Ben Elton on Blackadder, Rik Mayall & The Joy of Writing

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Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

Speaker 1 And I'm Richard Osman, but we have a third person in the studio.

Speaker 2 We are so honoured to have one of the great comedy talents of all time with us, Ben Elton,

Speaker 2 who has a new autobiography out called What Have I Done?

Speaker 2 And asking him your questions from a career that has spanned 40 years, TV comedy, stage comedy, books, musicals. There's very little you haven't done, Ben.

Speaker 1 There's very little you haven't made a fortune out of, Ben.

Speaker 1 Well, there's quite a lot of things I haven't made a fortune out of, but

Speaker 1 fortunately, some things I did. It's all about writing, though.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've done a lot of things in the realms of writing comic fiction in various forms and a little bit of comic truth, or at least my truth in terms of stand-up.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's all kind of the same job. It's all the same job.
It's putting words in the right order, isn't it? Exactly.

Speaker 1 So, every single one of these questions has come from our listeners, so forgive us.

Speaker 1 Why are you such a

Speaker 1 hypocrite? Just to start in. Oh, that is the first question.

Speaker 1 Put things in context at the beginning. We'll go sort of fairly chronological.

Speaker 1 When the young ones came out, I think I was 11 or 12. And for anyone who is my age and for anyone who's younger, if I can just contextualise it, it was like a bomb went off.

Speaker 1 The school playground the next day, we had more of a monoculture those days, but it absolutely.

Speaker 1 took the entire country by storm like crazy and i think genuinely for me changed the way i saw television changed the way i saw comedy it's one of those things that there was a time before the young ones and a time after the young ones.

Speaker 1 And so we will start there, but also from me and from my generation, thank you. And for the generation below, thank you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you want to know quite why we're going to be so simpering, it's because of that. So everything you've done afterwards as well, we'll talk about that.
But we will start with the young ones.

Speaker 1 Andy Nielsen has a question. He says, The Young Ones is my favorite all-time sitcom, and lots of other people's.
How did you come up with something so chaotic and funny?

Speaker 1 And what was it like working with Rick Mayo?

Speaker 1 well Andy Rick Rick came up with the original concept I'd known Rick from university days when I met him when I was 18 and he was yeah he was he's only 13 months older than me he was still only 19 or even though he was a third year which affected our relationship somewhat he always referred to me as fresher in the early days and I wrote a lot of comedy plays at university and Rick did an awful lot of comic sketches and things and I remembered him and he remembered him and was he very much Rick Male even even back then oh yeah I mean Rick Rick was i think of all the people i've met a lot of really talented and some really charismatic performers but of all the talented performers i've ever met the most the one with the most instant star quality that that overwhelmed you when you met him was rick and that was in his day i mean it it it changed i mean rick's story is quite a it is a very complicated one and it's not all happy by any means the book is very good on all of it

Speaker 1 it's it it's a lot what how it all unfolds yeah it was it's difficult meeting rick Rick was love at first sight for me. I think it was for an awful lot of people.

Speaker 1 Adrian Edmondson was also at Manchester, and they and a few other good talented comic students did a welcome freshest show for us.

Speaker 1 And it opened with Rick really doing a monologue about how amazing he was. And of course, he was a spotty student in a great coat, cold breath hanging in the air, fag, everyone was cold.

Speaker 1 It was this old church in Manchester. And yet Rick lit up the room.
It was unquestionable that he was. I mean, his joke really was that he was already a a star.
He knew it. We knew it.

Speaker 1 Let's just get over it and start celebrating. And I mean, that was his kind of shtick.
And I found it immensely exhilarating. We became really good friends very, very quickly.

Speaker 1 A couple of years later, after Rick and Aide had had a couple of tough years doing, trying to, you know, do their gigs wherever they could, they did a show in Edinburgh called Death on the Toilet.

Speaker 1 And I was up there for a student theater. I was in Edinburgh as well.
I went and saw their show. It was absolutely brilliant.
It opened with, I don't know if this gag is,

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a disablist element, but I think it's okay. The first line, Aid sat in his little room being like a sort of figure from waiting for Godo.

Speaker 1 And there's knock on the door and the door opens. There's Rick, dressed as death with the big cowl and the side and everything.
And Rick says, and are we allowed to swear on this? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Aid said, who the fuck are you? And Rick says, I'm deaf.

Speaker 1 And Aid says, all right, I'll speak louder. Who the fuck are you?

Speaker 1 And that was the opening gag of rick and aides like when they were 21 20 anyway they got to london alternative comedy was happening and i graduate a couple of years later went to london also

Speaker 1 and i got a call in january 81 from rick saying fatty get down the pub immediately i've got something to talk to you about and he he was there with lisa maier his girlfriend and they between them had to come up with this thing to do a sitcom a wild anarchic sitcom in sitcom in which anything could happen and it was to be based very loosely on some characters that that he and aide and nigel planer and pete richardson that's another story.

Speaker 1 It's all in a book. I'm not going to say that.

Speaker 2 Well, I like how you go back and you say the bits that didn't work.

Speaker 2 I think that's always fascinating for people. And there is an element of the young ones.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that didn't work. I mean, what was up with Mike was the first, I mean, Chris Ryan was a fantastic actor, generous to a fault, brilliant, but miscast.

Speaker 1 And there, well, no, it wasn't that he was miscast. He did it brilliantly, but the part had totally lost its way.
And there's a long story about that, and I'm not going to go into it now.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting in terms of how comedy and relationships in comedy and the ability to improvise together are all hugely dependent on that moment on the on on the on the muse that yeah that that that when you're on that role and and if something goes wrong if an atmosphere changes suddenly anyway look there's a lot that's great about the young ones a lot that in my view isn't great about the young ones well that's for again as as i say it went went off like a bomb that show we'd never seen anything like it we'll talk a bit a little bit about why that was but even as a even as an 11-year-old you're kind of going but what's up with mike yeah

Speaker 1 It was something of a poison chalice that was given to a great actor. I mean, look, look, it's, I mean, I can tell the story of your life, but it's quite a long story.

Speaker 1 So Rick rings you up and says, so

Speaker 1 you are 21? Yes.

Speaker 1 So this is the stage where you're supposed to sort of for the next five or six years, do the odd student review, you know, write a couple of gags for radio comedies, this, that, the other, you know, build this kind of career and then maybe pitch a sitcom.

Speaker 1 But at 21, you go to the pub, Rick has this idea, and you literally go home and write it. That night, Yeah, it was immensely exciting time.
I've always worked fast. Sometimes it's gone against me.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I've thrown too many words at a project and they've kind of all missed. And sometimes I've got it right.
And this was one really wonderful night. Rick was inspiring in the pub.

Speaker 1 At that point, as I say, I loved Rick. I mean, it was a platonic love, but I was sort of in love with him.
I wanted, all I wanted was to make him laugh. I knew how to make him laugh.

Speaker 1 I knew how to write towards his particular talent. And the same a bit with Aid and Nigel.

Speaker 1 Rick's idea was this anarchic thing and what it needed was flesh. And I remember him saying now, you know, like, you're a writer.
You've written loads and loads of plays. Now you can write this.

Speaker 1 He was, you know, saying, look, you know, if you get all their insults wrong, you know, if somebody insults him, say, look, I'm not a fidge, you know. And I can still remember him saying that line.

Speaker 1 And that line went obviously straight into the show. But I went home and

Speaker 1 and thought very hard about what was a very embryonic, sort of quite rough and ready idea. Quite a lot of the characters, I mean, Rick's poet didn't have any socialist pretensions.

Speaker 1 He was into theatre. Aid and Rick did these two kind of furious men, the dangerous brothers.
But again, they could have been middle-aged.

