Ben Elton on Blackadder, Mr Bean & Writing TV Classics

What does the man behind Blackadder actually think about modern comedy? Ben Elton, multi award-winning comedian writer, novelist, director and lyricist joins Romesh to discuss his new autobiography, 'What Have I Done?’' and share with us how he went from being a 10-year old auditioning for amateur theatre, to writing some of the most-loved British sitcoms including Blackadder, The Young Ones and more. From going to University with Rick Mayall, getting the call to work with Queen and how the We Will Rock You Musical really came about, to what happened when Blackadder got cancelled and why he loves Mr Bean so much. Plus: a classic question from Shanthi, a rant about mobile phones and an unexpected modelling pitch to M&S. Don't miss it. A Ranga Bee Production in partnership with Platform. 00:00 - Intro 02:50 - Ben’s autobiography 04:49 - On reviews and critics 09:09 - A gift for Ben 12:54 - Ben’s route into writing 15:34 - On stand up 21:32 - Challenging sexism and politics 24:10 - On Improvising 26:13 - The real story of Blackadder 37:55 - Ben’s favourite work 39:30 - On negative headlines 40:56 - Upstart Crow with David Mitchell 43:32 - Triumph and disaster 45:03 - Shanthi’s question to Ben 48:35 - On We Will Rock You 01:01-40 - Misquoted 01:16:55 - Saying what you want to say 01:18:28 - Modelling pitch 01:19:02 - Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Are these answers too long?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  No, it's great, it's great.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Well, I suppose it's open-ended, isn't it?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we can edit as well.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  When it comes out...

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Casually thrown out.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  When it comes out, it'll just be you going, "Yeah, no, I don't."

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Love you, love you, Rom. Love you, Rom, love. And put that on a... Hello there, I'm Ben Elton and I am very, very excited indeed because I am going to be on the Romesh Ranganathan Show and it doesn't get any better than that, pod-wise.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Oh, shut up, Romesh.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Virgin Red. So, Virgin Red means go. That's the whole idea. And I'm telling you that because I am by nature, someone who does not go. I'm world-class at talking myself out of things. Someone says, "Let's go away for the weekend," and within 30 seconds, I've already talked myself out of it. So, I stay home, thinking about all the things I want to be doing, which is why Virgin Red is, honestly, brilliant for people like me. Virgin Red offers epic rewards from the brands you love, and you earn Virgin Points from doing things you're already doing: your travel, your shopping, your day-to-day spending. And those points unlock trips away, hotel stays, live music, and experiences that become the story you're telling for years, moments that become memories. All you have to do is go. Go somewhere you've been meaning to. Go do something you never knew you could.

• 1:32Speaker 01

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• 1:54Speaker 03

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• 2:22Speaker 01

  Okay, you ready? I'm gonna do your intro now, Ben.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  This is quite difficult for somebody with a career like yours, but let's give it a go. Uh, my guest today is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, novelist, director and lyricist. He charged onto the comedy scene in the 1980s with subversive stand-up and sparkly suits on Saturday Live and went on to help shape the landscape of British television, writing seminal sitcoms including The Young Ones, Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line and more recently, Upstart Crow. He's also written a string of bestselling novels including Popcorn and Dead Famous and created the smash-it jukebox musical, We Will Rock You. His autobiography, What Have I Done?, is out in paperback this week. It's the legendary, the peerless, the supreme, Ben Elson, everybody!

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Thank you, everyone.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for coming on. It is an honour to have you on the podcast, thank you so much.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  That's very nice because I can genuinely say, uh, I'm a fan and that's lovely, so thank you.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you so much. Now, you have got a book out. This is it right here.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the hardback. It's the paperback that's coming out, but people can still get that.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  But the paperback, I assume, will still be massive?

• 3:30Speaker 00

  It'll be a bit smaller than that, but it'll be a lot, it'll have the same number of words, which is a lot. It's about a hundred and sixty thousand words, it's longer than-

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Hundred and sixty thousand?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's longer than any of my novels, that's for sure, yeah.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Hundred and sixty thousand, did you intend on it being this, like, how did it come about that it's? I mean, obviously, you've got a long career.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  You know, when you sit down to write your memoir, you know, I intend to stretch it to a hundred and sixty or indeed crush it. Cause I've got to say, it's not all in there, by any means. I had no predictions as to the parameters of the tome.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  When I began writing.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Did the publishers give you any guidelines?

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Honestly, I think they would have preferred it shorter because, you know, that is the modern world. They weren't saying there's anything they wanna lose.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  But just could you lose something? And I said, well, no, because it's it's my autobiography and I I'm not gonna cut it to size. I certainly cut anything if it's boring or, you know, banging on, but I'm not gonna just take fifty thousand words out simply because you wanna short a book. They were great about it, can I just be clear?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  That the people at Pam McMillan have been absolutely wonderful.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is not, you're not starting a beef now?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  No, on the whole, they tended to push towards, you know, can it come down a bit? But we were all very happy.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  How were you with taking notes?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  I'm always good with notes.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Are you?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  I never, I never made a note that I didn't appreciate on second reading.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  The thing about when you get, when you get notes, you know, you always, fuck, you know, I mean, come on, you don't, you know, huh? And, you know, let, do not reply at that point, how dare you? I mean, you've basically torn the heart and soul out of my knob gag, what is left? What is left? Uh, and, uh, you don't, don't write that email immediately. You've got to sit on those notes for a day, read them again, and they're nothing like as bad.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't read reviews because that's all, for a start, by its very nature, if I could read them before I was publishing or before I was on the stage, then maybe they may be of some use to me. But they're not of any use once they're over. You say, oh, you might learn something if you, you know, you know, I mean, I I have enough critics in my, not least my wife, but, you know, people I work with. You know, uh, and I listen, I'm good, I'm good with notes.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  How long have you not read reviews for?

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Since A Silly Cow in nineteen ninety, uh, which was a play I wrote.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Reviewer.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Well, it was a play sort of about a reviewer. It was a play based on a on a on a on a course so liberate at the time. There was a writer called Nina Mishkoff, who'd written a scathing critique of an actress who and saying she couldn't act. And the actress, basically, you know, went for something we all dream of doing. The the actress went for her and I think she almost, I think she tried to sue. I mean, something she said, you can't say I can't act. You can say I'm this, that and the other. And I had at the time already, you know, had a fair few slaggings. And I used to think, you know, if I was a baker and and all a bunch of anonymous, you know, bread eaters in newspapers published, going to say, this isn't even bread. You know, this, this, you know, I mean, if it had been bread, I could have, but because

• 6:44Speaker 00

  I've had that, you know, this is simply not funny. This is simply not a a play. I I was interested in this actress saying, you can't, you can't say I can't act. I've been in the R S C. I've done this, that and the other. I mean, it's just not fair. And now two million people have read it. Anyway, I wrote a play adjacent to that story for Dawn French, because Dawn, which was very lovely, had asked me to think about writing something for her. And it was a great, it was a whodunit about a great subject, which is artists trying to get their revenge on critics, which is, I'm certainly not the first person to plum that depth. I I I wrote the play and the reason I don't remember the name of the actress is probably because the producer went litigation crazy and said, you can't, this is obviously the Mishkoff story.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  And you, for instance, you've made Dawn's character a lesbian for various reasons. Well, she might say I'm not a lesbian, which I don't think she is a lesbian, you know. And so they made me push it further and further away from the source material, which I'm perfectly happy to do because it wasn't documentary. And then I was inspired to write the play. That was all. So that's why I I I left the source material well behind. It was only an article I'd read in the paper anyway. Anyway, it got absolutely slacked. And don't, you know, critics, fine, you know, whatever they want to say, free world, et cetera, and that's fine. But the problem is you shouldn't read reviews because if you read a review that says this, this, this novel is ninety nine percent novel writing perfection, ninety nine percent of this probably better than any other novelist has ever written.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  All you're thinking of course is. What the fuck about another one percent?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  So, you know, all power to them, they do their thing, we do, we do ours and, but I, I, I very much don't actually read it. I get, you know, my promoter producer bloke called Phil McIntyre, you'll be aware, you know, it's not Ben Goodben, don't read him. Well, I wasn't gonna know. Well, don't, you know, but that's, that's, uh, uh, that's, you know, but you always hear and some well-meaning friend will say, I was outraged when they said you were a hypocritical piece of shit. I'm going to write. And of course, I, my day had been great up until that point. I'm sure, I'm sure you have the same, no, we probably never had a battery, but.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  I think I've had a good, a great one.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  Exactly. We all feel it and it's a thing and it's best not to. The only advice I can give is it's slightly the best, the only way you can mitigate a battery view is always horrible. It affects your business. So what I mean about the baker selling bread, it's not even bread, you know, you're basically somebody saying, don't go and see this, you'll hate it, you know, and I'm thinking, as every artist has ever thought, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. I mean, didn't you hear the laughter? You know, all that goes on and on and on and on. And the only way you can make that slightly better is not to have actually read the thing because the phrases themselves, and you can ask any actor, they can remember the verbatim. They can't remember their lines, but they can remember the slogans.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember quotes. I remember quotes.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, awful. Uh, now we've got you a gift.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Hmm?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Um, there's two gifts actually. I just, I was about to open it for you. There you go. You're capable of doing that.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  You know, they're not wrapped, are they? No. Oh, two gifts. All right.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Now, that is a, that is a fidget pen.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  It's for, it's for writing if you're distracted.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  It might fall apart.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  I'm not, do I, am I supposed to get it out?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  No, it's here.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  You got.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Now, Georgie on the team has actually experimented this for you and that's it as a dog.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I see you. Oh, what fun. So, oh no, actually that, that's great fun.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  So basically I'm presuming it on the, on the cover, there's an actual pen. Doesn't really give any sense of its potential, does it?

