My finest hour however was Blankety Blank. One of my favourite programmes as a child, first hosted by Terry Wogan and then the great Les Dawson (I fulfilled a lifelong ambition by appearing in a special Comic Relief episode with Paul O’Grady hosting in 2011), it was a gift for double entendres. So I wrote questions involving teachers such as, ‘Miss Benson was shocked when she ran into the staffroom to see Mr Chesterton had got his blank out,’ or, ‘Mr Russell and Mr Nicholson were showering after the rugby match when Mr Russell turned to Mr Nicholson. ‘My word, you have an enormous blank.’
As you may have gathered, just as in the TV series, the answer to every question was ‘penis’. The contestant, a pupil plucked from the assembly, had to try and think of a suitable non-rude alternative. Aged thirteen, I was writing and performing my own material.
In some tiny way my career as a comedian had begun …
5
‘Don’t do it!’
Unfortunately, not everyone enjoyed my sense of humour. The metalwork master at Reigate Grammar School, Mr Rooth, was a permanently grubby man with a beard. Mr Rooth smelt of rust. He was so irritated by my constant chatter as we made things out as of metal (I only managed a letter opener though it started out as a tray), he would actually pay me 50p per lesson not to talk at all during the class. However, I was soon to see a comedy performance that would convince me that making people laugh was all I wanted to do …
In the mid-1980s Rowan Atkinson was much like he is now, one of the most popular comedians in the country, though his career had yet to break internationally. Rowan had made his name in the punk sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News. My sister Julie and I were sometimes allowed to stay up to watch but were sent to bed if the sketches got too rude. Richard Curtis wrote a comic song entitled ‘Kinda Lingers’ which when sung by the quartet of Rowan, Pamela Stephenson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones became ‘Cunnilingus’. This was the cue for our parents to immediately send us upstairs.
‘But we don’t even know what cunnilingus is!’ I protested tearfully.
Julie and I bought tickets to see Rowan Atkinson live on stage at Croydon Fairfield Halls. Our parents didn’t come with us; instead we took a friend each. I counted the months and days and weeks until finally the night of the performance came.
Needless to say, with Rowan centre stage and all the sketches written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton (one even premiered the character Mr Bean with his getting-changed-in-front-of-a blind-man-on-the-beach routine), it was an evening of laugh upon laugh upon laugh. As much as I was laughing I was observing. How did he time that joke? What was so funny about that particular facial expression?
Rowan is unlike most comedians as he has mastered both verbal and physical comedy. So I studied him carefully that night. Most of what I saw is burned into my memory. I thought, This is exactly what I want to do.
Although I wanted to make people laugh I could never quite imagine myself as a stand-up comedian; I still can’t. Rowan wasn’t doing stand-up; he was acting in sketches, the most economically written sketches without a single misplaced word. Rowan is an extremely precise performer; as a result the performance was like a masterclass in comedy. Even though in real life Rowan is painfully shy and has a stammer, the verbal sketches where he was a teacher or a vicar or the devil were delivered perfectly. To compensate for his stammer Rowan tends to overemphasize words, which makes them sound funnier. In Blackadder II he elicits laugh after laugh simply for his pronunciation of the shortest name, Bob.
If the verbal sketches were magnificent that night, the physical comedy was even better. Even now I can remember exactly where I was sitting in the theatre, at the back of the stalls, marvelling at his huge talent, looking down the rows of seats as the entire audience doubled up with laughter. Rowan was a conductor and the audience was his orchestra. One day I wanted to conduct a symphony of laughs too.
This was in the days just before videos of comedians’ live tours were common, and not long after the show finished its run an audio recording was released on vinyl. Alone in my bedroom I listened to that record over and over again. More than any piece of music before or since. I studied it. I yearned for it to yield its secrets to me. I had borne witness to its power; now I longed to harness it.
Listening to the record, I learned how to time a joke. I wrote down the lines to all the sketches. Then I would go into the bathroom and practise them in front of the mirror, copying his facial expressions from memory. I didn’t perform them for anyone; I just wanted to act all the sketches to myself and work out where all the laughs were.
His influence on my acting was obvious, as this review of a school play in The Pilgrim demonstrates: ‘The play provided a good vehicle for parading the ample talents of Messrs Dashwood and Williams. The latter’s facial contortions à la Rowan Atkinson seldom fail to amuse …’
The very first Comic Relief Red Nose Day was in 1988. I asked the deputy headmaster Mr Mason if I could take the assembly that day even though it wasn’t my class’s turn. My wish was granted, and I memorized the sketches perfectly. I put on my red nose and walked to the bus stop, taking that instead of the school coach so I could get there early to rehearse on the stage. Mr Mason, with his comb-over and half-moon spectacles, introduced me: ‘As it’s Comic Nose Day it seems only fitting that this morning’s assembly is taken over by the school comedian.’
I stood behind the curtain, fiddling with the dog collar I had cut from a piece of white cardboard, so thrilled that anyone other than me thought I was a comedian.
