by Rob Brydon
Marion and Geoff came about, again, through the support of Henry and Steve. Hugo and I had made our pilot episode (it would go on to be episode one in the eventual series) and had submitted it to the BBC, where it sat for nine months without a response. In the meantime, two things happened: I began to write Human Remains with Julia; and I started to receive a great deal of very positive feedback on the pilot from everyone who saw it. But from the BBC there was only silence. Looking back, nine months without a response was perhaps another way of saying ‘no thanks’, but I still held on to the hope that we might get good news any day soon.
As the time passed, I kept hearing of other shows which I knew had been submitted at the same time as ours and had already heard that they’d been commissioned. Eventually, and in some desperation, I called Henry Normal at his home in Brighton; by now, we were well into the writing process for Human Remains and I told him that we’d still heard nothing from the BBC about Marion and Geoff. I knew that he and Steve had seen the pilot; he’d told me that they’d watched it together in his living room one evening and it had so moved them that, at the end, they couldn’t look each other in the eye for fear of betraying their emotions.
I asked Henry if he and Steve would be interested in adopting it as a production for their new company, Baby Cow. He said yes straight away and the BBC, with the weight of this endorsement behind it, commissioned the show. Better than that, they commissioned ten episodes. Our show was ten minutes long and the BBC had also commissioned ten episodes of a fifty-minute show called Attachments, so they needed something to round up the hour.
It had been the best part of a year since we’d filmed our pilot episode, and in the intervening time Hugo and I had come up with lots of ideas and directions in which we might take the story. It was wonderful to finally get the chance to create more stories for Keith, knowing that they would make it to the screen and be seen by the viewing public.
While keeping everything focused inside the car, we expanded the world outside to include tales from Keith’s past. How his ‘one proper job was for a Japanese company, at the very cutting edge of technology, and I’m very proud to have worked for a company that was so advanced that it was able to do away with manpower’. How his honeymoon with Marion hadn’t been an entirely happy affair, ‘But then, what honeymoon is?’ We sent him up and down the M4 motorway, desperate to see his beloved boys. When Marion and Geoff took Keith’s little smashers to Disneyland Paris, Keith simply got on the Eurostar car transporter and followed them, delightedly telling us of his plan to surprise them in a restaurant with the greeting, ‘Avez-vous your real dad?’
His job as a minicab driver was one for which he was clearly not cut out. In the first episode, he fails to make radio contact with the taxi company and later in the series, while delayed on his first airport job (‘quite glamorous, really’), he fills his time by going to a safari park, on his own. Before leaving the airport, he speculates about how much of the five-hour delay he could fill within the terminal building.
I could look around the shops. Not for five hours. I could do that for about forty minutes. I could have something to eat, half an hour, another forty minutes, that’s one hour twenty minutes, then I’ve got another three hours and forty to fill. Uh, three hours and forty, I could play on some of the games in the arcade. Say I could do that for half an hour, if I played slowly at low levels. Got another three hours to fill, have another drink, coffee or something for … ten minutes, that’s … I’m pushing it, really pushing it. I could browse in Smiths for … if they don’t move me on, I could do that for an hour … It’s not going to happen, is it? Whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t add up. Hmm, right … Bloody hell. What to do? What to do?
I would imagine that the line about browsing in Smiths came from the endless hours I’d spent in the Hounslow branch. Once at the safari park, Keith begins to wonder why the plane is delayed.