• 10:23Speaker 00

  And, and, but you can break it up. I presume that there's a very, very small inkwell. I mean, basically, only the last section, one would presume.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Has a little plastic tube of ink in it. So it probably ran out quite quickly, but you can still play with it, isn't it?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we were hoping you weren't gonna find the shortcomings of it so quickly.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, what's the, what's the issue? Yeah, the issue, I mean, I presume that.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, after what you said about critics, you've really gone in on this pen.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  No, no, they have every right, I'm not, you know, whatever.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It seems like you like it.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  And, uh, and is it a book?

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Is it a blank, is it a blank?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  It's a notebook, yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  It's a blank paper book. Well, that's delightful of you, thank you.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  No worries.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I re- honestly.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  You seem so underwhelmed, I can't quite believe it. Just be hon- just be honest.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  At sixty, at sixty-six.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  This is a, this is a, this is a present that people give, you know, like, I, you know, like, oh, you're going with those lovely stationery shops. Moleskin, you know, and, and, you know, you get menu stock in or whatever, you know, over the year, you know, and then, you know, they're like a podcast, you might get given one on a podcast and. I mean, obviously I'm thank you, but I don't need a load of blank pages. I've stared at them enough and I've got, you know, my wife's very, very eco-conscious, as am I, but she's much more so. Um, you know, we have to rinse our cling film, you know. We do, God knows how much water we're using. Don't wanna quote my, but we do, we rinse them and we hang them out. Our kitchen looks like an explosion in a condom factory. Bit of material there.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  But anyway, she won't let me throw anything out, so we've got millions of empty notebooks and, and a lot of them, funnily enough, a lot of them have the beginnings of a story by one of, not by me.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  But one of my, uh, children.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Because, you know, kids, they do that, they come, gonna write a story. Get excited about a notebook. Four lines in and then they draw a little picture and then they, they fuck off and that's the end of that. So we've got a lot of books of just like this, except with a little bit going on on the first page. You know, we can't throw that away, look, she did that or whatever, but anyway, not throwing all the other pages away. So, look, um.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, I guess.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  I'm not travelling. It's a very kind present.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, sure.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  I know there'll be somebody, actually, would anybody like this? No, you see.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so not only, not only do you not want it, you can't believe the idea of anyone else wanting it either.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  I bet a lot of people have got a lot of blank, blank lovely books.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I've got loads.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, lo- lovely books, a lovely, I wrote a line in my play Popcorn years ago where the psycho killer's talking about shooting up a shop and it was a, it was a Smith's or something. And she, I love stationery, she says, and it's true, we all love stationery, I, I, everyone loves a stationery shop. So I can go in and feel them in the shop and then, you know, not buy one, but look, thank you. I really hope this doesn't sound churlish.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  No, no, it's great, no, it's great, it's great, it's, uh, I mean, you, you know, you could have dismissed it quickly, but if anything, it feels like we've given you material. Now, if we can, uh, if you can bring yourself to, uh, tell us about your beginnings, because obviously you've had an incredible career. What, what, what's kind of your route into writing and comedy?

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Uh, well, I didn't, you know, I didn't have any idea in my very early years. So I, I really had a couple of epiphanies that, that, that changed the course of my life. I probably would have ended up where I am, maybe, you know, obviously I've been very fortunate to have quite a, a degree of success. The first inkling was, uh, when I was ten. The school, uh, at the school, there was an announcement that the local theatre, little amateur theatre group called The Curtain Raisers, um, were putting on Peter Pan and they were appealing for lost boys. And I was very excited, but, and said to my, I want to audition for that. And she said, that'd be great, you shouldn't. I then forgot about it, but fortunately she reminded me on the Saturday morning, I went to the audition.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  I didn't get John, I got understudied John, he's the one with the top hat and the glasses in Peter Pan. Uh, uh, but I got slightly soiled. I mean, that's the name of a part, not, not that I was overexcited at the prospect of it. I've never said that before, it sounds like an old joke, but, but, uh, I got the role of slightly soiled and I absolutely, as my gran said, she's from Cheshire. Oh, you've got the bug, Benji, you've got the bug, because she was also big in amateur dram. In the twenties and thirties, she was, had a lovely voice and she was the, uh, lead soprano of the local Gilbert and Solomon Society back before the, before the Second World War. So she knew about having to bug, she loved theatre. And I thought, I wanted to be an actor and I could think of nothing more than being an actor from that moment on.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  It was only three nights in, in, you know, Golem, you know, it was Onslow Village, Borough Hall. But it felt like the West End as it does to any kid getting it like like every soccer match feels like Wembley, you know, if that's what you're into. And then, so I wanted to be an actor and I started getting involved in um Dram, I did The Artful Dodger a couple of times in Oliver, uh and um then a number of firstly, I was watching lots of telly and falling in love with Malcolm and Wise and Two Ronnies and thinking about where are those jokes coming from. I was very aware of writers right from the start. I've always, you know, kind of seen the credits and um and yeah, I I knew absolutely and from the age of thirteen or fourteen, I knew that I wanted to be a comic

• 15:42Speaker 00

  writer. I wanted to write comedy. I had no real ambitions to perform at the time, no ambitions to direct until I saw a few directors fucking up my stuff and then I, you know, so all writers feel that. All writers. Richard Curtis eventually got round the cameras and I'll do it now, I think I um so yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  But then you also are a phenomenal stand up and you know, you haven't mentioned that as part of your ambition at all, but for for a lot of comics, your stand up was so ahead of its time. And actually, if you go back and watch your stand up now, the pacing of it, the speed at which you deliver punchlines, what you're talking about, the social commentary, it's aged so incredibly. You are you are you became an unbelievable stand up and a big influence to a lot of stand ups. But that wasn't part of your, so how did that come about that you ended up doing that?

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it really wasn't. I I had no um thought of becoming a stand up comedian. As I say, I've been in a double act in amateur music halls, in church halls in Surrey, you know, but that was not, I wanted to be a playwright and and and when I went to university. Um, I I I wrote plays and I I didn't put myself in them. I mean, obviously, I I have a healthy ego, but it's not one that makes that is about me being seen. I mean, as you can see, I've not made an enormous effort, despite the fact that the instructions were to come camera ready. So this is this is me camera ready.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  You look great, man.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Well, thank you.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, if this is your camera ready, that's fine.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  It's not. It's not the result of any great effort. I don't. My ego is not based in personally showing off. Uh, obviously, I love people, I love what I've done, but it's different ego. So, no, I had no idea, not even wanting to be an actor. Uh, I I rarely put myself in my plays at university. I must have put fifteen plays on at university, my original stuff, always directing other students. And when I left university, I was already very aware of what Rick and Aid were doing, Rick Mail and Aid Edmondson, because very fortunately, sometimes stars, you know, didn't quite align because they were two years above me and I was very close to Rick at university for a year. I didn't know Aid hardly at all. We became very, very close soon after. But, uh, but anyway, I was aware of what they

• 17:57Speaker 00

  were doing in London. There was this thing, alternative comedy going on, and Rick had already said, come and write me some fucking gags, Farty. Uh, and, uh, and he was, you know, I was very happy to, you know, I was writing a bit of stuff in and around Rick and I wanted to make a living doing comedy and I also wanted somehow to advertise my wares. So, yeah, the obvious answer was, I can see what Rick and Aid are doing and a lot of far less competent comedians in the Comedy Store and the Comic Strip. Um, and I could do that. And I had this thought, I mean, one thing's for sure, I think I could do better material than almost any of them. Yeah, I was arrogant enough to think, I I've got better gear and I can write it tonight. Um, and, uh, but performance wise, I had

• 18:41Speaker 00

  no real idea of who I was.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  But I was lucky, you know, Rick Rick got me an audition at the Comic Strip, which was the high end of the two alternative comedy clubs. There was no circuit. There was a comics Comedy Store, which was a bear pit, a horrendous, you know, just a battleground.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Um, uh, very unpleasant. Uh, uh, and then there was the people who were good at the comedy store who'd all left en masse to do the comic strip, which was a much, much, much better. You know, the audience were there because hey, this is the exciting scene. This is these, these are the the new wave of comedians rather than the audience were there to get a late night pint and get their rocks off shouting at some poor diminutive student on stage. Um, but I got an audition at the comic strip because I knew Rick and at my first show, I did two character pieces. Hey, my first show, my, my audition and he got, I did an impression of Ronald Reagan with jokes about uh, Grecian two thousand, which was a graying, you know, and, and, and something about, you know, destroying democracy, the

