They had these things that they loved, particularly espionage,
the idea of Englishness, corporate England.
They absolutely loved taking the piss out of that whole new ages
generation of of red brace wearing if that's your right
people and I think they were ahead of their time in that.
Get a fax over the Cliff at Harrington's EGM 3:00 tomorrow.
Find out where Janet is and pull Martin in.
From Where the hell is Martin? I wake up right and get Sarah in
here. Now we've got an agenda to work
out. Hello and welcome to Goompod.
If this is your first time listening, this is probably the
world's only podcast to have covered such.
Diverse touchstones of popular culture as The Phantom,
Raspberry Blower, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and Renterdick.
My name is Tyler Adams. And on this show we look at the
universe of the goons both collectively and individually,
and also broaden things out to look at comedy of a certain
kidney and the people who made it.
So pretty much anything which makes me and my guests laugh.
And very occasionally stuffed with Hilda Baker in as well.
Hilda Baker creeps into this podcast quite a bit.
John, sorry, my guest this week. I should, I should bring him in
formally. My guest this week is a comedy
writer, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, script
editor, John Cantor. Hello.
Did I cover everything with with that list?
Yes. Screenwriter is maybe an
overstatement, though. I did write Full Monty 2, the
sequel, which never ever got made because a new head of the
studio said it didn't want to follow up to the Full Monty.
But if there's a new new head of studio, maybe they will, and
I'll dust it down because it was, you know, probably and
written on on paper in Quink. It was that long ago so.
Hang on, though. Hang on, yeah.
Correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't there a Full Monty Two recently
on net? Yes, I'm afraid to Damn you
noticed. Yes, that wasn't anything to do
with me, I must say. I think it was a, well, I think
it was a Netflix TV series or anyway it was an expanded
version and I haven't you've seen it.
No, no, no, no. I've not even seen.
I've not even seen the the first one.
You've seen the original. No, that's not my sort of thing.
Yeah. Oh, that's oh, oh, OK.
Hey, listen, I know you're meant to be interviewing me, but what
is it about the Full Monty that puts you off seeing it?
Right. Do you know what it is?
And it's not the, it's not the fact that it's men stripping at
all, right. Do you know what it is?
Yeah, tell me. Do you remember all the Hoo ha,
all the publicity surrounding it when it came out in whatever,
97? Was it 97?
Exactly right. Yeah.
And then our present king. Was filmed doing a parody of
them in the gyro line. Do you remember that?
Was that for presumably for Comic Relief thing or?
I don't know, but he, I can't remember.
But he was there, and he he'd obviously expressed an interest
in the Full Monty and someone, one of his equeries, or someone
you know who hopefully got fired soon after, suggested that he
and his flunkies might like to recreate that scene of them.
Doing sort of like a hip swinging dance while they're
waiting for oh oh this is exquisitely painful, but it
brings us onto a very big subject.
I don't know whether we want to talk about at all, but that's
the way the comedy is an instrument for people in
political life or or to be. Margaret Thatcher in the Yes
Minister sketch. Oh, I didn't.
No, I didn't. Oh, no.
I might have to vote for her retrospectively.
What? I didn't know about this.
What? Tell me more.
She did she well because she famously didn't have a sense of
humour. No, no, she was.
Proud of the fact, I think, wasn't she?
I think so, yeah. It was a guarantee of
seriousness, though. But she did enjoy Yes Minister
or Yes Prime Minister or both. And she probably didn't get the
joke. But anyway.
But there was some people listening to this will know much
more than me. But from memory, what happened
was. She she was asked, or she asked,
if she could appear in a short sketch with Nigel Hawthorne and
Paul Eddington as as their characters in Yes, Prime
Minister or Yes Minister. And they agreed.
And I I haven't seen the footage, but I gather it's
excruciatingly bad. Yes, it's all very simple.
I want you to abolish economists.
Abolish economists, Prime Minister.
Yes, abolish economists and quickly.
All of them, Brandon. Here's all of them.
I look forward to receiving your plan for abolition soon.
Tomorrow, shall we say. I'd like you to announce it
before it all leaks. Yes, it is tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Prime Minister, Yes, yes.
Well, just sort it out. That's so interesting because a
recent Prime Minister, I'm not, I'm not going to name him
because every time you say his name you increase his earning
potential. But anyway, this, this recent
Prime Minister was of course essentially, and I know what I'm
talking about here, essentially a comedy writer.
And when he was foreign secretary, he went on a
diplomatic mission to the Yemen. And some diplomats who were
talking to him were amazed that he said the following thing.
He said. And I quote, with friends like
these, who needs Yemenis? Now I know because I'm a comedy
writer that he went, he flew all that way to the Yemen for the
diplomatic mission, knowing that the one thing he had to do was
say that gag, you know, So it was, it was a comedic mission
rather than diplomatic mission. And here are my, you know, six
years on broadcast to the world or such members of the world are
listening to the pod. And I just think that that's
extraordinary. Is that do you think that's why
he accepted the gig? Foreign Secretary thought.
Hey, I've got my Yemeni joke. I could one day.
I could use that. Wow, that's advanced comedy
writing. But yes, I do.
I, you know, I know what it's like to have a line.
You want to say. And I'm going to, I'm going to.
You're often a tangent, but it's absolutely it's not.
It's not a tangent. I use one of my my main claim to
fame, and I know whatever I write I can never beat.
This is I was Douglas Adams flatmate for a couple of years
when he was writing Hitchhiker's Guide.
And one of the things about Douglas was he had a telephone
habit and he had a writing habit, and he combined the two
by ringing all his friends, of whom there were many, from the
flat on the landline. Obviously I shared the expense
of that. The day after, say, he'd been to
a gig by, I don't know, Elvis Costello, he had a funny Elvis
Costello game. Watching Elvis Costello, it's
like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So he would call his friends the following day and say, how are
you, Jerry? How are you, Anita?
How are you, Mark? But I knew that as soon as he
could, he would get to the Elvis Costello gig joke.
So I would hear it maybe 10 or 12 times.
And I don't want to sound bitter, but I do want to sound
tired of that particular gag. Or did he use the same gag and
just, Oh yes, I mean, Douglas was he was a talent, very
talented writer, so he would have honed that gag to in an
inch of its life. So it didn't need adapting,
adopting, or improving. It just need heating.
I want to talk about a bit about Douglas Adams later, but but
while we're on that right, I'll, I'll bring this up now, Yeah,
because. You came up with the line life.
Don't talk to me about life. It's true, yes.
Which is Marvin the Android. Marvin, the Paranoid Android.
OK, now the reason I'm bringing that up now.
Couple of shows ago, Yeah, I played host to comedy writer
Andrew Marshall. Oh, yes.
And Andrew Marshall had been a friend of.
Douglas And so the story goes, he was the He was the
inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android.
I did, you know, I didn't know that.
I'd always thought it was David Renwick rather than Andrew
Marshall. How did you.
Oh. Well, apparently originally
Douglas had called him Marshall the Paranoid Android.
Oh, great. Well, there you are.
There you. Are but Andrew Marshall was a
little bit. Not hurt by it, but he was a
little bit. To this day, he's a bit
bewildered by why he was the inspiration.
Because he said I'm not a. I'm not.
I'm not a morose man. No, that's so interesting.
Whereas David Renwick is proudly sparing his presence, sparing
his absence, proud proudly what I would say morose.
He's he's a, you know, he's a melancholic man, as as many
comedy writers are. That is intriguing.
He's been, he's been on this as well.
He was quite upbeat on this. Yeah.
Oh, I hope you. Yeah.
That's So what a cure. What a little curio, right?
Yeah, while we're on previous guests.
