by Rob Brydon
Beverley: Had to do something, didn’t you?
Tony and Beverley kept an assortment of dogs in a large fenced-off area at the bottom of their garden, were keen fans of Scottish dance and held regular prayer meetings at their home. They frequently visited the home of their pastor, Vicar David, and his close friend Dennis, clutching a curly sausage casserole, but usually left it on the doorstep after their repeated knocking had gone unanswered.
I can’t imagine how we would have created such a fully realized world without just sitting there and talking in character to each other over many hours, then painstakingly reducing it to the best bits and shaping what was left into a script.
Watching a rough cut of Human Remains with Julia and Henry Normal.
We had completed two episodes before showing them to Henry and Steve. By now, Julia was living in a flat in Marlborough House on Osnaburgh Street, one floor up from the flat in which Kenneth Williams had lived and died. I knew the number of his flat from reading his diaries; as I’d ride the old-fashioned grille-fronted lift up to Julia’s, I would pass his door, always offering up a nod of acknowledgement and respect to the great comedian. There was no printer at Julia’s, so when we were happy with a script (written on Final Draft software) and had allowed ourselves the reward of filling in the title page – always the last part of our process – we wandered down Great Portland Street to Kall Kwik, or some such store, where we would have copies made. These would be paid for, a couple would be placed in envelopes addressed to Mr Normal and Mr Coogan, and then we would ceremoniously drop them into the postbox.
I can’t overstate how confident I felt with what we were producing. I knew it was good; and I knew that, if Henry and Steve liked it, then it would get made. I remember sitting on a plane, about to head up to Edinburgh for the festival with my Treatment colleague Laura Shavin, and her asking me what I was doing at the moment. I told her how Julia and I had by now written three scripts and were going to make a show called Coupledom (its original title, rejected by the BBC, as was its follow-up suggestion Beautiful Love) as soon as we were finished with six. She asked if it had been commissioned. When I said no, but that I was sure it would be, she looked at me with a mixture of pity and bewilderment.
On another occasion, I was at the BBC doing more Saturday-night BBC1 promos (‘There’s trouble in Holby at eight!) and I remember the producer asking me what I was up to. When I replied that I was writing a comedy series with Julia her face screwed up with inquisitiveness and she shot back, ‘Has it been commissioned?’
I think it may well have been commissioned by then, but I’m sure she couldn’t imagine someone who was voicing promos managing to get something off the ground. There can be a terrible competitiveness at that level of show business, almost an anxiety brought on by the sudden and unexpected progress of others. I think Hugh Laurie once described how he eventually came to realize that there was not a finite amount of success in the world, and that someone else gaining great success did not necessarily mean that there was now less to go around for everyone else. It’s a good thing to remember.
Henry and Steve loved the scripts and were keen to present them to the BBC, where they would go on to become Baby Cow’s first proper commission, along with Marion and Geoff (which was a co-production, but more of that later). In the meantime, Julia and I carried on writing, trying to progress towards the magic number of six couples, which would be enough for a series.
From the look of this we’re either writing Human Remains or forming an electro pop band in Berlin.
We had always loved the idea of creating something that featured American characters, as so many of our reference points and influences were American. We began to improvise an antagonistic couple, constantly needling each other. We walked around Julia’s flat, often creating scenes on the hoof as, in the absence of a camera operator, I held the camera in one hand, as far away from us as I could get. It felt as though we were in Husbands and Wives or Crimes and Misdemeanors territory, and this was one of the most enjoyable episodes to write, certainly in the early stages of pure creativity and improvisation. This Woody Allen feeling was as much a curse as a blessing for me, in that I was wary of simply doing an impression. I was determined to find a voice that didn’t sound like Woody Allen – but, I have to say, I think I failed on that score. I ended up with a hybrid Woody and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo! type of voice and, with hindsight, should have worked harder to come up with something original.
Putting my voice to one side, we ended up with two very individual characters, Barne Willers and Fonte Bund, who together made up the Fonte Bund Band. I’m sure that a big part of the reason for giving the band that name was simply that it sounded funny to our ears. There was something about the American accents that gave us a delight in saying certain words and phrases. We talked of how Barne had worked in a health-food store entitled The Bean, The Pulse, The Berry and this would have us rolling with laughter as we tried to say it ever more quickly. I find the thought of someone refusing to abbreviate a name like that, especially when they are saying it several times in the space of one conversation, to be hilarious.
‘Well, to really understand The Bean, The Pulse, The Berry, you have to understand what The Bean, The Pulse, The Berry represents to anyone who comes into The Bean, The Pulse, The Berry. Uh, The Bean, The Pulse, The Berry is more than a store, it’s a … [etc.]’
Whenever we were improvising around the idea of the health-food store, I of course always pictured in my mind the one from my schooldays in Porthcawl, with Katie Davies Williams standing beguilingly at the till.
