Fry_ A Memoir Part 8

At the first-night party I heard a senior academic and distinguished Shakespeare scholar congratulate Brigid on her idea of presenting the introductory speech as a kind of communal oath. 'A superb concept. It made the whole scene come alive. Really quite brilliant.'

'Thank you, Professor,' said Brigid without a blush, 'it seemed right.'

She caught my eye and beamed.

Cellar Tapes and Celebration The last term arrived. Another May Ball. Finals of the English tripos. The May Week Revue itself. Graduation. Farewell, Cambridge, hullo, world.

For the last Footlights Smoker before we began work on the show itself I recruited my old friend Tony Slattery, who fitted in with the greatest ease. He tore up the audience with guitar songs and extraordinary monologues of his own devising; one girl, according to the fatalistic janitor figure who looked after the premises, actually wet herself.

'There's such a thing,' he said as he shook a canister of Vim over the damp cus.h.i.+on, 'as too too funny.' funny.'

I attempted to persuade Simon Beale to join us too, but he had enough singing and drama to fill his diary. I think he felt that comedy shows somehow weren't quite him. With the addition of Penny Dwyer, with whom I had worked in Mummer productions and who could sing, dance, be funny and do just about anything, we had a cast to join me, Hugh, Emma and Paul Shearer for the big one, the May Week Revue that would go on to Oxford and then Edinburgh.

I wrote a monologue for myself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula and a two-handed parody of and a two-handed parody of The Barretts of Wimpole Street The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in which Emma played Elizabeth, a bed-bound invalid, and I played Robert, her ardent suitor. Hugh and I had both seen and found hilarious John Barton's Shakespeare Mastercla.s.ses on television, in which he had painfully slowly taken Ian McKellen and David Suchet through the text of a single speech. We put together a sketch in which I did the same with Hugh. So detailed was the textual a.n.a.lysis that we never got further than the opening word, 'Time'.

Hugh asked the previous year's President, Jan Ravens, to direct us, and we began rehearsals in the clubroom. We put together a closing ensemble sketch, in which a ghastly kind of Alan Ayckbourn family playing after-dinner charades breaks down in animosity, revelation and disarray.

Performing the 'Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s' sketch with Hugh.

At some point we must have sat Finals and at another point I must have completed two dissertations, one on Byron's Don Juan Don Juan, another on aspects of E. M. Forster. I can remember neither, having knocked them both up in two frantic evenings: 15,000 words of drivel typed out at high speed.

When the news came that the English results were published I walked to the Senate House, against the walls of which huge notice-boards in wooden frames had been attached. I strained through the crowd of hysterical studentry and found my name in the Upper Second list. I had scored a dull, worthy and unexciting 2:1.

Peter Holland, a don from Trinity Hall who had supervised me for practical criticism and seventeenth-century literature, offered consolation.

'They reread you for a First twice,' he said. 'You came very close. You got good Firsts in all your papers, top in Shakespeare again. But a 2:2 in the Forster dissertation and a Third in the Byron. That's why they just couldn't do it. Hard luck.'

The hurt was more to my pride than to my plans. To be honest, Cambridge was right, I had shown I could fly through written exams against the clock, but the serious work of a dissertation, which required the kind of originality, scholars.h.i.+p and diligence that I either didn't possess or simply couldn't be a.r.s.ed to produce, exposed me for the plausible rogue that I was.

With Kim outside the Cambridge Senate House, celebrating our Tripos results. I was insanely in love with that Cerruti tie.

Hugh read Archaeology and Anthropology and got a far more amusing and likeable cla.s.s of degree. He had been to one lecture, which gave him the material for a quite brilliant monologue about a Bantu hut, but otherwise had not disturbed his professors, written an essay or entered the faculty library. I think he would be the first to admit that you know more about Archaeology and Anthropology than he does.

The first night of our May Week Revue came. The show was called The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes, as much a reference to the underground Footlights clubroom in which it was born as to Bob Dylan's Bas.e.m.e.nt Tapes Bas.e.m.e.nt Tapes or any pun on Sellotape. or any pun on Sellotape.

Hugh came on stage for the opening. 'Ah, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the May Week Revue. We have an evening of entertainment, of I got a Third by the way sketch comedy, music and ...'

We were under way. The Arts Theatre has one of the best auditoriums for comedy I know. Sitting in a spotlight with a leather book on my lap delivering the Dracula monologue, standing on stage with Hugh for the Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s, kneeling at the stricken Emma's bedside, pouring tea for Paul Shearer in the MI5 recruitment sketch all these moments were more pleasurable and thrilling in this theatre, on this occasion, before such an enthusiastic audience, than anything I had ever done before.

Hugh and I looked at each other after the curtain fell. We knew that, come what might, we had not disgraced the name of Footlights.

The Cellar Tapes closing song. I fear we may have been guilty of embarra.s.sing and sanctimonious 'satire' at this point. Hence the joyless expressions. closing song. I fear we may have been guilty of embarra.s.sing and sanctimonious 'satire' at this point. Hence the joyless expressions.

One night of the two-week run the word went round backstage that Rowan Atkinson had been spotted in the audience. I broke the habit of my (short) lifetime and peeped through at the house. There he was, there could be no mistake. Not the least distinctive set of features on the planet. We all performed with an extra intensity that may have made the show better or may, just as easily, have given it rather a hysterical edge I for one was too excited to be able to tell. The great Rowan Atkinson watching us perform. Only a year and a half ago I had all but vomited with laughter at his show in Edinburgh. Since then Not the Nine O'Clock News had propelled him to major television stardom. had propelled him to major television stardom.