Speaker 1 Nigel's Neal at that time was in his mid-30s and had already contracted herpes on an ashram in India. What I wanted to do was make it about youth in the early 1980s.

Speaker 1 Give it that Thatcherite, Thatcher's Britain slant. And it all happened very, very quickly.
I mean, I was immensely fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.

Speaker 1 I'm not unaware of the the the privilege of that but yeah i i definitely was on a roll though those that night and in those early weeks but you're also the right person in the right place at the right time so you're being presented with something which is essentially chaos which is four very different performers all of whom have certain things that they can bring to a role your job as a writer which is often the job as a writer is to take that chaos to preserve that chaos but just give it an A to B, give it a journey, give it some sort of strength.

Speaker 1 Well, to preserve the chaos, give it some semblance of plot. But more than that, what was required was a contemporary edge, because people think that the young ones was this groundbreaking thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, you came and you kicked down all the walls and changed everything. And they always think about, you know, rats talking in the floorboards and Vivian coming through a wall and things.

Speaker 1 But actually, all that is very much a part of the British tradition of comedy. You go and see the crazy gang.

Speaker 1 Well, you can't now, but if you've gone in the 1940s to their palladium shows, they were beating each other up, smashing the furniture up. Rick and Aid were obsessed with Laurel and Hardy.

Speaker 1 And Laurel and Hardy, the sort of calculated anarchic violence of their relationship.

Speaker 1 So, so much of what people think was groundbreaking being old, it was relatively new for a sitcom, not for television.

Speaker 1 The Pythons, of course, you know, somebody playing a piano, the lid comes down and his hands are cut off and he's spurting blood. The Goon Show, completely all over the, you know, out.

Speaker 1 No walls for the Goon Show. They broke every one.

Speaker 1 So, but I think what was original about the young ones, and I guess I do, you know,

Speaker 1 it's certainly something I was very concerned to get in there, was its contemporary feel. BBC sitcom in the 70s had got very middle class.

Speaker 1 It had a great tradition of doing more blue-collar comedy, Septo and Sun till Death is DuPart, the likely lads.

Speaker 1 But by then, there were great shows, the likes of The Good Life, which I famously had a go at on the young ones through Trivian. But I loved it nonetheless.
But

Speaker 1 to give kids a sitcom, to do a sitcom based on exaggerated but recognizable youth types of the early 80s.

Speaker 1 The kind of hangover hippie who's still wearing flared trousers three years after punk, the actual punk, you know, the Vivian sort of wants to be an anarchist at all times.

Speaker 1 And of course, the farty geography student who pretends he's a socialist. You all know he's going to end up working in a bank and voting conservative.

Speaker 1 Rick Vick's character would probably be voting reform by now.

Speaker 1 He'd be standing for reform. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 He'd certainly have a GV News show.

Speaker 1 What I think was original about the young was actually isn't the bit that kind of most people celebrate as its groundbreaking nature.

Speaker 1 It was an enormous and almost, and I know you had a year or so between writing, you know, going home and writing that thing and being in the studio. And it was an enormous

Speaker 1 hit.

Speaker 1 What does that do to you? You'd never really had a professional flop. You'd have, you know, you'd put on loads of plays and things that not worked for you.
Oh, no,

Speaker 1 it always worked.

Speaker 1 But what does it do to you to have that immediate success for a young?

Speaker 1 What does it do to you? What did it do to Rick and Aid and Nigel and Chris?

Speaker 1 I think we all, I mean, obviously Chris had a different situation because as we've just discussed, that was the sort of least formed and least recognizable character.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of reasons for that. I think we all...

Speaker 1 were too busy and too happy to notice. Also, there was a lot of unhappiness for, well, certainly for me.
I mean, The Young West was written by three people. There's no question.

Speaker 1 Rick and Aid were, Rick and Lisa worked together and I worked together. I I know my bits and I know their bits.

Speaker 1 And that was very unhappy for me because originally I'd had a much closer writing relationship with Rick. And I think that that

Speaker 1 breaking up was,

Speaker 1 I think, quite consequential for Rick going forward into the future of his career. But leaving that aside, what was it like in 81 or 82?

Speaker 1 I think everyone was thrilled, but we had no concept of how big it was. You don't.
You don't go at first, no internet or anything like that.

Speaker 1 You know, we knew we were getting, well, I wasn't getting recognized. And of course, they weren't so much because they were all covered in spots and makeup and all sorts.

Speaker 1 So I don't think it really impacted us. We knew we could afford more beer and more curry and we were young.
We were celebrating life. We loved to go to the pub.
We loved to go out.

Speaker 1 I have always spent far too much time looking forward to the next thing

Speaker 1 and worrying about how good it is and did we get it right to celebrate enough. That's one of the things I learned right in the book that perhaps I haven't.
I should have calmed down a bit at times.

Speaker 1 But, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 It's been a very happy life. So I've got no complaints.
But

Speaker 1 the fact that we became instantly so famous, well, I'll give you an example, right? Yes, we were huge. The thing was talked about by everyone.
Everybody knew about it.

Speaker 1 And when we came to do the book, it sold three-quarters of a million copies of that. I still think it's one of the greatest

Speaker 1 works of literature.

Speaker 1 That was the last time I think Rick and I really kind of had fun working on stuff together. Again, Lisa and Rick were writing stuff, and a lot of it was great that went into the book.

Speaker 1 I was doing my stuff. But Rick and I sort of did some stuff in the pub together.
That was fun, the book. And that kind of was the last time, really.
Filthy Rich is another story.

Speaker 1 But the fame thing, right? So obviously Young Ones was huge. So they did a little tour.
I wasn't involved. It was called Kevin Turvey and the Bastard Squads, featuring the young ones.

Speaker 1 Kevin Turvey was a rich character. He was a rich character.
I maybe know a couple of lines, but that was Rick's one of his organic inventions that he really did himself. They went on tour.

Speaker 1 Now, if the equivalent of the Young Ones, not that there would be an equivalent these days, probably the last time you had anything remotely nationally focused that had as big an impact would go back to Little Britain or something that the kids were into.

Speaker 1 I mean, now it would be arenas. There'd be no question.
It would be absolutely arenas because while the media is shrinking, while television is shrinking and live, go figure, is getting bigger.

Speaker 1 People crave the communal experience because they don't get it off the telly anymore. They're not all watching the same show anymore.

Speaker 1 But the young ones back in the day, touring in 82, 83, after the first series, they were playing 400 people in a half full student union. Live just wasn't the thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, isn't that absolutely crazy? Because it was

Speaker 1 the biggest enormous yeah i mean they got to fill them out in the end but it was still only eight eight and they did about two weeks and it was student unions it's so interesting to think even you know that's bowie was still playing

Speaker 1 hammersmith the biggest gigs you could do were still theaters yeah the arena thing hadn't happened and people weren't used to that going out en masse you know because i guess there was too much good stuff on the tea and you got your community experience by just watching it and talking about it the next day

Speaker 1 yeah you've hinted a couple of times that your relationship with rick didn't really survive the young one. Your creative relationship, your creative relationship.

Speaker 1 Well, we remained close friends all our lives, and

Speaker 1 we toured together as stand-ups in the 80s. I remember I went to it.
Oh, my goodness, did you, Richard? Oh, that's

Speaker 1 so cool. Suddenly, there's this thing of saying, oh, look,

Speaker 1 it's like a two-part.

Speaker 1 It's like a live thing. And Ben Elton is doing half and Rick Mayer is doing half.
Yes, please. Everybody in Britain is like,

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry. That might be the greatest evening.
Well,

Speaker 1 it was indeed. It's lovely to hear.
But again, even though Rick was, I mean, I still wasn't a star at that time. It was pre-Saturday Live.
I mean, I became famous overnight in the middle of the day.