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Greeks and him. And anyway, I can't quite remember, but I made a link between a hair white, a, a, a, a hair dye and democracy via Greeks. Anyway, that was the Reagan sketch. Uh, dyed beyond dye. So there I was, four or five minutes into my big break and it cut and that was death. But I had a second bit. Uh, so stuck a sort of little pillow up my jumper, put on a bright blazer and did what, you know, now we would perhaps question it, but I did the, the fat northern comedian talking about his wife. Um, I, you know, now we'd think hard twice about the terms we use and like categorizing, but nonetheless, there were a lot of fat northern comedians, even their wife, uh, on the show called the,

• 20:29Speaker 00

  and some of them were great. Some of them were brilliant artists, but there was an awful lot of my wife so fat, my, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, you know, you should see it. And I did a kind of Bernard Manning pastiche, which didn't really have any jokes in it. It was just a rant about how fat my wife was, but you know, I'm fat anyway. Yeah. And that went. It sounds good, man. Yeah, it was, it was a clear, I mean, the audience understood it as a satire on sexism. Yeah. Which I did quite a lot of and I could be pretty funny at. I then slightly quid my pitch by ending with a sexism in comedy, knock it on the head or, or the likes because I'd only just graduated and students can be terribly self-important and I'm sure I, I, I fell into that, that pit somewhat. Got another gig at.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  A comic strip and then I had to beard the lion and take on the comedy store. Cause there was, there wasn't any, there was no future for me at a comic strip. They had their own, that was all just Rick and Aid, Pete and Nige, Jenny and Dawn and Alexi and Arnold Brown. So that was them and I got a guest spot just cause somebody was away, that was it. So I had to go on my own and take it on and, and I, I did well, but very quickly I dropped character work. Became my own character, which was a, a shoutier, more aggressive version of who I was. I'm not remotely aggressive, not, I've never been in a fight, ever. I'm very proud of that, you know, but the comic comedy store was a terrible place to play.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Um, audiences could, it was gong shows, they could shout, it's always lads.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  They've still got the gong shows.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, they do the odd gong show. This was a gong show. That was it. And, and it was. And I very quickly became compare cause I, I was quite good at it. And as I say, I had the material and I could write more of it all the time.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  So did material come easily to them?

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Totally. I mean, I, writing comes easily to me. Um, I mean, it isn't always, I'm sure, you know, there'll be your listeners, well, perhaps we'll talk a bit more. I did make a lot of effort, but I, I, I, I find it's something that I was. You know, people say, are you driven? I say, no, I'm inspired. I'm inspired to write. I'm not driven to write. I'm inspired to write because I've, I've got some ideas that are tumbling out. I'm not as fast as I used to be. Um, when you're young, you know, it's all exciting. Every idea is a winner and you're just bashing it down and just churning, churning it out. Yeah. I mean, I was a jobbing writer. I did stuff for Rick. I did stuff for, for, for Pete and Nige.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, I, I, I was satirical. I mean, I, I, I dissected where, you know, I did routines about. Taking us facts like you can't advertise tampons on the telly, which you couldn't, didn't used to be able to do, which is just kind of insane. But we lived in a, literally lived in a world where, where, where menstruation was a secret. Was something even called tampon secrets and whispers and, you know, gave them work, you know, you know. And, you know, this is clearly, you know, corrosive. Sexism and patriarchal beyond belief and and I and I, you know, I I I knew how to skewer that. I said, what would it be like if men, you know, men, men menstruated, well, you know,

• 23:32Speaker 00

  we'd be boasting about it down the pub, wouldn't we, you know, I was bleeding last night, fainted, you know, gallons, mate, gallons, you know. Yeah, sex, you know, and and, you know, I I did a big, long routine about it. And some of your listeners, if they know my work, will know it. But it's an example of a of a lot of the stuff I did, which was to take a little bit of politics. It should became a sort of catchphrase and and and and use it to create actual comedy, not comedy that you just agreed with.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  But comedy that made you laugh and you could even laugh even if you didn't agree with it. And that was obviously the aim. So, yeah, I became I became a stand up comic, but it was never my ambition. And for many years I I hated it. I hated doing it. Yeah, it was, you know, it's hard. You're putting yourself on the line and, you know, you've got to, I never died. I mean, I I've never, I've never had the, you know, the the experience of really fucking up on stage again. Because I my material, you know, I worked, I didn't improvise on stage.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, a lot of comics, they think the way, and maybe they're right for them, is to go on and, no, maybe they've got a couple of ideas and they just busk with it. No, I work really hard at home.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So everything you said was heavily scripted.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Heavily scripted. Now, if you have done that work, and frankly, most comics do, it's a myth, you know, we, Robin Williams used to come down a comic strip, comedy store. And, you know, obviously, a truly great stand up. But the first time you see it, you think, my God, I mean, he's literally taking this woman's handbag. He wouldn't do that now, but like, you know, he's doing, and he's, and it's like as if he's literally making it up as he goes along. Of course, then you see him the next time and he's not. He might be in a bit of a different order and there might be a few new things, but basically he's got a shed load of shtick. And Billy, Billy Connolly, my my my greatest comic, my greatest British comic in my lifetime. You know, again, he appears to be, you know, he's laughing it through, it's occurring to him.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Of course, it isn't, he's got to do, he's got an eighty day tour. I used to say, people say to me, oh, you know, I came, I loved the show, I came again, it's just the same stuff again. Yeah, because obviously, I'm going to write two hours of brand new, like, dag packed, you know, then maybe I could do a new show every night. But if I'm going to give you honed material. So, yeah, I worked incredibly hard on my stand up comedian, uh, stand up material, always did. Learn it. Very boring job, shouting at edges as you walk along, you know. Um, and then then you can improvise some strength if you've got a routine and you know where you're going, then often, oh my goodness, you know, the muse touches you and you come up with something new on stage and that's a moment of, that's sublime. I mean, Woody

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Allen spoke for all comic writers when he said, when I write a joke, I'm hearing it for the first time, because you really don't know where it comes from. At the book, when the, when the rubber hits the road, Keith Richard, everyone talks about songwriting. You don't write songs, you just block him from the air, man, you know, but that is kind of how creation is. You could, if you could plan it, then you, you don't really know where the, where the perfect thing hap- comes from until it arrives. Normally for me, that's at home with a computer or a pen, blank lovely blank book that you want and I could be trying to fill. Um, and sometimes it's on stage.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  But I, well, I, I do want to talk to you about Blackadder.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Because, well, recently I did a show called Last One Laughing, and they do this thing, I don't know if you, I don't know if you've ever had this, where they, for the social media team, they basically, it's a really reductive way of doing things. What they do is they go, we're gonna do a face-off, and then they name two sitcoms, you've got to choose your favorite one. And then it's like a knockout tournament. It's really horrible way of, they just do it for a social media clip. Anyway, Blackadder appeared, and then it trumped every sitcom that they named after that for me, because I think.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  They don't name the young ones, The Thin Blue Lion and Upstart Crow?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I asked them to, and I dismissed all of those. No, but for me, Blackadder is, if not the, it's in the conversation for best ever sitcom, it's incredible. First of all, it's so relentlessly funny. You know, you sort of think about even the, the journey from the first series to the second series, you know, it's, it's so different, but still funny in, in different ways. I mean, it's, it's, when you talk, you know, you talk about the rigors of writing, you can see that, you can tell that a lot of work has gone into that. What was kind of your journey with that show?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Well, um, you say the journey from the first to the second, that was, that, that was it, except it wasn't a journey, it was an arrival. Um, and you, you said, you know, they were both funny, but not in, but there, you're wrong, of course, because the first one wasn't funny.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  That's probably pitching it too hard and I apologize to Richard and Rowan who wrote it. But um yeah, Black, The Blackadder, which was the first series of what became The Blackadder sort of thing, um was written by Richard and Rowan. It was not, it wasn't done in the studio, it wasn't a studio sitcom, um and it was done on film. And I, I don't think I'm giving away any secrets when I say it was what they call a curate's egg, good in parts. Um, uh, Richard and Rowan definitely thought that because Rowan dropped out as writer, as far as I know, he's the only, he was, I don't think he's written anything else since, and I don't, I'm not sure he'd written anything before that. So Blackadder Two was a complete reinvention, um, and really, I sort of wanted to have

• 28:48Speaker 00

  a different name, and it did, kind of, because it was no longer The Blackadder, it was Blackadder, and that was his name, whereas The Blackadder was a nickname. But I was very, very fortunate in that after The Blackadder had been deemed a curate's egg by all the people who, who were in on it, um, you know, we need to think hard about this now. So there's Richard. Now, if that had been me, I'd have said, yeah, thank God, you know, that, that weight of, of, of, of not funny writing is off my back, I'm gonna do it on my own. I, I, I would unquestionably have said, right, I can handle this. To my immense good fortune, and life-changing good fortune, Richard said, no, I, I, I don't