He came round backstage to shake our hands, a graceful and kindly act for a man so shy and private. My state of electrified enthralment stopped me from hearing a single word he said, although Hugh and the others told me afterwards that he had been charmingly complimentary about the evening.

Two nights later Emma's agent, Richard Armitage, came.

'Do you see yourselves,' he asked us afterwards, 'doing this kind of thing professionally? As a career?'

It was all so sudden, strange and overwhelming. A few terms earlier I had been happy to wander on as a grizzled soldier or warty old king in productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare. I had listened to the more serious actors talking about applying for places on the Webber Douglas Academy graduate course, the path that Ian McKellen had taken after Cambridge. Since I had met Hugh and started writing sketches with him and on my own I had dared hope that I might perhaps apply one day to BBC radio for a job as a scriptwriter or a.s.sistant producer or something along those lines. About my future as a comic performer I was less sure, however. All the facial mastery, double-takes, clowning and fearless a.s.surance that Hugh and Emma displayed on stage and in rehearsal came much less naturally to me. I was voice and words; my face and my body were still a source of shame, insecurity and self-consciousness. That this Richard Armitage was prepared, keen even, to take me on and shepherd me into a genuine career seemed like astonis.h.i.+ngly good luck.

I later discovered that, crafty old fox that he was, Richard had sent his youngest client ahead to see us and deliver his opinion. Which explained what Rowan had been doing there. Plainly he had made encouraging enough noises about us for Richard himself to make the journey to Cambridge and, now that he had seen the show for himself, to make this offer.

I accepted, of course. As did Hugh and Paul.

'Of course,' Hugh said, walking back from the theatre afterwards, 'it doesn't necessarily mean anything. He probably scoops up dozens every year.'

'I know,' I said. 'But still, I've got an agent!'

I stopped to break the news to a parking meter. 'I've got an agent!'

The silhouette of King's College chapel loomed up against the night sky. 'I've got an agent!' I told it. It was unmoved.

Cheerio, Cambridge My last May Ball, my last Cherubs Summer Party on the Grove at Queens'. May Week parties all over Cambridge, new levels of drunkenness, mooning, stumbling about, weeping and vomiting. Kim and I threw our own party on the Scholars' Lawn of St John's and got through every last case and bottle of Taittinger that Kim's parents had kindly sent down. My family came to the graduation ceremony: hundreds of identically subfusc graduands-turned-graduates milled about on the lawn outside the Senate House, all looking suddenly rather adult and forlorn as they posed with forced smiles for parental photographs and said their final farewells to three-year friends.h.i.+ps. The shadow of the outside world was looming over us all, and that three years seemed suddenly to peel and shrink away like a snake's sloughed skin, too shrivelled and small ever to have fitted the fine and gleaming years of our owners.h.i.+p.

In room A2, Queens'. Graduation day: posing with sister Jo.

Kim's parents lived in Manchester but they also had a house in the prosperous London suburb of Hadley Wood, a brisk walk from High Barnet and c.o.c.kfosters Tube Stations, and they made this entirely available to Kim and me as soon as we left Cambridge. It was an absurdly wonderful and luxurious introduction to life outside university. On the television there I watched Ian Botham wrench the Ashes from Australia's grasp and felt like the happiest man in the universe.

Almost immediately The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was off to Oxford for a week at the Playhouse Theatre. After the pleasures of the Cambridge Arts, the Playhouse, with its long, narrow skittle-alley auditorium appeared wholly inimical to comedy, and our material seemed to us to fall flat. The management and technical staff of the theatre were less than welcoming, and we spent a frightened, unhappy week avoiding the hostile glares of the tab men and lighting crew and alternating between melancholy wails and hysterical laughter as we huddled together for mutual comfort and support. It was a bewildering crash to earth. Hugh was so angered by the staff's unkindness that he wrote a letter to the manager which he showed me before posting. I had never seen cold fury so expertly rendered into polite but d.a.m.ning prose. was off to Oxford for a week at the Playhouse Theatre. After the pleasures of the Cambridge Arts, the Playhouse, with its long, narrow skittle-alley auditorium appeared wholly inimical to comedy, and our material seemed to us to fall flat. The management and technical staff of the theatre were less than welcoming, and we spent a frightened, unhappy week avoiding the hostile glares of the tab men and lighting crew and alternating between melancholy wails and hysterical laughter as we huddled together for mutual comfort and support. It was a bewildering crash to earth. Hugh was so angered by the staff's unkindness that he wrote a letter to the manager which he showed me before posting. I had never seen cold fury so expertly rendered into polite but d.a.m.ning prose.

From Oxford we travelled to the theatre at Uppingham School, Chris Richardson welcoming us as two years earlier he had prophesied he would. Oxford had convinced us our show was a shambles and that Edinburgh would be a disaster, but Uppingham rebuilt our morale a little: the staff and school made a supportive and enthusiastic audience and the theatre on whose boards I had been the very first to step in 1970 as a witch in Macbeth Macbeth was a perfect arena in which to restore our confidence. Christopher was the warmest and most thoughtful host, making sure that we each had excellent accommodation, including a small bottle of malt whisky on the bedside table. was a perfect arena in which to restore our confidence. Christopher was the warmest and most thoughtful host, making sure that we each had excellent accommodation, including a small bottle of malt whisky on the bedside table.