Speaker 2 Because you became front of house. Yeah.
Because before you were the writer,

Speaker 2 suddenly you weren't that long.

Speaker 1 So that fame didn't really, even though I was hugely delighted to have a sitcom on the BBCN to be earning some money.

Speaker 1 And it led Richard Curtis to watch it and ring me up and say, do you want to come in on reinventing the Black Adder?

Speaker 2 We're going to talk about that next. Fame was interesting.

Speaker 1 It was wonderful. But in terms of...

Speaker 1 being famous, honestly, just didn't notice. And of course, I wasn't famous.
I was a writer.

Speaker 1 And when I went out on tour, Rick insisted we had equal billing and he split the money equally because that's how we always were. But even though he was this massive star, we were still playing

Speaker 1 some student unions, mainly town halls, 1,500 seaters. But again, the equivalent now would be a week at the O2 for somebody of Rick's impact.

Speaker 1 So, yes, Rick and I still, and we worked together on the stage.

Speaker 2 Were you always trying to get back to that feeling with him that you had in those moments where you creatively, but you could never get back there? I've really felt that in the book.

Speaker 2 There was that moment of sort of prelapsarian thing where

Speaker 2 you're just kind of perfectly fused as creative.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I start.
the book kind of at Rick's funeral because obviously that was a massive thing in my life, as it was in many people's life, even for those who didn't know him.

Speaker 1 But the story I tell is that I'd actually tried to write a sitcom for Rick, sort of forum with him, because when you work with Rick, you know, you're always looking for his feedback.

Speaker 1 He would edit with laughter. He was the most generous laugher I've ever met.

Speaker 1 And I'd read him my scripts because I used to write in longhand longhand and he couldn't read my writing and I'd read them and he would just laugh.

Speaker 1 And his rich fruity, I mean, the exact opposite of giving Rowan a script. I mean, so diametrically opposite.

Speaker 1 Two genius performers, their personalities and the way they kind of dealt with input from writers who knew how to serve them was very different.

Speaker 1 I mean, I love Row, he's a dear friend, but there was no generous roars of laughter.

Speaker 2 There's a bit in the book where you go and see Rowan Atkinson and he just turns over the pages and puts them beside as he's going through the whole script.

Speaker 1 There's not a huge amount of feedback there.

Speaker 1 There's an idea here somewhere.

Speaker 1 I quite like the first word of this one. Literally, and that was like two comments over an hour, whereas Rick would roar and roar.

Speaker 1 And yes, because Rick and my relationships kind of schismed during the young ones,

Speaker 1 he and Lisa went off and wrote and I, I mean, it wasn't any, we didn't acknowledge it, although there was a number of decisions made during the young ones, which Rick made because he was the power.

Speaker 1 Rick was the golden one.

Speaker 1 It was Rick's show, and I was very lucky that he'd invited me in as writer, or as a writer, as it turned out.

Speaker 1 So, yes, that was a difficult time, and Filthy was perhaps an even more difficult time for Filthy Richards because Filthy Richardson, which was just a sort of follow-up version of that, much more theatrical basis.

Speaker 1 Yes, whereas the Young Ones came from a place of truth.

Speaker 1 Comedy, no matter how big it is, as long as it's rooted in truth, as long as there's a kind of honesty to what you're doing, it doesn't matter how vast and grotesque the character is.

Speaker 1 And so, so, you look at somebody like Mike Myers's creation of Austin Powers or Rick's Rick's flash art or whatever. I mean, obviously, created with the Ryers.

Speaker 1 But, well, you know, let's not

Speaker 1 take your credit, man.

Speaker 1 Well, you're certainly not getting it from the actors on the Black Adder, let me tell you. But let's not go there.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, the relationship, my relationship with Rick was always one of love, and we, and it was unfinished business. And I always dreamt that we would finish it.
I felt that he, his

Speaker 1 extraordinary talent was never fully, fully blossomed. It shone so brightly.
And then it kind of got a little bit lost. And not everything he did was so great.
And I could no longer busk with him.

Speaker 1 And of course, bottom was a wonderful thing. My view is the only two people who ever really knew how to write with and for Rick were me and Aide.
And both relationships were very, very complicated.

Speaker 1 And of course, Rick's drinking became a problem. And I can say this because I've talked to Barbara.
She gave Barbara Mayo, his wife.

Speaker 1 She's, you know, I said, do you mind if I talk about that in my book? And she said, she wrote me a beautiful letter and said, no, it was a part of all our lives, particularly yours.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you must tell your story. And, and, so, yeah, Rick went on, you know, there was a, his biggest hero of all was Hancock, and there were Tony Hancock.

Speaker 1 And there were, there are elements, there are elements, yeah. Hancock trajectory to Rick, because he was slightly at the mercy of the material.
He could come up with great stuff, but

Speaker 1 he always went too big. You know, he needed, he needed material.
Yeah, so and he needs that structure. And he needs, yeah, he he needs a narrative.
And some of those great performers can just explode

Speaker 1 like they want, but you need to root them. And some detail in character.

Speaker 1 They can't be as broad a strokes as he would like.

Speaker 1 Basically,

Speaker 1 for both me and Aid, Rick's death deprived us both of an ongoing hope and indeed presumption that we would, me with Rick, and it not the three of us.

Speaker 1 I mean, Rick and Aid worked together and I and Rick worked together. I've also worked with Aid, but you know, it's all terribly terribly triangular.

Speaker 1 We always thought we'd get there in the end. And I always thought I would get back to Rick in the end.
And, of course, you know, we went for a jog and fell over in the chair and died.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, the sitcom that we've been denied

Speaker 1 of Rick in his 70s or just, you know,

Speaker 1 the beautiful thing you could have written. But you know what? It still makes me very, very sad.
But it exists for all of us who are fans because we can imagine it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, we know what that relationship is. So you've done the yum ones.
It's been a huge hit. We'll get onto your stand-up in a bit, but if we can just keep talking about

Speaker 1 as a writer, I think so. You've had this hit and people have hits, right? We understand that, but it can be a flash in the pan.

Speaker 1 If you follow it up with another hit, an even bigger hit, then suddenly you go, oh, okay.

Speaker 2 So we have a good question on this from Ewan, who says, the progress between the Black Adder to Black Adder II, the Black Adder is basically Black Adder season one, which you didn't write on.

Speaker 2 The progress between The Black Adder to Black Adder II counts among the most astonishing transformations in any series of television, I agree. A quantum leaping quality.

Speaker 2 Was it sold to you as a brief when you joined that it would have to be a clean slate starting the whole idea again completely from scratch, or was it more organic?

Speaker 1 There was no brief because

Speaker 1 it was a wonderful thing. I owe, just as I owe the young ones to Rick, I think I paid the debt, but I certainly owe it to him.
I owe Black Adder to Richard Curtis.

Speaker 1 One of the things I am most happy about in my life is that I don't think I've ever not been friends in a professional all the people I've worked with have were became and remain dear friends and in fact Richard interviewed me about this book only in Cheltenham just the other night 40 years after or more after the wonderful phone call when he asked me to join him on Black Outer 2 now whisper it not it's not I mean I think Ewan has basically said it but black outer one was you know was not considered a a comprehensive success

Speaker 1 and and

Speaker 1 it was cancelled right well yeah that was that was a little later that's another very good story story. What happened for me was Richard, Rowan had dropped out.

Speaker 1 Rowan and Richard wrote The Black Adder. It was his nickname in those days.
We changed a lot of things, not least he became Mr. Black Adder.

Speaker 1 If I'd been Richard at that point, I would have written it on my own. I'd have said, thank goodness Rowan doesn't want to pretend he's a sitcom writer anymore.
Now I can get down to it.