We eventually settled on calling the episode Hairless, a reference to Barne’s obsessive paranoia regarding his hair loss – although what could possibly have put that idea into our heads, I still don’t know. Hairless would be the first time that I would play the guitar in public; just about managing to negotiate my way around a simple three-chord song that Julia and I had written entitled ‘The Cat and the Mouse’. We came up with this and many other songs during breaks in writing, when she or I would pick up a clunky old Spanish guitar that lived in Julia’s flat and start messing around and recording the efforts on to minidisc. ‘The Cat and the Mouse’ was just one of a larger collection made entirely for our own amusement, until we realized that it would work perfectly for these characters.
I have a couple of CDs full of our rambling, made-up-on-the-spot songs. We’ve sometimes talked about releasing them – perhaps on a website, or as extras on a DVD. Some of them are rather good, some of them are not, and many of them are filthy.
One of the songs, a bizarre dirge about potatoes, ended up on the bonus episode found on the Human Remains DVD, in which Barne and Fonte got to perform with the genius that was John Martyn. We went on as his support act in Guildford and were met with bemusement bordering on light anger, even after a heartfelt introduction from John himself. At one point, Barne tells the crowd how he once saw Rod Stewart at the LA Forum and how Rod had kicked footballs into the crowd. Barne wanted to emulate that with the Guildford audience but had been told that it was a health and safety risk. So, instead, he took out a table-tennis bat and hit ping-pong balls into the gathering of impatient John Martyn fans.
I am sometimes asked which of the six episodes is my favourite. Although it’s an ever-fluctuating chart, the final instalment is often at the top. More than Happy began through a series of improvisations in which a chipper British Gas engineer, named Les, talked with a clinically depressed florist, named Ray, about how they’d met all those years ago. These discussions went on to include the many and varied items sold in their seaside shop, Ray’s love of arts and crafts, and the couple’s coded references to the absence of the twins.
Les: You know, me and Ray, I think you’ve got to say we’ve been very happy, very happy indeed. I mean, apart from losing the twins, obviously.
Ray: Yeah, that was …
Les: Ooh, that wasn’t very nice, that ruffled a few feathers. I’ll be very honest with you
, when they was taken from us, when the twins was taken from us, early …
Ray: Ruffled a lot of feathers.
Les: Ruffled feathers we didn’t know we had. Let’s be, you know, but uh … Smashing kids, you see, but when you got to go, you got to go, and go they did, didn’t they?
Ray: Totally unexpected.
Les: They went, they went.
Ray: Brought us together.
Les: All we’ve got is each other, you see.
Ray: Brought us together.
Les: All we’ve got is each other.
Ray: Brought us together.
Les: All we have is each other.
One thing that characterized the conversations was Les’s refusal to listen to the heavily medicated Ray or to acknowledge that she was at all depressed. He would refer to her as ‘the teacup’ or ‘the trumpet’; and when she answered his enquiry as to whether she was happy with a firm no, he would reply, ‘That’s it, more than happy.’ We both delighted in this lack of communication and wrote as much as we could along these lines.
The two of them ran a doomed shop, selling bras, flowers, coffee, snacks and grotesque models made from the driftwood that Les would cheerfully collect and hand over to Ray, who would decorate the models with all the skill of a visually impaired four-year-old. Much of the episode takes place at the picnic table that the couple would erect on the beach. For this, our location manager found a fantastically bleak concrete promenade at the foot of a cliff, separated from the sea by a man-made concrete sea-defence wall. It wasn’t what we had imagined at all, but it worked perfectly. We also hadn’t expected the glorious weather that we enjoyed for the week’s filming; we had always pictured Les and Ray on the beach with a gloomy overcast sky, perhaps even rain. When the day arrived, we were greeted with clear blue skies and bright sunshine, but this again worked in our favour, highlighting the gloom of the couple against the vivid colours of nature.
20
The series was green-lit by the time we’d finished first-drafting the third or fourth episode. It was a difficult commission; the scripts were dark and dense, and Julia and I were completely unknown. It was only the power and persuasion of Steve and Henry that convinced the BBC we were the right horse to back. They were in a very good position to do so. It was an especially good time for Steve – he was riding high on the back of the much-lauded I’m Alan Partridge as well as the live show, and he had just signed a production deal between Baby Cow and the BBC. This was another of the increasingly regular occurrences where I was simply in the right place at the right time and, just as importantly, with the right people.
We set about gathering the team that would help bring our ideas to the screen, and met several directors before settling on Matt Lipsey. Matt seemed to share our view of the world we had created, as well as welcoming our continued input and accepting our desire to be able to create stuff on the spot once the cameras were rolling. It was vitally important to us that we were able to retain as much creative control of the project as we could – from the writing all the way through to the editing – and Matt was happy to go along with that.
When it came to casting, there were a few people we already had in mind. In particular, in the episode All Over My Glasses, we asked Mark Benton and Ruth Jones to play Leighton and Elaine, which they did brilliantly. I think we made a horrifically convincing foursome. When Ruth, Julia and I had been members of More Fool Us in Bath, we had worked alongside Jane Roth. Jane and Julia had performed as a double act for a while, the Sisters of Percy, and she came in to play the owner of the bridal shop who goes along admirably with Stephen and Michelle’s enquiries, even tolerating being put in a headlock by Stephen (‘I’m only pissin’ around. Look at her! Fuckin’ cackin’ herself, she’s cackin’ herself …’). Jane gives a beautifully understated performance; at the time the show came out, I remember being asked repeatedly if it was a real shop owner featured in the episode. This was one of my favourite scenes – Leighton laughing along for fear of being out of step with Stephen, Elaine telling Stephen to stop, and Michelle cowering in the cubicle as Jane keeps a smile on her face despite being afraid of the idiot who’s invaded her shop.