• 29:30Speaker 00

  wanna write it on my own, I'm interested in, in Ben. And Richard came to me, and he, he came to me because he loved The Young Ones. I didn't know Richard, you know, he was one of the Oxbridge, you know, gang, that was a sort of separate world, the, the not the nine o'clock news world, you know. And he came to me and we, we just hit it off as friends immediately. So when The Blackadder sort of job of co-writing The Blackadder came open because Rowan dropped out, Richard asked me.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Uh, and of course it was life changing for me and it was life changing for everyone because my element was undoubtedly significant. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I didn't bring something to it. Um, between Richard and I, we agreed on a radical reinvention and that was that we should go into the studio for a start. Rowan, for one of the world's great performers, live performers, his Edinburgh shows were legendary. I mean, he doesn't like it. He's somewhat, antisocial is the wrong word, but he, he, he keeps a distance, you know, I think it's well known. Um, he doesn't enjoy performing, I don't think very much, but he's brilliant at it. Um, let's get in the studio, let's get laughter, let's do what we do very well in Britain, which is do a studio based, community based sitcom

• 30:40Speaker 00

  with an ensemble of great actors playing to a live audience. So that was a big change. But by far the bigger change was let's change the characters. And I was very clear on that from day one, which is that, you know, Rowan's playing an idiot in The Blackadder. The first scene, oh, I don't really know what's going on. Um, and, you know, I've said it in my book, uh, and he rose read it and enjoyed the book very much. Uh, I enjoyed your book. Um, I didn't offer a quote, uh, but anyway, as I know your publishers hoped I would. Uh, but then he doesn't, you know, he's not, that's not, you're not going to get that from Rowan. Um, but he's, he's read what I wrote, which is that, you know, whisper

• 31:25Speaker 00

  it not, I don't think Rowan's idiot characters are as funny as his superciliously superior characters are. I mean, of course, Mr. Bean is a colossal global success and I love it, but I principally love it for its nihilism, for its, for its wickedness, for the fact that Mr. Bean is not cuddly. Mr. Bean is vicious and, and can be spiteful and scheming and, and, and that side of it I love. But I don't, I thought that Black, Rowan's Blackadder character just isn't funny and nor is Baldrick's. I mean, he's the sort of, you know, the scheming one. Let's swap it. So I don't know whether Richard or I, but we both agreed immediately on this big change, which was to make Baldrick the idiot and Rowan the scheming one, the clever one. Cause I mean, Rowan being effortlessly superior, ah, come

• 32:10Speaker 00

  in, you know, is, is, is, is, is peerless. Uh. And so that was without doubt the most significant shift. We didn't do such a big change with the character of Percy, but it it sparked a collaboration between Richard and I, which I I tra- we only ever done it once, but, you know, it was a beautiful, beautiful collaboration and a beautiful friendship. And when people ask us who wrote what, we literally have no idea. We really do. There's this sort of myth that, you know, I did all the rude stuff and he did all the cute stuff. Complete myth, you know. I mean, we I do tend a bit more towards the the knob gag and he tends a bit more towards the cute.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  But, you know, I can write a sweet little upturned nose joke and he can write a a turnip-shaped gonad, uh, or a gonad-shaped turnip, um, gag. Uh, so we are ambidextrous. Is that the word? In terms of cute and and rude. Uh, one of the luckiest days of my life was the day Richard had the generosity, which is a saying I don't think I would have had, the creative generosity to say, I don't want to do this on my own. And that's why I got to co-write The Blackadder.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  One of the things that I about that is I just can't imagine that happening now, that you you took it so far from the original, right? You know, that switching the characters, all of that is such a radical change. Was there resistance to that? Or were they happy to just let you do whatever you wanted?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Well, there's a sort of quite a good story about that. Um, most people don't know this, although those of them who've read my book will know, um, that Blackadder was actually cancelled after the first series. What happened was the first series, as discussed, was considered, you know, lots of strengths, some weaknesses, but it cost an awful lot. John Lloyd, the producer, brilliant man, brilliant comic man, another great colleague over the years, um, John Lloyd famously said, Blackadder, uh, one looked a million dollars. Unfortunately, it cost two million dollars. That was his joke. And it kind of, we didn't work in dollars and I think it probably was about, you know, a hundred thousand quid. But but it basically it cost too much. It cost a lot and it didn't deliver. It was the big

• 34:19Speaker 00

  investment in Ryan Atkinson, the standout star of Not a Nine O'Clock News, um, sorry, Griffin Pamela, uh but they all became stars, but Roe was the man and uh the investment hadn't paid off. But they decided to go with it again. Then there was that old enemy of creativity, regime change. How often, I'm sure it's happened in your career, God knows it's happened to me, you're in development, it's all going well. The boss changes and he just cha- or she just chucks everything out because if they go on with it. The previous person gets the credit, well, that was previous person's project. And if they go on with it and it fails, then they get the blame. So I've had pr- really good, promising stuff, just killed by. The simple fact that the new boss doesn't want the old boss's promising stuff.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Anyway, so regime came in, Michael Gray came over as controller of BBC One. And the first thing he did was looked at his comedy budget and he thought, I spent that much on that show, it didn't really work and he cancelled us. And I got a letter through the post. In fact, Richard, who was much more in the loop. Than I was even then. Now, of course, you know, he, the Pope takes his phone calls and, you know, Bono asks to bring him tea in the morning. But uh even in those days, Richard, before Four Weddings, before Comic Relief, before. His wonderful work in so much in global famine, um. Even then, he was so well connected, you know, as my, as Phil McIntyre said, you don't get to be head, the first Australian to be head boy of Arrow without something about you, he knows what he's doing.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  And he came to me on our last edit session, we were just putting in all the scripts, we were about to send all the scripts in, everything had been written. He said, they've cancelled it. I said, what? He said, I'm just telling you, they've cancelled it, they don't, they're not going to do it, we'll get paid for the scripts, but they're not going to use them. And lo and behold, next day in the post, post was quick in those days, I got my letter from John Howard Davis, head of entertainment. Michael Gray has cancelled the Blackadder and I regret to say for the, not just the, this means it's, you don't, don't hold out hope, it's over. Now, I still have that letter framed in uh the, my lavatory. Uh and uh, well, I have a number of lavatories, I don't want you to think I've only got one loop. No, no, I didn't, nobody assumed that you only had one. I move it around. Uh I judge the measure of a man's success by how many flushable loos he's got, you can't count caravans.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Then we went into overdrive. I had no influence, but Rowan's agent, Richard Armitage, has a lot of influence. And John Lloyd had some influence. He produced Not on the Nine O'Clock News. And they went to Michael Grade and they said, look, everything you don't want, we've already chucked out. This is a new show. It's got a similar title, Black Adder Two, but it's in the studio. It'll cost half as much. It'll be five times as good. Look, just look at the scripts, etc. And to his immense credit, he reversed his decision, which was a huge thing to do. Now, since then, Michael has kind of convinced himself and rather dined out on the story that there never was a cancellation. He simply rung us young punks up and said, now, look here, you, what you need to do is put this

• 37:17Speaker 00

  in the studio. You need to make Adder, Black Adder, the clever one, and Baldrick the fool. And basically, so, you know, bless him, he's rather dined out on the idea that he sort of forced our young punkish talents, wrangled us into line. And that's why the Adder was such a complete bullshit. There was no doubt. Michael Grade came in after the whole series was written. Where he could gain enormous credit, more credit, in my opinion, is that he reversed his decision. That's a huge thing for a boss to do, to come in, say, right, well, I don't want that and chuck it out. And the budget was reallocated. So when he brought it back, he had to take budget from the following year. So it was a huge reverse ferret, as they now say in politics. And that takes a big, brave, bold decision because

• 38:01Speaker 00

  of course it made him look like a flake, you know, that we'd gone in, so please, can you let us do it really? And he'd go, all right, then you can. You know, had it not worked as well as it had, I mean, he would have looked such a fool. So I think, I mean, we owe him so much, but not remotely for the reasons he's been saying for the last 40. Bless, good on Michael Grade, a huge figure in the business. But yeah, that's the real story of the Black Adder.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  So you mentioned young ones. Of the sitcoms that you've written, what's the one you're most proud of then?

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Well, up until quite recently, I always just say, you know, none of them and all of them. I don't go around really being proud of my work. I'm proud of the fact I did my best and I don't look back. I never watch anything that I've done. I never read anything that I've done. It's not out of some kind of, hey, oh, it's all dead history to me. It's just not interesting. I'm interested in the next thing. And if I did, if I do happen to catch a bit of an adder or Young Ones on a plane or something, all I can think of is the stuff that I was furious about at the time. It never dies. I never should have cut that joke, that edit's awful or whatever, uh, or we could have done better. And so I don't think about my work and I know that every single project I ever did, I did my best at, and I always thought at the time it was my very best work. And so I genuinely never had an answer to that.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  And it was always a rather boring, perhaps pious sounding one, which is, I'm proud of them all. But now I have an answer and that is Upstart Crow. Because, you know, that was written in adversity and it was a, a very hard write. It's a hugely, you know, though I say it myself, hugely researched piece. Uh, it takes an awful lot of sort of digging into Shakespeare. Uh, and I was coming from a position of some considerable weakness in as much as I'd had a big failure with a show I'm very proud of and as proud of as The Young Ones, which is a show called The Right Way, which starred David Haig, which was somehow deemed to be a, an insult to comedy. And, you know, I was really hauled over to, you know, they had a discussion on Newsnight. Why is Ben Elton so shit these days?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Um. How did, how did that feel to be at the centre of all that?

