There is more to Birmingham than Balti, Black Sabbath and bin strikes. Proud Brummie Joe Lycett set himself a mission to fly the flag for the city and to extend a hand of friendship to other Birminghams around the world (well, there are 18 in America) – from Birmingham, a suburb of Detroit where locals call themselves Birminghamsters, to Birmingham, Alabama, still best known for its place in civil rights history. Lycett is as famous for his campaigning stunts as he is for his comedy. Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back was a consumer rights show with laughs, such as ‘shredding’ £10,000 in protest of David Beckham’s Qatar World Cup sponsorship deal.
In The United States of Birmingham, Lycett travels off the beaten track. Touring places that just happen to share the same name is a journey into the heart – which happens to be especially red at the moment – of the US. It’s an eye-opening and surprising look at the state of that nation, which Lycett, who became a father late last year, is still trying to process when he calls Big Issue from his own Birmingham.
Big Issue: You established the first International Day of Birmingham. What’s the best way to celebrate?
Joe Lycett: Ideally, come to Birmingham. Start the day at Victoria Square, take in the beautiful surroundings. Wander down New Street towards the bull. Stroke the bull’s nose, or wherever on the bull you want to stroke. Find yourself in a watering hole, raise a glass to Brummies past and present: Alison Hammond, Ozzy Osbourne, Adrian Chiles. End up in the Gay Village and get pissed. That’s how I would treat the day. But if you can’t get to Birmingham, just buy some Bird’s Custard, have a bowl and be done with it.
Where did the idea for the programme come from?
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We were making Travel Man, talking about whether we’d ever do an episode in Birmingham, Alabama. Then we started looking and realised there are all these other Birminghams. There’s an underwater Birmingham [Birmingham, Kentucky was flooded by the creation of the Kentucky Lake], a Birmingham with really swish sports cars [driven by the Birminghamsters in Michigan]. We went to the commissioners at Sky, and they said, “Yeah, we’ll have that.” And we were a bit like, “What?! You’ll commission any old shit, won’t you?” And this was the shit they commissioned. And here we are four episodes later.
Which was your favourite Birminghomage?
I didn’t dislike any of them. I talk about the Toledo one a lot because of the Beer & Bacon Festival and Tony Packo’s [a Hungarian-American diner] where you can get a Bloody Mary with a sausage in it. But then I’ve got a real soft spot for all the rural ones in Iowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania. They’re all different, but they’ve all got something.
Do they all have something in common?
Two things seemed to be consistent. All the Birminghams feel like they’re forgotten, slightly under-doggy laughable places. And lots of them are really proud of their water. We’re really proud of our water in Birmingham, UK. We don’t necessarily love Severn Trent, but we do like the tap water. Oh, a rat just ran across the street outside the window! Everyone’s saying we’ve got loads of rats and I’ve literally not seen one, and then I just saw one. That’s fun, isn’t it?
Does a place feeling like a forgotten underdog build a certain character in its people?
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That was so strange about Birmingham, Alabama. They were talking to me about how they felt like they were underdogs, then they went on to say, but we have all these brilliant things – we’ve got amazing restaurants, incredible art, brilliant sports teams – they listed all the things I would say about Birmingham, UK, even though we’re completely different places.
My main takeaway from the show is that everybody from town officials to gun shop owners are incredibly nice.
It was a prejudice-busting trip. There are these people that are so lovely and welcoming and reasonable and kind and really proud of the place that they live – probably voting in a way I certainly wouldn’t vote. I truly don’t understand why these people have done what they’ve done. Because the people that I met and the person that they voted for are such different things. It’s such a weird place, America. I mean, the guns. I fired my first gun when I was out there. And really it is sort of our fault. When we were under the great King George, the law was that you had to open your home up to a soldier at any point. So the Americans were like, hang on, there’s a dude in my house with a gun, and I’m not allowed my own gun? So when they wrote the Constitution, that’s how it ended up being your right to bear arms. So they can thank us for that.
Did you expect to be welcomed by everybody so warmly?
Once we got going, we were welcomed. But in some of the Birminghams, when we were asking about filming, they were very sceptical and thought we were pranking them. A lot of them thought we were like a Sacha Baron Cohen style thing, where we’d make them look silly. So it took our production team going to meet them and saying, no, we are just celebrating places called Birmingham. The gun shop owners were fascinating to me. I don’t know what I was expecting from them. They seem like the sort of people you’d see in a Games Workshop. Geeky about their thing.
Here they’d be playing tabletop games, in America they run a firing range.
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But also a real kindness. Off camera, one of them had said that they just had a baby, and I said, I’m actually expecting a baby in a few months. This gun shop owner in New Jersey scuttled away into the shop where all the guns were and came out with this little babygro with a gun logo on it and gave it to me as a gift. I took it home, showed it to my partner and she said, “Absolutely not.” So that has not gone on to our son.
At this time of division, is reaching out to others the biggest issue of our times?
Possibly the only way out is through and getting to understand these people. It’s interesting you say about what the big issue is because I feel – I don’t think I’m unique in this – a weird inertia. There are so many bad things happening that I don’t really know where to start. And I know that’s possibly the aim, flood the zone and all that. But because I’m taking some time out to do some paternity, it’s a good time to take stock. But when I come back, I don’t really know. Part of me feels like you’ve got to go more local because the big issues are so big. Let’s fix things in our backyard before we try and fix the world. But I’m knackered, I’ve had four hours sleep so I’m not doing anything right now.