Speaker 1 To my great and glorious good fortune, Richard is a more subtle and more, perhaps more interesting person to me because he thought, no, I definitely still want to collaborate and I know who I want to collaborate with.

Speaker 1 Richard doesn't collaborate very often. I mean, he obviously wrote all his fabulous movies on his own.

Speaker 1 So, what it was that led him to decide to share with me, I think it was kind of the young ones kind of comes back to rip my comedy DNA.

Speaker 1 So, Richard wanted me in, and no, there was no brief. He said, Look, we're going to do it again.
The BBC says we can have another crack, but clearly, it hasn't worked that well.

Speaker 1 Let's have a go at it again.

Speaker 1 So, the first series had been a sort of an historical epic, shot kind of very beautifully, shot sort of from a distance, and just, just yeah, just not yeah they were trying to make holy grail for a sitcom I mean a kind of medieval comedy film but in sitcom and as John Lloyd the producer very wittily said it looked a million dollars unfortunately it cost two million dollars and as I said in the very first meeting Rowan falling off a horse at 300 meters in panavision is no different to the unit cater of falling off a horse.

Speaker 1 What you need is Rowan close up but more importantly his status is Rowan funny and whisper it not but Rowan's not very funny in Black 1. Because his idiot shtick isn't as funny as his superior shtick.

Speaker 1 I mean, Mr. Bean aside, with that curious nihilism, you know, but even that.
Sometimes we're sort of like kind of slightly worrying, you know.

Speaker 1 I like Mr. Bean, but I didn't particularly like

Speaker 1 the Blackadder. And I said, surely.
I mean, the decision Richard and I made together on our first morning working together was to flip the status to make

Speaker 1 in the first series, Rowan had been the idiot and Baldrick had been the smart one. And we turned it on his head and made Rowan the smart one and Baldrick the idiot.

Speaker 1 And certainly that was something which was a deal breaker for me because I loved when Rowan is being superior and supercilious, there is no one on earth more funny.

Speaker 1 You know, you know, if he's sat at a desk and there's a knock at the door and he goes, oh.

Speaker 1 Come in. You just know something is a salt.

Speaker 2 It informs all the insult comedy that comes later. And so many people come in on the split stream of that.
And there's so many great shows, which you can see are entirely informed by his

Speaker 2 particular form of withering insult.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we, Richard and I, kind of invented a language.

Speaker 1 The whole, you know, the thing, black out of speak, you're as small as a very small and small thing that's got a degree in being small or whatever that everybody's been doing for 40 years.

Speaker 1 I mean, that started on...

Speaker 1 on our on our typewriters because there were no computers then i mean words have always been my obsession i mean young ones language also for a while i mean smash hits was basically written the magazine pop magazine was basically written in girly swat language you know from 82 onwards and is it often the case as a writer because you're you're you're so prolific that is it often the case that one line or one comic idea that you suddenly feel ah the taps are on that you you come across something you think oh if that but if this were like this and suddenly you can write suddenly you get out of your own way in the same way you're flipping those two you go into the room thinking if you flip these two I see where the plots are.

Speaker 1 I see where the comedy is. You can't understand what it is.

Speaker 1 It has to be organic. Woody Allen, I think, spoke for all comic writers, probably all artists, when he said, when I write a joke, I'm hearing it for the first time.
Basically, you don't know, it just

Speaker 1 happens. You have to let it happen.
Just as a painter, you know, can't stare at the blank canvas forever. You've got to commit a stroke.
You can't plan it. You've just got to do it.

Speaker 1 And hopefully it will lead to another. And eventually, you'll kind of find out what you're doing.

Speaker 1 But if you're working, as I've had the privilege to do, with some of the greatest comic performers, comic actors of any generation, then that makes the excitement

Speaker 1 considerably greater because if you're working towards a talent like Rex or Roan or Melchit, you know, or Stephen,

Speaker 1 because I knew them all very, very well, and you're working towards something you already understand.

Speaker 1 And occasionally, sometimes I think, well, yeah, once or twice, you know, actors did, you know, drop in a good idea and you think, well, so you should be.

Speaker 2 Every now and then we let them have one.

Speaker 1 Well, very.

Speaker 2 Can I talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 Because I do think that's really interesting because everyone thinks that the writing in Blackadder was just beyond and it just as you say it redefined a whole different form of comic writing you and Richard and yet it's quite clear in the book that it's it's a you the pair of you have a little bit of a struggle even though all those guys are your great friends

Speaker 1 you know and and remain so and when I'm talking you know Hugh Laurie Rowan obviously Stephen Fry all of them are and remain your great friends um but it was but but it was hard it was a it was a pretty unhappy experience right uh no not right riding the blackadder was immensely happy richard and i just the two of us if we'd just done a podcast we'd have had the loveliest time uh we loved every minute of it we became the closest of friends and it was it was a wonderful experience then the first bump in the road was doing the scripts with john john lloyd who's a very could be very fierce very clever man often right not always right producer one of the big producers did not the nine o'clock

Speaker 1 yeah that was difficult because richard and i felt we knew what we were doing and john thought he thought he knew what he was doing and sometimes it worked and and sometimes it didn't.

Speaker 1 And John, of course, was the producer and he was senior and the boss and he'd always say, boys, boys, Genji, Dick, you're both geniuses. I understand that.
I'm just the smallest, tiny producer.

Speaker 1 I'm a minnow simply here to enable your glorious talent. But can you just allow me to be right just this fucking once? And of course, it was always one more time.

Speaker 1 But we got through that and we produced the scripts. Then would you get to rehearsal?

Speaker 1 Now, what happens in rehearsal, normally, first morning at North Act and BBC rehearsal rooms, everyone has a table table read.

Speaker 1 There's read, there's some polite laughter, and then you get up and start to block it, start to work it. So,

Speaker 1 table read, you've given the scripts, all the actors turn up, they sit around all next to each other. You read through, everyone sees what works, what doesn't work.

Speaker 1 Costume a lot thinking, oh, what can I do here? It's just, it's a lovely sort of normally

Speaker 1 kind of the first run of something. My first experience, I didn't go to Cambridge, I went

Speaker 1 to Manchester, but with the exception of me and I suppose Baldrick, there wasn't a single non-Oxbridge graduate in the room.

Speaker 1 And basically, those table reads were like what I believe Cambridge tutorials were like, in as much as you've got your tutor, you're all seeing tutor, that's John, and a bunch of students, and then some Timorous student produces their work to be reviewed by the group.

Speaker 1 But of course, only Richard and I were bringing our essays in. So the script would be read.

Speaker 1 And then I've got to be honest, I mean, Stephen knows I say, you know, there's Stephen, you know, and you to a certain extent, he was nice. Stephen and John are.

Speaker 2 Some of our finest British public school actors, these were.

Speaker 1 Yes, they pushed their chest. Cigarettes would be be like a great weary sigh would sort of come out and there'd be a half-hour discussion on whether the word wibble was funny or not.

Speaker 1 And it was like, it was, it was soul-destroying. You know, you could spend hours deciding which furry rodent would be most amusing to stick up Baldrick's bottom.

Speaker 1 Would it be, you know, would it be a vole or a gerbil or what? I stopped going after the first week. I mean, I knew the screen.
Look,

Speaker 1 a little,

Speaker 1 every now and then something good came up.

Speaker 1 I mean, Stephen, to his enormous credit, came up with the idea of calling, in Blackout a 4, calling um tim mcinery's character darling which was just a work of it was a stroke of absolute brilliance but you know a couple of the things he's he didn't write and there's some slight gall as the years go by which they all know and as i say i mean i'm very close to them all but at the time it i just didn't go but richard went the whole time and he would sit there defense can we just rehearse it and often you know you just come back round to the original script sometimes it'd change a bit sometimes it didn't sometimes for the worse i think blackadder's Blackadder's Christmas Carol was a considerably better script on the page than it was after it had been tutorialized to death for

Speaker 1 three days.