The great William Goldman is famous for saying of Hollywood that 'n.o.body knows anything', an apophthegm that holds just as true in theatre. I received a letter from someone who had been to The The Cellar Tapes Cellar Tapes at the Oxford Playhouse and wanted to tell me that they thought it the best show of its kind they had ever seen. I tried and failed to remember a single moment of the Oxford run that I thought had gone well. I realized, however, if I was honest, that the audience did at least laugh, and there had been sustained and enthusiastic applause at the end. I suppose the rudeness of the theatre staff and the shape of the auditorium had contrasted so negatively with the perfection of Cambridge that the entire experience seemed black and hopeless. at the Oxford Playhouse and wanted to tell me that they thought it the best show of its kind they had ever seen. I tried and failed to remember a single moment of the Oxford run that I thought had gone well. I realized, however, if I was honest, that the audience did at least laugh, and there had been sustained and enthusiastic applause at the end. I suppose the rudeness of the theatre staff and the shape of the auditorium had contrasted so negatively with the perfection of Cambridge that the entire experience seemed black and hopeless.

Caledonia 3 Before long we arrived at Edinburgh, where we found ourselves sharing St Mary's Hall with the Oxford Theatre Group, whose own show was on immediately before ours. They were friendly and self-deprecating and charming. St Mary's was a large venue with temporary seating banked high. It turned out to be perfect for the show. We received favourable reviews and found ourselves sold out for the two weeks of our run.

We performed two sketches on the radio for a BBC Radio 2 Fringe round-up programme presented by Brian Matthew, who interviewed us afterwards. It was my first time on the radio: performing the sketch was fine, but as soon as I had to speak as myself I found my throat restricted, my mouth dry and my brain empty. This would be the case for years to come. Alone in my bedroom I could say things to an imaginary interviewer that were fluent, amusing and a.s.sured. The moment the green recording light was on I froze.

One night Richard Armitage left a note to say that someone from the BBC would be present and would like to see us. Two days later he told us to give some time after the show to two people from Granada Television. The following night Martin Bergman, who had been President of Footlights in '77'78 and whom I had seen in Nightcap Nightcap, came to see the show too. They all had offers that made us dizzy with astonishment.

The man from the BBC asked if we might be willing to record The The Cellar Tapes Cellar Tapes for television. The two from Granada, a florid Scot called Sandy and a pert young Englishman call Jon, wondered if we would be interested in developing a comedy sketch show for them. Martin Bergman told us that he was arranging a tour of Australia. September to December, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Did we like the idea? for television. The two from Granada, a florid Scot called Sandy and a pert young Englishman call Jon, wondered if we would be interested in developing a comedy sketch show for them. Martin Bergman told us that he was arranging a tour of Australia. September to December, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Did we like the idea?

On the penultimate night of the run, as we were executing our final bows to the audience, their cheering suddenly increased in volume and intensity. This was gratifying but inexplicable. Hugh nudged me; a man had walked on stage from the wings behind us and was coming forward holding his hand up for silence. His presence only encouraged more cheering. It was Rowan Atkinson. For a moment or two I thought he had gone insane. His reputation for timidity was already established. It made no sense whatsoever for him to be here.

'Um, ladies and gentlemen. Do forgive me for interrupting like this,' he said. 'You must think it most odd.'

These innocent remarks elicited greater laughs from the audience than any they had favoured us with all evening. Such is the power of fame, I remember thinking even as I looked on bewildered and intrigued by this peculiar invasion. Of course, Rowan had a way with words like 'odd' that did make them very funny.

'You may know,' he continued, 'that this year sees the inst.i.tution of an award for the best comedy show on the Edinburgh Fringe. It is sponsored by Perrier ... the bubbly water people.'

More laughter. No one can say the word 'bubbly' quite like Rowan Atkinson. My heart was beginning to hammer by now. Hugh and I exchanged glances. We had heard of the founding of this Perrier Award and of one thing we were absolutely certain ...

'The organizers and judges of the award, which is to encourage new talent and new trends in comedy, were absolutely certain of one thing,' Rowan continued, echoing our conviction. 'That whoever won it wouldn't be the Cambridge b.l.o.o.d.y Footlights.'

The audience drummed their feet in appreciation, and I began to fear for the safety of the temporary structure supporting them.

'However, with a mixture of reluctance and admiration, they unanimously decided that the winner had to be The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes ...' ...'

The auditorium exploded with applause, and Nica Burns, organizer of the award (after thirty years she still is. Indeed she funded it herself when the sponsors.h.i.+p dried up), stepped forward with the trophy, which Rowan handed to Hugh.

Rowan Atkinson presents Hugh with the Perrier Prize cheque. Edinburgh, 1981.

The Vice-Chancellor placing in my hands a piece of paper that testified to my status as a BA (Hons.) was a small thing compared to this.

We had done it. We had put on a show and we had not disgraced ourselves. Indeed, we seemed to have done better than that.

Later that night, after dinner with Rowan and Nica and the people who looked after Perrier's PR, we trailed drunkenly home to our digs.

I lay awake almost all the night. I am not romanticizing the moment. I remember how I lay awake and where my thoughts took me.

A year and a half earlier I had been on probation. For almost all of my childhood and youth I had been lost in the dense blackness of an unfriendly forest thick with brambles, treacherous undergrowth and hostile creatures of my own making.

