At that moment the toilet flushed and out of the cubicle walked a chubby man with spiky peroxide-blond hair. It was Gary Barlow. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back.
After the success of GamesMaster, Sky One commissioned a five-times-a-week computer games show aimed at young boys. One episode a week was dedicated to giving tips to computer games enthusiasts. Myfanwy Moore had a full-time job at the production company Hewland International and very kindly secured me an audition. Despite seeing the established comedian Roland Rivron go in before me, I was given the job of providing the tips. In the audition I was the only person who put on different voices and was told that’s why I was given the job. Also I would have been the cheapest. The truth is I would have done it for nothing.
I created a number of characters for Games World suggested by the different games genres. For example for beat ’em up games I was Tony Dolmeo, an accident-prone stuntman in a karate outfit. For driving games I was a tough detective whose catchphrase was ‘Get off my manor!’ For flying games I was a World War I pilot called Wing Commander Wonker – the outsized flying trousers came from the BBC costume store and bore the name ‘E. Morecambe’. I wasn’t one per cent as funny as him, but I was at least wearing his trousers. Matt appeared in a brief non-speaking role as a man having a haircut, with me playing a camp hairdresser.
Jet, the sexiest one from ITV’s hit series Gladiators, was squeezed into a rubber dress as the Gamesmistress, presumably so teenage boys watching would have someone to masturbate over.
After I had finished filming a few episodes, Jane Hewland, who ran Hewland International, brought her twelve-year-old son into the edit suite to see my work. Either he didn’t recognize me or didn’t care about my feelings because, although I was sitting in a corner of the edit suite, when Mrs Hewland asked her morose only child, ‘Is this man funny?’ he replied, ‘No.’ He then added, in case anyone thought that was not definite enough, ‘Not at all.’ To complete the role of son of a despot he turned his thumb down in the manner of a Roman emperor ordering an execution.
Somehow I kept the job, probably because I was paid a pittance. The series ran for twenty-six episodes, which meant two important things:
I didn’t have to get a proper job.
I wouldn’t have to hand over my pants and socks to my mum every night; I could finally leave home.
I had been spending lots of time at the flat Katy shared with a girlfriend of her’s from university, but now was able to rent my own little insect-infested studio flat in London.
Katy was always busy as an actress, and was cast in a play of The Count of Monte Cristo at the Manchester Royal Exchange. The nightclubs in Manchester have long been legendary, and we spent many long hot nights dancing after her performances finished on Saturday nights. On Sundays we would head to the bars on Canal Street. One afternoon we saw an older gay man dressed in white shorts sitting out on the grass with a small group of friends. Getting to his feet, he noticed he had shat himself. Everyone nearby noticed too – he was wearing white shorts after all.
Catching all our eyes staring at the brown stain, he announced, ‘Every inch a lady!’ and waltzed off.
Everybody laughed, but I never forgot the word he used – ‘lady’. It was funny.
Games World was revamped for a second series, and a character from the competition night, Big Boy Barry, was given his own show, a sitcom. Or as it turned out, a shitcom. Big Boy Barry was an overweight arrogant child star, a part Alex Verrey was born to play. My role was that of Big Boy Barry’s put-upon sidekick, Leslie. It was for the most part miserably unfunny, but I threw myself wildly into it. I added all kinds of strange subtexts, for example that the nerdy Leslie was attracted to men but didn’t realize it.
Games World ran for another twenty-six episodes, which meant I secured an agent at the prestigious ICM, now known as Independent and home to some of the biggest British actors in the world from Daniel Craig to Hugh Grant. An audition followed for a new children’s programme for the BBC called Incredible Games. Again I must have been the best in the price range as I was given the job as the presenter, a kind of Max Headroom character who took kids up and down in a lift and asked them to ‘Press my button!’
I remember watching the first episode go out on a Sunday morning with Katy on my tiny portable TV in my tiny studio flat after a particularly late night of clubbing, and then walking out into the streets thinking I was going be recognized. Of course no one did. Not yet …
17
Hant & Dec
The head of children’s television at the BBC at the in the early 1990s was a lovely man called Chris Pilkington. Having met through Incredible Games, he asked me to become involved with a new programme he was developing, The Ant & Dec Show. This was in 1994, and Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly had played the most popular characters in a children’s drama series called Byker Grove. Their chemistry on and off screen led to them being given their own entertainment series. I went to a rehearsal room to meet them, having been told that the one who wore a hat was called Ant. So all I had to remember was the word Hant.
Hat + Ant = Hant
The old-fashioned executive producer Peter Murphy wanted them to spoof The Wizard of Oz, but I thought how much better it would be if they spoofed contemporary bands and TV programmes. Including me there were three writers (a fourth was sacked as he couldn’t come up with anything funny and is now a newspaper television critic, though it would be unkind to say who). I really took to Hant and Dec, and they to me. In boring meetings I would amuse them by drawing obscene pictures on scripts and discreetly showing them. I came up with some funny material: a rap song about Blackpool, a game show called Beat the Barber in which kids had their hair cut off if they lost, a spoof of the Take That ‘Back for Good’ video, and a running serial called Hollywood Hospital. I was the star writer, but what I really wanted to be was the star performer, so I would write myself into the sketches. No one seemed to mind until when playing a vicar I took off my trousers for no apparent reason. This was children’s television, after all.