I just want, if you don't mind, John, I just want to mention
something about my A couple of weeks ago on this show, I
interviewed Katie Secum. Oh, right.
Who was the daughter of the late Harry, right?
OK and and you know it was a great conversation we had and I
thought, oh, this will go down well with the with the massive
as I call them. It has gone massive.
Yeah, it has gone down. It has gone down phenomenally
well and I can, I can't say that word properly, but it's the
second most downloaded episode in a 24 hour period ever in the
history of this podcast. We had so many people on social
media responding and so many such lovely feedback and
people's memories of Harry and it just sparked off a lot of
really nice, you know, the times that we're living in at the
moment. Lots of nice memories and
reminiscences of how nice a man Harry Seekin was right now.
He mentioned that because there was one thing that I did find
out after I spoke to Katie and it's too late to ask her.
OK, I'm kicking myself. Because what I didn't realize
until the other day was that her godfather?
Yes. Was the actor Stanley Baker?
Oh, right, Stanley Baker. Yes, fine actor, very good
actor. Great acting, one of my
favorites. And in fact I mentioned him or
we mentioned him last week on the show we we discussed a Peter
Sellers film and for various reasons Stanley Baker came up
twice in the conversation talking about a couple of his
films and. And yeah, and as I say, when I
when I heard or when I was told that she that Stanley was
Katie's godfather, I thought that's eye wash you know I
thought that's rubbish. But I did check with her and she
said yes, I am. So Harry and Stanley were very
good friends, obviously both Welsh entertainers in their own
way. They liked to play cricket.
They. They played cricket together in
the young. What did Harry do?
Was he was I I see Stanley Baker as a fast bowler but I know
about seek him. I I know this is my son like a
physical thing but I see him as a wicked keeper.
Do you know? Yeah, what he did.
I don't know much about cricket. It's either is the is the wicket
keeper the guy that stands behind and doesn't do much.
Look, you're from New Zealand. You grew up with this stuff.
I yeah. Hey, listen, why don't you get
Katie Seekin back for a Part 2? You know, like Graham Norton
does with, with, say, Miriam Margulies.
He has her on almost every week. Because.
I'd have her on. I'd have her on Miriam Jesus.
I'd have the explicit rating for this podcast I wanted to quick.
Miriam Margulies? Yes please.
In the 80s, Miriam I think, was at her absolute height as a as a
voice over artist. And I think she had more than
two houses just from voice over fees.
Anyway, I was at that time, along with everything else
because I'm a freelance writer and I have a broader repertoire.
Things I was producing radio commercials at at a place in
Soho called Silk Sound And I was, you know, I was earnest and
I tried to be polite and Miriam came in.
I'd never met her before and I said hello Miriam, I'm John.
Here's your script for today's session.
And she looked at me and said, oh, what Cambridge College were
you at? Obviously you can't see me, but
I still wonder whether that was a compliment or an insult.
Was it a deadly assault on the fact that Oxbridge males
dominated the entertainment industry?
Or was it just us going, oh, you look like you got good A levels.
I will never know because I didn't.
I was so taken aback, but I I didn't ask her.
Well, we know she had a bit of an issue with with with males.
God, yes, she had bloody hates her.
Yeah, please and so on. Although she loves Great Idol
and Michael Palin. So I think, yeah, but now we're
talking about it. I am, I'm 70 years old.
I've just outed myself as two things, an old white guy and an
Oxbridge guy. So there's no going back from
this point? Now I've I've had, I've had a
number of people of your yeah. Well, I mean get us now before
they put us in museums or shoot us.
And I say that without bitterness because I think we've
we've had a bloody good time. We're like 5000 years of it.
Anyway, I'm so old and white and the guy, an Oxbridge guy that I
can remember when I was in the cage, Footlights, we would sit
around us men. There's no other way word for
it. And say what can we give the
girl to do you know, the girl meaning the girl who was going
to be in the review cast. And I I feel, you know the
reason I'm saying it, it's, let's face it, it's guilt.
There's no other word for it. I just feel bad that that's the
way we spoke between 1972 and 1974 and maybe afterwards.
You know, it's it's a strange thing.
But you wouldn't have thought that at the time, no.
You didn't consciously think I'll?
No, absolutely not. You know we're being and indeed
they Radio 4 extra kindly repeated a sketch show I was in
1974 called. I think it's called, It's
called. Oh, no it isn't.
Along with Griffiths Jones and John Lloyd and various other
luminaries. I thought, my God, I hope they
get rid of those sketches in which we do Pakistani accents,
because of course that's just what we did, because everybody
did. Well, don't come on this podcast
talking about people doing Indian accents, Pakistani
accents, Welsh, Pakistani accent.
Well, Sellers and Milligan, OK, I just mentioned we'll start, I
want to talk to you about because obviously this is a
podcast, this tends to be about the goons and we're going to
touch on talk about that in your.
Whatever sort of history or inspiration you have derived
from them, by the way, Miriam, The Office is is open.
I'd love to have if you want. Because she is.
She's getting involved with. I noticed Jane Jane Milligan,
who I'm in contact with guests of the show, who's Spike's
daughter. She posted something on Twitter.
Still Twitter. Not X Twitter about a new IT
looked like an animated version of Spike's Bad Jelly the Witch
story. I don't know if you're aware of
Bad Jelly the Witch. No, I.
Don't know, but but there looks to be some new version coming
out and Miriam Margulies is going to be part of the voice
cast, it would appear. So that's very exciting.
So yeah, perfect excuse for Miriam to come on if you
Absolutely, yeah. But I mentioned, obviously she's
she's, let's face it, she's got a bit of a potty mouth, that's
why. That's her.
She's a filter is a filter. It's just it's down the plug
hole. The glory of Miriam is she
never, ever had a filter, so she never had one to lose.
So I went to the head of the of the Footlights club and said I
haven't had an invitation and he said, oh, it's an oversight.
I said, is it? Oh, I have to watch myself.
You're doing really well. It's such a shame because we
love it when you. Just.
Let I know, but it upsets some people and I don't want to upset
people because the whole thing is life is shit at the moment.
It really is. It's terrible and we've Oh no.
So, so, yeah, so obviously thank you very much for for coming on
now you've written extensively you've you've, you've.
I've gone on record to say that you're you're happy.
How do I put this? Happy not to be in the limelight
yourself, but you surround yourself with comedy performers
who interpret your work and you don't have a sort of a desire to
be front and centre and you're no, I don't.
I don't have a desire to be front and centre, but damn, when
I am, I enjoy it. Oh, right.
OK, it it goes both ways. But a friend of mine once said,
he said you're a bit of a, you're a sort of comedy Butler.
And you know I'll take that. I have served the great and I've
worked with some of the greats, I've worked with some of the
smalls and mediums, I've got to say.
And yes, it's it's been interesting from that point of
view. Always.
You have a voice in your head when you start to write and that
I think for any writer, look, let's be straightforward about
it. If you're asked if you, if Lenny
Henry, for example, says you're going to write my next stage
show with me my next touring show, you have two great
advantages. You have Lenny's voice in your
head and you have a guaranteed audience, you know, Yeah, that's
a glorious thing. Given how often a freelance
writer will will, as it were, write blind, not knowing if
anybody is going to care, not knowing if any producer is going
to take it up. So that's one of the best, best
aspects of of writing forum for well known people I must say.
Yeah and and you've written extensively for Lenny, I gather
over the years but you've you've done you've contributed things
like not the 9:00 news who dares wins Les Smith and Jones.
Big fan of a Les Smith and Jones and Smith and Jones in general.
And also also you a script editor on.
One of my all time favourites, A Bitter Fry and lorry.
Oh man, I mean what is the what is the easiest job you've ever
had? I mean the boys as we call them,
the boys Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie wrote.
