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Danny Wallace

Scottish-born funnyman Danny Wallace not only discovered awesome comedy collective The Mighty Boosh, but also penned a series of rib-tickling books, including The Yes Man, which was recently turned into a Jim Carrey movie. More recently he has toured some of Australia’s bizarre and brilliant Big Things for a column in UK newspaper The Guardian.

You’ve been Down Under touring the Big Things. What made you do that?
My wife is Australian and we met in London. Her brothers would ironically send pictures of the Big Things. I didn’t really know anything about them, so when I came over to Australia she took me to see one and I just thought, “well, let’s see a load more”. It’s a way of getting to see the country in a way that Brits might not know about. It’s a great way of moving along the coast. I just started with the chook and wrote about what happened on the way to the big earth worm.

What’s the appeal? 

I like the fact that everyone in Australia thinks they’re rubbish, and yet they keep building them. They started out representing the area, “hey look, we’re great at prawns,” or, “we love oysters”, and then it just became, “we’ve got a lot of mosquitos, let’s build a big mosquito”. Why? Keep that quiet. Don’t build 
a massive one.



Your book The Yes Man was made into a film recently. Did Hollywood change it much?
It’s very different from the book, because it’s American and it’s Jim Carrey. So from day one I just said: “The book is always there, the book will never change, but with the film we can do anything, and Jim Carrey’s doing it, so do your thing.” The structure’s the same, the characters are pretty much the same, but a lot is very different.

Has that annoyed your diehard fans?
People do get on their high horse. But that’s silly. That’s saying no when the whole book is about saying yes to things. Why close yourself off? It’s a silly book with a good heart. I said: “As long as it’s a silly, warm film with a good heart and it’s funny, that’s what I care about.” I’d rather there were two things in the world that were different and exciting than two things the same.

How’s it feel being Jim Carrey?
Great. I’m a big fan of his. I thought if he plays it like The Truman Show then that would be the way I would want it. He does it really well. Jim Carrey challenged me recently to bungy jump, because he bungy jumps for the film. Apparently there’s a crew coming over to London and they’re going to push me off a bridge.

Are you still saying yes?
I don’t say it to everything because I’d be dead by now and broke. But I say yes more. When I see one of those opportunities it’s like a foreign film where a subtitle comes up and I know what I have to say. My grandma used to say, “you’re as likely to meet the love of your life at a bad party as at a good one”.

For your age you’ve been fairly prolific. Would you call yourself a workaholic?
I go where the fun is really. I’m not all that ambitious but I guess I’ve got a polite ambition. My ambition extends to wanting to do something well and I try to do things that are fun. Like doing this Big Things thing, I’ll probably end up losing money, but I don’t care. It’s fun, it’s an experience, it’s something else I’ve done. As long as you have fun doing something and you do it well, you might be asked to have some more fun.

Danny’s latest book, Friends Like These, is out now, published by Ebury Press

Check out his Big Things column here.