Trying to stop being an accidental comedian is like trying to lose weight, or stop drinking, or come off heroin.
Heroin?
I’ve never been on heroin. I’m just being dramatic.
Right.
But there’s a withdrawal period where the lines are blurred. There are relapses. There are moments when you wonder if you’re doing the right thing.
In 2003, almost as soon as I stop working with Rik, I get offered a part in Doctors & Nurses, a sitcom written by Nigel Smith and Phil Hammond. Despite having David Mitchell, Joanna Scanlan, Abigail Cruttenden and Mina Anwar in the cast it doesn’t catch fire. It’s the last programme to be made in the Carlton TV Studios in Nottingham, and we quickly become aware that the crew are working out the last few weeks before they’re all made redundant. Everyone in the building is monumentally depressed. It’s like spending six weeks talking someone off a window ledge – and the comedy turns sour in the miserable atmosphere of constant goodbye parties and tearful cake-eating.
I get on really well with Nigel though – this is the cheerful, glass-half-full Nigel whose immune system attacked him and who has to get pissed through a tube – and after Doctors & Nurses gets lost in a miasma of indifference we settle down to write another sitcom together, about a dad who’s sofa-surfing in his daughter’s student flat, partly because he’s broke and badly divorced, but mostly because he wants to feel young and anarchic again. It’s called Teenage Kicks. We make it as a radio programme first, but then Paul Jackson – yes, Paul Jackson again, who’s now head of comedy at ITV – picks it up for television.
And so it comes to pass one day that I’m sitting at home waiting for the viewing figures to come in. Paul texts the figures to me every Saturday morning. The first week it gets 3.6 million, the second week 3.8 million. ITV works on a very straightforward principle – viewing figures – and Paul tells me that if we keep above 3.5 million we’ll get a second series.
I didn’t catch the show when it went out the night before so I’m watching it on catch-up. It’s an episode called ‘Sorry’ – my favourite of the series. I particularly enjoyed writing and shooting the final scene in the caravan. It’s a funny show. It’s well written. It’s well performed. It’s technically very accomplished. But I realize as I’m watching that it’s just not ‘it’.
Why isn’t it ‘it’? Vernon’s a great character, the situation is ripe, the script is full of jokes, the studio audience is laughing. Why isn’t it ‘it’? I can see it’s funny, and I’m ticking off the gags, but sometimes things can be joke-shaped without being the real thing.
I’m not trying to compare myself to Spike Milligan, but as I sit there I’m reminded of watching the last few iterations of the Q series. I remember thinking at the time, ‘This man is a genius, and these shows have all the right things in place . . . but they’re just not really funny any more. He should have stopped before he did this. They’re just not “it”.’
And then an extraordinary feeling engulfs me – I don’t have to do this any more, do I?
The text comes through from Paul – slight dip to 3.4 million, but still with a 17 per cent audience share – he’s very happy with the result.
But I can’t take it in. I’m feeling such elation at the thought of not having to do it any more that I feel dizzy. It’s a feeling of such profound relief. It’s unfathomable. Imagine not having to prove that you were funny any more. Comedy is the only art form that demands instant and constant proof – if they’re not laughing, you’re not funny. It’s an enormous pressure. For thirty-three years I’ve lived with the pressure, and I’ve just realized I don’t have to live with it any more. I don’t have to be a comedian.
Brilliant.
But what do I do now? How do I tell Paul? Luckily I don’t have to. It’s a series of eight and the numbers continue to dip. It scrapes along in the low threes for the rest of the run.
My friend and producer Lucy Ansbro rings to say there’s a conversation to be had with ITV since the average figures were close to the mark but I tell her I don’t want to pursue it, I tell her I’m done, and to her immense credit she immediately understands. Lucy’s been the producer on all the Bottom Live tours and videos, we’ve worked a lot together, we’ve sat in a lot of hotel bars, we get on very well, and she gets it. Maybe I’ve already let it slip out that I’m an accidental comedian. Maybe she’s been expecting it? It adds to the sense of relief.
I am free.
Brilliant.
What do I do now?