We used another of our More Fool Us colleagues in Hairless, when Toby Longworth played Dr Boxer, the therapist with the unusual, if not unethical, methods. Toby had always been the star of the improv group; he had been part of a double act with Bill Bailey, the Rubber Bishops, and had always seemed a few years ahead of the rest of us. He came in to audition for Dr Boxer and blew us away with an improvisation in which he asked Barne to imagine a number between one and ten.
Then, on hearing which number Barne had chosen, he replied: ‘OK, that number is you. Now I want you to imagine another number between one and ten … it could be a number of greater numerical value, or it could be a number of lesser numerical value. The important thing is that it is your number.’
Barne offered up another number.
Toby paused, before replying: ‘OK, that number is you now.’
We loved this and lifted it in its entirety into the episode (with Toby rightly receiving an additional material credit).
In An English Squeak we struggled to find an actor to play the clown with whom Flick has a brief encounter in the bedroom until a then unknown Stephen Mangan walked in and played it perfectly. It was one of his first jobs, something I now like to remind him of at every opportunity. For the part of Nana, the domestic help, we were very lucky to get the also then unknown Joanna Scanlon (long before she became celebrated for shows such as The Thick of It and Getting On).
We worked and worked on the scripts, right up to and during the filming, which took place around Brighton in the summer of 2000. We began with An English Squeak, finishing each day with a trip to Henry’s house, where we would go over the script again and again, looking for areas that could be improved upon. It was an intense and exciting way to work; in addition to any changes we’d made the night before, we would also record looser takes once we felt we had the scripted version in the bag. We would also just keep going, once we’d reached the end of what was written, and see what happened.
We shot an episode a week; once the first episode was finished, it went off to be edited into a rough assembly. I remember us watching the first pass at An English Squeak and being hugely disappointed. This, I was to learn, is a common response to seeing a rough cut, but at the time I was unaware and just knew that what we’d done wasn’t anywhere near as funny as I’d thought it would be. We set about writing new stuff for the episode; the bits by Geoffrey’s grave, the croquet, the tennis and the scenes with Peter pushing Flick around the grounds in her wheelchair were all shot in one day at the end of the six weeks. If you look closely, you’ll notice that I’m wearing a wig in these shots (my hair having been shaved off to play Gordon and Barne).
The extra day of filming came about as a result of an insurance claim after Julia injured her hand in the door of one of Steve’s cars – probably a Ferrari. She had been due to play the guitar as Fonte in Hairless but was unable to use her hand properly after the accident. That is why I was playing the guitar in the episode. But, again, this happy accident worked perfectly with the characters. It made complete sense that someone like Fonte, who claimed to be a great artiste while merely covering the songs of another (in this case, Alanis Morissette), would happily get someone else to play the guitar for her. It made further sense that that someone should be poor Barne, who did all the donkey work in the relationship while sitting at the back of the stage, out of the spotlight.
Our make-up artist for the series was Vanessa White, who had just done excellent work with The League of Gentlemen. It was Vanessa who persuaded me to bleach and cut my hair and then ultimately completely shave my head for the shoot. I wanted Stephen in All Over My Glasses to have bleached blond hair, and had assumed we would achieve this through a wig or temporary dye, but Vanessa was having none of it. She convinced me that bleaching my hair was the only way forward for a serious actor
, so off I went and had it bleached. The following week, I had the top shaved off to play Gordon and then Barne, so the sides were still blond but the top was bare. When we had to do some pick-ups as Stephen, Richard Mawbey (the renowned wigmaker) made me a little blond toupee that sat on my head. I’m wearing it in the scenes set on the train, as I talk to the camera while Mark Benton moves stock around – although, thanks to Richard’s skills, you’d never know.
With the make-up team during the filming of Human Remains.
Vanessa also introduced me to the world of prosthetic make-up, something I’d never experienced before and a great help in bringing a character to life. Teeth were made for a couple of the roles and eye bags fitted for a few. The great thing about eye bags and ageing make-up in general, beyond what they bring to the characters, is the moment at the end of the day when you’re sitting in the make-up chair getting it all taken off. As the eye bags are peeled away, you suddenly look ten years younger and fresher.
This feeling of rejuvenation can last a good fifteen or twenty minutes. If you’re lucky.
We began filming at the end of July and went through a mostly hot, blue-sky summer to early September. I remember being in the make-up truck with Julia one day, the door fixed wide open to allow a slight breeze as my eye bags were being forcefully evicted, and seeing my first piece of press in relation to Marion and Geoff. The series was scheduled to begin going out on BBC2 at the end of September, and this was a little piece in Red magazine featuring the photo that most of the papers ran in association with the show – Keith staring out of the window of the car, his reflection caught in the wing mirror.