First I performed the ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ vicar’s speech wearing a cassock I had borrowed from a boy who was in a choir. Set at a funeral service this concerns three friends, one deaf, one dumb, one blind, who get run over by a combine harvester. ‘Dick saw the combine harvester. Harry heard the combine harvester. But neither could cry out. Tom, who could have cried out, never had the faintest idea what hit him …’ Then I put on a gown and moved on to the sketch ‘No one called Jones’, in which the teacher takes registration, and all the pupils have rude names like Ontop, Doodoo and Genital.
It still surprises me that Mr Mason allowed me to finish that second sketch. I left out the most obscene names but it was still very rude for a fee-paying school in Surrey. Perhaps that it was for ‘Comic Nose Day’ made the difference. At the end I collected money from my fellow pupils at the door with a bucket as they filed out. At break I counted the money: £53.20. I had raised my first money for people living in poverty around the world. I was monumentally proud and eager to do more.
Also in 1988 Rowan Atkinson was appearing in an evening of nineteenth-century Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s comic sketches in the West End, the collective title being The Sneeze. I bought tickets with money saved up from my Saturday job as a lifeguard at Banstead Swimming Pool, and my best friend from school Robin Dashwood and I took the train up to London. This time I was determined to meet my idol, so I bought a programme and we ran around to the stage door afterwards so I could ask him to sign it.
After a short while the nervous comic genius appeared.
‘Please can you sign my programme?’ I asked.
Without a word Rowan took out a pen and scribbled his name. While he did this I realized I had the chance to ask him a question.
‘What advice can you give an aspiring comedian?’
‘Don’t do it!’ he stammered, smiling as he moved on to the next fan.
Over a decade later I met him at an audition for the role of Bough in Johnny English. I wrote in my diary:
Monday 18/2/2002
Met the great Rowan Atkinson today, for the first time in 14 years. In 1988 I asked him to autograph my Sneeze programme. This time I was auditioning for Johnny English in the offices of Working Title. I recognized a couple of names on the call-back list for the sidekick role Bough – Ben Miller (who will probably get it) and Eddie Marsan. I had been informed that Rowan is shy and has a stammer. I was saddened at how bad it was. He even struggled to read
his lines confidently. I really felt for him. Rowan is also quite a scientist when it comes to comedy. No wonder his work verges on being perfect. I performed the scenes a couple of times but what I did never felt inspired and I left knowing I hadn’t quite made the grade. Perhaps I just wasn’t good enough, but the over-riding feeling I had was complete awe to be in the presence of my childhood hero. Just reading the scenes with him was intimidating.
Three years after that, Matt and I were stars, and we were asked to shoot a series of Radio Times covers for Comic Relief with various famous faces. Lou and Andy from Little Britain were put with Rowan Atkinson as Plantman, a superhero spoof he was doing for Red Nose Day that year. Once again he was painfully shy, but as we posed for the photograph I now had the courage to tell him the story of how I had met him as a schoolboy.
‘And you said, “Don’t do it!”’
‘D-d-did I really?’
‘Yes.’
‘W-w-well I must have been joking.’
‘I know, but I am so pleased I didn’t take your advice!’
He had told me not to be a comedian, but Rowan Atkinson was so brilliantly funny, all I wanted to do was be like him …
6
Theatrical Types
I was not a model pupil. My school reports again and again pick me up on my immaturity, poor concentration and relentless exhibitionism.
January 1984
Scripture: An ebullient student who makes sensible, perceptive comments when he manages to exercise self-discipline.
Physics: Recent good work has not hidden the fact that his concentration in lessons often wanders.
December 1985
Headmaster: There are still signs of immaturity in his attitude which contrast strongly with his more serious and sensitive nature. This report presents some challenges to David that I hope he will respond positively to.
July 1986
House Tutor: He contributes where he can. The sporting activities are not for him.
Year Head: Still signs of immaturity but David has shown a more responsible attitude of late.
Summer 1988
History: In class he remains an enigmatic mixture of immaturity and perception.
General Studies: David finds it very difficult not to treat all the exercises with flippancy. I find this annoying as he could contribute much with a positive nature.
Form Tutor: David is certainly not a conformist – though he needs to learn to curb his non-conformity on occasions.
Year Head: I agree: especially, that knowing where to draw the line is important.
Deputy Headmaster: Talented and flamboyant, David had better heed a few warning shots here.
Spring 1989
Form Tutor: On an individual basis he is often charming and cooperative, in a group he can be frivolous and irritating.
The truth is I didn’t want to grow up. I still wanted to play. That’s why I chose a job where adults can play like children.
There were four distinct social groups in my year at Reigate Grammar School:
the cool kids
the rugby types
the nerds
me and Robin Dashwood
We were our own group – I suppose of theatrical types, or ‘poofs’ as the rugby types referred to us.
There were reading competitions once a year, in which you recited a poem and then a piece of prose, and mostly either Robin or I won them. The only poem I wanted to read was Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be the Verse’ which of course has the word fuck in the opening line: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad …’ If only I had known about his poem ‘Love Again’, which contains the word cunt.