Speaker 2 I need to go back and watch that immediately now.

Speaker 1 It was, you know, it's not bad, but it goes way off the rails.

Speaker 1 That I mean, it was the only time I was really got as angry with John as he regularly got with me and Richard, because I really thought they fucked it up.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's okay, but it's not as good as it's going to be.

Speaker 2 Can I just say, I love that you all constantly have dinner with each other forever now.

Speaker 2 There's all this water under the bridge, which is great. You know, I love that whole kind of creative

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, the nice thing is, in the end, it was a hit.

Speaker 1 And it was a very satisfying hit. Many friendships.
But as I say, when you write towards...

Speaker 1 This is just a quick interesting sidebar, right? So you've got all these actors, right? And as I say, Richard and I were gloring in their talent.

Speaker 1 We kind of knew how they were going to deliver all these lines, which makes it so much more exciting to write the lines.

Speaker 1 You know, you've got, you know, if you're giving Stephen Fry a melt chip line, you've got a pretty good idea how he's going to do it.

Speaker 1 And it's going to be even better when he does it. Even with the genius of Rowan, we always pretty much knew what was coming.
The one actor that

Speaker 1 you never knew how they were going to

Speaker 1 present, speak the speech and never asked questions a single syllable was Miranda Richardson. Oh, yeah, she's amazing.

Speaker 1 We loved her so much, she just took the script and invented her own private madness. You never knew what random emphasis she was going to hit next.
And every time it was a stroke of organic genius.

Speaker 1 And it was interesting. Rich and I always used to say the one Black Ida actor who we didn't kind of know how they were going to sound was Miranda.
That's amazing, isn't it? I love that.

Speaker 2 So many people believe that

Speaker 2 the final scene of Black Ida Goes Forth is the greatest ending of a comedy series. In some cases, the greatest ending of any TV series they've ever seen.

Speaker 1 I think it is.

Speaker 2 Did you know when you'd written it,

Speaker 2 but you didn't even go and watch it being filmed?

Speaker 1 I think I was there on the last

Speaker 1 episode.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 the thing is, all good sitcom is a community effort and and studio sitcom is above all a community effort it really does take a village and a very large village to make a studio sitcom just to be clear for your listeners and viewers uh studio sitcom is a theatrical presentation you present a half-hour comedy to a live audience the only thing is between you and them is seven or eight cameras booms hanging over their heads uh and you know it and and and it's being mixed live it's a beautiful thing people say oh the laughter sounds canned it's not canned.

Speaker 1 When you hear that laugh, when the German says, what is your name, boy? And Mannering says, don't tell him, Pike, the laughter you're hearing is the genuine laugh, just the same as with all our shows.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, of course, you do a second take. So you might put the first laugh on.
But basically, the actors... are timing their work.
Anyway, it's a beautiful community experience, right?

Speaker 1 And the reason I bring this up, not just because for some reason, the success of single camera sitcoms like The Office Brilliant Are they Are, because we're British, we instantly have to see a downside and say well we hate those old-fashioned studio sitcoms like what what like faulty towers only fools and horses dad's army anyway it takes a village to make a good show and it took a village to do the last scene of blackadder richard and i wrote i think a sensitive script We were very aware through the whole of Black Adder Goes Forth that this was a very different comic dynamic.

Speaker 1 I mean, millions dying of the plague in the Elizabethan era.

Speaker 1 You know, it was a tragedy for those people, but you can't really feel it. Yes, you can't really.
I mean, when I was doing upstart crowds. We've been now.
Yeah, I guess now we've had our own books.

Speaker 1 We're doing events.

Speaker 1 But when I was doing Crow, I tried to do the, you know, I tried to make Hamnet's death, you know, like they were parents. But sorry, I'm leaping like a mountain.
Most upstart crowds.

Speaker 1 Mount Goat from point to point. The point was Black Hatters, the final scene.
We knew that, you know, don't forget, it was only written in 88. So a lot of...

Speaker 1 Veterans were still alive from that war, let alone the family. Both my grandparents

Speaker 1 fought in the war, on either side, in my case. So, you know, we knew it was real tragedy and the most appalling death of a generation.
So we were writing with, I think, some care.

Speaker 1 and an instinctive need to do a different form of comedy about the deaths.

Speaker 1 But then, of course, we bring in John, the producer, Richard Bowden, the director, the brilliant as was BBC in-house special effects. They had a tiny studio.

Speaker 1 They had so little facilities, costume, makeup. I mean, a vast number of people put their talents into creating that moment.

Speaker 1 I would probably say Richards and John, the producer and director, are definitely led it. They are the heroes of that moment.
Our script said they, you know, I think it's a great last line.

Speaker 1 You'd have to who'd who'd be, you know, you'd have to be mad to be here. No point pretending to be mad.
So Richard and I teed it up nicely and we said they go over the top.

Speaker 1 You know, I think we might have put silent drum or something like that. And so then Richard and Richard and John are planning it.
And then they bring in the team and

Speaker 1 something truly beautiful was produced. And I feel genuinely, there is no false humility here.

Speaker 1 I know what I did on the Black Adder, but I feel hugely privileged to have been a part of a team that produced not just that final scene, but the whole thing, because it really does take a village to make anything worth having.

Speaker 1 This world where we look to leadership from strong men, be they movie directors or presidents, is madness. It's communities that make the difference.

Speaker 1 I will say this, though, and everyone remembers the poppy fields and what have you, but if anyone wants to go and get the scripts you look at the script for that entire last episode there's not i don't think there's a word out of place in the episode which comes from you created these characters who you loved and you created so many comic worlds that you could go anywhere with them but i don't think there's a word out of place and particularly in that last scene i think it was one of the greatest comic scenes in british sitcom because it's so beautiful and and and it's and it's real people who we care about and they've been so silly and so ridiculous for so long but we loved them and we believed in them and so i i think this the script does well that's really lovely to hear And we were proud of it.

Speaker 1 And then the performance,

Speaker 1 watching Hugh realize that all his friends are dead

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 watching Tim's character, Darling, realize that the Tiddlywinkers are no more. You know, that it's 1917, the Great War of 14-70.
Which is an amazing love.

Speaker 1 Anyway. It's very beautiful.
Can I finish the Black Adder thing with a question from Nicholas, which is

Speaker 1 a different note. How much money would a streamer need to offer yourself, Richard Curtis, and Rowan Atkinson to make another Black Adder series?

Speaker 1 I i honestly don't think that it is it is in any sense a question of money all of us are are are fine you know we're all very comfortable i mean not as you know not we're not all the same level of comfortable rowan thank you very much uh it's but

Speaker 1 Black Adder was a labor of love 40 years ago. I mean, we did the last one in, wrote the last one in 88.
It was made in 89.

Speaker 1 Any little efforts at doing anything since, I think, have been pretty grim. I've never been, you know, happy even with the idea of doing it, let alone seeing what happened.

Speaker 1 I mean, all right, but you know, I mean, the only reason we would ever do anything adderish again would be because we wanted to. And there is no desire to do it.

Speaker 1 As I say, I mean, I know it sounds sort of like I'm overplaying it, but you know, I literally exchanged two emails with Rowan only yesterday trying to see if we could, you know, meet before I go back to Australia.

Speaker 1 We remain

Speaker 1 all such close friends. And I think one of the reasons that we are that is that we aren't going to do another series of black adders.
I mean, listen, how can you follow?

Speaker 1 How can you follow the end of the last one as well? It's beautiful.

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Speaker 2 Now, moving on to We Will Rocky, the whole idea of the jukebox musical. Okay, Nadia Hills is saying, What were Brian May and Roger Taylor's first reaction to your plot for We Will Rocky?

