Is Rowan Atkinson Not Actually Funny?

I want to cover all bases. Okay. Oh, my God. Yeah. There you are. No costume, no set, no second take, a talk show, a razor, and a man who has just stopped being himself. Rowan Atkinson does not call himself a funny man. In 2011, he put it like this. I'm not a naturally funny man. I find that I can only be funny if I become someone else. A world has never agreed with him. Here he is in New York, still dressed as the character, but the voice is his, and so is the joke. In order to get from my house to the post office, you go out of my house, you turn left, you turn right, you turn left, and it's second on the right. Whereas here, you go down, you turn left, you turn right, you turn left, and it's second on the left. And that's quite a difference. That's a lot of stuff there. That's what I see. I would think that... He is funny in the costume, he is funny out of it, so what does he mean when he says he can only be funny as somebody else? He does not mean he cannot be funny, he means he cannot be funny on purpose as himself. It began with a face he had not even noticed. Do you see your face as your greatest asset, your facial dexterity? Mark, how kindly I've prepared you. Yes, facial dexterity. It's something that I never... I never realized I had, until I was about 20, 21, I only... He noticed it late, but by then he was at Oxford, studying engineering and turning up at sketch workshops for a summer review. One of the other students was Richard Curtis. Curtis remembers him never saying a word, then getting up to do an original sketch in which the stutter disappeared. Nobody filmed that. This is a stage recording from later. He's playing the interviewer. The other man is playing an expert on bees. Good evening. Tell me, what first interested you in the bee world, Mr. Cromwell? Well, um, even as a child, I used to... Shh! I'm sorry, shouldn't I have said that? No, of course you shouldn't. Pay no attention, please. When I say, shh, it's just a nervous mannerism I picked up. If, uh, if I want you to keep quiet, I will say, shush, you were saying. And so I have grown to love the little creatures. I mean, nature really has produced a little masterpiece in the life... I'm so sorry, I'm afraid that's a reflex action too. I squawk whenever someone mentions the word life. You see, even when I mention it myself, I should have told you. Well, the bees, as you know, are divided into different categories. The queen bee and the worker bee, whose life span... The doctorate was real Newcastle in 1975, then Oxford for a master's degree, then a doctorate he began and never finished. He does not bring it up often. He was asked about it once in 1981. My career as an electrical engineer. If the other thing had not happened, that is the job he would be doing now, and years later, on a Danish talk show, he did the job anyway. That's a pen, you see, if we just attach it, I just need a bit more wire off that. Huh? Hmm? Hmm? Here, here we are now. Now then. Thank you. Not going to turn into something, are you? No, no, I hope not. Please, please point it the other way. Like a monster. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what I'm saying. Comedian. Engineer, writer, and one more line he almost never mentions. In 2011, Top Gear put him in their cheap little car and timed him against every famous name that had ever driven it. Beautifully handled and Gambon, no drama, no histrionics, across the line. No, no. Yeah, exactly. One looks up there, but there's absolutely no reason why I should be there. It would be, I felt as though I did okay, but not great. That's my view. One minute, 42.2. He had beaten John Bishop, who had beaten Tom Cruise. His most famous character came out of a writing problem. By Atkinson's own account, Curtis said they were sick of writing verbal sketches, so they decided to build something with no words in it at all. 14 half-hour episodes were ever made, 7 hours of television, in 200 territories, for 35 years. On a British chat show, the host named his favourite the one on a beach. Watch what Atkinson worries about first, not the joke, proving it is not a trick. No, it's just that I want to prove that it's not a trick, because generally when you see something in a film or on television... He does it there and then, on the sofa, with no props and no second take. This is how it ends. And there you are, you're in that position, and all you do is you pull, you pull, you pull. He's exact about comedy in a way that cost him something. Same Danish show later on. I'm analyzing the humor, or I'm analyzing the joke rather than enjoying it. So somebody tells a very good joke and I go, hmm. By then, the face had gone everywhere and it had started early. In 1981, nine years before Mr. Bean, he told Michael Parkinson about a hamburger bar. Yes, it's like I was in a hamburger joint in London a week or so ago, and I was, and in many ways it's because people expect, if you are well known through television, they don't expect you to be in a hamburger joint. So, the girl who was serving me the hamburger, I was just taking it, and there was a girl working next to her. And she suddenly turned to the girl next to her, and I was literally two feet away, and she said very loudly, is this Rowan Atkinson? And the other girl looked and said, uh, no. She said, oh, I don't think it was. All right. And because all this is happening, this denial that you're who you are, is happening so close to you, it's a very... It's a very disarming thing. People who shout at you from across the street. It's the, hey, give us a face, Rowan. Thank you very much. Being recognized is one thing. Being believed is another. I went into a bank to cash a check, and I handed over the check, and she said, thank you, and she said, oh, Mr. Atkinson, I'm such an admirer of your work. Could you sign this piece of paper for my daughter? So I signed the piece of paper, and I handed it back, and she took it back, she put it on one side, and she looked at my cheque, and she said, now, do you have any means of identification? And you think, well... 40 years of being somebody else, a face he did not notice until he was 21, a doctorate he left behind, a lap time that beat Tom Cruise, and a bank clerk who asked the most famous face in the world for identification. He says he is not a naturally funny man. Nobody has ever taken his word for it, because even while he was saying it, he was still funny.