Of course we weren’t allowed to read a poem with swear words, so we generally chose a First World War poem as they were familiar through class. Finally my turn came to take to the stage to read Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time …
An incredibly powerful piece; I still had some pretensions to being serious then. However, as I bounded confidently onto the platform I tripped and fell spectacularly flat on my face, my anthology of World War I poetry flying one way and my left shoe the other. Unsurprisingly the audience of 200 boys exploded with laughter. A kindly teacher picked up my book and a pupil returned my shoe. In some pain I hobbled to the centre. I knew somehow I had to be in on the joke and said, ‘I don’t find it very funny.’
This led to even more deafening laughter, and it was now impossible to read the poem without the whole piece feeling utterly absurd. Some boys were still laughing twenty minutes later and had to be thrown out.
My foray into public speaking was more successful. I thought my speech ‘Argos catalogues are the work of the Antichrist’ was funny and original, and it really wasn’t bad for a sixteen-year-old. The catalogues were relatively new then, and it felt satirical at the time. What’s more we had just studied Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and so I was newly familiar with the seven deadly sins. So the pictures of ladies in their underwear made you ‘lustful’, the fact that you didn’t have to walk around a shop meant you were ‘slothful’, the toy guns encouraged you to feel full of ‘wrath’, etc.
Success in the school competition led to another, to decide who was best junior public speaker in the whole of Reigate and Redhill! What made this different was that you now needed a proposer and a seconder (I asked two pretty girls in the sixth form, Sarah Smith and Helen Squire) and the judges could ask you questions at the end. The night came, and in our school uniforms we met at the town hall and sat through speeches from the other insufferably precocious pupils from nearby schools. The speech got some laughs, and then it was time for the dreaded Q & A, when each judge could ask you a question. Now you had to think on your feet. One severe bald-headed gentleman judge with glasses looked determined not to give me an easy time.
‘Mr Williams, you say that Argos catalogues are the work of the Antichrist, and yet those who are elderly or perhaps disabled rely on these catalogues to do their shopping.’
My mouth went dry; this was a stern response to a humorous speech.
‘Wouldn’t you say,’ he continued, ‘that these catalogues actually provide a very useful service in our community?’
‘Well, sir,’ I said, my brain searching for an answer, any answer. ‘That’s why these catalogues are so evil – they prey on the weakest in society!’
The audience laughed and burst into applause. The judge was irked but had one more question he could ask me. He wanted revenge.
‘It seems to me that these catalogues are not the work of the Antichrist at all, but in fact merely an expression of a consumerist society. Do you view consumerist society as immoral?’
Now my mouth was like a desert, and I had to take a sip of water so my tongue wouldn’t stick to the roof of my mouth.
‘What a wonderful question,’ I said, my mind still racing for something, anything to say. ‘I have to say our judges tonight have been exceptional …’
The audience was laughing at how I had avoided his Exocet missile of a question.
I continued ‘… and I would like to ask the audience to join me now in giving our wonderful judges a well-deserved round of applause.’
Everyone applauded and laughed, I had brought the house down. Even the judge smiled at how artfully I had avoided his question.
First place was mine. Next I won the Surrey heat, and I had my picture in the local newspaper holding the trophy. A school play prevented me from taking part in the United Kingdom finals. Winning a trophy was nice, but knowing I could improvise a funny answer and make a room full of strangers laugh was even better. You can learn in quite a technical way how to generate laughter, as I had by memorizing Rowan Atkinson’s sketches and replicating what he did. Most people could read those sketches and get a laugh or two; Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s writing is so strong. However, the ability to be spontaneously funny under p
ressure (a skill you will need if you are one day going to go into gladiatorial combat with Jonathan Ross on his chat show) was something more precious. Slowly but surely I was gaining the confidence to take myself further and further.
When I reached the fourth form at school we were all given the choice of taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme (boring) or joining the Combined Cadet Force (marginally less boring, and of course you were given a uniform). Having watched the older boys march up and down the playground, I decided that the Navy Cadets had by far the best uniform, so I joined them.
The uniform was much the best bit. You were allowed to wear it all day, even though the activities – mainly marching and standing still – did not start until in the afternoon. So I would use the opportunity to camp it up, much to the distaste of the teacher who acted as our commanding officer.
‘You are making a mockery of the navy,’ he barked.
‘I can’t help the way I march, sir.’
The marching, the saluting, the falling in line was all a game to me – to see how effeminately I could carry out the commands.
Only a few of us chose the navy, probably because of the camp reputation sailors have. We were sent off to an army camp to do a weekend of training. It was like doing forty-eight hours of national service: we cleaned boots, struggled round assault courses and consumed the greasiest food I have ever had the displeasure of eating. There were chips with every meal except breakfast.
I was singled out for ridicule. Daphne was what the older boys christened me. Apparently it was a word people in the armed forces used for homosexuals. Of course I had brought most of this on myself, as I was now in the habit of playing up to my effeminacy, and delighted in the attention.
My friend the comedian Ben Miller (of Armstrong & Miller fame) once told me a theory about comedians that helps explain this cycle of outrageous behaviour and bullying.
‘A comedian’s worst fear is being laughed at,’ he told me when were filming the Channel 4 comedy drama Coming Soon in Glasgow in1998.
Camp David Page 5