Chicken wire, plant pots and at-home voiceovers: Vic Reeves and Natasia Demetriou on The Big Flower Fight

Comics Vic Reeves and Natasia Demetriou are presenting a flower-arranging contest. It’s a delight, they tell Susannah Butter
Lovely bunch: Natasia Demetriou and Vic Reeves are hoping to work together again post-lockdown in her new sketch show

Vic Reeves and Natasia Demetriou are comparing their favourite perfumes.

“I like sniffing things — I’m wearing Guerlain Tangerine today,” says Reeves from his home in Kent. Demetriou approves. The actress and comedian has been putting on perfume every day during lockdown in north London. Today it’s Thé Noir.

The sweet scent of flowers brought Reeves and Demetriou together — they are presenting enjoyably silly new Netflix show The Big Flower Fight, where 10 pairs of amateur floral sculptors from around the world compete to win a chance to design a display at Kew Gardens.

It’s like Bake Off with blooms, presided over by American celebrity florist Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht, who Demetriou says “was born to judge a flower competition”.

Griffith-VanderYacht, who is as snappy a dresser as his name would suggest, believes “bigger is better” so, against the clock, the contestants create ambitious living sculptures out of chicken wire (Reeves expects sales of this to soar) — there are giant seahorses, beetles and squirrels in psychedelic colours.

Netflix

Gardening is part of what Reeves identifies as “a new era of arts and crafts, because technology has got to the point where it holds no wonder, so we have to go back to creating”.

Demetriou thinks that the competition element ups the stakes. “I’d love a calm show where people just arranged flowers but I don’t know if it’d have the same appeal.” Is she competitive? “I’m too lazy.”

Demetriou refers to Reeves by his real name, Jim Moir. “I am a huge disciple of Jim’s,” she says, listing all of his shows she loved, from Shooting Stars to Catterick. “She was watching me as well,” Reeves teases. “I’d open the curtains and she’d be there.”

They have a strong rapport and are delighted to be reunited for our call, digressing into a discussion about “ridiculous Nineties dramas”. How does Demetriou compare to Reeves’s other comedy partner, Bob Mortimer? “They are absolutely equal,” says Reeves. “I’ve never worked with anyone I didn’t get on with. The best bits of the show were when we’d have a chat.” Demetriou explains: “Jim would put a flowerpot on his head or shout into a daffodil like it was a trumpet.”

Thankfully Reeves’s hayfever didn’t cause any trouble. It’s acting up at the moment. Covid-19 has meant “I’ve had to stop picking my nose at the supermarket”, he says. “I’m a fabulous nose-picker, I’ll be gazing at the courgettes, picking my nose.”

Television shows in 2020

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He’s been enjoying walks among the bluebells behind his house, near where Flower Fight was filmed, but is “a complete gardening novice”, leaving all the hard work to his gardener. “I just give instructions. Tash knows much more than me, I’d applaud myself if I got the name of something simple right like a begonia.”

Demetriou says gardening is a gender-neutral art: “Creating is a thing that willies and vaginas can appreciate.” They both have heather plants left over from the show, which Demetriou is glad about as the rest of her plants died when she went to Canada to film vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows. “But my neighbours, who used to complain about water dripping down from my balcony, moved in with their parents for the pandemic so I don’t have to worry as I nurture my plants’ corpses — silver linings.”

They recorded the last voiceovers for the show from their homes — Reeves built “an incredible structure out of sleeping bags and a giant panda, which was fabulous for dampening the sound”.

Lockdown hasn’t been too much of a culture shock for Reeves, although he’s had to cancel his summer holiday to Portugal. He’s still painting every day, although he isn’t selling as much as usual. “I’m baking too, which is a terrible curse as I pile through fruit cake and lemon drizzle.” He despairs at what must be going on in the civil service; he worked there briefly aged 20 and talks about its “slow Victorian bureaucracy”.

Every night his daughter Lizzie, who loves cosplay, comes down in a different costume, while her twin Nell has learnt to moonwalk. He proudly says: “I was taught by a dancer in the Eighties and it took me ages but Nell started last week and can walk round corners and everything.” It’s inspiration for a film he and Mortimer are writing about a road trip to retrieve Michael Jackson’s training glove.

Demetriou is coping by tuning out of the news (“my flatmate watches it 24/7 because he enjoys getting wound up by it”), trying to be patient with her father, who refused to stay home at the start of lockdown, and rewatching her brother Jamie’s estate agent comedy Stath Lets Flats.

She’s also writing a sketch show with her friend, comedian Ellie White, which Reeves has a role in. “But I can’t imagine when it will be OK to film,” she says. “Filming is a mingley situation. I heard a producer is writing masks into his next script.”

Reeves is taken with this and suggests they write a sitcom about deep-sea divers. Then there’s the prospect of a second series of Flower Fight, which holds at least one big draw for Demetriou: “I didn’t get to visit Jim’s house last time so if we get another series I’m going round for a beetroot and cheese sandwich.”

The Big Flower Fight will be available on Netflix from Monday