Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian best known as a regular panellist on Have I Got News for You.
On the island
Eight records
Michael Crawford and Elaine Paige
It kind of fed all my egotistical thoughts about what a life in show business would be.
I thought well I must have a one Beatles song, and so if it's one Beatles song I suppose it's got to be a day in the life, but I haven't played it for years, and I don't suppose I'd play it that much on the island, but it'd feel odd if I didn't have it.
I thought I would I would should have something that is very soothing, something that I would go to sleep listening to late at night on this desert island.
This was a tape that somebody bought me while I was in hospital and it's just one of those songs I played and s and I and I liked it and I just played it all the time, you know, for for several months. So I suppose I've picked it just as if I'd need reminded of that tale time in Edinburgh.
It's one of uh Brian Wilson's compositions round about the time um he was going off his trolley really, but it's a beautifully sung, beautifully written song I think.
It was one of those moments in life where suddenly I got carried away with something. ... I went out and sought out the record after I'd met them and it just sort of reminds me just of the other side of being in control of it when suddenly you think you're better or greater than you actually are.
It's a song I think that Ray Davis wrote about an uncle who had gone to Australia who sort of was this man that he, you know, had a great deal of affection for and it's a kind of way of in the song expressing that affection. And it's about sort of, I don't know, being working class and thinking that life's past you by and you you you never achieve what you wanted to achieve or you you you were locked into a job very early on which you couldn't leave because children came along and all that kind of thing and they and that's kind of my background really, which is probably what I would have done if I hadn't have got on stage at the comedy store or if it hadn't have worked and it wasn't funny and I was useless at it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:14Have you wanted to make people laugh as long as you can remember?
Yes, I can't remember a time when I didn't. When I was three or four years old, I my games that I played on my own consisted of performing to an audience, an invisible audience. You know, my mother tells me I can't really remember it, but when I was about two years old, she saw me in front of the television where the Joe Loss Orchestra was playing, and I was standing there with a knitting needle, sort of conducting along, you know.
Presenter asks
5:06How much of Have I Got News for You is ad-libbed, how much is over-recorded, and is it heavily edited?
Well, what happens is it's recorded the night before it goes out, so it's recorded on a Thursday. Now the stuff that Angus does is he doesn't like people to know, so it's on auto queue, which he works with the producer from Monday onwards writing all those links and they're doing all the kind of heavy work on it. … and finding the questions and bits of film and all that sort of stuff. And myself and Ian go in on a Thursday afternoon, early evening, about half past five. We're there to about half eight and that's it. We're finished.
Presenter asks
9:20Was life similarly exciting at Tooting Employment Office for you?
Um well it was one of those things when I left school I mean how do you sort of you know careers officers would say to well what do you want to do? You know how can you say I want to be a comedian and you know they they won't say well all right we'll get you to fix you up with Harry Wirth and Petula Clark's show in Eastbourne. I mean it doesn't work like that so you you I never told anybody what I wanted to do because the reaction would be well they would laugh but it sort of laughed the wrong kind of laugh and
The keepsakes
The book
Rudi Blesh
I got very, very fond of Buster Keaton at one point and I read this book several times and I suppose it a lot of my views of what comedy could be and should be was sort of formed by that book and so I would take that one I think.
The luxury
I'll have a bed please, I think, because there's no point in me making one, you know, it wouldn't last the night.
Presenter asks
17:44Your career has been rather dogged by disaster, hasn't it?
Only Checkered, yes. … somebody was putting up posters for their show, not my show, and I, you know, were looking for a hand and so I sort of volunteered and so there we were at sort of midnight putting up these posters and these sort of three guys came round the corner, luckily wearing soft shoes, who sort of just looked for trouble and I sort of said the wrong thing at the wrong time or whatever and this guy came vaulting over a sort of barricade at me and kicked me in the head and I was you know, it was dreadful and I was had to go to hospital and I was … Sort of badly shaken and stuff.
Presenter asks
22:49How easy was it to turn your talent to improvisation, as required on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Well, I started doing it around about 1985. There was a a a guy called Mike Myers who went on to do Waynes World, that big film about a year or so ago, who was over here at the time doing a double act with Neil Malarkey. And he was Canadian, and there was also Kit Hollerback, who was working over here, who was American. And they this there's in the States there's a long tradition of improv clubs, wherever you go to any of the big cities they've got they've all got them. And he thought, well, there's not one here. So I was doing a show with Kit and Neil was doing a show with Mike in Edinburgh. And so we got together and they sort of explained what it was. And I thought, well, this is witchcraft. This can't be done. But then gradually, after a while, Of doing it regularly and g and just, you know, going to a couple of classes that Kit was holding at the time and just getting experience at it, you realize that all you're really doing is just You're talking off the top of your head and it's You know, it's like a conversation except that it's got to be funny and stuff.
Presenter asks
29:11Do you worry that the bubble is going to burst?
Yes. … No, I don't see it as a bubble really, I'cause I I it I don't think it's like a a manufactured thing. I mean, Have I Got News for You is a success not because I'm on it, but because of the whole nature of things that are going on in that show. There are a number of successful elements of which uh I'm one, I suppose.
“I can't remember a time when I didn't [want to make people laugh].”
“I always had this thing. I never particularly liked comedians who laughed at their own jokes.”
“I thought, well, this is witchcraft. This can't be done.”
“I don't see it as a bubble really, I'cause I I it I don't think it's like a a manufactured thing.”
“I suppose it's there for that reason. Also, I like it, it's a good tune.”