They never tell you why a plane is delayed, have you noticed that? They never … give a reason. Keep you in the dark. Technical fault, could be, um, maybe it’s a hijack situation … [PAUSE] Imagine how stressful that is, eh? Terrible. A hijack situation. Very stressful. I mean, in the old days with the propeller planes, the smaller planes, it was much easier. You would stand at the end of one aisle, wave your gun about, show who was boss. Nowadays with the bigger planes you can have three or four aisles, different sections, how do you police it? Um, you know, do you, do you treat people differently because they’re in different sections, are you a little less cruel to the people in First Class? I mean, you’re no fool, you know they’ve paid more. [PAUSE] You imagine, delivering a bomb somewhere, I mean you’ve got the bomb with you, could go off at any time, you’ve got to remember the secret code to alert the media, and I dare say you’re not allowed to … I wouldn’t imagine they encourage you to write it down. Like a PIN number, you’ve probably got to memorize it. [PAUSE] At any moment ‘ba-boom’. [PAUSE] It’s the modern curse, you see, stress. Doesn’t matter what you do really, if you’re a terrorist or a doctor. Or a zebra.
A little later, Keith is parked near some passing camels and is prompted into a memory of his parents.
See these camels now, I’m told they mate for life. Smashing. Like my mum and dad, really, they mated for life … literally. I mean Mum … Mum died on … the Thursday, in hospital [PAUSE] and then the following Monday, Dad shot himself.
The idea of the gun had been planted in episode two, when Keith drives to Cardiff with the weapon that had belonged to his father and uses the telescopic sight to spy on Marion and Geoff. The safari-park episode is a good example of how we would often create material on the hoof. On arriving at the park, we discovered that there were no monkeys (they had all been shot after contracting a virus). We came up with a lovely little moment for Keith as he sits eating biscuits in the car park and reflects on the news.
Well, quite a shock [PAUSE], they’ve all been shot. They had a virus, Herpes … Simian Herpes B. Uh, don’t know what they’ve been getting up to. I’ve had a virus, umm, not one like that, and I’m all right, I’m still standing. [PAUSE] Imagine that, ‘What is it, doc?’ ‘It’s a virus, Keith’ ‘What are my chances?’ ‘Well, if you start running now, pretty good.’ [HE MAKES THE GESTURE OF SHOOTING A RIFLE WITH HIS BISCUITS] Dear me …
Music plays a big part in the series. Hugo and I would raid our respective record collections, searching for the perfect choices, settling eventually on Slade, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Jones, Catatonia, the Bee Gees and Radiohead. With his brilliant editor, Graham Hodson, Hugo did a superb job in the edit. Creating an entirely distinctive look and feel for the show, he paced the stories wonderfully. He also did great things in the dub, very subtly manipulating the sound to enhance the narrative.
It was a great advantage that Marion and Geoff was spread out over ten episodes; it gave a chance for the word-of-mouth factor to build on the show, and build it did. Slowly at first, then slowly but surely, until it seemed as though everyone was talking about it. The critical response was exceptionally good from the start.
The Times said it was ‘a beautifully judged tightrope act both in the writing and in the delivery … like an Escher drawing’.
The Sun considered it ‘unmissable’, the Mirror felt it was ‘bleakly funny and achingly poignant’, and the Telegraph ‘brilliant’.
In London’s Evening Standard, Pete Clark declared it was ‘the funniest British comedy effort for years, and it is also the most heartbreaking … a Madame Bovary for our times …’
Andrew Billen in the New Statesman called it ‘a work of art’.
Wow.
This response was more than I could have hoped for, and I was quite taken aback by the sudden attention and praise. I began to have a sneaking suspicion that I might have arrived, finally. While this was going on, Julia and I were often holed up in a windowless room on the South Bank in the edits for Human Remains with Matt Lipsey and his editor Charlie Phillips, agonizing over what should stay and wh
at should go. In the episode All Over My Glasses, the original ending (a whole subplot involving the principal characters going off on a coach to see Texas at the NEC in Birmingham) was dropped. A bold and, frankly, unsettling decision.