Speaker 2 It does capture the bombastic nature of Queen, but they've never really thought about them having a sci-fi vibe. Where were you struck by that?

Speaker 1 Their reaction, Nadia, thank you for that question, was wonderful. The pitch I made wasn't really sci-fi-y.

Speaker 1 How did it come about? Yeah, We Will Rocky. It was one of the great gifts of my life.

Speaker 1 I was in Stuttgart with Brian the night before last as we opened a new production in Stuttgart that I've directed over there. So it is a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1 20 million people have seen this thing. 20 million.
Well, I love Brian and Roger. We formed a part.
I mean, I was saying, oh, you made friends with everyone. I have.

Speaker 1 I work with people. you know, it becomes a bond.
And when you're putting your heart and soul into something, you get very close to people. And they did too.

Speaker 1 So what happened was some 25 years ago now, one of the great good fortunes of

Speaker 1 one of my representatives, one of my agents a fellow called paul roberts he's from preston he said man queen of fold they want to do it they want to do a greatest sits musical they want you to write it i thought oh my god i can't believe it it turns out what what actually was the case he'd gone to queen and said if you ever thought of doing a greatest sits musical would you be interested in ben writing it and and their manager jim had said well maybe we'll we could talk oh my god that's slightly that is all of show business

Speaker 1 in one interaction slightly different reaction yeah but what had happened was queen were already looking. Jim Beach was already the manager, played by Tom Hollander in the movie.

Speaker 1 Queen were already looking at doing a Greatest Sits movie based on a life of Freddy. They'd even done a workshop with De Niro's company, Tribeca, who's a big fan.
Why wouldn't he be?

Speaker 1 He's the exact generation to be a huge Queen fan. And I think anybody who says they don't like Queen is just kind of mad because there's...

Speaker 1 There's songs you don't have to like every song, but there's so much in it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, they'd done this workshop of Freddy's about Freddy's horror, you know,

Speaker 1 this great tragedy of Freddy's death from AIDS.

Speaker 1 And Brian and Roger had gone over and seen it and said, well, that's not us. That's, you know, that's not who we are.
That's not what Freddy was. You know, we're not a tragedy.

Speaker 1 We're not a death from a disease. We're queen.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We are the champions. Yeah.
They didn't like it. And above all, they hadn't liked the fact there was no comedy in it.
They said, well, Freddie was the funniest man on earth. We've always had a laugh.

Speaker 1 Look at us. Look at what we wear.
Look at what we do.

Speaker 1 We are fun. Do we want to let people take ourselves seriously? We are not being serious, I promise.
They do take themselves seriously, but in a good way. In a proper way.
They love entertainment.

Speaker 1 They love showbiz and they love being rock stars. And anyway, so

Speaker 1 Jim originally came to me and said, look, the main thing is we've got this script, but there's no laughs in it. And can you put some gags in? I said, what?

Speaker 1 Put some gags in the script about Freddie dying of AIDS.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, it can be done. No subject is beyond comedy.
If it's done sensitively and properly, I bet I could have put some good laughs into it. But I didn't think it was the right idea.
I said,

Speaker 1 the queen should not be Freddy's story. Queen belonged to us all.
It's not even queen shouldn't be Queen's story. Queen is everybody's story.
I left home when I was 16.

Speaker 1 I lived in really quite depressing digs for the first term. I was doing my A-levels away from home and I was.

Speaker 2 It's good when you get the caravan though.

Speaker 2 I'm happy when you get the caravan.

Speaker 1 When I finally move into my own little caravan, and it's beautiful, and I started making friends and everything. But yeah, I had a very lonely start as a 16-year-old on my own.

Speaker 1 And Queen were number one with Bohemian Rhapsody for the entire first term that I was away, the autumn of 75. So everybody has Queen in their DNA, in their hearts.

Speaker 1 And I said, the show has to reflect the vibe of the band, not the story of Freddie or the story of Brian or the story of the band. It reflects the vibe.

Speaker 1 So I said, you need a great legendary, a colossal, an Arthurian epic. And Jim said, sounds good.
Write it.

Speaker 1 But I was very, very busy writing a musical with Andrew Lloyd Ware at the time and making my movie, Maybe Baby. No wonder I irritated people.

Speaker 1 And so it took a year, but then I had this idea.

Speaker 1 I'd been to see The Matrix and I couldn't, I mean, it's great fun, but I couldn't understand what is the purpose of keeping humanity enslaved in computers.

Speaker 1 There are always these films about, you know, humanities being by some dark force control, but they're done. Where's the profit?

Speaker 1 Basically, humanity is only any use to dark forces if you can profit from them. And I think in a Matrix, they end up eating them or something.

Speaker 1 You know, we're being stored for food. I never really, maybe that's rubbish.
I don't know, but I got this idea.

Speaker 2 The Matrix is good, Bandy. It's a good film out there.

Speaker 1 It's a wonderful film. But I thought, thought really a dystopian future, if it's not World War III, you know, it's not just, you know, Anarchy and Mad Max, would be actually

Speaker 1 endless consumerism. It would be a point where the computers were used to trap people's brains and

Speaker 1 keep their attention and give them endless pap.

Speaker 1 I can't see it. I have to see it.
So this was 1999, and

Speaker 1 I wrote them a synopsis about a world in which machines... produce the music, they're performed by holograms and beamed directly through personal communication devices to the punter.

Speaker 1 So the kids remain continually locked in an entertainment spiral

Speaker 1 controlled by a vast media conglomerate. That was 1999.
That's essentially this podcast every week.

Speaker 1 And I said, but on somewhere on this planet, in this future world, a one guitar has been...

Speaker 1 And I said, because the one thing this media conglomerate would never want to see would be the kids making their own music.

Speaker 1 They don't want punk rock. They don't want rock and roll or hip-hop because they want to keep producing this endless computer-produced pat, which will keep them.

Speaker 1 And I said, so this hairy, legendary bang rock collective have left one guitar buried in rock, and he who can draw it forth and play the mighty riffs will free the kids and live music will be played again.

Speaker 1 And that was the kind of pitch I made to them. And they lucky.

Speaker 1 And they loved it. And so that was the beginning of We Will Rock You.
And it was quite prescient because we said it 300 years in the future. And four years later, the Napster case happened.

Speaker 1 Then the MP3 was invented. The iPhone came five years after We Will Rock You opened.
And the rest is a very sad

Speaker 1 descent. I mean, lots of kids still do make their own music, but my goodness, they're making it harder to make a living out of it, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we were just, we're funny enough, we were just talking about that on our other episode this week. It's been

Speaker 1 an enormous hit everywhere around the world. And you've done things, by the way, that you're proud of that haven't been hits.
I'm sure you've done things that you were less proud of that were hits.

Speaker 1 This has been the thing that probably financially

Speaker 1 is the thing that's that's made the most

Speaker 1 musicals, three lost money, but if you've got if you've got one that does, you're all right. What is it do you think that makes a hit? What is it?

Speaker 1 Have you at any point, because you've seen every side of that coin, do you,

Speaker 1 how do you know when do you know whatever you're doing? You can't plan a hit. I mean, this is this, I mean,

Speaker 1 the only thing any artist can do, they might want a hit, and I think all artists do this.

Speaker 1 I don't want to make it in America. Yeah, like, hell yeah.

Speaker 1 But basically, everyone wants a bigger audience, and of course they want to get paid for it. But you can't plan that.
You have to be prepared to fail. You have to be true to yourselves.

Speaker 1 We will Rocky was not a bolted-on hit. Queen were actually in their biggest dip at the end of the turn of the century.

Speaker 1 I remember when I first met Bry,

Speaker 1 I said, how are you doing, mate? He said, oh, still pretending to be a rock star.

