Humor & Life Quote by Johnny Vegas

Typecasting becomes a punchline, and Johnny Vegas makes it land by treating his own career like a pub tab stretching across history. “My forte is playing drunks down the ages” isn’t just self-deprecation; it’s a sly flex. He’s claiming a niche so specific it sounds ridiculous, then widening it with “down the ages” until it’s practically a genre: the eternal drunk, endlessly recast in new costumes. The joke depends on that tension between the grubby specificity of “playing drunks” and the grand sweep of “centuries,” as if Shakespeare, Dickens, and HBO are all just different backdrops for the same wobble.

The second line is the sharper blade. He doesn’t ask “what the part is” because he already knows: the industry’s shorthand has reduced him to a vibe. The only remaining variable is the production’s period budget. That’s funny because it’s true in the way entertainment is often true: casting can be less about range than about recognizability, a familiar face delivering a reliable emotional texture. Vegas turns the indignity of that into control by narrating it as choice.

Subtextually, it’s also a wink at the cultural romance with drunkenness on screen: the drunk as clown, as tragic poet, as working-class emblem, as historical color. By asking only “what century,” Vegas suggests the stereotype is timeless, and that the audience’s appetite for it is, too. The line isn’t bitter, but it’s not innocent; it’s a comedian making peace with the box by decorating it.