Somewhere, somehow I had seen or been offered a path out and had found myself stumbling into open, sunlit country. That alone would have been pleasure enough after a lifetime's tripping and tearing myself on ugly roots and cruel thorns, but not only was I in the open, I was on a broad and easy path that seemed to be leading me towards a palace of gold. I had a wonderful, kind and clever partner in love and a wonderful, kind and clever partner in work. The nightmare of the forest seemed a long distance behind me.

I cried and cried until at last I fell asleep.

Comedy Enough time has pa.s.sed for the 1980s to have taken on an agreed ident.i.ty, colour, style and flavour. Sloane Rangers, big hair, Dire Straits, black smoked-gla.s.s tables, unstructured jackets, New Romantics, shoulder pads, nouvelle cuisine nouvelle cuisine, Yuppies ... we have all seen plenty of television programmes flas.h.i.+ng images of all that past our eyes and insisting that this is what the decade meant.

As it happens, resistant to cliche as I try to be, the eighties for me conformed almost exactly to every one of those rather shallow representations. When I was tipped out of Cambridge and into the world in 1981, Ronald Reagan was beginning the sixth month of his presidency, Margaret Thatcher was suffering the indignity of a recession, Brixton and Toxteth were aflame, IRA bombs exploded weekly in London, Bobby Sands was dying on hunger strike, the Liberal and Social Democrat parties had agreed to merge, Arthur Scargill was about to take up the leaders.h.i.+p of the National Union of Miners, and Lady Diana Spencer was a month away from marrying the Prince of Wales. None of that seemed especially peculiar at the time, of course, nor did it seem as if one was living a television researcher's archive package.

I emerged from university a thin, tall, outwardly confident graduate for whom everything seemed new and exciting, if wildly temporary. Sooner or later, I was convinced, I would be found out, and the doors of s...o...b..siness would be slammed in my face, and I should have to set about answering my true vocation as a teacher of some kind. In the meantime I could not deny that it was larky and lovely to be riding this transitory cloud of glory.

Carry on Capering The Perrier Award resulted in a London run of our Footlights show. Well, let us not overstate the case. 'London run' suggests something rather grand: in fact we played as the late-night afterthought in a converted morgue in Hampstead called the New End, postal codes away from the fizzing neon of Shaftesbury Avenue. Not that we were complaining. The New End was to us as exciting as the West End. This small theatre had made its journey from abandoned hospital mortuary to leading fringe venue seven years earlier under the auspices of the excellent and pioneering Buddy Dalton and was as glamorous in our eyes as the London Palladium or the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

The Cellar Tapes followed every night for a week the main evening show, Steven Berkoff's followed every night for a week the main evening show, Steven Berkoff's Decadence Decadence, which starred Linda Marlowe and of course the brilliant and terrifying actor/author himself. The impossible delight of knowing that Berkoff snuck into our dressing-rooms and stole our cigarettes was almost as thrilling as watching him scrawl 'c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t' all over Nicholas de Jong's Evening Standard Evening Standard review of his play and pin it defiantly to the wall in the theatre lobby. Berkoff had a hard, restless menace that he was to bring to the wider world's attention two years later when he played Victor Maitland, the cruel c.o.ke- and art-dealing villain of review of his play and pin it defiantly to the wall in the theatre lobby. Berkoff had a hard, restless menace that he was to bring to the wider world's attention two years later when he played Victor Maitland, the cruel c.o.ke- and art-dealing villain of Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop. Given his fearsome reputation it is something of a miracle that such a parcel of poncey Cambridge wags as us got away without verbal, at the very least, a.s.sault, but despite his manner Berkoff's first loyalty is to the theatre and to actors. Even freshly graduated revue artists in tweed jackets are admitted to the pantheon. His ire, aggression and insult are reserved for critics, producers and executives.

After the New End came Australia. In honour of Ian Botham's epic summer of genius we gave our revue the t.i.tle Botham, the Musical Botham, the Musical. It is not often that there is enough British salt or a big enough Australian wound for the one to be rubbed into the other, so it seemed like an appropriate and attention-grabbing name for the show.

Australia in the early eighties was a revelation to me. I had expected a backwater: yellow-cellophaned shop windows displaying orange tank-tops and ten-year-old transistor radios, drunken h.o.m.ophobic, pommy-bas.h.i.+ng Ockers, winged-gla.s.ses-wearing Edna Everages and a sour atmosphere of cultural cringe, inferiority-complex rodomontade and tall-poppy resentment. Not even the greatest Australophile could deny that those elements did and still do exist, but they were and are by no means predominant. I found Australia to be a country of matchlessly high-quality and low-cost food and wine and vibrating with an optimistic prosperity that contrasted vividly with Britain's miseries of recession, rioting and IRA bombings. The affluence and confidence astonished me. The bright outdoorsy climate seemed to be echoed in the national mood just as Britain's grey, chilly pessimism so perfectly matched its relentlessly unappetizing weather. I could not know that Britain's mood was set to change.