• 40:01Speaker 00

  N- not great. I tried to hide a bit. Um, Vice, is it Vice? One of them, one of the early websites, they, they did a roundup of reviews, which I, I didn't see the reviews, but I was told about the headline, should Ben Elton be put on suicide watch? Uh, you know, so it was, it was, yeah, it was pretty heavy, you know? I mean, I happened to, you know, cause somebody told me in The Guardian, Ben Elton must never be allowed to make television. Look, the piece probably maybe it wasn't good, although I thought it was funny, I still do. But it was a very traditional studio based sitcom about a health and safety worker, um, who was, you know, overly officious, you know, and always wore his high vest to bed and that sort of thing. And, um, anyway. Been viewed as like, you know, the last nail in the coffin of a sadly compromised eighties lefty.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Who's revealed himself as, you know, a talent, a sad act. Uh, and you know, that was kind of me done, which certainly for TV and things, which I don't think is out of. But I mean, I, I was still selling novels and things, but yeah, it was pretty grim in terms of a general presumption that I was a majorly busted flush. And probably one who'd somehow sold out everything he ever believed in in the first place. I'm, I'm very good with adversity, you know, you, you, oh God, fuck, that's horrible. And then you get over it. And as I say, I'm very lucky to be happy in general.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you're, yeah, I mean, it's fortunate that you're able to do that because it's, you know, it's horrific.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Uh, and you know, you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself down, et cetera. And then I got this opportunity. Which I never expected. I thought, well, that's me for sitcom forever. But, but Shane Allen and another one like Richard, like many people in my life. I, I owe an immense debt to Shane Allen was head of comedy at the BBC at the time. And he said, I've got something I want to talk to you about. And I just couldn't believe it because I, I really was pronounced, you know. Dead. Uh, and um, he said, the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death's coming up. All the other BBC departments are doing something on Shakespeare, except like entertainment or that's called comedy. Um, he said, we should do something.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  And I think, you know, had a history, you know, a bit erudite, but with lots of knob gags, you're the man in a way. He said, I'm not commissioning you, but do you have any thoughts? Said, I had an idea. You might like to write a cod Shakespeare play. You know, we could do a one off like a, an, you know, newly discovered Shakespeare play. So I, but I thought, no, a sitcom about Shakespeare's life. I had a lot of reasons that I thought he was the perfect, like lower middle class Englishman. Pushing against the posh boys. The more I read about Shakespeare, the more he reminded me of Captain Mannering. You would think not, but how would that be? But I can explain it. Basil Falty, the traditional British sitcom hero who, who is, who is clever and can see what he ought to be. And it doesn't get it because of all the society class prejudice, et cetera, et cetera. And Shakespeare.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  It's called Upstart Crow because that is the only known review of Shakespeare that has survived, which is this upstart crow dressing himself in the feathers of a poet and a gentleman, you know. They resented him and his talent enormously. And I thought, that's a great sitcom, you know, and he was a commuter, you know, Stratford, London, London, Stratford, lots there. He had, he lived with his parents in law, you know, oh my god, you know, et cetera. So I said, we should make a sitcom. And anyway, look, like you asked, what am I most proud of? I don't really care about the word pride. I I'm very proud of Upstart Crow and the fact that it was, it was loved. I mean, not in a level that adder is, but nothing's, you know, I mean, by the time Upstart Crow came out, the BBC was getting, was pleased with two million.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  When ten years before they'd have wanted ten million.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  So we got the two million and they were thrilled and. Uh yeah, Upstart Crow was a labor of love and making friends with with David and discovering David as a dear friend and colleague. Felt like meeting Rick or Ro, uh, you know. And yeah, so it was just a fantastic late life. My, my wife called that period the benaissance and.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  When, when Upstart Crow came out.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Were you, because of the right way, were you anxious about that? Or did you see it as a free hit because you didn't know you were ever gonna do that?

• 44:10Speaker 00

  I never, you're always a bit anxious, but I really don't. And I'm sure you're the same. You can't be thinking, how's it gonna go? You've just got to do it.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Well, it's not healthy to.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I'm very good at getting in the bar and not thinking about it anymore. Um, and, you know, I love a drink and that's always helpful. Uh, well, not for everyone, but for me, I'm an evangelist. If it's a problem, I always say, you know, it's not how much you drink, it's what Duck Blues does to you. You know, if you drink, you know, seven pints a night, but you pay your tax, you, you, you don't get in fights and you get up and work the next day, then you haven't got a problem. I mean, you might die a bit younger, but so the fuck what?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  You know, uh, but if you drink a teaspoon of sherry and you go out and punch a policeman and you can't give up that teaspoon, you're an alcoholic.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  So for me, it's about what it does to you. And I've always been a very benign drinker. I don't, I don't drink every night anymore. I did for thirty years, but I don't anymore. But I love it still and I hope to die, you know, with a glass of champagne or a nice ready man. But was I worried about Upstart Crow? No, I never, I never worry about because I know that I've had success and I've had failure and in the end, you know, I'm with Kipling. You really do have to treat, meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. And I mean, that has to be about the best piece of advice you could give to anyone, but certainly an artist.

• 45:33Speaker 05

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• 47:02Speaker 01

  We've got a question from my mother now on voice note. I say this every time, I don't know what this question is.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  So let's see.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Hi Ben, this is Romesh's mom. Hi.

• 47:19Speaker 05

  You've worked so hard and you have had so much success. What keeps you motivated to keep working when you could retire now? Have a lovely day. Love to meet you one day. Take care.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  What a delightful lady.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Lovely question. I mean, she's suggesting you retire.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  No, she, she, I mean, that's, that's the spin of a, of a, of a classically cynical. Millennial, I'm thinking, or are you a late Zed? No, you're a milli, you're a milli, aren't you? No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm pre. You're an ex. Yeah. You're an ex, only the forgotten generation, the ones nobody cares about. Yes, that's, they're coming in their own now because, yeah, they're gonna be the enemy soon because my lot are dying fast. I mean, there's no, there's no one in my family between, well, my brothers and sisters are older, but yeah. Well, what a lovely question from your mum and so charmingly put, and I hope we do meet. Maybe, because I know you do a show together.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do, yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Maybe I can get on that one.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  It was easily achievable, she could have come in today.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe I could get on that one. Um, look, I've always had an ongoing compulsion, compelling, as I say, I don't consider it to be driven, I consider it to be inspired, but I love to write comedy and I, and that's what, that's what keeps me going. Yes, I, I could, I don't really know what retirement means for an artist. If you're fortunate enough, and I am an artist and popular, you know, whatever, it sounds a bit highfalutin for a knob gag merchant from way back, but uh, I don't think there is such a thing as retirement because I would have written, if I had never made a success of life, I would have tried to, you know, submit articles to the local paper or something, I don't know, made a fanzine or, you know, I'd always written plays for Am Dram, whatever, which is what I did when I was young, and I'd still do it.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  And I think if you paint, you're always gonna paint, maybe people aren't gonna buy it anymore. But, and, and maybe people won't buy my stuff. I certainly don't sell as big houses as, or, you know, as I used to, I still, the audience still comes to see me, but nothing like they did in the late eighties when I was kind of very, very hip for a while. So, yeah, I mean, what is it that keeps me going? It's a genuine delight in the thing I've been able to spend my life doing. Uh, you know, there is no greater fortune, good fortune than your hobby becoming your, your, I mean, that's your hobby. If your hobby's your job, it's a vocation, isn't it? That's what they say. And comedy has been my vocation. Um, theatre arts, theatre and TV arts, I mean, name your degree course, uh,

• 49:48Speaker 00

  are my vocation and I've been lucky to spend my life in it and earn a living doing it. And yes, a good enough living to be able to stop. And I, I'm certainly not as in, you know, the world is comprehensively failing to beat a path to my door. Um, at present because, you know, I'm old, I'm an old bloke and, you know, even if a commissioner wanted to give me a show on telly, they'd have to think very, very hard because, and rightly so, because there's three generations of people wanting those breaks, wanting those chances. And I had, you know, my God, more than my fair share. So, but I won't stop writing. I mean, I'd be very surprised if I got another sitcom, but you never know.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Uh, but that doesn't stop me, you know, pottering about and, and, and all going back on the road.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  We Will Rock You, one of the most successful musicals of all time.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, not in a level of, yeah, very, very, very successful musical, not, not entirely. I never, never really cracked it in the States and, but yeah, a big success.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  You described that as, that We Will Rock You, the whole thing around that as one of the most intense periods of your professional life.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  What was that like to be putting that together? I mean, you, you've, we could have talked about this without, you know, we haven't talked about your novels and now your musicals.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it's incredible, the range of, of stuff that you've done, but We Will Rock You, how did that come about and how did that end up being so intense?

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Well, what, I mean, again, again, I mean, fantastic, good fortune. I mean, they say you make your own luck. And clearly, you know, I, I, I earned a shot at some of the things I'd done because, you know, I'd done some work that had worked. But that doesn't stop me being super aware of my good fortune because I, I auditioned people when I'm directing or whatever. And I am aware of how, it's a cliche. But how much talent is out there? There isn't enough work for the amount of talent. And considering some of the people getting the work have no talent, that makes it even worse for the talented people. So I am aware. Long may that continue. There's, there's, there's a lot of writers who would love to get them and deserve it. And, you know, it's all sounds like, you know, virtue signaling cliche, but it's bloody true. So although I know I'm quite good at, I am good at what I do.

