For many of Lycett’s fans, it was a relief. They supported the comedian and the cause, but felt that destroying the cash would have gone too far.

Professionally, Lycett says, the Beckham stunt “sort of f***ed” him, because it wasn’t the first time he’d said he was doing one thing, then revealed it to actually be something else. “I think if I tried to do an ultimatum again, people would just go, ‘Well, he’s not gonna do a thing because last time he didn’t,’ so I can’t do that ever again, probably,” he says.

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But there was another side that criticised Lycett – activists and artists who were annoyed that he didn’t shred the money. They argued that protest only works if there are stakes present. In not shredding the cash, Lycett had removed them, and tried to have the best of both worlds. Did he ever consider actually going through with it, I ask. “Noooo. I mean, I must have done, at some point, but I would never have...” he pauses. “I think I just know myself and I would never have actually done it.”

It’s the whole “trying to be polite and nice” thing again, he points out, “and also I do think it is wrong to probably destroy money in that way”. The fear, though? That was real. “Filming the shredding of the non-real money was one of the most horrible experiences,” Lycett says. “I’m still a bit bruised from it, really.”

When it came to Beckham, Lycett has always said he never expected a response from the former England player. But really, he does want to change things with his stunts. After 14 years of Tory rule, he hopes the Labour government will be responsive to the causes he’s championing: consumer rights, the environment, LGBT+ issues.

“I think they’re going to be progressive,” he says, although he doesn’t sound particularly sure of that statement. “But I didn’t go into the voting booth thinking, ‘Yes, this is great!’ I actually debated in the booth. Looking at the options, I was just like, ‘I have no idea who to vote for here really.’” In the end, he went with a “‘get them out’ policy”, as many did: “But yeah, I’m not thrilled about it. I don’t feel like everything’s looking rosy, but I am very glad that we’ve got rid of [the Tories].”

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After years in the public eye, calling out others has become Lycett’s profession. Does he ever worry about the finger being pointed back at him, being branded a hypocrite? “Yeah. Well, I am,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Built into being human is hypocrisy... We do have a sense of what’s right and wrong, and sometimes we don’t adhere to that ourselves.”

Lycett admits he’s “got myself into a bit of a hole with it”, but continues: “What I come around to is that that shouldn’t mean that you shouldn’t stand up for the things you believe in... I’m sure I’ll say something, and then it will conflict massively with something I’ve done before. But that’s how they try and shut people up, really, isn’t it?”

And if I’ve learnt one thing about Lycett, it’s this: don’t tell him to shut up. You’ll only make him louder.

‘Joe Lycett’s Art Hole’ is out in hardback, audio and ebook formats fromTrapeze