Botham, the Musical opened in Perth, and we worked our way across the continent, spending most of our earnings in restaurants. I learnt in Australia to love crayfish and oysters: oysters raw, oysters Rockefeller, oysters Kilpatrick and oysters Casino. At Doyle's seafood restaurant, which I still visit whenever I am in Sydney, I discovered barramundi and those strange lobster-like creatures the Moreton Bay and Balmain Bugs. This was also the first time I had ever seen wine sold varietally, where the bottles displayed the name of the grape variety, rather than the chateau, estate or domain of origin. This is so accepted now as to be unworthy of notice. Only the Old World clings to its Barolo, Bordeaux and Mosel labellings everywhere else you know from one glance at the bottle that the wine is made of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo or Riesling. Having said which, thirty years later it is clear that easy familiarity with varieties has not entirely penetrated Britain. I saw an edition of opened in Perth, and we worked our way across the continent, spending most of our earnings in restaurants. I learnt in Australia to love crayfish and oysters: oysters raw, oysters Rockefeller, oysters Kilpatrick and oysters Casino. At Doyle's seafood restaurant, which I still visit whenever I am in Sydney, I discovered barramundi and those strange lobster-like creatures the Moreton Bay and Balmain Bugs. This was also the first time I had ever seen wine sold varietally, where the bottles displayed the name of the grape variety, rather than the chateau, estate or domain of origin. This is so accepted now as to be unworthy of notice. Only the Old World clings to its Barolo, Bordeaux and Mosel labellings everywhere else you know from one glance at the bottle that the wine is made of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo or Riesling. Having said which, thirty years later it is clear that easy familiarity with varieties has not entirely penetrated Britain. I saw an edition of The Weakest Link The Weakest Link not so long ago where, to the question 'What are Merlot, s.h.i.+raz and Chardonnay?', the contestant offered the answer 'Footballers' wives?' not so long ago where, to the question 'What are Merlot, s.h.i.+raz and Chardonnay?', the contestant offered the answer 'Footballers' wives?'

Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Albury Wodonga were all ticked off the itinerary before it was time to return to a snowy December England. We broke the journey in Singapore, staying for two nights at Raffles Hotel, where we ran out of money.

Clash of Cultures I am back in London. I ride on the Underground and grip the chromium rail to steady myself. The contrast between my brown hand and the paper-white English ones alongside astonishes me. I am in the Tube travelling to Notting Hill. I am on my way to a meeting at a flat in Pembridge Place that will change my life.

For the most part Australia had seemed to take to our comedy. We were just a band of students playing in smallish venues, and it was neither overwhelming triumph nor humiliating disaster. We were presenting material that was now nearly a year old: the Dracula monologue, the Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s, the Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett sketch, songs, sketches and quickies that we knew backwards. I remember Martin telling us that we would still be doing them in ten years' time. I blush to reveal that I performed Dracula for a charity show in Winchester just three months ago, a full twenty-nine years after I wrote it. But if, and it was an if as wide as the distance between Sydney and London, we were to make a professional go of comedy, it would mean writing new material, it would mean attempting to make a mark in a new comedy world.

With Emma in 'My Darling' a Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning sketch.

In 1981 a great schism had apparently started to open up in the jolly world of humorous entertainment. I cannot recall when I first heard the phrase 'alternative comedy' but I do clearly remember seeing Alexei Sayle on television during my last year at Cambridge. Reeling and jerking like a puppet, crammed a la Tommy Cooper into a double-breasted suit a size too small, sucking in breath through his teeth, Sayle raged brilliantly about posey middle-cla.s.s liberals. I subsequently learnt that his best lines were actually from the resolutely middle-cla.s.s privately educated lawyer and Cambridge Footlights alumnus Clive Anderson, but that is not to take away the impact Sayle had. The tireless and surreal rants, all spat out in a Liverpudlian accent you could grate cheese with, combined with the look of a swarthy silent-movie villain made him funny, frightening and impossible to ignore, a kind of anarcho-syndicalist John Belus.h.i.+ but Lithuanian, Jewish and rebarbative where Belus.h.i.+ was Albanian, Orthodox and cuddly. When I first met him I was made acutely aware that I represented everything he most despised: public school, Cambridge and, due to that manner that I have never been able to shake off, Establishment. Prejudice and sn.o.bbery appear to be considered legitimate in that direction: if I had despised him for being the working-cla.s.s, state-school son of a communist railway worker, I should have been rightly condemned. In those days you were proud of being working-cla.s.s and ashamed of being middle-cla.s.s. I was desperate to be proud of being no cla.s.s, of being decla.s.se decla.s.se and and deracine deracine, of being bohemian-cla.s.s, eternal-student-cla.s.s, artist-cla.s.s. I missed all those by a mile and continue to this day to reek more of the Garrick Club than the Groucho Club, but that has never stopped me trying, in my doomed, futile and pointless way, to be free. We all have our strange ways of coping, or failing to cope. Over the years I got on perfectly politely and almost amiably with Alexei and his wife, Linda, but I am afraid I have never really forgiven him for his bullying unkindness and aggression towards Ben Elton. By the end of the decade and throughout the nineties he missed no opportunity to take pot-shots at Ben, unjustly accusing him of being somehow inauthentic, derivative and abjectly unworthy of the label comedian or alternative. Well, all that came later, and I dare say he has calmed down now: the point is that, for a short few years, Sayle stood out as the most visible symbol of this new movement and at the time of our return from Australia the world appeared to belong to him and his cohorts.