I think for the first series I worked on they wrote 173
scripts, you know, together, collectively as it were, and my
job was to read them. Obviously pick my favourites and
work on those which. I thought needed improvement.
An extraordinary thing about that job was every time I
thought a script needed improvement, we'd work on it,
improve it, and then it wouldn't make the final cut because the
boys were just so naturally adroit at writing material.
Yeah, really. I mean, this is this is your
money. This is taxpayers money.
Really. I was just being paid to read
those scripts and pick my favorites because if you have to
work on it, generally speaking it it it wasn't right.
It just it just wasn't working. But their their hit rate was was
phenomenal and they they were also fascinating people to work
with because and I think this is, this is an interesting thing
to explore with the goons and indeed with any collective, any
comedy collective. You had one who was very
positive and sure of himself and the other who was an agoniser.
Do you Do you want to guess which was which?
The Agonizer was, oh, of Fry and Laurie, Yeah.
My instinct would to be to say the Agonizer was Stephen Fry,
but that is so interesting because you are, it's listen,
it's a one and two shot there. Tyler.
Yeah, you had a 50% chance and you blew it because it was Hugh.
In fact, he was desperately anxious about everything he was.
He was a phenomenal warrior and Stephen just sort of knew it
would be OK. And similarly with Mel Smith and
Griff Reese Jones. Griff won't mind my saying
because I've known him a very long time.
He was feverish with anxiety. Just, I'll tell you a quick
story about that, you know. I mean, when you do ATV show,
you rehearse all week for it, and then on the Friday you
record it. Now when you rehearse it, of
course the scripts go through myriad changes.
So there's a there's a famous story about Griff and Mel about
to go in front of the cameras on the Friday night.
The audience is about to come in and Griff suddenly says Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Perkins, he's talking to you, a brilliant, much missed of
the show, said Jeffrey. What happened to the line about
the pineapple and Griffin preferring to a line in a let's
say it's a dentist sketch because you know 97% of sketches
in the in the 70s and 80s were saying dentists waiting room
what happened to the pineapple line and and Jeffrey said Griff
if you remember we took that line out on draft 11:00, we put
it back in draft 12 then we decided against it.
So this this version which you're about to do in front of
the audience is draft 13. So that's where the pineapple,
the line is gone. It's gone forever.
Now, the only point in the story is that Griff is about to go in
front of the cameras, in front of the people with all this, all
these drafts fizzing or feverishly fizzing in his mind,
you know, like a sort of brain, a brain overdose.
Whereas Mel Smith has not been there for all these changes to
the script. He's not been part of that
process. He comes in, he's relaxed, and
he just does the lines and he does it with I I suppose some.
I wouldn't want to say he doesn't care, that would be
quite wrong. But he he has a natural
relaxation about it, which made him wonderful to write for
instantly. And he realized that he'd be
fine. You see, he said none.
Unlike Steven, he knew he'd be fine in front of the cameras.
He had a natural gift. He had a very naturalistic style
of acting. That's the reason why he was
ever cast in not the 9:00 news, I remember John Lloyd saying.
Not to me. I think to the world before
that. If you had a sketch set in a,
say, AI don't know record shop, the guy playing, because it
tended to be a guy playing the man behind the counter would
sort of put on a voice to say, oh hello, what would you like to
get, you know? And but John Lloyd said the
great thing about Mel was he'd just say, right, I'm playing a
guy who works in a record shop. I'll just be a guy who works in
a record shop and I'll anchor it in reality.
And as a consequence, he was an absolute natural.
Yeah, say the famous Gerald sketch.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know he's playing the
the anthropologist. You watch that and you think
this is, this is delightful. Just how how real this is and
how you know it's a it's a natural comedy under player you
know and that. Yeah, it's those the home
videos, the homemade video strand of sketches that they
used to do when I don't know if you remember those, but.
I don't know. Third, fourth series of
Elizabeth and Jones. There would always be a there's
a recurring gag of this, this dysfunctional family of which
Griff was the father and there was a mother, and there was this
teenage son who played by Nigel Harman, who went on to play
dirty, dense son in EastEnders. You know what is the buried,
don't you? This is great.
Yeah, but but it was a dysfunctional family, Terrible
family. Just terrible, you know, Awful
family. But you had also Mel playing Len
the Lodger, right? And it was just a slob.
It just a just a slob. And he was so the the
insuchants, I think that's the only word.
The Insucians, yeah. Yeah.
And also can I just, I just want to point out for any lady
listeners who didn't know him that his reputation as a slob
was overstated. By which I mean he was very, he
was a very attractive man, had a lovely voice and a lovely way of
a lovely relaxed way of being in the room and and looking at
people as they spoke. So I think he's been unfairly
maligned as a sort of, you know, yeah, but he was happy.
He was happy enough to play on that stereotype, wasn't he?
Of the the, the wino. Clive, this is Roger.
Hello Roger. Come on in, help yourself to a
drink, I expect. You know where it is.
Because Griff was on the show many, many months ago, and he he
pretty much. He didn't tell me the pineapple
story, he told me, he told me similar ones where, yeah, he's.
He's there. He was quite open about the fact
that he was very anal and very, yes, across everything.
Yes, that's right. And then Mel had been out, I
don't know, maybe at the the bookmakers and he turned up and
hit every mark basically, yes, absolutely.
He he just at whatever state he was in, he could deliver.
Well, it reminded me of the of the story they say about Laurel
and Hardy, where Stan Laurel was in charge of overseeing scripts
and yes, and and the production and.
He'd be checking the the, the stage and the scenery the, you
know, he'd be before filming. He'd be there like hours before
making sure that everything was set up and and then Oliver Hardy
would turn up, having been on the golf course and he'd just
turn up at the last minute and do his bit.
And then it's amazing and you can't, you can't kind of change
your nature in that in that way. You'd think after a while that
the head of worry would go. Now I'm going to delegate some
of this worry. But no, no, It happened when you
were probably a little child, that urge to control and to
worry and to be anxious. And it cannot be.
It can't be. You can't delete it.
Yeah. No, no.
And I want to come back to certainly want to come back to
Fry and Laurie a little bit later, if not Mel and Griff as
well. But I'll let's just talk about
your early life. I suppose you're his.
You see, you've you've openly admitted to being 70.
So how do you you would have kind of maybe heard the last
couple of series of The Goon Show on radio.
Well, I was thinking about that and there isn't Listen to
comedian or comedy writer of my vintage who goes on a pod or
goes to a dinner party or even chats to someone in the Co-op
without saying what they listen to under the bedclothes as their
first kind of excavation for comedy gold.
And with me it was, I'm sorry, I'll read that again.
I was born in 1953, so that would have been I think early
60s, maybe 1962, three 60s. So I'm just kind of post post
goons, but I hope it's OK to talk about it.
Now. We're on the subject of the
goons, but my absolute favorite. I never met Milligan, Salas or
Sikkim, but I did go to a venue in the West of London.
I think it was a Commonwealth institute actually in the 70s.
To see Spike Milligan reading from his children's books.
And what I remember from that occasion, there must have been
maybe 70 of us just sitting in a small room listening to him
reading. At the end we we applauded so
loudly that he said thank you, he said.
I like loving people and I like people to love me.
And when I said out loud, it sounds like the cheesiest thing
that anybody could say before they broke into my way or
something. But it's completely
unselfconscious and completely earned, if that's the word.
You know what I mean? We really did.
We really did love the man, so I can never quite think of him
without remembering that. And also my father-in-law, whom
I, whom I really adored, Peter Nappa.
He was a head teacher and a very benevolent man.
And he's absolute favorite poem was nothing by Keats or
Wordsworth. But it was one of spikes and
you'll all know it. So maybe you like to say it
along with me at home. There are holes in the sky where
the rain gets in, but they're ever so small.