At the end of the second series Zenith, the production company, had a party. After a few drinks I sneaked into Peter Murphy’s office. Even though he was in his sixties, his walls were covered with posters of Ant and Dec which he had taken out of Smash Hits as if he was a twelve-year-old girl. I found a felt-tip on his desk and added huge erect penises to the posters. There were Hant and Dec smiling at each other as their cartoon erections nestled against each other below. It was ultimately an act of self-sabotage, because even though it took Peter Murphy a few days to notice, I never worked for Zenith again.
In 2012 Simon Cowell asked me to become a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, and I had the pleasure of working with Hant and Dec again. Now Hant has stopped wearing hats, I don’t know who’s who.
Despite this act of career suicide The Ant & Dec Show was a huge success, and I became in demand as a writer for children’s TV. In 1996 I was asked to write the links for presenters Andi Peters and Dani Behr for the Smash Hits poll winners’ party. The now defunct pop music magazine gave out awards voted for by their readers, like Best Haircut (usually rightfully won by Take That’s Mark Owen). This was to be my first meeting with Simon Cowell, and it was a deeply uncomfortable one.
The show took place at the Docklands Arena, and among the artists performing that afternoon in front of ten thousand screaming children were two of my absolute favourites Björk and Pulp, and two of my least favourites, Robson and Jerome.
Robson Green and Jerome Flynn were two actors from the TV drama series Soldier Soldier, who had released their version of ‘Unchained Melody’ from the show. It went straight to number one and kept Pulp’s ‘Common People’ off the top spot. The release was masterminded by Simon Cowell.
I had written Andi Peters the introduction line, ‘Wake up, Granny, it’s Robson and Jerome,’ which as insults go was pretty mild.
In rehearsal Simon saw the script and approached me.
‘Ar
e you the writer?’ the short man in Cuban heels asked, fixing his eyes on mine.
‘Yes,’ I replied, a little bit scared of this man, despite the fact that he was half the size of me.
‘So you’re the problem.’
I had never been referred to as a problem before and was taken aback.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Robson and Jerome are my act.’
I sighed and followed him as he sashayed over to a corner of the stage.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered.
I did so.
‘Look, these guys have had the biggest-selling single of the year; they have the biggest selling album of the year …’
‘So?’ I asked, gaining in confidence now. I loved ‘Unchained Melody’ but hated Robson and Jerome’s version. What was most baffling was why all the grannies who bought it were too lazy to walk a little further into the record shop and pick up the Righteous Brothers’ greatest hits instead.
‘So, you can’t say that about them,’ said Simon, lighting a menthol cigarette and holding it between his fingers as if he was a Bond villain.
‘I don’t think you can smoke in here,’ I said.
‘I think you’ll find I can do whatever I like.’
There was an uncomfortable pause for a moment.
‘Look, what’s the problem? Grannies do like them,’ I offered.
‘Grannies like them, kids like them, everyone likes them.’
‘I don’t like them,’ I said proudly.
‘Well you are in a minority of one. Why can’t Andi say, “Here with the biggest-selling single of the year are the fabulously talented Robson and Jerome”?’
‘Because that wouldn’t be funny,’ I protested.
‘And you think what you have written is funny?’
‘Yes … ish.’ I was crumbling now. ‘I don’t want to change the script.’
‘If you don’t change it I am pulling Robson and Jerome from the show.’
‘But —’
‘This conversation is over.’
He put out his cigarette on the floor and clip-clopped off in his high heels.
A lighting technician walked past. ‘You can’t smoke here,’ he said to me.
‘It wasn’t me!’
The script was changed. Simon got his way. As he always does.
Around this time I was summoned to a meeting at BBC TV Centre, to become part of the writing team for a new children’s sitcom called Out of Tune about a choir. The producer had gathered together around a dozen children’s televison writers, and we all sat around a big table and had to say our name and what we had written.
‘Hi, I’m Bob. I’ve written for Metal Mickey, Supergran.’
‘Hi, I’m Phil. I’ve done Bodger & Badger and the Chuckle Brothers.’
‘Hello, my name is Mick. I’ve written on Crackerjack, Rentaghost, Seaview. You name it, I’ve done it.’
Then it was my turn. ‘Hi, I’m David, and I’ve written for The Ant & Dec Show. That’s about it …’
For a moment looking at those tired faces I glimpsed the ghost of my future. I could make a good living churning out scripts for children’s television for the rest of my life, but I knew that wouldn’t make me happy.
I had to make a change, and soon.
Meanwhile Matt had been working at the Chelsea FC merchandise shop (despite being a lifelong Arsenal supporter) and had continued to develop his cabaret act as Sir Bernard Chumley. He was invited to do a guest spot in Dorian Crook’s Edinburgh show.* Being a close friend of Matt, perhaps the closest at that time, I took the train to Edinburgh to see him. Needless to say, Matt stole the show, and the reviewers agreed.