I am not by nature a pessimist but I did wonder if the door had closed on types like us. Comedy is, as everyone knows, all about timing, and I feared that in the career sense our comic timing was way off. Not the Nine O'Clock News Not the Nine O'Clock News, with three Oxbridge performers, its ex-Footlights producer John Lloyd and its Oxford chief writer Richard Curtis was surely the last hurrah of our kind. And good riddance, the world was saying. What punk had done for music the alternative comedians were doing for comedy. The cla.s.sic 'Ah Perkins, come in, sit down' comic sketch would be swept away along with the tuck box and the old school tie. This is how it seemed to us in our darker moments. I am now fully aware of a fact that will be obvious to you but of which back then I was only dimly conscious, so easy it is to believe that events, history and circ.u.mstances conspire uniquely against one. While we may have feared what we feared you can be sure that squadrons of comedians waiting in the wings had quite contrary anxieties. They looked at a BBC dominated by Oxbridge graduates who all appeared to read the same books and newspapers, talk the same way, refer to the same arcane experiences and share the same tastes. There was no Channel 4 at this point, no cable, no satellite, just BBC1, BBC2, BBC radio. A single ITV channel offered variety shows and the last heroes of the great musical-hall tradition in comedians like Benny Hill, Morecambe and Wise and Tommy Cooper as well as sitcoms that, with the glorious exception of Rising Damp Rising Damp, were unmemorable, unoriginal and uninspiring. If you were from neither an Oxbridge nor a variety background I can quite see how Fortress Broadcasting must have appeared una.s.sailable. From such a point of view Emma, Hugh and I would have looked like pampered n.o.blesse for whom the portcullis was respectfully raised, the banner hoisted and fires lit in the great hall. It is perhaps unseemly to emphasize how far from true we felt this to be, but unseemly emphasis is pardonable. Indeed, at just this time, Margaret Thatcher was making unseemly emphasis her signature oratorical mode, and the decade itself prepared for cheekbones, big hair, shoulder pads, political division and conspicuous consumption all to be emphasized in as unseemly a manner as could be managed. Unseemly emphasis was in the air and nowhere more so than in the comedians muttering and ma.s.sing outside the castle gates.

Peter Rosengard, a life insurance salesman with a penchant for cigars and Claridge's breakfasts, had visited the Comedy Store in America and in 1979, together with Don Ward, a comic who specialised in warming up rock and roll crowds, he had launched the London Comedy Store, a small room above a topless bar in Walker's Court, Soho. Already by 1981 the Comedy Store had come to stand for this whole nouvelle vague nouvelle vague in comedy a movement that coincided with the sharp style of the listings magazine in comedy a movement that coincided with the sharp style of the listings magazine Time Out Time Out and its achingly leftist breakaway rival and its achingly leftist breakaway rival City Limits City Limits, a movement that tapped the discontent and desire for difference of a student generation emerging into a recession-hit, Tory-controlled, anxious and angry Britain. Squadrons of young middle-cla.s.s revolutionaries wore out the grooves of London Calling London Calling, talked the talk of gender politics and walked the walk of CND and Rock Against Racism. It is not to be wondered that they were unsatisfied with the comedy of Are You Being Served? Are You Being Served?, The Russ Abbott Madhouse The Russ Abbott Madhouse and and Never the Twain Never the Twain.

The house of entertainment was comprised of two families: the traditional, to which d.i.c.k Emery, Mike Yarwood, the Two Ronnies, Bruce Forsyth and the above-mentioned immortals Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper belonged, and the graduate, that dynasty started by Peter Cook, which swelled to its full greatness under Monty Python and was now coming to a full stop, or so we feared, with the Not Not team of John Lloyd, Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Oxbridgers all. Was the new comedy represented by Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, French and Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Keith Allen and the many others bubbling under an alternative to the first family or to the second? Well, more to the second in fact, despite the background chatter of the times which made out that it was all a cla.s.s war. Alexei Sayle went to Chelsea Art College and was the most Pythonesque of all the comedians with his streams of absurdist surreality and deliberately recondite frames of reference. French and Saunders met at drama school. Elton, Edmondson and Mayall had all been students at Manchester University together. The truth is that very few of the first wave of alternative comedians could claim to have got their education from the streets or the school of hard knocks; in fact as an old lag team of John Lloyd, Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Oxbridgers all. Was the new comedy represented by Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, French and Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Keith Allen and the many others bubbling under an alternative to the first family or to the second? Well, more to the second in fact, despite the background chatter of the times which made out that it was all a cla.s.s war. Alexei Sayle went to Chelsea Art College and was the most Pythonesque of all the comedians with his streams of absurdist surreality and deliberately recondite frames of reference. French and Saunders met at drama school. Elton, Edmondson and Mayall had all been students at Manchester University together. The truth is that very few of the first wave of alternative comedians could claim to have got their education from the streets or the school of hard knocks; in fact as an old lag I I might be said to be the most real and hard of any of them, a thought preposterous enough to show that the idea of there being a group of working-cla.s.s comics threatening Castle Poncey was really quite misguided. All the comedians were from the same mix of backgrounds as ever, and there was plenty of old-school silly sketch comedy among the angry edgy stand-up. It is true that there was an alternative might be said to be the most real and hard of any of them, a thought preposterous enough to show that the idea of there being a group of working-cla.s.s comics threatening Castle Poncey was really quite misguided. All the comedians were from the same mix of backgrounds as ever, and there was plenty of old-school silly sketch comedy among the angry edgy stand-up. It is true that there was an alternative audience audience who were ready for something different, and their demand for the new might be said to have released the energy that was now being called 'alternative'. Some years later Barry Cryer gave the best definition of alternative comedians I have yet to hear. 'They're the same only they don't play golf.' who were ready for something different, and their demand for the new might be said to have released the energy that was now being called 'alternative'. Some years later Barry Cryer gave the best definition of alternative comedians I have yet to hear. 'They're the same only they don't play golf.'