We were told that Human Remains would begin transmission two weeks before Marion and Geoff had finished, and this bothered me. I was worried that all the work I’d been involved in for the last couple of years would be splurged onscreen and gone in the course of three months. As it turned out, it was the perfect way of showcasing my work. If anyone had thought that Keith was my one-trick pony then Human Remains, with its six very different couples, showed a range and versatility to put those suspicions to rest. The critical response was again fantastic, with The Times saying, ‘Rob Brydon and Julia Davis, who demonstrate a level of invention, observation and sheer versatility that defies comprehension … This is extraordinary television, so effortless and inexplicable that it is touched with comic genius.’
Affirmation, vindication, validation – these are all good words to describe how I felt. But along with my sudden notoriety came an unsettling new experience. Most people go through life hearing about themselves only what is said to their face; it’s very rare that anyone will come up to you and offer a disparaging comment with regards to your appearance. Once I began to be written about, this all changed, especially in the broadsheets – where a profile piece inevitably contains a degree of psychoanalysis for good measure. I was genuinely surprised, albeit perhaps a little naively, when so many of the writers who interviewed me would then include in their piece a comment or two on my appearance. As more and more articles were published, a theme began to emerge.
The Observer told its readers of my ‘sorrowful brown eyes and lugubrious features’.
Jasper Rees in the Evening Standard saw me as ‘a wiry Welshman with a long thin knife of a face’.
The Daily Express opined that I was ‘deadpan and tombstone featured’.
Jasper Gerrard, in the Sunday Times had given the subject considerable thought.
So does he have five-star potential? His appearance is utterly ordinary. Women would probably consider him boy-next-door crumpet, were it not that he is saved from any hint of matinee idol looks by his bad complexion.
Ouch!
The first year of the new millennium was coming to an end. And so too, it seemed, was my era of terrible job after terrible job. Everything had changed; I felt now as though I was on a wave, and all I had to do was ride it. After becoming used to a life of rejection letters, returned VHS cassettes thudding on to the doormat and a phone unable to make a call that could stretch beyond a secretary, I was suddenly receiving invitations to events here, there and everywhere.
One such invitation was to a party being thrown by the BBC to celebrate something or other relating to Light Entertainment. It was held in one of the large studios at Television Centre and was full of the great and good of the day. It was the first of many occasions when person after person seemed to want to come along and congratulate me on Human Remains and Marion and Geoff – I of course was only too happy to receive their praise. Early in the evening, through the throng of besuited bodies, I spotted Ronni Ancona coming towards me. I had met her some years earlier, while making the pilot The Strip Show for Channel Four, since when she had gone on to the BBC and great success with Alistair McGowan on The Big Impression. I had noticed her earlier across the room, talking to Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker, in the process effortlessly forming a new comedy team, the Three Ronnies. Knowing how big a fan I was of the two, she offered to introduce me.
Ronnie C., all tartan-trousered warmth and charm, told me how much he’d enjoyed Marion and Geoff. I returned the compliment and gushed over him (probably a little too much), telling him how not just I, but my whole family, had loved his work over the years and how I had performed some Two Ronnies gags at school just before the world premiere of Star Wars onstage.
I wondered whether Ronnie Barker was aware of my work, and what he might have thought of it?
Ronnie C. introduced us: ‘Ron, this is Rob Brydon.’
Mr Barker looked over at me quizzically, his eyes narrowing. ‘Ah, you’re the chap who does that Human Remains.’
‘Yes …’
There was a pause.
‘I saw four of them.’
‘Right …’
There was another pause.
I stood waiting. Was he going to give me a compliment to add to my list? Surely he was; why else would he have brought it up?
He thought for a moment, before offering: ‘You should tell the girl that does it with you, she shouldn’t always play dowdy.’
And that was it.
But there was one more treat in store, a cherry on the cake of my success, when I discovered that I had been nominated for the Best Newcomer category at the British Comedy Awards. I was thirty-five years old; I had watched the awards every year since their inception, sitting on my sofa, sure that I would never be a part of it. How could I be? It was another world. I particularly remembered seeing Steve sweep the board with three awards just two years ago. It had seemed to me then like something from another universe.