• 51:55Speaker 00

  I'm not the only one who's good at what I do. And I've had a lot of luck and one bit of luck was, um. Phil, I mentioned Phil McIntyre and Paul Roberts, who were kind of my sort of man, our agent promotion company. They, one day. It was a lovely little ploy. Uh, one day, uh, Paul Roberts, he's an old one for Preston, uh, uh, he rang me up and said, Ben, I can't believe it. I've got such amazing news. Uh, Queen want you to write a musical with their best hits. I thought, bloody hell. He said, do you want to meet her? I said, yes, of course I want to meet her. I mean, this is Queen. This is the second, for me, the second most significant band that ever was. You know, I mean, clearly, you know, there's the Beatles and then, then you take your choice and for me it's, it's Queen.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, and, you know, I love all rock and pop and lots of it. And there's, there's a tight race, but yeah, Queen, fuck me. And, uh, so, yeah, anyway, it turned out he then phoned Jim Beach, Queen's manager, the bloke Tom Hollander plays in the movie. And said, now, Mr. Beach, uh, you know, I, I wondered if you ever thought of making a, a musical.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  I said, well, if you ever were, you know, we look after Ben Alton then he's very, you know. And so those two, so I'll meet him, you know, I didn't meet the boy, I say the boys, they're older than me, but I didn't meet the band at that point. So. You know, Paul sort of tricked me because I'd have gone. You know, if he'd said, look, I pitched you to Queen, I didn't really, you know, as if that's, as if that's gonna happen. Um, but he said, no, they really want to meet you. And of course they did. But anyway, so Jim did beat me and it was just a bit of good fortune because they had been working. Jim particularly been working on a, a Queen musical, but they've been doing it about Freddie's life. And it was a very serious musical, a lot about AIDS.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  The end of the musical is him dying, uh, you know, it, it, it, they'd done a workshop in New York with Robert De Niro, who why wouldn't he be a big Queen fan? I mean, he's in, he's a boomer like, like me. Um, and Brian and Roger had gone over, they're, they're the active members of the band. Of course, Freddie's gone and, and John doesn't really get out much, you know, but he, he keeps an eye on it, but you don't see much of him. I've only met him once. Very nice. We had a nice drink together. Um, Brian and Roger had said they don't want to, like, it's not, we want something fun, they said. Are we gonna do a Queen musical? You know, want something fun and exuberant like we are, like Freddie was, we don't. So, um, luckily, at that point, Paul had pitched a comedian. So the first thing they asked,

• 54:20Speaker 00

  uh, you know, Blackadder and Young, I had some, you know, they, oh, they're all quite interesting. I mean, people, British rock stars are quite interested. I mean, I've got, you know, the Beatles, as you know, if you read the book and, and, um, you know, I nearly wrote a Bee Gees, had a lovely time with Brian, with, um, Sir Barry and yeah, so it's a broad. Yeah, my, my body of work coming at the time it did, you know, was good for rock. So the Young Ones was on every tour bus, you know? I mean, I'm known in the rock world, uh, which is great for me because I love rock and pop more than anything. I married a bass player and, uh, it's special to me. That's my love is, is rock and pop. So the first thing Jim asked me to do was, would you like to gag up what we've been working on already?

• 55:03Speaker 00

  What the one about Freddie dying of AIDS, which is very, very serious and about the politics of marginalisation, the gay communion or whatever. I said, I don't know. I said, look, I don't think that's where you should go with a Queen musical. Queen belongs to all of us. You know, I was quite, I've always been quite brave, uh, uh, fronting things up. And I mean, I'm talking to Queen's manager and yeah, I, I said, look, this isn't for me. I don't think that's what you should do with the Queen. I don't think it should be about Freddie. It shouldn't be about the band. It should be the spirit of the band. You want a legend. You want something Arthurian, something grand and pompous and huge, but also with satirical edge and bite and a bit of snark in it. And, uh, he said, well, that's very good. Said, if you've got any ideas, get in touch. Uh, and a

• 55:43Speaker 00

  I was working on my Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the time and directing my my movie, maybe Baby with Hugh Laurie. So I was busy. But a year later, I came up with this idea for a sort of matrix world where where music is streamed directly to the consumer from the big corporate entertainment machine. They get it into a handheld device. They're sort of locked into it, mesmerized by it. This was written in nineteen ninety nine, can I tell you, long before the iPhone or indeed the internet rea- I mean, it was there, but that was pretty prescient as a piece of satire. Anyway, so that's how that came about. I pitched the idea to them. Brian and Roger loved it. It was sent to John because Queen don't do anything if there's not four votes.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  Uh, Jim Beach and the family have a vote and then the three remaining and John loved it too. And we were off and it was wonderful and a very exciting time and I wrote, We Will Rock You. And I went away. I spent a lot of my life in Australia because my wife's Australian, so I went away and the director was doing it at the Dominion Theatre and I came back for the dress rehearsal. Very, very excited, completely not involved. I wasn't directing and asked nothing to do with me. I was the writer. And in the end, what emerged was I had to kind of take over um and I ended up directing the the production and and and it was a very, very, very tough time, but we did get it on and we got it on to where it's getting standing ovations and people are loving it. And it was another of those real heavy

• 57:13Speaker 00

  heavy slaggings. I mean, the press night, it was a joyful, joyful night, rock and roll, dancing in the aisles. And then the next morning was one of those. It was like the right way. I mean, it just a a a comprehensive, you know, the Daily Mirror said, I should be shot. I got most of it. They all said they kind of hate Queen because Queen was go- people don't remember Queen were going through a bit of a, you know, in the turn of the century. Oh, Freddy's gone and they're just a bunch of long-haired husbands or whatever. I mean, you know, the music was still there, but you know, it was a bit of a dip, you know. Now it seems impossible to imagine that Queen weren't the all-conquering, you know, iconic cultural.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Colossus that they are, but it wasn't like that around that time. And there was a lot of, you know, the daily, again, I didn't read, I was quoting to me, in fact, Robert De Niro quoted it to the, the Telegraph said, I've got a thousand CDs in my collection and I'm proud to say not one of them is by Queen. So, well, why are you fucking reviewing? Would I go and see an opera and try and review? Would I go to commentate a football match? I don't know anything about football. You know, it was amazing that there was this kind of pride in, well, Queen, you know, yes. But it, and they all called it, you know, Freddie Mercury's band. And they all, you know, Freddie, all of them said Freddie would be revolving in his grave. They all suddenly know Freddie, unlike Brian and Roger and Jim,

• 58:29Speaker 00

  and his family, you know. Jim's, Freddie's mum wrote to us after the reviews, which were catastrophic. We were going to close in a week. Everyone was going to be out of work. It was horrendous. Our business was cut in half. We'd had this huge first night. Normally that's your best box office day ever, particularly if you've got not just Robert De Niro, but Noddy Holder from Slade at your opening night. And that, that for me was really something special. And it was a big opening night. But we were, our box office died the next day because it was a real, like, Radio Four, you know, do not give them your money, time out, don't give them. It was, it was heavy. I don't know why. I saw resentment of success. I don't know what it was. And I got it particularly. You know, as I say, the Daily Mirror said it should be shot.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  And so we'd got it on against some very difficult circumstances. And then it was sort of looked like it was going to be killed at birth, but we kept working and kept working. Queen played the, the Jubilee. Her maj stepped up and gave us a bit of bit of publicity, you know, one Queen looking after another, so to speak. And Brian played on the roof and he played live. Imagine that. He played live. I mean, you watch it and imagine he's doing it live with earphones and the entire band, or band of the Coldstream Guards, like 200 metres below him. And I did a, I kept working on it and working on it. Eventually it became this great hit. But for a year, people think it was an instant. For a year, we had what's called the curtain in. Which is what you do with a big auditorium that isn't full.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  You basically drape half of it. So the audience walk in, there's huge stalls and there's like empty seats and there's this black wall. I was made of cloth and you walk all the way down and you go through this wall and then you're into the half auditorium. And we had the curtain in for a year. We didn't have the circle open. But there was, you know, it was a hard slog. It was a very difficult slog, but well, the morning after we got the reviews, Jim Beach read, a hundred people were assembled. I mean, obviously everyone had years worked, people had got their, you know, it was devastating. And that, that theatre would have been empty for you. It wouldn't have been able to fill it with anything else. In fact, until Devils made Where's Pride, they didn't really get another hit. And, um, and he read the review from the NME, which is the classic sort of we know better than the fans sort of thing.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  You know, I preferred their earlier work. Yeah. Kind of thing. Um, and he read it, the review of News of the World, the Queen album, uh, from seventy eight, um, said, uh, there, there, uh, upon this appalling egregious, you know, insult of an album, uh, amongst twelve appalling tracks, two stand up as being worthless and without merit. These are, we are the champions and we will rock you. And I'm not saying critics are wrong, but then they often are. And that's the thing. They, they make it as a statement and we, he read it out, but it was small comfort at the time. But I think the problem is, is that when something appeals directly to, something like