If this was the Zeitgeist Zeitgeist then it was frankly miraculous that our Cambridge Footlights show had won the Perrier Award and that I was now stepping off a Tube train and looking for that address in Pembridge Place. then it was frankly miraculous that our Cambridge Footlights show had won the Perrier Award and that I was now stepping off a Tube train and looking for that address in Pembridge Place.

I rang the doorbell and was buzzed in to an upstairs flat. Hugh, Emma and Paul Shearer were already present. Jon Plowman, whose flat it was, was busy with coffee cups. He was the pert young Englishman from Granada we had met at Edinburgh. Sandy Ross, the pink-faced producer who had been with him that night, introduced me to a dark-haired spectacled young fellow of earnest aspect.

'This is Ben Elton, he has just graduated from Manchester.'

Sandy outlined his plan: that those of us a.s.sembled should form ourselves into a team of writerperformers and create a new comedy show for Granada Television. We were to write and rehea.r.s.e here in London and then go up to film and record at the studios in Manchester. Ben was already in the middle of collaborating with his university friend Rik Mayall and Rik's girlfriend, Lise Mayer, on the writing of a new comedy series for the BBC, a kind of anti-sitcom that had the working t.i.tle The Young Ones. The Young Ones. We, for our part, were also committed to the BBC, not for a series but just to record We, for our part, were also committed to the BBC, not for a series but just to record The Cellar Tapes for a one-off transmission. for a one-off transmission.

The idea behind the new Granada show, Sandy Ross explained, was to combine the traditional world of Cambridge sketch-writing with the anarchic, edgy style (he used those words) of Ben, his confreres and all that they represented. Since there were four of us and only one of him, the plan was to bring in At Least Someone Else of a non-Cambridge flavour. The names Chris Langham, Nick le Prevost and Alfred Molina were floated, and perhaps others that I do not recall. Another girl was also required. For a time there was the possibility that it might be the Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead. She came to a rehearsal, I recall, was clearly not impressed with what she found and declined to be involved. Instead Sandy and Jon found a perky young actress, also Scottish, called Siobhan Redmond. In time most of the men in the production were destined to fall for her, myself included in my own peculiar way.

In the meantime, we were tasked to go forth and write.

As I look back through the years at that period of my life, occluded, discoloured and scratched by time, experience and all the ravages and abuses to which my poor mind and body were since subjected, it all seems so improbable, and for reasons that make no obvious sense, so very, very sad. It was nothing of the kind, of course, it was slightly frightening but deliriously thrilling.

Without ever expressing it in any deliberate or calculated way I think Hugh and I understood that we were some kind of a team. Not a double act, but somehow inevitably and eternally linked. The worry uppermost in my mind, the one that I dared not communicate to Hugh, or Emma or Kim or anyone else, was whether or not I was in any way funny. I think I was confident that I was witty witty, that I was a.s.sured, articulate and verbally dextrous with a pen in my hand or a typewriter keyboard beneath my fingers, but between funny and witty falls the shadow ...

I believed that being funny, being able to cause laughter through expression, movement and that mysterious palpable, physical something something that is given to some and not to others was a gift similar to athleticism, musicality and s.e.x appeal. In other words it had something to do with a self-confidence with the body that I had never had, a self-confidence that allowed physical relaxation and ease that themselves seemed to generate more self-confidence. This was the source of all my troubles. Fear of the games field, fear of the dance floor, athletic inept.i.tude, s.e.xual shyness, lack of coordination and grace, hatred of my face and body. This could be traced all the way back to kindergarten Music and Movement cla.s.ses: 'Everybody sit down in a circle cross-legged.' I was not even able to do that, could not so much as sit tailor-fas.h.i.+on without looking a gawky fool. My knees stuck up, and my self-confidence sank. that is given to some and not to others was a gift similar to athleticism, musicality and s.e.x appeal. In other words it had something to do with a self-confidence with the body that I had never had, a self-confidence that allowed physical relaxation and ease that themselves seemed to generate more self-confidence. This was the source of all my troubles. Fear of the games field, fear of the dance floor, athletic inept.i.tude, s.e.xual shyness, lack of coordination and grace, hatred of my face and body. This could be traced all the way back to kindergarten Music and Movement cla.s.ses: 'Everybody sit down in a circle cross-legged.' I was not even able to do that, could not so much as sit tailor-fas.h.i.+on without looking a gawky fool. My knees stuck up, and my self-confidence sank.

I had lived twenty years convinced that my body was the enemy and that all I had going for me was my brain, my quickness of tongue and my blithe facility with language, attributes that can cause people to be as much disliked as admired. They were adequate for very particular kinds of comedy performance. Verbally intricate monologues and sketches that I had written myself I could be confident in performing happily. But I lived, as I have already indicated, in dread of double-takes, slow burns, pratfalls and those other apparently essential comic techniques that seemed to me as terrifying, impenetrable and alienating as dance steps or tennis strokes. I know how infantile and silly such fears may sound, but in comedy confidence is paramount. If the performer is unsure then the audience is on edge, and that is enough to strangle laughter before it is born. I saw in Hugh, Emma, Tony and others instinctive physical gifts that I knew I did not share and was sure I could never acquire. Besides which, they could all sing and dance. Who could possibly make a career in s...o...b..siness if they lacked musical ability? All of the greats could sing. Even Peter Cook was more musical than I was. I lay awake at nights convinced that Sandy Ross and Jon Plowman would see my inadequacies at once and quietly drop me from the cast. At best they might ask me to stay on purely as a writer. Perhaps I would not mind that too much, but it would be a humiliation and one that I did not relish. A part of me I have to confess this, moronic, puerile and cheap as it may sound really did ache to be a star. I wanted to be famous, admired, stared at, known, applauded and liked.

