Abigoliah: Hello there. This is All British Comedy Explained. I’m Abigoliah, and with me is Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there.
Abigoliah: Guys, our guest today is one of the most successful and prolific comedy writers in the world. Equally huge here in the UK, he’s written stage plays, novels, musical stand-up comedy, and is one of the most successful sitcom writers of all time. He is the mind behind The Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap, Blackadder, Upstart Crow, and countless others. Guys – we got Ben Elton, baby.
Tom: Yeah. And I’m absolutely thrilled. This is kind of a dream come true. When I was about 13 or 14, I can remember watching Saturday Live, which eventually became Friday Night Live. He always had a stand-up slot on, and it was the only thing we could talk about in the playground the next day – because I was a comedy nerd even at that age. So to get to spend an hour just chatting to him about comedy is the thrill of my life.
Abigoliah: He’s amazing. And we talked about The Young Ones, of course, because if you haven’t listened to our episode about The Young Ones, please go back and check it out. We also talked a lot about stand-up and Blackadder, so there’s a little bit of everything in here. We only had an hour – we could have talked to him forever. We didn’t even get into the novels. We didn’t get into the plays. We didn’t even talk about the musicals. He’s just done so much. He’s done so, so much. Shall we just get into it?
Tom: Let’s get into it.
Abigoliah: Let’s do it. All right, guys – here’s Ben Elton.
Abigoliah: Ben, thank you so much for coming on All British Comedy Explained.
Ben: Yeah. I can’t promise to explain anything – certainly not all of it – but I’m very happy to be here.
Abigoliah: So if you haven’t had time to dip into the podcast – and I don’t think you would – the premise of the podcast is I live in the UK, but I have seen shockingly little British comedy television. So Tom is taking me through all of the great British comedies. So I’ve gone from never seeing The Young Ones, to loving The Young Ones, to then learning you wrote The Young Ones, to falling down a rabbit hole of watching all of your stand-up, to becoming a huge fan, to reading your book, to now interviewing you. So it’s been quite a whiplash for the past couple of weeks for me.
Ben: Wow. They call it a deep dive, don’t they? Those young people. Well, it sounds like a great pod. I don’t listen to comedy-comment podcasts. I do occasionally listen to political ones, but podcasts have so far not really caught me up. I tend to listen to music when I’m on my cross-trainer. But I’m very, very happy to be on a podcast.
Abigoliah: I mean, it’s probably not to discourage our listeners from listening to our podcast, but for you, probably listening to a podcast where people deconstruct comedy is a little bit like work. You’re like, “I kind of do this.”
Ben: Well, I think it would probably – I don’t know – might annoy me a bit. I find deconstruction, certainly – maybe not amongst professionals. I mean, clearly you are. I know you’re a comic. I don’t know about you, Tom – you’re a playwright. I’ve seen one of your brilliant plays. But I think deconstructing comedy on the whole tends to happen when critics tell me my stuff isn’t funny – going for something easy or whatever.
My definition of a critic is somebody who claims Pinter was a comedy writer. So on the whole, I think people who think “funny” means you should be able to think about, “Oh yes, that was very witty” – if you’re saying, “Oh, that was awfully witty,” then it probably wasn’t very funny at all. Because comedy, for me, really is direct. A laugh, like a tear, is something that begins in the emotions rather than with the intellect.
Tom: Yeah, it’s an involuntary response, laughter, isn’t it? And that’s kind of a weird thing.
Ben: Yeah, I think so. And that’s why the sound of people pretending to laugh – I mean, I don’t get – I’m not going to mention Pinter again – but sometimes that which we’re told is funny, you know, and people feel embarrassed, so they feel they ought to… is a sad sound. A real laugh is one we all recognise, and we know the fake type as well.
Tom: So what were the things that were making you laugh before you were doing this professionally? Like when you were growing up – what were the big influences on you? Who were you a fan of?
Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think they were influences. I certainly didn’t see them as influences at the time, because obviously I didn’t know where I was going to go with my life. They were just something I absolutely loved. I loved comedy as a kid. Funnily enough, nowadays I consume very little of it.
But when I was a kid and a teenager, it was pretty much all I was interested in. I absolutely loved all the comedy that was on the telly in the ’70s. It was something of a golden age – or there was obviously brilliant stuff. Dad’s Army – arguably the best British sitcom of all time. Fawlty Towers – arguably the best British sitcom of all time. I think those two fight it out.
But I also loved the stuff that wasn’t necessarily considered quite so – you know, ITV did some great comedies in the ’60s and ’70s. On the Buses, Please Sir! with John Alderton. This is stuff which, sadly – hah! Abigoliah – you have to seek some of these out.
