Currently the comedian is also promoting his first book, a collection of one-liners ambitiously titled *A Billion Jokes: Volume 1*. Although the contents are cringe inducing, Serafinowicz clearly revels in groans as much as laughter demonstrated in crackers like ‘I finally got around to reading that Stephen Hawking book; it was about time.’ Nonetheless his enthusiasm for them is very endearing. “I’ve been quietly stockpiling these jokes for years and I’ve always wanted to collect them into a book” he says proudly “I haven’t quite worked out how many volumes I can make. The real inspiration though is twitter.”
Few entertainers have managed to channel social media as excellently as Serafinowicz (although his brother-in-law, Graham Linehan matches his twitter devotion). “Twitter is like doing stand-up by post” he explains, “I’ve done stand-up and it can be pretty terrifying but occasionally very rewarding and fun. But often it’s no fun at all. Twitter on the other hand is pretty much fun all the time. It’s such a thrill to see a joke begin to spread. Sometimes when I think of a joke that may be a bit offensive, my instinct is always to just tweet it and see what happens. Last year I did a lot of stand up and amassed all these jokes that I thought were really funny but some ended up bombing. I find that there’s a particular type of wordplay that people don’t like live but can really work when it’s limited to a hundred and forty characters. You have to boil the joke down to the bare skeleton. The more fat that’s there the less it gets retweeted.” With the ability to immediately access his several hundred thousand followers from his phone, Serafinowicz (alongside comedians like Limmy, Rob Delaney and Louis C.K.) has been able to amass a devoted online following that has eluded many more established acts. “Twitter’s a great discipline as a writer and it’s sort of where the idea for the book came from. It’s so futuristic and ephemeral I wanted to make something that might actually last and exist in people’s homes. I even designed it to be more traditional looking and Victorian.”
As well as writing books and making films Serafinowicz is also completing directing a hat-trick of Hot Chip music videos (“the new one is set inside a video game and was made in Andy Serkis’s motion capture studio”), filming a cameo in the new Arrested Development movie (“It’s one of my favorite shows, I really don’t want to screw up and have everyone talking about the ‘shit one with Peter in it’”) and considering releasing an album of his music under his composer alias ‘Gelg’ (“It will probably only make a hundred people happy. It’s the most ultra-niche thing of all my niche things”). Yet Serafinowicz is still trying to engage with a wider audience. “The internet stuff doesn’t pay much,” he admits, “Now when I’m working on something it’s often based on favours and sweetness but there’s a limit for what you can do for no money. To make something bigger like a series or a film you really only get one chance and I’m not sure how many favours I have left.”
But by dedicating his life so fully to refining characters and expressing surreal ideas, is Serafinowicz doomed to become an empty vessel that may one day confess his darkest secrets to a Muppet? Although there are parallels, Serafinowicz has a self-awareness and affability that distinguishes him significantly from Sellers. But he does recognise that getting lost in a joke doesn’t always provide the desired creative catharsis; “In terms of my career I really feel like I’ve underachieved” he acknowledges, “So many performances become lost forever when they’re online or on television. There aren’t many great comedy films and it’s a huge challenge to make comedies like The Pink Panther series that actually last. But that’s why I want to try… I just feel like I haven’t done the thing I really want to do. But I just don’t know what it is yet.”