Speaker 1 Freddie was gone.

Speaker 1 And so it wasn't a slam dunk by any means. And in fact,

Speaker 1 it took a long time to make money. It took five years before it broke, well, maybe about three and a half years to break even.
You can't plan a hit. Obviously, in terms of having the Queen songbook,

Speaker 1 you've got about the best head start you could possibly imagine. I mean, the reason Rocky was a huge hit is mainly because Queen's music is so.

Speaker 1 utterly fabulous and it brings people together and makes it. We call it Rocky.

Speaker 1 Sorry? Did you call it Rocky? Rocky. Rocky.
Rock you. Sorry, Rocky.

Speaker 1 I thought it was some nickname you'll have for it. No, no, we call it Rocky.
But it wouldn't have worked with just Queen. There's plenty of Queen tribute shows like ABBA.
The biggest thing ABBA

Speaker 1 was the Bjorn Again, and they were big. They'd play one

Speaker 1 Wembley Arena or whatever. But to make a Mamma Mia, you needed the right story.
And for ABBA, it was perfect. The sunny holiday romance, you know, a girl who's wondering who her father is.

Speaker 1 She wants to get married, but she doesn't know who's going to give her away. Perfect for ABBA.
And if they hadn't got that right, I'm telling you now, Mamma Mia would not have been a hit.

Speaker 1 And the Beach Boys one wasn't a hit. There's lots that have been hits when you think it's a bulky.

Speaker 1 Spice scores, Spice scores. Most of them are.

Speaker 1 So I actually think I did get this story right for Rocky. I think it is, and Brian and Roger do too, and Fred is family.
Fred is a set.

Speaker 1 After the reviews hit, Freddy's mum, who saw the show first night, wrote the cast a letter because it was pretty devastating. I mean, we were predicted to close in one week.

Speaker 1 That's had bad reviews, right? Very, very bad. I mean, very bad.

Speaker 1 We were on the news. Queen to close within a week is the

Speaker 1 critics' verdict.

Speaker 2 As I say, 20 million people have now seen this musical.

Speaker 1 It was very, very brutal. And of course, 100 people were staring immediate unemployment in the face.
And Freddy's, and a lot of the critics say they were very angry on Freddy's behalf.

Speaker 1 They all said Freddie would have hated this, as if Brian and Roger, who were his brothers. And Deakey, also, big thumbs up.
I mean, John Deacon, he doesn't get involved.

Speaker 1 He stays at home. I've met him once when he told me.

Speaker 1 you know don't fuck it up he said and uh he said he loved the story i always think john deacon's got the perfect life yes he's got all that queen money doesn't have to be recognized ever if if he doesn't want to be.

Speaker 1 I don't think he would be recognized if he went out. I imagine he's just sitting at home watching the snooker.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he gave us a big thumbs up. And so Queen were behind it.
And Freddie's mum wrote after the reviews, and we were predicted on the news to close. I mean, we were a news story.

Speaker 1 She wrote, Freddie would have loved this show. I know it off by heart because we had it upstate, back up the stage for 12 years at the meeting.
Freddie would love this show. It's set in the future.

Speaker 1 Freddie always looks at the future. And above all, it's a comedy.

Speaker 1 Freddie always always saw the funny side and she said if music be the food of love rock on and we did for 12 years at the dimension your uh your relationship with critics is sort of uh through throughout the book we we often come across um

Speaker 1 critics what what what is your because a lot of people would never read any of their yeah criticism um what is your relationship to uh the british critical community well i certainly don't read it either i mean i learnt a very long time ago you cannot read reviews good or bad, because phrases will live in your head rent-free.

Speaker 1 You'll never stop writing letters of rebuttal. You'll never stop being angry.
Obviously, you know, we live in a free world.

Speaker 1 And actually, I read reviews and sometimes they can be great and interesting. I wish they would admit that they were subjective.
I do wish they'd say, in my opinion, rather than this is a.

Speaker 1 And with me, it has always been quite personal because I became a famous comedian. Everything I've ever done as a writer has been sort of reviewed to be a single person.

Speaker 2 Yes, how did the stand-up just sort of invert all of that from being the backstage person, you then became a public target?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I suppose because I was political and I, you know, I've always used, when I'm doing my subjective writing, which is my stand-up act, I'm saying this is me kind of thing.

Speaker 1 You know, I put my kind of, sometimes put my principles, the things that outrage me, that delight me into it. And certainly the 80s was a very divisive decade.

Speaker 1 We were young, you know, who wasn't, you know, angry about Thatch from where I came from.

Speaker 1 In my topical reader, but I used to say I can do two minutes on Thatch and an hour on my knob, and everyone says you're a political comedian. No,

Speaker 1 I'm a sexually repressed party comedian. I do Thatcher and knob gags.
And knob gags.

Speaker 1 And certainly the reason I, yeah, so I've, I've always had to deal with the fact that, you know, sparkly suited Thatcher bashing Ben Alton has written a new novel or whatever.

Speaker 1 I've never

Speaker 2 16 novels. Can I ask you something about writing? Sorry, Joey Kay says, you've been basically non-stop for the last 40 years as a writer.
How do you have so much self-discipline?

Speaker 2 Can I add my thing onto it? Because I want to know this too. Can you explain to me how you write?

Speaker 2 How do you, what do you do? You go to your computer in the morning and how long do you sit at it?

Speaker 2 Because I'm really intrigued because you've done so much.

Speaker 2 And how many times do you rewrite it? Were there ones where you almost like had three drafts or something and that was it?

Speaker 2 And were there things where you've done, I don't know, 20 drafts of the same script?

Speaker 1 Both, yeah. I mean, like

Speaker 1 Demolition, the first episode of The Young Ones, was basically written in one go and was very, was virtually unchanged. That's

Speaker 1 novels, plays, because sometimes I do, I mean, particularly with novels, I mean, sometimes I'll tinker for a very long time. Well, a long time for me.
How do I write?

Speaker 1 You've got to sit down and you can't walk around waiting for inspiration. You've got to sit at your desk.

Speaker 2 Like you said, make the mark and then change the mark and then

Speaker 1 the only advice I'd ever give to any writer or indeed any artist is make the mark. Start.
Don't try and write the perfect sentence. That image of the screwed up paper in the the waste paper basket,

Speaker 1 that's the wrong way to go about it. You could don't rip it out.
Carry on. It's okay.
So it's a shit first sentence. You can come back to it.

Speaker 1 Maybe the whole first five pages will be shit, but eventually you'll get on a roll and then you can go back and fix it up. And certainly that's the way I work.
work.

Speaker 1 Very rarely does something leap fully formed. Occasionally it does, like the example I just gave, and more so when I was young.
But very quickly I learned.

Speaker 1 So I do do a lot of editing. And I listen to that.

Speaker 1 I was working in my younger days towards these fantastic talents that were exciting me. And I was in the pub with them as well.
We were not Rowan, obviously. I'm not sure he's ever been in a pub.

Speaker 1 But, you know, so it was all very organic and very wonderful. But slowly, you sort of start to grow up.
People have their own lives. And you're more working on, you know, you're working on your own.

Speaker 1 But yeah, you get up, you go to your study or wherever. And if it's on your knee on a bus in a cafe, I've done plenty of that.
You know, JK, she famously had to work in a cafe.

Speaker 1 It was the only warm place. You know, you can't say, I can't work unless I'm at my GIT in France.
If you're a writer, you can write anywhere. But I'm lucky.

Speaker 1 I've got a nice study and I go and sit in it and I try and stay there and try not to make too many cups of tea. I mean, honestly, when I'm writing a novel, I'll drink nine pints of tea a day.