I loved Steptoe. It was a great time for British comedy. Very good – not just narrative comedy sitcoms, but also… I wasn’t a fan of stand-up, but stand-up really wasn’t seen much on the telly. I mean, Bruce Forsyth was on the telly a lot, but not as a stand-up. Tommy Trinder – not as… they were there to host shows.
Stand-up really only appeared on the telly in any great amount when a show called The Comedians, an ITV show, started to broadcast. It was a showcase of almost exclusively – but not exclusively – male, white, working-class comedians. There was a famous Black comedian, Charlie Williams – “Hello, flower” – who was a Black comedian who, amazingly, had broken through in working men’s clubs in the ’50s and ’60s. He was born in Britain, as evidenced by his Yorkshire accent.
I didn’t love stand-up. I loved double acts – Morecambe and Wise, and of course The Two Ronnies – but above all, Morecambe and Wise.
And then my greatest influence of all probably wasn’t on the telly. It was literature. It was P. G. Wodehouse.
Ben: I would say P. G. Wodehouse was almost the voice that really alerted me to the idea of the joy of writing comedy as opposed to performing it. The fact was that when I was young, I didn’t tend to read many books. My mum and dad would have loved me to have read more books, and I tended to like comics. And so one day – I was 12 or 13 – they gave me a book of P. G. Wodehouse short stories called Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, which is just one of his many, many, many, many publications. I mean, of course, there’s hundreds of them. And I immediately fell in love and consumed almost nothing but Wodehouse for the next three years.
And I think he’s the greatest comic voice in English letters. For me, he remains so. And his ability to time a gag on a page, his ability to actually make you laugh out loud on the page – I don’t think any adaptations have ever remotely done him justice. He works on the page so much better. I mean, when they’re adapted, they tend to be sort of whimsical and nostalgic, and just really about, “Wasn’t it this marvellous sort of sunshine world of posh boys and silly girls?” But actually–
Tom: Worse, I think the ones that turn it into a cartoon – the Blandings adaptation recently was all kind of bright colours and people pulling faces and falling over – and I just thought, this has nothing to do with the Wodehouse that, like you, I grew up so enjoying.
Ben: It’s yet to be got right. But yeah – P. G. Wodehouse, I think, is – if I could name one comic influence, I would say it was P. G. Wodehouse. But after that, it would be TV comedy on the BBC and ITV in the ’70s.
Tom: I think I can see little echoes of Jeeves and Wooster, particularly in Blackadder. You know, the young master getting into scrapes, Queenie as a sort of avatar of Aunt Dahlia – something like that.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, there’s no doubt that his influence on anybody – well, anybody who’s read him will be highly influenced by him. But even if you haven’t read him, because everyone else has read him and has been influenced by him… I mean, Stephen Fry is a huge fan and his work reflects that, as is – I mean, Hugh doesn’t write so much, but even in his performances, and Hugh does write some. Yeah, I think it’s reflected in my writing. I think I learnt how to time a gag on the page from Wodehouse. I didn’t know I was learning – I was just being taught by example.
Abigoliah: So you started off writing plays and stuff, and in uni, right? Or college, as you call it?
Ben: Yeah – earlier than that, I was committed to being a writer from really reading Wodehouse. And a little bit of Noël Coward goes in there as well.
And I was basically… I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was a child. Most children don’t. But I found out very early on. When I was 10 or 11, I started appearing in drama productions. The first one was J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. I was one of the Lost Boys. I played Slightly Soiled and got a few laughs and was immediately bitten by the entertainment bug, and felt: I want to be in entertainment.
And I imagined I wanted to be an actor, but very soon – by my early teens – I was pretty clear that I wanted to be a writer, and that would be Wodehouse. And it would also be Noël Coward. When I was 13, in 1973 – I guess I’d have been 13 or 14 – Noël Coward was 70 and the BBC… there was a lot of stuff celebrating his life. Funnily enough, some of your listeners won’t even have heard of him. I mean, there was a time when he was one of the most famous people in the world. I mean, at one point he represented the 1920s culturally almost as much as the Beatles represented the ’60s. He was the most prominent cultural British figure of the 1920s in popular culture.
And he was a great playwright and a great wit. He wrote astonishingly funny songs. The BBC did a documentary about him, and I hadn’t read his – didn’t know his plays, didn’t know his songs. But I fell in love immediately with his life. Very quickly I bought an album of, you know, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and “The Stately Homes of England”. I mean, hilarious. Brilliant lyric writing.
And I went and saw Hay Fever with my mum at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. That no doubt was part of the celebrations. And Hay Fever was one of his very early plays and remains a brilliant light comedy of manners and situation and language. Of course: “You must wash more, dear. It’s bad for your skin to leave things lying about on it.” He wrote that when he was, what, 23, I think. I mean, he was a–
So Noël Coward was also a real influence. So Coward and Wodehouse probably alerted me to the power of language and the joy of language and the joy of comic language more than any other influences.