That's why rain is thin, you know, Just imagine that with the
put your in with us at Glasgow with the arms aloft, waving them
slow, just like no girlfriends sitting on our shoulders.
I don't have a girlfriend. I I just want my wife to know
that. Yeah, you know what I mean, It's
just so it's just so touching. Also other references to Spike,
my friend Roy McGrath, whom you may remember from.
They certainly do, yeah. Roy is absolute.
Roy is a very, very Milligan influenced writer.
When I first met him as a radio writer, he he was, he was very,
very gifted as a kind of word play man and it's absolute
favorite joke again said along with me and maybe maybe Tyler,
you'll know where this comes from.
It's definitely one of spikes and it goes like this.
The curtains were drawn, but the furniture was real.
Do you know where that's from? It sounds Milligan Esque.
I can't play. It's definitely Milligan
because, Rory said sober. But it's so beautiful.
I just, I just love it. It's just sort of the perfect.
It's it's typical Milligan, isn't it?
But the the shift, it's the fewest words in the most effect.
I absolutely, absolutely love it.
And the other thing I want to say about Spike, in retrospect,
I was thinking back on the comedians that I used to watch
on television in the 60s, and I'm thinking particularly Les
Dawson, Frankie Howard, Tommy Cooper.
I mean all great comedians. But I'm thinking that that
they're of their time for a particular reason.
First of all, none of those comedians amazingly wrote a
single children's book, which now everybody does.
If you're a comedian, you write children's books.
And as we know, David Williams has made an extraordinary
success of it. Well, of course Lenny's just
written written more than one, so he kind of spike kind of
changed the template to what a comedian might be.
Because the other thing that I keep thinking about when I think
of Spike Milligan is his extraordinary espousal of green
courses. And we're talking in the 1960s.
It's way ahead of the curve, sure.
Yeah. And the.
But there's I suppose it's for good.
And I'll you know, we expect our comedians now to not just to be
funny, but to contribute their, contribute their ideas, their
political ideas, that certainly their charity, they must do
charity work, which is of course great.
But I sometimes sort of get a little bit confused when I see a
comedian doing charity work because I think, well, I've met
you and I know you're not even not charitable.
But do you know what I mean? It's a complicated matter, isn't
it? Because they're doing good for
the world and the people for whom they're doing good are not
going to say, well, actually that guy's what Miriam Margulies
would call a beep. You know, what do you want?
This is? It's difficult, isn't it?
It's unconfidence. Absolutely.
I mean, Spike was a pioneer in so many.
Absolutely, Yeah. Also, the other thing I think
about when I think about him and this is going to sound weird,
but I don't care, is he was a very, very, he was kind of a
beautiful man. And there's not, there aren't
many British comedians who I think are lovely to look at for
an extended period of time. I don't know whether you can
think of any Rick mail. Steve.
Steve Coogan, I suppose in his post.
Oh, wow, that's so interesting. Steve.
Yes. I don't.
Yeah, I don't think he's a patch on, but I love how gay this is
getting. I don't think he's a patch on.
I mean, I wouldn't kick him out of bed, but then I wouldn't
invite him into bed and he wouldn't be interested and that
would be disaster because neither of us would be
interested. They.
'D just be an embarrassing silence, wouldn't they?
It would be terrible. How do we get here?
How do we get to this bedroom, Steve?
I don't even know you man. Yeah, but I do think, yes, Rick,
Rick and Spike had a kind of a real they they're really
wonderful looking people. And it occurs to me, I recently,
I went to the Edinburgh Festival last year and I'm not talking
about beauty now, but I'm talking about something else.
If you go and see a stand up comic, you're you're there for
an hour. And I I'll probably get
cancelled for saying this, but it actually matters quite a lot
what they look like because you know, that's what you're going
to have to look at for the next hour.
You can have a look at their faces.
So you must be, you must be drawn.
You know you must be happy to watch that face for an hour.
Yeah, I. I know what you say.
I mean Spike, people listening to this might be scratching
their head saying, well, that white haired bearded man.
Oh no, he used to wear Hitler moustache in the Q series was
but Spike in his youth, or certainly during the war and
into the early days of the Goon Show, he was.
Like matinee idol. Absolutely right.
And I think women loved him.
And putting on my Miriam Margulies hat, What a, that's a
terrible image. Miriam Margulies hat.
One of the things I think is extraordinary, just just just
about times being different. I saw Spike on a talk show.
I can't remember what it was. And he was asked about his first
wife. And I think the question was
tell us about your first wife. It was.
And he said, well, I married my first wife because I wanted to
see her breasts. And I thought, what an
extraordinary thing to say. Firstly because it's true.
And secondly, what a, what a, what a kind of how, how lucky
are we of different later generations that we can see
people's breasts without marrying them, You know, that's
saved a lot of human misery. I put it to you.
He said. He said variations of that over
the years. Oh good, he oh good.
I'm glad it wasn't just a sort of bizarre one or.
Yeah, but no. But he spike was definitely a a
boob man. We we know that you don't have
to choose, Spike. No, he he.
Yeah, I'm sure. He was interviewed by Doctor
Anthony Clare. Oh yes, I love that show.
In the psychiatrist's chair many, many years ago, obviously
the early 80s or mid 80s, yeah, and I'm sure on that, Sure, he
said. On that something about.
I married my first wife. That's where I got it from.
Yeah. Yeah, I married my first wife
because she had big boobs and I didn't.
Or something like that. Something like, yeah, you have
to make a joke out of it, Spider.
We can see through that. We know you're using it using
humor to distances from the truth.
You got married around this time?
Yes, I did, actually. The girl.
I was mad. Girl proposed to me.
So will you marry me? And I thought, I don't want to
disappoint it, so I said yes. Had you known her long?
Oh, I'd known her about a year. I think it was physical love,
though. She had big boobs and I didn't.
Can I just say one final spike thing, which I used to this day?
I don't know how people are on the Q series.
I mean the BBC, as far as I know.
You'll know better, Tyler. I don't, I don't think.
I don't think they've repeated them, have they?
Yeah, that it has. BBC Four did like a clip show or
a compilation and and it's, I mean we've covered it recently
on this show, two parts episode we talked about.
Myself and guest watched 5 episodes of Q, Didn't watch at
all, but it is available. All of it, or most of it's
available on DVD. How did it hold up?
Like, a bit like Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Oh, right. A big, a big chunk of it doesn't
hold up and it's kind of a lot of dress in there.
Yeah, it's and it's not. I'm not just talking.
I mean, there's a there's quite a bit of blackface and stuff
like that. Yeah, sure.
But there's also just stuff that just goes on too long.
Yeah, you know, in, as I think I said at the time, I think in
amongst the the Dreck, there's a lot of beauty and there's some
great, great sketches. There's some hilarious stuff in
queue, Yes. Well, but you're going to say
something about queue. No, it's only there's just a
single line that I've remembered from about 1969.
I still use it to this day. The doorbell rings.
Spike goes to the door, opens the door, welcomes the guests
into his hall and says excuse the mess, we've got the
conservatives in. That's it.
And it just try it. Let's try it.
You may not have more than a year to to use that gag, but
it's it is a beautiful gag. I I don't know whether you've
talked on the part about Son of Oblomov.
You know that about? That I do know of.
We haven't talked about it though.
No. Oh well, I saw it.
It ran in the late 60s at the what's now called the Harold
Pinter Theatre. That was then called the Comedy
Theatre, which was a stage version of the Goncharov story
about a man who refuses to get out of bed.
It's, I mean, it's a great, fascinating story.
I'm kind of perfect for a comedian because obviously he's
bed bound and that means all the attention he's drawn to him.