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Yesterday by the sublime genius of the world, the, you know, the gift to the twentieth century that is Paul McCartney. And for years he was sneered at because he wasn't rude to people and he didn't, you know, John Lennon was mean and nasty and, and he wrote, you know. But, but obviously they were both geniuses, together and apart. And they both gave a gift to him. Their contributions, the sum of human happiness is incalculable. Together and apart, but particularly together. But Paul got it in the neck because he's a nice guy and he, you know, and he writes, sometimes he just writes something so sweet, it defies, defies definition. And, and so you get somebody, you know, Julie Birch was sort of, you know, talked about the only thing worse than Imagine is Yesterday, you know, it's like, oh, come on. But something like Yesterday is so perfect.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  And he wrote it in, well, he dreamt it, I believe, and. And I think if something defies criticism, it is difficult if you are a critic.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  What are you gonna say about yesterday, other than it's simply sublime? Or you could say it's kind of cheesy and obvious, you know what I mean?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  And I think Queen got a lot of that, because some people think, because something is deeply loved by people who are uncritical in general, that must make it cheesy and somehow worthless. I am a, an evangelist for good popular art, not all popular art is good, but not all literary art or high art is good either, but quite the opposite. Uh, and if popular art is generally pop, generally, genuinely popular, it probably is good art. If you wanna see what people, critics will be lauding in terms of pop music, look at what was twenty years ahead, because something like Wham, I remember Wham being sneered at, sublime pop music, come on, Wake Me Up Before You Go, it's a perfect pop song, you know, and yet they were cheesy, teeny bop, you know.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  Um, thank goodness the single, in a way, one of the very few gifts the internet's given, I mean, it's, I would un-invent the internet if I had a split second, but one good thing about the, is that singles have become important again, because people can cherry pick tracks.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  And although I do love a great album, to denigrate the single, that used to how it be, like Led Zeppelin, we don't do singles, you know, we don't, we wouldn't go on top of the post. Well, you know, you're a great band, but Slay did singles, and so everyone thinks they're just somehow less. Anyway, we've got a long way from wherever it was we started, so I don't quite know.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  It was a hell of a journey.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I certainly haven't answered anything.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  No, you have, you have. Okay, so this game is called Misquoted, I'm very excited for you to play it.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  It's Misquoted, I'm gonna give you five quotes, some of them you said, some of them you didn't.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  Okay, oh, yeah, all right.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Um, all you've got to do is tell me whether you did or you didn't.

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  So you're saying, don't go off on one for twenty minutes.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  I thought she's.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  No, you can go on as long as you like, we, we've got an edit.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Okay, so.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  You keep saying that.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  It's supposed to say, we love it.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  No, we love it. We do love it. We do love it.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  I do talk a bit too much.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  No, we do love it. We do love it. Okay, here's your first one. Good luck to you.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I think I would have been a better writer if I hadn't been so restless. Did you say that or not?

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it certainly, I don't think it's very elegantly put, but I think it definitely sums up a kind of feeling that sometimes I've undermined my work by rushing and thinking of the next thing. Not that I don't work hard, I do, but yeah, I think I probably might have said that.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  You did say that.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Oh, good.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  To the Times in 2025. Congratulations.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  So I should remember that, but things are going, yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. Here's your second one. You're one for one. Congratulations. Does it feel good?

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  I'm indifferent.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Okay. Thank you for being honest. Okay, here's your next one. As cunning as a fox has just been appointed professor of advanced strategic cunning at Oxford University.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Well, if it is genuine, it's me and Richard, and no question of that, because it's certainly Blackadder. Um, it might be a sort of cod one, because I've spent a life saying, you know, we invented this trope, which, you know, a couple of actors have kind of claimed credit for, but. Ah, um, but the thing of you're as small as a very small thing that got a degree in being small, you know. So maybe it was a cod one, but I'm gonna go for it. I don't remember Blackadder's lines. People quoting me all the time. I'm going back for a bit of Rat Surprise tonight. It's Blackadder. I don't remember them, but I think it sounds quite good, and I'm gonna claim it for me and Richard.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Okay, it's from Blackadder Goes Fourth, but we slightly, we added something to the line, and there's a reason.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  That's cheating.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  I know, I know it is cheating.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  You can't have a half quote. All right, I'll rework half of it then.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, you did. Um, because we added advanced strategic. So the actual quote is cunning as a fox has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. And the reason we did that.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Is because.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  You don't have to pay us anything or something like that?

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Correct. We don't have to clear it. We don't have to fair deal it.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it's because you're sort of, you're sort of famously agonized over every word, didn't you? I mean.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  We do, yeah. I, I think, as does Richard, yeah. We agonize, as did P G Woodhouse. That doesn't mean it takes a long time, because you can agonize quite quickly and vigorously, and I do it often. Um, the, uh, so, but yeah, words are, I love, I love words, to have a toolbox full of words, to have the English language to play with.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Is a joyful, um, a joyful thing. And yeah, words mean everything to me.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Okay, you're two for two so far.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Okay, you're giving me that.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  You're feeling less, yeah, I'm gonna give it to you. You're feeling less indifferent?

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Well, you think I should, whoa.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  You're getting it.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  I had time for disaster, darling. I'm with Kipling on this.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  All right, here's your next one. We are a breeding, sorry, we are breeding a generation of big-thumbed hunchbacks.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  Well, it's something a lot of people have sort of observed. You see sort of cartoons. It's certainly something I've kind of. I've definitely, I mean, if it's a false one, you're, you're being clever and naughty because you're kind of writing stuff.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  And look, honestly, I think it sounds quite like me. I, I'm, I'm gonna claim it. It probably isn't, but yeah.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  You did say that.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Twenty fourteen.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Uh, in a, in a radio interview. So, so well done for remembering that you might say something. Yeah. Um, you, you, I mean, you ran, you, you, you've talked, I mean, you even talked about.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  Do you think your, your listeners will, and indeed viewers, will get it? I mean, I'm sure they will.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll get, they'll get it. But I mean, are you particularly.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  About, you know, the beginnings of mobile phones. I remember trying to write something for Rick, you know, in the years just before I. You know, everyone smoking their phones. Whoa, smoking my phone.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  And, uh, anyway, but. I never got to do it because the BBC wouldn't, well, I don't have it. Anyway, there you go. Yeah.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  But is that something you're, you're particularly, uh.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Get particularly angry about?

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I think. Technology is now self-evidently a genuine existential threat to humanity. I mean, clearly with AI, but I felt it with the internet. The ability to, to, you know, they say a lie, a lie has gone around the world before the truth has put its running shoes on. Well, I mean, the internet around the world twenty seven times. I always knew it wasn't the great democracy. I used to have big fights with Stephen about this because, you know, he was this evangelist, which is marvelous. It's gonna be like a library in your pocket. And, uh, and I always knew it was just gonna be a fucking sewer, you know, and, uh. You know, if you want, you can always buy a book, you can look it up and.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Look, I know they're a good, I hate.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  My kids hate me saying it because they have to live with it, you know, there's no going back. I'm not a Luddite. I'm not trying to reinvent, you know, I'm not gonna smash the spinning internet. But I I I believe that the fact that there is no accountability or legislation to restrain the excesses of technology is an astonishing own goal on a part of the human race. We we if you have a drug that can can literally mesmerize children and adults, but let's say kids, because that's what's important in the future. If you were to invent a drug that will will take people's attention away, will distract them forever. You know, well, there are such drugs and they're and they are massively prescribed. We see that we must legislate against a drug that can steal childhood.

• 1:09:30Speaker 00

  But when it's fucking Steve Jobs going, we got a great new piece of fun tech here. You know, I'm glad he's dead because he can't keep inventing new versions of the iPhone with different plug sockets that we've got to buy a new plug for. I mean, it sounds cruel, but honestly, the AI, like, they admit it themselves. They're gonna, it's gonna put everyone out of work. I mean, I I did talk about this on stage, but if you if a terrorist announced, we have a machine, we've developed a machine that will put humanity out of work within ten years, should we choose to use it. MI5 and the SAS would be, you know, we'd be after them. But because it's a bunch of tech bros in California, they're literally admitting

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  this is going to destroy jobs. Oh, we're all gonna have extra leisure time. Oh, fucking, people like to earn their livings. People like to. I I'm, yeah, I I feel very strongly that unbridled, un- un- technological innovation is always seen as something that inevitably must be good. Oh, you'd like to be cold, would you? You'd like not to have a cure for your, yeah, and we all know there's good stuff. But frankly, I think the balance has been tipped. I think technology should have stopped at the electronic type. In terms of communications, the electric typewriter, very nice, I maybe word processing stopped.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  No, I wanna put a computer in my pocket that will propagate, you know, they're buzzing round conspiracy theories on techno, this is what, oh, my people didn't land on the moon, they're pushing their conspiracy theories on technology which is unimaginably beyond their imagination, I mean, Harry Potter would balk at a machine, you take a picture of your dick and send it round the world to everyone if you're using our big airdrop. This is mind blowing, was it, as Amos said, you know, once, when technology gets so sophisticated, it's indistinguishable from magic, well, clearly the iPhone is such a thing.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  And yet people are idiots are using it to say, I don't believe in the moon landings, you know, well, don't believe in the phone either, you know. It's, so, yeah, I, I'm, I, look, as I say, I had, I had, all I can say is, I was, I had this opinion whenever, when, when it was all bright and gleaming, but I do know kids have to use it and it is great, yes, you can, some of them, it, it's great as well, it's like cars, you know, but you need to think about this shit. Look, there's, there's pros and cons, but I am, I am clear in my belief that AI is, and I, of course, how can you not use it, it's there, oh, you're using sat nav, you know, what are you, a hypocrite, I've got to, because you can't, can't buy a map anymore.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  But yeah, I am very, very, um, sad that technology has been allowed to infect our lives in such an unrestrained manner.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Sorry to bring it up.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Sorry, yeah, was that to do with anything that we were doing?