There, I have said it. It is not the most surprising confession for a performer to make, but it is hardly the done thing to admit to such a shallow ambition. There was no question that Emma would be famous, no question at all. I knew that Hugh would make it too but I worried myself silly that I would be left out, like the last one to be picked to play for the team. Cambridge had shown me that I could make an audience laugh, but I had enjoyed the luxury of making them laugh on my terms. Now that we were in the big wide world, one which was looking towards the punkier end of the comedy spectrum, it seemed inevitable that I would be judged to be the one who didn't quite quite have what it took. Perhaps a little writing, perhaps some radio work, but nothing like the stardom that beckoned for Hugh and Emma and for Ben Elton's friend, about whom I was hearing more and more, the astonis.h.i.+ng Rik Mayall. have what it took. Perhaps a little writing, perhaps some radio work, but nothing like the stardom that beckoned for Hugh and Emma and for Ben Elton's friend, about whom I was hearing more and more, the astonis.h.i.+ng Rik Mayall.

Exactly what I most lacked this explosive comic genius most possessed: physical charisma, devastating self-a.s.surance and an astoundingly natural appeal that radiated out at the audience like a thermonuclear shockwave. He could be silly, charming, childish, vain and inconsequential in a way that simply and unequivocally delighted. You didn't question it, a.n.a.lyse it, applaud its cleverness, appreciate its social meaning or admire the work behind it, you simply adored it, as you might any natural phenomenon. Whatever gifts I possessed appeared shrivelled, pale and underdeveloped. In the comedy shower-comparison test I failed, and it hurt. Was being in the adult world like being back at school all over again? It seemed loweringly likely.

Meanwhile, I could at least throw myself into the last hurrah of the Cambridge Footlights.

Hugh, Emma, Tony, Paul, Penny and I arrived at the BBC for the televising of The Cellar Tapes at exactly the time Ben Elton, Lise Mayer and Rik Mayall were putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the at exactly the time Ben Elton, Lise Mayer and Rik Mayall were putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the Young Ones Young Ones scripts and Peter Richardson, Ade Edmondson, Rik, Dawn French, Jenny Saunders and Robbie Coltrane were preparing to shoot the Comic Strip film scripts and Peter Richardson, Ade Edmondson, Rik, Dawn French, Jenny Saunders and Robbie Coltrane were preparing to shoot the Comic Strip film Five Go Mad in Dorset Five Go Mad in Dorset. It is hardly surprising that we felt a little like the New Seekers sharing the bill with the s.e.x Pistols.

We moved deeper into the realms of the truly old-fas.h.i.+oned when we met the producer whom the BBC had allocated us. He was a thin, jerky man in his mid to late fifties who smelt strongly of whisky and unfiltered Senior Service cigarettes. Which is hardly surprising since he had no other diet. When he introduced himself, something in his name rang a distant m.u.f.fled bell.

'How do you do? Dennis Main Wilson.'

Dennis Main Wilson why was that so familiar? Dennis Main Wilson. It sounded so right. Like Chorlton-c.u.m-Hardy, Amy Semple McPherson, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x or Ortega y Ga.s.set, one of those triple names that tripped off the tongue as if one had always known them, while in truth one is never quite sure to whom or what they might refer. why was that so familiar? Dennis Main Wilson. It sounded so right. Like Chorlton-c.u.m-Hardy, Amy Semple McPherson, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x or Ortega y Ga.s.set, one of those triple names that tripped off the tongue as if one had always known them, while in truth one is never quite sure to whom or what they might refer.

Dennis Main Wilson was in fact the greatest comedy producer of his generation, perhaps of any generation. On the radio he had produced the first two series of The Goon Show The Goon Show and the first four series of and the first four series of Hanc.o.c.k's Half Hour Hanc.o.c.k's Half Hour: for those alone his grave should for ever be festooned with flowers and his memory eternally cherished. On television he was responsible for bringing us The Rag Trade The Rag Trade, Till Death Us Do Part Till Death Us Do Part, Marty Marty with the great Marty Feldman and with the great Marty Feldman and Sykes Sykes with the equally great Eric Sykes. Perhaps most crucially of all in terms of television history, he demonstrated a patience and openness to new ideas rare in grand and established programme-makers when he agreed one day to read a script presented to him by a lowly BBC scene-s.h.i.+fter. Most senior broadcasting staff can always find a way to avoid unsolicited material. Dennis was made of kindlier stuff and accepted the shyly proffered sheaf of ma.n.u.script with the beaming enthusiasm that always characterized him. The scene-s.h.i.+fter's name was John Sullivan, and his script was called with the equally great Eric Sykes. Perhaps most crucially of all in terms of television history, he demonstrated a patience and openness to new ideas rare in grand and established programme-makers when he agreed one day to read a script presented to him by a lowly BBC scene-s.h.i.+fter. Most senior broadcasting staff can always find a way to avoid unsolicited material. Dennis was made of kindlier stuff and accepted the shyly proffered sheaf of ma.n.u.script with the beaming enthusiasm that always characterized him. The scene-s.h.i.+fter's name was John Sullivan, and his script was called Citizen Smith Citizen Smith. It was produced with great success and launched the career of Robert Lindsay. Sullivan followed it up with Only Fools and Horses Only Fools and Horses, which I think one may safely call the most popular comedy in British history.