Speaker 1 Not because I want the tea, but because if I go and make a cup of tea, that's five minutes when I'm not staring at the bloody screen.

Speaker 2 Jack Thorne says he likes to get between three and five. He sits in his office all day, but he says he likes to get between three and five usable pages of dialogue.
How much do you

Speaker 1 ever

Speaker 1 say that? And I've never, and Stephen tells a story of some great 19th century novel is who always wrote a hundred or whatever.

Speaker 1 And if he finished a novel, he'd just start the next one so that he'd done his number of words. That day.
I'm not like that at all.

Speaker 1 I'm very relaxed.

Speaker 1 No writer works as hard as somebody who's got a normal job. If you work at a checkout or you, you know, that's not a problem.

Speaker 2 That's not going down the mind. Yeah, it's not going to be a matter of time.

Speaker 1 Another professional day down the mine.

Speaker 1 Even you who are currently on this phenomenal role, it's firstly, you're at home, it's nice, you can get up.

Speaker 1 And also, when you want to go and have dinner or go to the pub or not work that day, you don't have to. And I have a really full life.
I've got family and friends and

Speaker 1 I enjoy them to the hilt. So I don't work all the time at all.

Speaker 1 I know we've only got seconds left and we've hardly dealt with enough.

Speaker 1 I do want to finish what you asked about the critic thing because I've never talked about it.

Speaker 1 Rob Bryden read the book and he, I don't know him very well, but he read it and he rang me and forgive me the accent. He said, you know, Ben, I had no idea you had so much, so much shit thrown at you.

Speaker 1 I thought the thin blue line was a critical success. And he basically said,

Speaker 1 why did you feel you have to bring it up? Because it's my autobiography. It's my story.
And that has been a small part of it. And it's only a small part of the book.

Speaker 1 But I do talk about it because, you know, to be constantly in a public eye and trolled for 40 years. I mean, these days, everybody gets trolled.

Speaker 1 If you're on the internet, you're going to get trolled just at school. You're a pioneer, though.
But yeah, I was a pioneer of being trolled. And

Speaker 1 sometimes it got me down a bit for a day or two. You know, critics have said you're very thin-skinned.

Speaker 1 My wife thinks I'm very thick-skinned because, you know, you get quite a lot of it and you try and avoid it, but someone will tell you, someone

Speaker 1 will tell you a review in order to express their outrage. I thought it was awful when they called you a hypocritical, no-talent shit.
I couldn't believe it. I nearly wrote a letter.

Speaker 1 And of course, your day is ruined because you only break the rule. People go, I'm so sorry about that Sunday Times thing.
Exactly. I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 Why are you talking about that?

Speaker 1 I'm just talking about a life in the public eye.

Speaker 2 Because then you have like one million wins that we are very happy for you to take.

Speaker 1 Well, that's that's not, yeah, and I and I'm very happy for them, but but even the wins tend to be custody. You know, it's quite it's a look.

Speaker 1 I don't want to go any further into it, but I don't talk about it except in the book. And it's because it has been a companion to my, and in the absence of any real tragedy up until Rick's death.

Speaker 1 I mean, now with people getting older in my family, I'm experiencing more sadness and unhappiness. But Rick's death was the first genuinely terrible blow that I felt.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, maybe I've had such a lovely life. I've had time to get really annoyed about being slagged off in the papers.

Speaker 1 I mean, the reason we wanted to speak to you is because of this extraordinary career you've had and the extraordinary amount of successes you've had, what you've been through.

Speaker 1 And as you say, I think sometimes in the public, people see the shiny suit and go, oh, he's the guy from Saturday Night Live. And actually, to my mind, you're one of our...

Speaker 1 great writers and everything you've written for so many different medium and you've

Speaker 1 no one has that many hits by accident okay it's unbelievable it doesn't happen but lots of people listening to this a lot of young people listening younger people listening to this it is quite hard these days to create to make things you know we're living in a slightly different world but the one thing that never changes is the creative impulse is the bit in the head the bit where a creator goes i have something i want to say what's the way that i can say it and how can i get people to see it What is your advice after a kind of a lifetime of doing these incredible things to anybody who's sitting there thinking i just i just want to create something i want to do something that people are going to love i bet i never can what's the what's the advice the thing is you can uh you can create anyone can create the question is will anybody else see it or read it and that obviously is is the great imponderable and when i if somebody wants to be an actor i always say that the obvious which is you've got to ask yourself if you devote your life to acting basically working in bars etc etc getting the odds role etc when you When you come to be an old person and you look back and you say, and I had some nice parts and did a bit of fringe that was really satisfying, but you never made it, will you still think you made the right decision about your life?

Speaker 1 Because if you can't honestly say that, then you should not be an actor. I think it's easier for writers because you can always find something of an audience with writing.

Speaker 1 You can self-publish, you can get on blogs. In the old days, there was fanzines.
I know I've been unbelievably lucky. I don't need to check my privilege.
I drip with it.

Speaker 1 And I am genuinely grateful and astonished for every opportunity I've had, just being born middle class, you know, a stable family, whatever.

Speaker 1 But I also know that my instinct to write was organic and instinctive. It started when I was 11 or 12.

Speaker 1 And had I not been successful, had not Rick made that phone call, I would have tried in every sense. I'd have sent my plays off as I was doing it.
And had that, I'd have written for Am Dram.

Speaker 1 I did Am Dram all through my teens. I loved Am Dram.
My artful Dodger is still fondly remembered in Golluming.

Speaker 1 We haven't talked about it artful Dodger, but of course we must.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't think we're sadly going to have time today because I've witted on and banged on. But the truth is you have to believe it's a vocation, not an ambition.

Speaker 1 You have to believe that you want to create. You want to express yourself artistically in some manner, acting, painting, writing.

Speaker 1 And you're doing it first and foremost for yourself. And if you're successful, you continue to do it for yourself because that's the only way you can.

Speaker 1 fulfill your contract with the audience, which is to say, this is what I think is good. This is what I believe in.
If you don't like it, well, that's a shame. But at least I know I wasn't a hypocrite.

Speaker 1 I did my best. I'm not trying to please you.
I'm trying to please myself. And you can do that, you know, in private.
You can do that with friends. You can do that, get up in a pub.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying I would love not to have made, of course, I'm grateful. I've had a very successful career and found an enormous audience.

Speaker 1 And I've, and I've had to work, you know, hard to maintain that. But I also know that had I ended up getting a normal normal job.
I think you use the term civilians.

Speaker 1 Had I ended up being a civilian, I listened to the podcast. podcast

Speaker 1 i would be writing and i would be with my local amdram society i'd be trying to get them to put my play on or just do a sketch for a for a little review for charity it's easy you know you can if you do it for charity you'll get an audience you know i'm i'm i'm not saying there's a lot of people out there thinking i just you know it's easy for you you have to believe that a life as an artist is this you'll take you'll accept any any kind of disappointment to pursue it and if you can't face that then then then don't uh ben thank you so much thank you so much absolutely pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 1 And we had so many questions and not enough time to get through to all of them. So thank you to everyone who sent questions in.
But the one thing that became apparent from the questions is:

Speaker 1 forget the critics, the love that people have for you and the joy you bought people over the years. We haven't even talked about the joy your novels bought me, for example, which they absolutely did.

Speaker 2 all of the questions

Speaker 1 benefit and i really have forgotten and i've had i've had some good reviews as well it's come up a lot but some good careers

Speaker 1 i i've I've had some good confusers as well.

Speaker 1 I've only ever addressed it in the book, and I wouldn't want anybody to think that's what I go around thinking. I am aware.

Speaker 1 I wish I'd been more aware at the time that some things I've done have meant a lot to people. And it's just lovely to know that now.
So thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you to your listeners. Thank you so much for coming talking to me.
Thank you, Ben.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

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