Anyway, the show was renamed Son of Oblomov for the simple reason
that Spike refused. Either refused or couldn't stick
to the script. So basically it was over the
course of the performances, there was maybe 15% Gunter off
an 85% spike, and it was a fantastic night out in the
theatre for everyone. Except I thought even at 16, you
know, except for his fellow actors, because it's not easy
being on stage with someone who could and would do anything.
You know, you're not, you obviously have to go with the
flow, but it's it, it was testing, you know, it was
difficult, yeah, there to be stooges.
And you know, you got to feel for actors because that's
they're, you know, they're trained to inhabit a character
And they went on and of course they were just mercifully had
the piss taken over them. I can't remember who were his Co
stars in that, but I think he would.
John Bluthor would usually be one of his.
He surrounded himself with people who were very good at
bouncing off his shifts. So John Bluthor was one.
People like David Lodge. People like even Valentine Dyle,
would you believe? Oh, right.
Yeah. But you, because you were
president of Footlights. Yeah, the early 70s at
Cambridge. Now you know, Spike.
Famously, well, famously, Around In Our Circles, In My circles,
he recorded or he appeared in a two man show at Cambridge,
performed, performed a couple of hours worth of stories, songs,
poems, jokes. He and a South African musician
called Jeremy Taylor. Yes, I've heard.
That was 73.
Well, that's when. Damn, I missed it.
I wish you'd get in the TARDIS and go back.
I was. That was a student there.
Oh damn. Yeah, but I would have, I would
have put money on the put, put me house on the fact you'd have
been there. But yeah, I'm so disappointed.
Maybe you're off squaring or something in the Oh no, I want
to go back to 73. I want to speak Tamsin.
Hail again. Tamsin.
I don't know what happened with us, but if you listen to this,
don't get in touch because too much water is flown flown under
too many. 50 years, 50 years, 50 years, 50 years, man.
Yeah. And what about, OK, I know you
never, obviously, you've seen, you've seen Spike, you haven't
met him, but you've seen him. Yeah.
Were you a fan of of of the work of Peter Sellers?
That's such a good question. The answer is yes or no.
Clearly there's some astonishing achievements.
And never mind the goods. I'm thinking particularly of
Doctor Strangelove. I mean one of the things I
admire so much about Sellers is there is so few British, there's
so little British comic talent that's been able to conquer
America and the world to make movies.
And I really, I mean, you know let's let's, let's, let's talk
about them. I mean from from the later
generations, yours and mine. I can really, I I.
You take your hat off to Sacha Baron Coe.
Yeah. Made movies that have been
global. I I also take my hat off to to
Steve Coogan he's an extraordinary film career.
And to Armando Yanucci for doing Death of Stalin and so on.
And also to Edgar Wright, because I I think Simon.
Simon Pegg, of course. And Simon Pegg.
Simon Pegg, absolutely. He's hanging out with Tom Cruise
as we speak. Doesn't like to talk about it,
though. Doesn't like to talk about it.
Oh, not even to Tom. No, Simon Simon Pegg famously,
is very reticent when it comes to talking about his friendship
with Tom Cruise. Yes, I'm saying that with a wry
smile on my face. Yes, quite.
I think future generations will probably find out why.
But listen, we move on to say, yeah, that that Sellers film
career has the most phenomenal heights, never mind the early
British. I'm All right Jack Films.
To have made both Strangelove and and being there is is a
fantastic achievement. But then I don't know whether
you ever saw Do you know the actor Simon Williams?
I certainly do. Yeah.
Fine actor. He, I saw him on television
talking about. I think he was in one of the
final tube. The fiendish plot of Doctor Fu
Manchu Sellers, I knew you'd know well, he was in it.
And he, I remember seeing him talking on television about it
and he said, you know, I was in my trailer.
He probably shared his trailer. Actually, he said I was in my
trailer. We had a scene scheduled for the
afternoon. I'm ready to, I'm ready to go
on. You know, I'm ready.
And then the word comes to my trailer, you know, from the SEC,
you know, from the second assistant director, third
assistant director. Peter can't do the scene this
afternoon because he is. I think it was his astrologer or
astrologist don't even know the word.
Anyway, the person who reads, yeah, sees the stars, reads the
stars, has decreed that this is not a good afternoon for Peter
to do a scene. And if you think about that just
on a person, on a kind of what I might call a humane level, and
I'm speaking as one of the, you know, I'm speaking as a kind of
supporting act backroom boy. I mean, it's kind of
intolerable, isn't it? And it just makes me sad to
think about his greatness at the same time as having to think
about stuff like that. The little, the tiniest things
would trigger Sellers and and it could have been something as
simple. It could have been that somebody
in the somebody was in the vicinity of the film set, you
know, maybe within 5 miles who was wearing a purple raincoat.
Oh yes, yeah, I just read that. Perhaps it was on X Twitter X
Goldie Hawn talking about that very thing appearing.
There's there's a girl in my suit saying, wearing purple,
wearing a purple trouser suit, being told that it was the
colour that Sellers hated. If Sellers got wind of someone
wearing purple even, you know, just the one of the catering
staff, that was it. But no, there's a nice twist to
that story because according to the story Goldie Hall tells, he
arrived, saw in the purple suit and said, my God, but you look
lovely, which is a quote from the script so good on him.
He covered it up. Nevertheless, it's it's painful
to think. It's painful to think about him
in the context of stories like that because I know actors are
insecure and but you know there's still there are what You
know there might be 150 people depended on you for doing that
scene and it's just such a shame.
You know it's so. I think there were little.
Indications of him A being not well physically and B being
pretty off the wall inside his head.
Pretty flaky. A good day was great, but a bad
day was just horrible. I knew he.
He stopped us all. We all had to go and have a
vitamin B12 injection, he said. There's no energy in the seal,
it's just not working. We all had to go and have this
wretched vitamin injection. He was as mad as a snake.
Yeah, I tried to. What's the word?
Divorce the band from the from the art, as they say.
Yes, I know that's got harder in recent times, but.
It it has. It has.
And look, you know we're all fans I'm sure you are of The
Beatles and but you've we've heard the stories about John
Lennon's behavior sometimes. Have you had a chance to listen?
Because the day that we're recording this, it's the day
after Now and then, Now and then I have listened.
And it did make me well up for, for a curious reason, actually.
It made me well up when I heard the guitar and I thought, oh,
that's George. And then I read that it wasn't,
it was Paul Paul playing in the in the style of George and that
that tone, that that, that George tone.
And then of course I loved it. But it's not.
I can't pretend it's not. Perhaps it's the I wish that the
verbal hook was stronger, you know, I don't think now and
then. It's sort of gets you like like
a great hook does, you know? But I know it's wonderful to
hear. Yes.
Yeah. Very, very emotionally moving.
And yeah, I I like it. I I I certainly prefer it to
real love from Yes. Or free free.
Free is a bird I like that you like.
Free is a bird. That's OK That's OK.
Yeah. But OK, well, I've got, yeah, I
do want to talk about, as I say, want to talk about some of the
people, some of the work I've been with.
You, as you sort of said at the beginning, you know, your
friendship with with Douglas Adams is yeah, as well as well
known. You lived with him for a number
of years and then did and then did.
Was it just a case that he got married and you had to vacate?
Was that what happened? You know, I lived with him in
just off the Holloway Road and then we moved to Highbury New
Park and then I think it just, you know, I'm struggling to
remember. I think I'd simply moved out
because I felt we'd been together, you know?
40 years and it didn't feel a day too long oh so hilarious.
The the story I remember was such affection is one day in
about, I suppose about 1981 or two, Douglas said.
I'm just going to the off license to buy.
