Riddle: What happens when you are in a room with two of the most revered funny guys in the world—Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’?

You are in for a riot, that’s what happens! And it happened to me last week; it’s very difficult to keep a straight face when you’re in the company of the duo who are currently on a world tour in India as part of the Black Dog Easy Evenings, for their show, An Evening With Colin & Brad. We caught up with them before they treated an audience to stomach-clenching outbursts, where they pronounced ‘Gurgaon’ as ‘Gargoyle’. And, just in case you’re wondering, yes, they’re every bit as hilarious as they are onscreen. But, why should I take the fun away? Read on…

© Colin and Brad

MXP: ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’ is legend, even today!

Colin: It is, isn’t it? And so are we!

Brad: Yeah, we’re two old guys whose combined age is around 108!

Colin: With Whose Line… there was always an element of surprise. Then, there was the relationship between all the players—I think we enjoyed each other’s company and had a lot of fun translated on the show because the audiences related to the fun that we were having; it was very contagious!

MXP: Colin, how did you come up with a new pun in every single show?

Colin: I guess I’m just amazingly talented! But, you know what? We had a great cast and so it always translated. It’s hard to do improv by yourself; part of it has to do with opening up, listening and reacting to what your partner is doing. So, they deserve a little credit for whatever I came up with.

© Colin and Brad

MXP: And what if you slip up?

Colin: Oh, we’re always slipping up and that’s what’s so funny. Because there is nothing planned and everything has to be at the tip of your mouth. So, we would hope it turned out funny. It’s like a ‘How ‘bout this?’ and then, if the audience laughed, it was a great joke; if they didn’t, then we would try and turn that into some kind of joke.

MXP: But what if you have a bad day? Does that affect your performance?

Colin: I think they are two different realities! So, no matter how bad a day we’ve had or how hurt we are, we get energized by the audience and the fact that they’re there to see a show that we don’t even have prepared at that moment; we have to work with them to come up with it. So, that wakes you up a little bit and gets your energy going. On such days, the show is the most fun that we have because we have total freedom to do whatever we want. So, for us, it just matters that if we’ve had a bad day, then this show is going to be the best part of that day because it’s a chance to have fun without anything bothering us.

Brad: Part of doing improv is that you’re in a constant state of panic. So as soon as you’re finished with one thing, you’re already getting into the other one. It’s like a series of near-death experiences. So you don’t quite remember anything besides the fact that you remember not dying and that’s about it!

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MXP: What’s life like when you’re not in front of an audience?

Colin: We’re both pretty shy in our real lives. I know you wouldn’t think that. But, we really spend most of our time in hermit, with our wives.

I do all the cooking at home. So that’s my way of relaxing and unwinding along with a lot of wine.

Brad: And I do all of the eating.

MXP: Does humour come very easily to you both?

Small pause…

Brad: Colin’s eating a cookie. Let me get this one. Comedy comes very easy to me. And Colin has to work really hard to be funny.

Colin: Brad’s a liar. So, don’t listen to anything he says.

Brad: Colin has an eating disorder. He can’t do an interview without eating a cookie!

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MXP: What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever done in Helping Hands?

Colin: Oh geez! That’s a hard one! So often, you know just shoving things into Ryan’s mouth and then having him spit it out into my hands. It’s pretty disgusting…

MXP: How do you get the spot-on ideas for Hoedown?

Colin to Brad: Ohhhh… you have a better idea than I do on that!

Brad: The hardest part of Hoedown is who you are in the line. The farther down in the line you are, the more chances you have that someone is not going to take the rhyme in the line. In the end, you almost have three versions of the hoedown!

MXP: What’s your favourite moment from Let’s Make A Date?

Colin: I like the ones where we can be more physical.

Brad: I liked the one where Colin was being eaten by ants. I don’t know why but that was kind of fun for me.

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MXP: Which are some of the funniest pieces you have performed together?

Brad: From Whose Line…, it was something that Colin did with Richard Simmons—a scene where Richard had to be a range of objects, and in the end, he was a jet ski.

MXP: Do you think women are impressed by the standup comedy act?

Colin: I think that women are very attracted by humour. We’re both very lucky that we have beautiful wives because I think our humour could have been the only thing that could have attracted them.

MXP: What’s your new show about?

Colin: We’re going to play games that we come up with and are similar to games we played on ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’. We bring a lot of audience members on the stage. So it’s very interactive and in fact, this is more interactive with the audience than Whose Line…

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MXP: Tell us about your bromance!

Brad: I am Colin’s favourite person in the world. Just don’t tell my wife.

Colin: We have somewhat like a sibling relationship where I’m the older, wiser brother and he’s the annoying younger brother. I hate him… But, it worked out for us. We’ve never had a fight in the 13 years we’ve been touring which is quite amazing. We’ve both had the same sort of outlook on performing, on what shows should we be doing. Each of us has our strengths that we bring to the show. Brad is very detail-oriented, making sure that the tour works its best.

Brad: And I’m looking forward to finding out what Colin’s strengths are.

Colin: That’s funny.

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MXP: You’re quite the inspiration for younger standup comedians and shows!

Colin: I think it’s great that I’m an inspiration for young improvisers for things they should do and Brad is an inspiration for things they shouldn’t do.

Brad: We’ve been very fortunate with Whose Line… that brought our improv out into the mainstream. Wherever we’ve toured, we’ve had many young people come up and say, “You know, we really love you and because of you we started doing improv at our high school.” So, we’re very proud of the legacy AND that we’ve brought people into this art form that is incredibly easy to do and is a great job for lazy people.

MXP: What advice do you give them?

Brad: Get a real job. That’s first. I always say that if there is anything else that they love doing, they should do that. I tell that to Colin all the time!

Colin: I never listen to anything Brad says because I’m too busy eating cookies.

Our general advice is just go out there and do whatever you want, as often as you can. Unfortunately, it’s not one of those things that you get to read in a book. You have to just go out and do it. At times you’re going to fail and it’s the only way you figure out most things about yourself and it’s a muscle that really has to be worked on.

Photo: © Colinandbradshow (Main Image)