Serafinowicz is the eldest of three comedy siblings who grew up in Gateacre in the south Liverpool suburbs, a city he calls “this crazy little independent state”. You realise that adults are just old kids, and they’re as stupid and reckless and ill-informed and blah-blah-blah as anybody.” And you realise that there’s not a magical thing that makes you responsible or grown up. “As a kid, you think all adults have got it all sorted, you know – ‘Don’t worry, got everything sorted, we’ll take care of it’. News Russell Brand tells fans 'there are things I can't talk about' at gig after sex abuse claims Read More “All of us are dads,” Serafinowicz says, “and I think there’s definitely an unspoken thing that we want our kids to love the character.”īrian’s a gentle buffoon, and the climax of the stage show leans into his very endearing uselessness as he tries to make his late father’s dream of space flight a reality on board the Butterocket. He turned up occasionally on the sport-themed CBBC sketch show FIT but has pretty much been mothballed since. Over the years they’ve piloted a Brian Butterfield sitcom and worked on a variety show vehicle and a chat show. Serafinowicz writes Brian’s material with his brother James and another brotherly writing team, Andrew, Steve and Tim Dawson. More recently he led Amazon Prime’s underrated superhero satire The Tick, and he voices a character in the Chicken Run sequel Dawn of the Nugget.īut Brian Butterfield is a character he keeps coming back to. “Me and Robert have always referred to it as our expensive hobby,” he says.
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Its two series recently returned to iPlayer and Serafinowicz is still very proud of it, and has been talking to Popper about their dreams of making Look Around You: The Motion Picture. Then in 2002 he got his own show, Look Around You, the spoof of schools’ science programmes he made with Friday Night Dinner writer Robert Popper. Serafinowicz in Look Around You, 2005 (Photo: BBC)
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Serafinowicz’s first TV work was as Spitting Image’s voice of Jacques Chirac, and he became, for a while, an actor who was very good at turning up in other people’s stuff: he had brief but very funny appearances in Smack the Pony, Spaced, Black Books and I’m Alan Partridge, and in Shaun of the Dead as Shaun’s landlord and early victim of the zombie apocalypse, Pete. I think it’s the thing that if people stop me in the street, and they recognise me, it would be for Brian Butterfield.” “We wanted that, and all the little bits in The Peter Serafinowicz Show, to live on online, and that character particularly – people just sort of latched onto it a bit.
“Dude,” he starts in slight disbelief, “I mean, this character, it’s only been on TV like a few times.”īut his few sketches have been huge on YouTube ever since they first went out. Serafinowicz is still getting his head around the love for Brian.
Brian met fans after the gig, many of whom were wearing bootleg T-shirts promoting short-lived ventures like his games console, the Buttertendo.
But he’s hit on a new way to make money: a business seminar, in which he will reveal the secrets of his success and you will get your own signed degree certificate from Butterfield University afterwards. In the show Brian is, as usual, bouncing back from a typically unfortunate run of events. “In a way, it reminds me of what we – that is, me and the other writers – have been doing for years now.” ‘If people stop me in the street, it would be for Brian Butterfield’ (Photo: Press)
“He’s this old guy, but with so much enthusiasm and drive,” Serafinowicz says. Brian Butterfield is, at last, taking centre stage. The show itself is joyous, silly and huge fun. At the gig, you can buy tote bags showing a shopping list for the many suggestions Brian makes for “treat day” foods – hoisin crispy owl, Large Macs, 20-cheese omelette – and there are packets of Butterfield’s own brand bonbonbonbons. He’s been, among other things, an international hotelier, karaoke bar owner, private detective, speaking clock operator and most famously, the inventor of a diet plan for which adherents must fast for six days before going hell for leather on “treat day”. In his first appearance on The Peter Serafinowicz Show in 2007, he was a very good spoof of no-win, no-fee solicitors in an advert for Butterfield Direct – Brian is such a shoddy lawyer that one client ends up in debt to a ghost – but since then has become a businessman with an endless genius for starting, running, and inevitably cratering new ventures. Brian Butterfield was only briefly on TV, but the way his sketches keep percolating around social media mean he’s perhaps more popular now than he ever has been. The Moth Club gig is one of the last warm-ups for a national tour, which is both a reintroduction and a victory lap for one of British comedy’s cult heroes. Peter Serafinowicz as Brian Butterfield (Photo: Press)
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