I just want to get a can of Coca-Cola said OK, see you in a
minute, you know, And he came back.
He was a very big man, 6 foot five, and he was holding, I kid
you not, 144 cans of coke and these, you know, these giant,
Giant, yeah. And he said to me, look, I went
to he was. So he was childlike and
excitable in a very endearing way.
Sometimes, he said. Look, I've just been to the off
licence and I realized I've made enough money now I can buy.
I don't have to buy a can of Coke.
I can buy 12 dozen. That's what he did.
And lazy time. I don't even drink Coke, so he
must have drunk more. It's good going, carrying,
lugging that from the yeah, yeah it was.
It was an impressive sight. Almost as impressive as I went
on holiday with him in 1978 to Corfu and two we used to oh God,
it's so embarrassing. But why?
Why does why do you feel later in life obliged to tell
embarrassing stories? We used to sit outside Taverna's
and play. He'd play Simon and Garfunkel's
the Boxer. He was a huge Paul Simon fan on
the guitar. And we would, we would sing the
boxer with me supplying, you know, 57% accurate harmonies in
the hope of, you know, meeting girls.
And we didn't meet one girl and she liked us both and sort of by
the same token, like neither of us.
But on that holiday I saw what no one else in history has ever
seen, which is I was with Douglas on a on a nudist beach
and I watched him coming out of the water, just clad, just clad
only in snorkel and flippers. And it was.
I tell you ladies, it was quite a sight.
The correlation between height and and male girth or male
length is but damn, it was confounding.
It was one of those times when you feel glad you're not a lady.
I have to say, OK. Didn't you?
Speaking of ladies, I read something.
Oh, yeah, you wrote something I read when you said that your
mother used when you were living with Douglas.
Your mother would often phone, but not to talk to you.
Or she'd She'd talk to you, but she'd only want to find out what
Douglas had been up to. Oh man, thanks.
Thanks for bringing that up. I love.
I love free therapy. Yeah, that was a feature.
I mean, that was a feature of my mother.
She was very excited when I worked with people who she, she
could see on the telly. But it did have that corollary
that she would ring up and say, hello, Jonathan, how are you?
And then she, when I gave the answers, it's like, well, she
had to listen to that obviously, because that was a primary duty.
But then she would always say, how's Griff, You know, how's
Griff? How's And I know that when
Griff's mother rang Griff up, she didn't say Griff.
How's John Canter? Is he still tall?
You know, so it did get to me. Yeah, but, you know, fame is the
spare. What can I say?
It's even kind of 1 removed. Yeah.
And you mentioned Griff. Yeah.
So you you were both in Footlights together?
We were, yeah. Yeah.
And then he cuz I know he became a radio producer first, right
And then graduate and then he got sort of he was a minor part
of the first series of Not the 9:00 news and then graduated to.
That's right. Chris Langham, left and and.
Griffin Yeah. Did you.
I mean, did you ever did you get, did you have the
opportunity potentially to, you know to follow that path
yourself, if you know what I mean.
I've had a flashback to the Edinburgh Festival 1973.
Yeah. The producer of this show called
up Sunday, saw the show and asked me whether I wanted to be
on it and that that's when I yeah said no, I didn't.
I didn't. I didn't feel it was for me.
So that's yeah that that is that is a genuine opportunity that I
missed the performer but I still happier to be a writer.
It's odd. I got every so often I do a
public appearance like I'm interview interviewing.
I'm introducing a series of screwball comedies at the cinema
in Aubre in Suffolk where I live.
I just do a 5 minute intro this this Sunday we got his girl
Friday 1940. A great film.
I might be simply to write 5 minutes of intro and you know
it's it's not a big deal but it preys on my mind.
I just even at that age, I thought, wow, my question.
It's an odd question, but it's very simple.
Supposing you're doing a show in the evening, what are you meant
to do in the day? And still kind of wonder that
just to tell you my most recent public appearances, in 2019,
Lenny Henry went on a nationwide tour to promote his first volume
of autobiography. It's called Who Am I Anyway?
And as his long term cohort and he said to me take this book and
out of it construct an hour's stand up material.
So I duly did. I mean it was a pleasure.
It's always, it was always a pleasure working with Lenny.
And then he said for the second-half, I'm damned if I
want to learn anything more. So you're going to come on tour
with me and the second-half of the show every night is going to
be you interviewing me in a kind of, you know, Michael Parkinson,
Graham, Nortony kind of way. That's what I did.
I went on a 42 day tour of of the United Kingdom with Lenny
Henry every night asking the same question.
So Lenny, I'm very interested in how you went from doing sketches
and comedy to Shakespeare. That's an extraordinary leap.
How did it happen? And whether you like it or not,
and I didn't, I didn't. That is a kind of an acting job.
In other words, not only do you have to ask the question, you've
got to look interested in the answer.
And not only do you have to look interested in the answer, you
have to look surprised by the answer like you didn't hear it
last night in Bradford on the previous night in Stoke.
Yeah, once it came on stage and then he said Jack.
For some reason he always calls me Jack.
Jack, you nodded too quickly. You nodded before I'd given the
answer. So there you are.
But he. But of course he he would have
to give the impression that it was the first time he'd heard
the question. Exactly.
So in that sense, in that sense, we're equal.
But you know what I did? I made sure I had 4 gags in that
interview segment. So I always knew if nothing else
and I Rd. tested them. That's what you do.
As you know, any touring comedian or touring interviewer
does the same thing, which is to Rd. test the material.
Did did you ever, did you think, did you ever attempt to or dare
to try and throw him with like, you know, OK, I think question
he wasn't prepared for, like what's your inside leg
measurement or something? Absolutely not.
No. Because as I say, I've given
myself these little Bonbons Littles and I remember.
Can I just tell you? Because it gives me pleasure of
nobody else. I used to say to him, you know,
Lenny, are you kind of addicted to technology?
And he'd go, no, I don't, not particularly, no.
And I'd go, oh, that's so Man, that is so untrue.
Yesterday we drove all the way from Stoke to Nottingham.
That's like a, you know, it's a 90 minute journey and I swear to
God, you never took your eyes off your phone.
I mean, OK, you drove safely so that that was the gag and it
gave me joy, you know, every night that got a good, good
laugh. And I thought, obviously I like,
I like this work because I'm going to get a lot tomorrow
night in Middlesbrough on that. And that's that's the tiny joy
of being a travelling interviewer.
Wow, brilliant Lenny Henry. You've obviously worked with him
extensively. And also Dawn, I believe.
Yes, I Wrote Murder. Yes, I did write an episode of
Murder most horrid for Dawn back in the 80s.
It was acceptable in the 80s as Calvin Harris memorably sang
Yeah, Yeah, Let me tell me that And I'm sure he told the world
that he invited Dawn to see his stand up show and after the show
she came back and she had 73 notes for him.
Now that's remarkable in many ways, not not not least because
it it speaks to her ability to write legibly in the dark.
It also, I've always loved that story because I think performers
like to be a friend of mine once said being edited is like being
loved. And I thought that's a very cute
observation because obviously a lot of what you say will be in
quotes negative. But you can say in such a way
that you're saying, look, I believe in you, I support you, I
think you could do this better. And I think that really, that
really chimed with him, you know?
Yeah, that brings us nicely onto.
Back to a bit of Fry and Laurie. Yeah, like you say, you had the
best job in the world. You were there reading these
sketches, these bits and and sifting through and deciding
what you felt worked, what needed work and etcetera,
etcetera. Did you actually contribute
anything in terms of writing? Do you know?
I, I did, I I I contributed my. My great contribution to British
television comedy, I maintain, is this tiny thing.
So I used to do a series of spoof vox pops.
Maybe. You know, Yep, over there.