The nomination was for Marion and Geoff and I wanted very much to win. The awards at that time took place at the ITV London Television Centre on the South Bank, just up the road from the National Theatre where, all those years ago, I had seen Anthony Hopkins in Pravda while on the college trip. It was also not far from the editing suite where, just weeks earlier, we had been arguing over Human Remains.
It was a good year, in which Alan Bennett won the Lifetime Achievement Award. When I was at college, there was a video library and each week The South Bank Show would be recorded and added to the shelf. I would often sneak in, between classes, and take out the show devoted to Bennett’s A Private Function and watch it again and again. Now here I was at the same ceremony as him, potentially winning an award on the same night. Victoria Wood was given the Writer of the Year prize. I had watched her stuff for as long as I could remember – Julia and I were both influenced by her when writing Human Remains, and Duncan Preston banging his head on the boom microphone in Acorn Antiques is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen – and now here she was in the same room.
When the moment for the Best Newcomer category arrived, Jonathan Ross turned to introduce the presenter and I remembered how I’d interviewed him down the telephone line on Radio Wales aeons ago as he burst on to the scene with The Last Resort. Was I about to share the stage with him? Mum and Dad were watching the broadcast live, back home in Baglan, as the guest presenter took to the stage. It was Steve Coogan – a good sign, surely? He read the nominations, some clips were played, and then he opened the envelope.
Time stood still.
I prepared my magnanimous loser’s face.
And the winner is … Rob Brydon.
Winner of the Best TV Comedy Newcomer 2000 at the British Comedy Awards. ‘The student becomes the master.’
Unless you’re reading this, Steve, in which case, ‘The Best Day of My Life.’
That was the first award; the next year I returned and won the Best Actor Award for Human Remains. In the meantime, Julia and I both won Royal Television Society awards, Marion and Geoff won the South Bank Award for Best Drama and a Broadcasting Press Guild of Great Britain award. Human Remains was awarded Best Comedy at the Banff International Festival in Canada, beating Frasier and Friends in the process.
It felt good.
It also felt a little unreal. Had I really crossed the divide? And, if I had, would I be able to stay on this new side – where, I have to say, the view was much nicer. As I did the round of interviews and photographs that always follow the receipt of an award, I remembered the words Jimmy Savile had spoken to James Lovell and me all those years ago, at St David’s Hall in Cardiff, after we’d just performed our first paid gig.
‘It’s very hard to get to the top in this game, but it’s a damn sight harder staying there.’
>
Was he right?
I was about to find out.
With Mum and Dad, celebrating my success at the British Comedy Awards.
Epilogue
Six years later, I was sitting on a bench looking out onto the water at Manly, one of the many glorious beaches that Sydney has to offer. I was in Australia for the second time, filming the second and, as it would turn out, last series of Supernova, a lovely, silly show that I made for the legendary Beryl Vertue and her Hartswood production company. I was eating fish and chips, and sitting next to me was James Corden; we’d stayed in touch after Cruise of the Gods and had hooked up in Sydney, where he’d found himself as part of the world tour of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. They’d already been to Hong Kong and New Zealand, and after Australia would go on to win a record number of Tony awards on Broadway.
We were talking about a new project, Gavin and Stacey, that James was writing with my old school chum Ruth Jones. The two had met while filming the ITV series Fat Friends and had come up with the idea of a one-off film set at the wedding of an Essex boy and a girl from Barry, the seaside resort in South Wales.
There was a part in it for me – the part of Bryn West, Stacey’s uncle – and Ruth and James had sent me a couple of scripts. Although I liked them very much, I was unsure of accepting. The problem, as I saw it, was that Bryn was a little too close to Keith Barret – both big-hearted men, both rather naive and, more importantly, both Welsh. I was concerned at becoming pigeonholed as someone who only plays Welsh characters. It’s an odd fear; after all, no one says of Robert De Niro, ‘Oh, here he comes, playing yet another New Yorker.’