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Big thumbed hunchback.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, so like, yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, you know, we're gonna be, yeah. Okay, here's your next one. My life's loves are language and sparkly tailoring.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Definitely not me.

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  I love, I love um language. I don't love sparkly tailoring. I don't love any tailoring. I'm an M and S man. In fact, I'm gonna use this opportunity to say an idea I've had.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  I'd like to be an M and S model. I've never done, and I've never done an advert, but I've always loved M and S. Right back to when it was Saint Michael's in the back of your pants, you know, and I, uh, you know, I don't, the, these are, anyway. All I'm saying is, they had take that, you know, as venerable fifty year olds. Now, I'm at mid sixties.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  And all I'm saying is, you know.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Marks and Spencer's, if you, if you could get in touch, I actually think you'd be a great shout for this.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, you know, sort of old man, but you know, still relatively in shape and that, and they, they do great. What I love about M and, M and S is short leg. I mean, can you believe, they do short leg, middle leg and leg. That's incredible. I can go into M and S, pull on a pair of jeans and it fits. I don't have to go, can you put some pins in and I'll come back tomorrow? Which is so boring. You can't walk out of the shop. But M and S, short arm, short leg, that's who I'm for. I was gonna call, if I did another tour, because I'm pushing this idea now. Um, I was gonna call the tour, short arm, short leg, because that's what you can get in M and S and they, they.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  That's, yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  And you get long arm and long leg, leg as well, if you're taller and longer.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. Okay. I, I, I actually think.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  So I don't think I said that quote.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  No, you didn't. You said, language is my love, to the Guardian in twenty twenty four.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Did I then say sparkly suits?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  We added that.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would have, I can understand languages, my, but the sparkly suit bit, no. The sparkly suit was me, it was a conscious decision. I went on, used to go on stage and again, this weird thing in the late, in the seven seventies and early eighties, credibility was everything, selling out. Constantly, like you play a big theatre, oh, sell out, what? You know, like, you know, you should be in the small clubs. There, there was no logic to it. But there was this idea that if you become, so the left is cursed with this, I talk about it in the book, is cursed with a hatred of success. That somehow there's something sort of grubby about doing well, you know, that must mean that in some way you're not no longer caring about anyone else. Now, cause I've had it all my life, cause I've been pretty successful and I've always been fairly verbose about my.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Social conscience, I suppose, and you know, people might think, you know, fuck you, but I I say what I think and you can think what you think.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  We used to go on stage and everyone would go on stage like looking like they didn't care. Like you go on a T shirt and jeans because like you didn't wanna be Tarby. You didn't wanna be Bernard Manning. You didn't wanna be one of those seventies suited glitteries, you know, because that was like, you know, that was the man. You know, so, you know, and all incidentally, almost all those comics from the same were working class. You know, because actually working up, they they don't celebrate. I mean, the class things changed a lot, but in those days, you know. They don't celebrate looking poor. Their whole idea was to try and not look poor. So, you know, you had great fashion amongst working class kids, the mods. The the the the the Teds, you know, uh it was only middle class kids like me that wanted to look like tramps, you know, in our.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Great coats and our T shirts, but we were all middle class. Sure, most of us were, Alexi wasn't. It was interesting, you know, uh but. So, yeah, so it was this idea you went on stage jeans and a T shirt. Well, of course, you go on stage looking like a student, you're gonna get treated like a student. Fuck off, you, I'm not gonna use the C word. Because I personally fought a battle against that and I'm sticking with it. Um. But, you know, you'd hear a lot of that. And I thought, well, I'll get a suit. I'll try and look like a comic. Uh but I wanna admit, I'm not gonna pretend I'm like sharp or sexy. I've never had any any any illusions about. Looking good or say or being cool. I know I'm not cool. I'm enthusiastic.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Sort of undermining this M and S pitch, if you don't mind me saying that.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  Uh maybe a bit, yeah. Uh yeah, well, maybe cut this, because I really would like to do that. I mean. But I've never been cool. Enthusiasm is not cool. So if you're enthusiastic, look at Paul McCartney, you know, the everybody want, ah, it's rubbish. I don't even want, oh, I did it, you know. So you go, yeah, it's the greatest thing I've ever done. Hey, hey, you know, that that's not cool, even if you are a genius. Um so anyway, I decided I'd get a suit, but I'd make it sparkly so that everyone would know I wasn't pretending I was cool or anything. I was a farty. Uh I'm celebrating my dickheadness by wearing a silly sparkly suit. And that's why I was, I have no affection for tailoring or sparkliness.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Okay, here's here's your here's your last one. I have always policed my own work.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  Sound a pompous thing to say, but you get interviewed and I mean, it's it's it's sort of.

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  I think I possibly did say it, but I'm hoping I didn't. Well, he did say it. Oh, yeah. On the Louis 3 podcast, but it was actually, it might make you feel better in terms of. I was dying for a wee, for about half an hour. Yeah, anyway, carry on. Well, actually, that bit of context helps. But when you're talking about cancel culture and how people always want you to talk about the fact that you can't say, I mean, I get asked this a lot. Comedians now, they want to always ask comedians, how do you feel about cancel culture and the fact you can't say what you used to? And it's obviously bollocks every time. Yeah. So I would have said, look, I exercise self censorship. I am, that's my answer. I don't, you know, I will say, what I, I will stand in my truth, as young people say, and as my wife added, and you are up to your neck in it.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  And I'm, so yeah, I, I think I've given a chance, I'd put it slightly better. But no, I don't censor myself on stage beyond my own personal morality. If you don't think something is actually funny and worthy of you, don't say it. And that's about, and you know, if you're, if you're a racist, you might, then, then, then that'll be your truth. But I, I believe I am a, a liberal conscious. I don't, as what is called punched down. And so I'm pretty, I feel I'm, as Shakespeare said, long before the term standing in your truth was said, armed, strong in honesty. I'm getting more pumpers every moment.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Um, Ben, it's been amazing to have you on. And I know, I know I said to you, we can edit. Your answer's been fantastic. So thank you very much. You're, you're genuinely a legend. Um, we, we try and get something viral from every guest. Is there anything that you can tell us that you've never said publicly before? I guess is that.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  So odd. I mean, I'm 66, man. I mean, there's very little I haven't said, you know, um. Nah, I'm on the spot. You'd have to, I'd have to, I don't, I don't lie. I mean, one thing I can honestly say is I've never said anything in an interview or on a page that I didn't think was, was what I wanted to, I wasn't, I've never tried to manipulate anyone by, you know, oh, he wants to hear this or they want to hear that. And it's got me into trouble sometimes. It made me sound pious. I'm apparently sometimes and, um, but I've every, I've said everything a lot over the years and I don't think I do ever, I often find I've got more to say when I'm asked a question. But if you ask me. Come on, you know, what did you really, what would you really like to say? So I've been saying

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  it all my life. I've been so whatever, whatever it is, I really wanna say, I said it.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  And I, all the time from my, the first word I wrote, and particularly with my stand up. That's the thing about stand up. It's such a beautiful art form, which I hated at first, but I came to love because it's subjective art. Most of my work is kind of objective. You're putting lines in people's mouths, you're, you're writing a novel, which is a story. So you're coming at it from a lot of different directions, but, but, but the, the stand up is the nitty gritty of, again, a phrase often used, who I am. It's who I am.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  Um, so yeah, there's nothing I've been dying to say because I, if I'm dying to say it, I say it and too much.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  There, there is one final thing that we'd like to give you the opportunity to say. M and S are big fans of the podcast.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Is there anything you'd like?

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  I'm not entirely well dressed for it. I could do, I could send you photos. Um, I, my suits are, are, are, are M and S. My, I, I, I could show you. Um, yeah, I think it's time. They, they got some old, um, rattled old alternative comics on, you know, never mind take that, you know? Yes. If you need a model, I'm here.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Ben Elton, everybody. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Romesh Ranganathan Show. I've been told that some of you are watching this, enjoying it, wallowing in it, but you still haven't subscribed. That's mad behaviour. You're gonna miss episodes. Very silly. So follow and subscribe to the Romesh Ranganathan Show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We drop new episodes every Monday and Thursday. On Monday, I'm here with amazing guests, talking about their career, what they're up to, having a laugh with them. And then on Thursdays, I'm joined by my mum, widely regarded as the audience's favourite Ranganathan. And we answer your questions, your stories and your family dilemmas. So I'll see you on Thursday when I'm back here with my mum. Shanti, send your questions

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  and stories to [email protected], voice note or text on 07731 623 355. We genuinely love hearing from you and there's a good chance you hear yourself on the show. See you next time.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

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• 1:22:12Speaker 04

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