Beautifully done. And one of them had Stephen in a
sort of 1950s housewife hat. Yes, I can picture it.
Yep, yes. And he would just say, he would
start to say something and he'd put his hand over his mouth and
go, I think I've left the iron on.
And then he'd come out of flame. And I said, and this is where I
changed the face of comedy. I said we should just play that
every week. There's no need to write another
one for the character. It's nice.
I mean, come on, I've listened to Help by The Beatles 710 times
and it's great every time. In fact, the the pleasure is, is
partly in knowing what's going to happen.
Yeah. Well, that's what they did.
And then I used to think later. Well, like with The Fast Show,
you know, I'm not saying they got it from me, although I kind
of AM. So you so you kind of inspired
those Vox pop bits. No, I didn't inspire the Vox
Pops. I just thought there's, you
know, the agony of creating comedy is such that why don't
you have 14 seconds of the show, which is, which is the same
every week. So that will save us 14 seconds
of agony. Those.
Yeah, because you'd have. You'd have, you'd often have,
like you say you'd have Steven dressed as that 1950s lady you'd
have. Hugh dressed as a policeman.
Yes, that's right. And you'd have Steven dressed.
My favorite one of those is Steven dressed as this kind of.
He's like wearing a tank top. His hair's slipped right back.
Slipped Glasses I. Went around to a primary school
because he had that end of term thing and they shove all their
paintings, all the paintings they've done in her class, so
shown them all around the wall. Oh crap, yeah.
It's just I just honestly, YouTube is the great, great
fountain of of joy in anybody's life who loves comedy.
You know just go to the YouTube and watch a bit of stuff and it
unfailing me. It unfailing me makes me, makes
me raw. And and the the thing I
treasured about them was I don't think it's sentimental to say
that great great comedy can or does come out of friendship.
You know, there's been many great.
I mean look at Dawn and Jennifer, you can't fake it.
But the the shared way of feeling about something.
So Hugh would come in one morning to rehearsal and say, oh
God, I can't believe it, I I took my car to be serviced.
And the man said, yeah, Oh yeah, I'm busy with another car, but
my colleague will be along in a minute.
And here we go, my colleague, my colleague, and this with a face
that said, this is the worst thing that's ever that's ever
happened to a person in the world.
And Stephen would understand the rest of us were, you know,
what's wrong with that? But the rest, you know, it was
astonishing that that kind of telepathy and shared love and
hatred stuff. Absolutely, I I think.
I was trying to think of knowing that I was going to talk to you
and and we're going to talk about the show.
I was trying to think of my fate if I could single out my
favorite bit of Fry and Laurie sketch or bit ever.
And I don't know if it's one you remember particularly, but it's
it's the Mr. Sibnock sketch, Hugh playing a very old man with
very long white hair in a brown dressing gown, and Stevens
playing his. Carer for want of a better word.
You know that one. No, I don't.
This is. I'm excited to know what's going
to be. And and and Steven's very
playing a very effeminate character and it's a very funny
sketch in general. Him wanting his Coco Steven sort
of fussing around him and then the the crux of the sketch is is
Mr. Simnock. Wistfully ruing the fact that
he's not done so many things in his life that he wished he'd
done, such as watching a woman urinate riding a camel.
And there was a few others but but but not.
It wasn't just the the lines and the comedy.
It was the character that Hugh played.
It was perfect. And the character that Stephen
played was perfect. And I I will take that sketch to
my grave. I want to drink milk from the
breasts of a Burmese maiden. I don't know what's got into you
today, Mr. Simnock. I don't really.
I think we're going to have to give you some extra Vitamin E
Burmese maidens in Todmorden. We've got bug breath.
You up? Well, there's no call to be
getting personal. I hope like rotten.
Cabbages. I'm very angry with you today,
Mr. Simnock. You're a great Nancy.
I'm not a great Nancy, Mr. Simnock.
And you're wicked to say so. You're.
Great Mary. I'm Boom Boy Nancy, But you've
never even done it. I'm not going to take any more
of this from you, Mr. Simnock. I'm not really.
You should be in a place like this at your time of life.
Well, someone's got to do it. Dedication.
The way I bother, I do not know you.
Should be out there having oral sex and killing people and
watching women urinate in opera. Eating hamburgers in opera
houses and drinking milk from the breasts of Nepalese maidens
it. Was Burmese last time?
Nepalese. I've changed my mind.
Instead, you're stuck here taking rude talk from an old
man. You're a great bog breath,
Nancy. You've really upset me today,
Mr. SIM. No, you have.
Really Now I'm going out to hurry along your Coco.
When I get back, I don't want any more nonsense, honestly.
With a screaming great Bertie in your pong. 92 years old and I've
never watched a woman urinate. Tragic waste that oh man, and I
want to congratulate you on in your introduction.
Using the phrase wist wistfully ruin, which is a delightful
phrase and it can something that they, and I mean this is the
nice nicest possible something that either of them could have
said. It's incredibly gifted, their
advanced education because English was definitely there.
Oh, there's so many sketches. There's so many sketches.
Like the language sketch where he talks about language.
Yes, I mean they they were, I mean, people talk about
undergraduate humour. But I I think they graduated.
I think they were glorious, available to all.
And I just remembered, I want to bring it back to Spike, the
described Hugh Laurie joke. But I think Spike could have
written he just, he's playing himself effectively.
He holds up. I think it was a pair of socks.
It might have been a pair of pants.
Let's say it was a pair of underpants.
He holds up a pair of underpants to the camera.
And he says, you know, there's a funny story attached to these
underpants, but I'm afraid it's fallen off.
Yeah, I think Spike would have been proud of that, I think.
It's, yeah, yeah. Once again, it's it's it's
wonderfully visual. Absolutely.
There's a few other people that you've worked with.
I want to just touch on that I that I admire.
And again, circling back to Douglas Adams, you, you and John
Lloyd collaborated on Afterlife On Afterlife, Yeah.
Yes. Which which was, Which was
basically what the the, the, the the follow up to John Lloyd and
John and Douglas's meeting of Lyft.
That's absolutely right. Yes.
Douglas and John's friendship was incredibly strong, I think.
I think John thinks about him every day of his life actually.
So I was kind of very glad to be invited onto that small team to
to to to take that format and revisit it and it was a joy.
It was very, very interesting to me though because we we went to
in typical bloody this is so Douglas Adams and Douglas Adams,
what he used to do was hire a villa in I don't know Tuscany,
even Australia. I was in Sydney one time and he
was he hired a villa to write. Which is in a way good, in a way
completely daft, because writing it is an introvert activity.
And there's yeah, frankly you might as well be in the looking
out on the Holloway Rd. is looking out on on Tuscan
mountains because do you know what I mean?
You're you're not really going to partake of them?
Yes. And it doesn't make sense.
Yes, doesn't really make a lot of sense.
But. And the whole joy of going away
I think is, is getting away from what you do all day.
But, But anyway, so John and I naturally hired a villa in a
villa. We hired a little house in Foye
in Cornwall, you know, near to Daphne de Moray country.
Yeah and first day write Co writing.
We sat opposite each other and you could tell we got what do we
do now? In other words do we properly Co
write and OfferUp things for the other person to comment on and
then rewrite. And the answer was no.
We sat within a few inches of each other, like like you did.
Like you did in in the fifth form when you kind of hid your
work from the person at the next desk because he didn't want, he
didn't want to have it seen or Nick do, do you do your own
geography at O level homework? So it's the most odd thing.
But then of course we read them out and it was fine.
But I'm always very interested in how writing partnerships work
and ours didn't really, but it was fine.
Normally there's a person who sits at the laptop and somebody
who wanders around. So we said OK, so if if for
example. So you were sat there together.