In addition, Matt played a few supporting roles in the second series of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and dropped out of Bristol University, where he was doing the same drama course that I had just completed. I had been sending him veggie sausage mix through the post (delicious and cheap – I lived on the sausages when I was a student). Now there was no need, for he was back in London (well Edgware).
Soon Matt and I were free to spend more and more time together. We had been meeting up in Golders Green Park, halfway between where he lived with his mother and brother in Edgware and my flat in Belsize Park. There we would talk and talk about how we would one day make a series called Sunday Club. It was meant to be a children’s programme from the late 1970s that had never been aired, now unearthed and broadcast for the first time. We made endless notes. Most of our ideas were quite dark – a zoologist would introduce the children to some animals which had all unfortunately died in transit. It would never get made, but we didn’t know that and would while away many an afternoon coming up with increasingly bizarre characters and scenes. So from friendship we were now creating together, albeit a television series no one would ever see.
In the evenings I would either watch Matt play at comedy venues around London, which tended to have wacky names like the Chuckle Club or the Balham Banana, or we would go and see comedy shows together. We were eager to consume any comedy we could find, so one night we might be going to a recording of Newman and Baddiel in Pieces at the BBC, the next we were watching Jim Davidson in his adult panto Sinderella, during which Matt heckled throughout, pretending to be an overenthusiastic fan, shouting ‘JIMBO!’ every time Jim stepped on stage. Of course this was far funnier than the pantomime. One blazing hot Saturday night in summer, one when the whole of the country was outside with a cold beer, we stayed inside and watched Roy Chubby Brown’s unwatchable film UFO.
One night we went to a comedy club in Hampstead. A tall good-looking young man was hosting the night. He had boundless confidence but seemingly no talent for making people laugh. All he did was say to the noisy audience, ‘Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up …’
I thought, If you said something funny they might shut up. The performance was so excruciatingly embarrassing that we chose to leave, even though Matt knew him vaguely as they had been pupils at the same school.
No one who saw his performance that night would think the young man had any future in comedy whatsoever. His name was Sacha Baron Cohen. Years later he would find the way in which he was funny. On a smaller scale, so would I.
On another of these nights, on a Tube train to another room above a pub, I turned to Matt and said, ‘Why don’t we do a show together in Edinburgh next year?’
‘As what?’ said Matt. ‘I want to do it as Chumley.’
‘Of course you can be Chumley, and I can come on as various different characters.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know yet, but we can write it together.’
Matt wasn’t sure he wanted to be in a double act. What’s more he was starting to get paid bookings as Chumley on the London comedy circuit so he didn’t necessarily need anyone to collaborate with.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I might want to go up the year after that on my own.’
It was an uncertain note to start a partnership on, but I agreed. I was desperate to move away from children’s television and be in the world he had joined. ‘Yes, of course. Let’s just do this one show and see what happens.’ I had always wanted to work with someone more talented than I was. Matt certainly was, and he had proved it. What’s more, we had become like brothers.
However, one night our career together nearly ended before it had even begun. We had arrived at a comedy club early and decided to get some chicken and chips. Matt was a notoriously fussy eater and only really liked chicken and chips, and could conjure it from any menu that included chicken and potatoes in any form. Crossing the road, Matt was hit by a car and fell to the ground.
I got him inside the takeaway and, panicking a little, asked, ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘No.’
‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘You might be concussed too.’
I turned to the man behind
the counter. ‘Please can you call an ambulance?’
‘It’s ten pence to use the telephone.’
‘Not to dial 999!’
‘Maybe it will be quicker to just take a cab.’
I never took cabs, ever. I couldn’t afford to. However, this was an emergency. ‘You wait here,’ I said.
I ran out on the street, hailed a cab then bundled Matt inside.
‘Please can you take us to the nearest hospital.’
‘What happened?’ asked the driver.
‘My friend here got run over.’
‘Did all his hair fall out in shock?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, but that was years ago. Sorry, can you just drive, please? He may be concussed.’
The driver sped through London in the early evening of another warm Saturday night. I handed Matt over to the doctors and nurses and called his mother, Diana.
When she arrived at the hospital, we sat in the waiting room for news.
‘Thank you for looking after my son,’ she said after a pause. Years later she told me she meant not just on that night.
As it happened, Matt was not seriously injured, and the partnership would of course continue.
Meanwhile, I had been given a slot on a BBC2 yoof comedy called The Sunday Show. This is best remembered as launching the career of Paul Kaye as Dennis Pennis, and giving the great Peter Kay one of his first television appearances. I had impressed the producers at an audition, I think mainly for giving rent-a-politician Derek Hatton a massage while I was meant to be interviewing him. However, the producers really didn’t know what to do with me, so dispatched me to interview celebrities in the hope of entrapping them into saying something stupid. First was Mandy Smith, the teenage bride of Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, who had recently come out as a born-again Christian. With her I discussed the Second Coming.
‘Do you think he’ll be driving a Fiat Panda?’ I asked.
Remarkably she went along with it.
Camp David Page 13