Yeah. And you were, you were coming up
with definitions. Yes, basically.
So like the the, I'm just thinking so you know the
frustration that you feel when you can't get the cellophane off
a CD or a DVD, that sense of frustration.
Would you have, Would you have said try?
Try to think of a word for that, for that's interesting.
No, that's a good question. And no, we would rather.
Certainly I would rather be there with the cassetteer or the
Google Maps and go Foy Teddington.
Yeah. So can you know?
Yeah. Look for the inspiration in in
the word rather than what? Backwards for the meaning, yeah.
Got you. OK.
So you'd find the, you'd find
the location, and then you'd spend an hour thinking of the
definition. Yeah, preferably a minute, but
possibly an hour. Yeah.
Yes. And.
And you've recently or relatively recently been
involved you, you write a lot for radio.
Yeah. And I'm trying to think what
it's called. I'm so, so believe it.
Believe it. With Richard Wilson.
Yeah, I wrote. I wrote six series of that.
For has that finished now? Yes, it has right.
Ages got to us, Tyler particularly, yeah, so we did 24
and it was great, but yeah. Now I'm a huge.
Richard Wilson fan I Was before 1 Foot in the Grave.
Even though that's good, that mocks you out if you.
Will Well, I enjoyed him very much.
I was a big fan of Only When I laugh, right?
Yes. With the perpetually ill, or at
least hospital bound, James Bolum and Peter Bowles and
Christopher Strowley. And of course, Richard Wilson
was was one of the was was like the head doctor that would
always, you know, look through his Half Moon spectacles at the
wither with that withering glare.
Withering glare, yes, But now I'm a a big I mean, 1 Foot in
the Grave is is certainly one of my favorite favorite sitcoms.
And what was it like working with with Richard?
It was. I mean, it's very interesting.
It was meant to be sort of pseudo autobiographical.
Yeah. And actually he said to me
earlier, no you do you do it, John, you write it.
I'll I'll be fine with that. So he, he's a, he's a very
private man but he he sort of rather liked.
I would kind of tease him in a way and and I take as much as I
could from what I knew of his real life.
So I knew save his friendship with them Ian McKellen.
And I thought we've got to have as much Ian McKellen as we can.
So I I created a character for Ian McKellen.
We called him head of Gay and that was rather that, you know,
that was the kind of thing I think he enjoyed because he, you
know, he wasn't a sort of, as you probably know, he didn't
come out till the 90s actually. And so it wasn't a great public
figure in that way. But he, he liked the fact that
that I went for that. And the other thing to say about
Richard is and Sean, Ed William who was running Radio Light
Entertainment made the point. My goodness, he's such a he was
such a natural for radio. Nobody sounds like Richard.
I mean it's extraordinary. And of course when he went to
drama school in the early 60s in in London, they they sort of
thought, well you'll never work in this town again with with an
accent like that. But it used to be hilarious.
If Richard, you can't ask Richard.
Don't ask Richard to do an accent because that's an
absolute waste of obvious, extraordinary talent for being
himself. And he and he, the other thing I
loved, let's face it, he's very, very popular with him.
He's done a lot of work in theatre.
People love him. So, you know, if you want to get
David Tennant to do Richard Wilson's radio show, of course
he'll do it. When 1 Foot In The Grave ended,
very soon after, Richard appeared in another sitcom
called Duck Patrol. Oh, that's right.
That's right, with. Him.
With the David Tennant, the young David Tennant and Jason
Watkins, I think, yes, I think that's right that again you can,
you can find little bits of it on YouTube.
Yeah, but no and and wonderful, man.
I mean, I'd love to have him on this because I know he's a fan
of the Goons, but he's probably got better things to do.
What was happening? Richard was sounding more and
more like an old pal Ian Mckellan, playing Gandalf and
Lord of the Rings, all portentous and momentous and
pretentious. Anyway, he cancelled the hotel
and we set off for London and I drove and I drove.
I drove through the night at 6:00 in the morning, my head
lulled forward onto the steering wheel.
Luckily, I was parked outside Richard's flat at the time.
David, you fell asleep. Blind me right.
I'll say goodbye and head home. Thank you so much for
everything. It was memorable, wouldn't have
missed it. I'm glad.
But let's not do it again soon. Listen, you can't drive home in
your condition. Come up and have a cup of coffee
strong enough. Absolutely.
I'm buzzing. Good.
I want you to listen closely in my will.
I'm going to leave you my walking stick and my mobile.
And you're well, you've left me your walking stick and your
mobile. You don't have to repeat what I
say. Just listen.
Sorry, I'm so wired. I I'm feeling incredibly awake
and totally zonked at the same time.
OK, well, before we wrap up, I know, I know you've you've,
you've, you've written plays, you've written novels.
What are you working on at the moment?
What I'm working on now is I had a play on in Edinburgh in 2022.
Yeah. And being a play at Edinburgh
only lasted an hour. I've so I've extended it into a
full length piece. It's called 500 Couples and it's
about a couples counsellor, a woman who's hit her 60s and has
basically been saying the same things for 32 years in her job
and has got to the end. So it's a kind of it's I've
called it a ROM com. It's basically about the central
character is a couples counsellor who, as I say, has
been doing the same, doing the job for 32 years and in fact
does not have a partner herself. So we see her getting to the end
of her professional career and then we see whether she's going
to have a man in her life. So I've got a read through of
that this week. And also I wrote a novel called
A Short Gentleman about a barrister who commits a crime
but cannot admit that he's done anything wrong.
And that's incredibly close to my heart because I studied law
and my father was a solicitor. And there's something about a
highly educated person who can't admit they've done anything
wrong, which really appeals to me.
So I've done a one man show based on it and that's got a
read through in January. So basically what I'm doing now
is, is trying to get back on stage.
You know, I I really miss working with Lenny Henry on his
live show. That's come to an end, but I
just loved being all over the place in front of an audience.
Yeah, you're on the show and making it better, going back
into the dressing room and and saying that they didn't work.
I love the whole process, but there's.
Bound to be more Lenny Henry. Henry shows?
I don't think so. I think Len now has probably
hung up his stand up suit because the most recent stage
work he did was a play called August in England, which is a
one man show, a one man show. It's a one man play and put on
at the Bush Theatre. It was excellent.
And I think, no, I don't. I think he's what is so
interesting and I don't say this with any kind of attitude but
when I met Lenny in the 1990 or something, you know this is a
guy who'd left school at 15 or 16 and gone to work in a foundry
since which time, because he's such an incredible got such an
incredible appetite for everything he's become.
He's got a PhD, he's got an MA, you know, in.
And he's now, he's far outstripped me in terms of
education. So in the beginning, I think he
3232 years ago, I don't think he he had the confidence to be a
writer, but he's but he's got that now.
Yeah, he's got a drama series on ITV as we speak.
Three little birds, you know, I think he.
I think he's found himself. Sometimes it, sometimes it can
take 30 years to reach that. Yeah.
Yeah, OK.
And and John has been genuinely. Huge amount of fun speaking to
you because you're very you know you've got a wealth of stuff to
talk about such a career and and and such enthusiasm that comes
through as well it's it's infectious so so thank you very
much for for coming on and I've only told you the stories that
are broadcastable so. You can tell me the other ones,
surely? Surely even with a half a pint
of Stellar inside me? Yes, yes.
Oh, John. Listen, thank you very much.
It's been great pleasure. Language is the Creek on a
stair. It's a spluttering match held to
a frosted pane. It's it's a half remembered
childhood birthday party. It's the warm, wet, trusting
touch of a leaking nappy, the Hulk of a charred Panzer, the
underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the
upper lip of the Mediterranean. It's cobwebs long since overrun
by an old Wellington boot. No, no.