And – I mean, I don’t know if it’s true – I mean, this is how I’ve worked it out retrospectively, but I think it was that year, ’73, when I first discovered P. G. Wodehouse and I first discovered Noël Coward, and I was 13 or 14, and already constantly doing – all the time – I was in, I was playing the Common Man in A Man for All Seasons that year, I think, or the year after, which is a beautifully written play. And I knew I wanted to be a writer.
I never wanted to be a stand-up. I never wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a writer. Any performing I do is just a conduit – is just an expression of me as a writer.
Tom: What I’m finding so interesting about this conversation is: I was about the age that you’re talking about when The Young Ones was on TV, and I can remember how it felt like this completely new voice – this, like, kicking down the doors – and the stuffy establishment figures hated it. They thought it was ridiculous. They thought it was vulgar.
And there’s that incredibly painful story you tell in your book about Ronnie Barker, one of your heroes, having a go at you at a party for swearing on TV – which, apart from anything else, you hadn’t done. But I think it’s fascinating that actually you’re drawing on influences like Wodehouse and Coward that all the people who were rejecting The Young Ones would have completely embraced.
Ben: Oh yeah. I mean, it’s scarcely a surprise, really. I mean, the shock of the new always irritates. I’m 66 – I have to make an effort not to be irritated by terribly successful young people doing stuff I’ve never thought of. I mean, I think I manage it. I don’t think I am a curmudgeon remotely in the way Barker was.
Tom: And Corbett wasn’t.
Ben: Corbett – not so. I’m sure he probably… he certainly wasn’t as pompous. I mean, Ronnie Barker was pompous. He was a lovely man, and I got to know him a little bit later, and he was fine and a great comic talent, but definitely very aware of his own… He liked to be called “The Guv’nor” at the BBC. “Just call me the Guv’nor.” Corbett less so.
But then, you know, I got to know Ronnie much later, and I asked him to be on my show, and he was kind of, in a way, looking for a gig at that point. We all have ups and downs in our career, and Ronnie would say he was certainly in a dip after Ronnie B retired.
The fact that I have influences which might be considered vaguely conservative with a small “c” – I’m not interested in the politics of either Coward or Wodehouse. I mean, they probably were conservative with a large “C”, but that’s irrelevant to their work. And I was, as I say, equally influenced by great British sitcoms. I just didn’t think about the writers when I was watching it.
I mean, now I’m an evangelist for flying the flag of Galton and Simpson, who wrote Tony Hancock and Steptoe and Son. And whenever I see ’60s playwrights eulogised for their exploration of the gritty working class, I think: why are Galton and Simpson not? If ever there was an exploration of mutually dependent, bleak existences, it’s Arthur and Albert Steptoe. That’s real kitchen-sink stuff. Never mind fucking John Osborne and his, you know, his Entertainer. You want to look at The Entertainer, then look at Tommy Cooper.
So look – my influences are not surprisingly good stuff. And each generation is… I mean, most of the “angry young men” supposedly of the ’50s turned out to be rabid Tories, particularly John Osborne. But I don’t think being seen as a slightly radical artist necessarily means you’re radical politically.
I mean, Noël Coward was absolutely the young one of his generation. I mean, Hay Fever in 1924 shocked. It was the shocking comedy of a drug-fuelled youth, you know, with hints of incest and homosexuality and plenty of drugs. But of course, he was a deeply conservative figure in every way, despite being a closeted gay man.
The funny thing is, I think The Young Ones was seen as kind of anarchic and groundbreaking, but actually the things that were identified as being its most special, groundbreaking things – I think were its least. I mean, people think, “Oh look – it was a sitcom in which you had talking rats and people appeared through walls, and there were cartoon figures, and a band played in the middle.”
And all these things were seen as terribly groundbreaking. And yes, they were very different to the slight rut BBC comedy had got into in the ’70s – very middle-class sitcoms: Rings on Their Fingers, The Good Life – good shows, but, you know, not what you’d call groundbreaking.
But actually what The Young Ones was doing – so much of what was considered anarchic was a total part of comedy tradition. I mean, you look at the Crazy Gang – they came through walls, they smashed them. If you look at Morecambe and Wise in terms of strangeness, think of those two old men sitting in bed together, endlessly rehashing their youth. I mean, never mind Vladimir and Estragon passing the time – Eric and Ernie in bed, you know. That’s… wow.
And look at Laurel and Hardy, for instance – talk an anarchic relationship of furious mutual interdependency with lots of violence, lots of cartoon violence.
Tom: I’m thinking of Hellzapoppin. You ever seen that?
Ben: Hellzapoppin! Or the Goons. Yes. So, you know, the Goons were, in a way, a sitcom. They all kind of lived in a sort of world together – doors would knock and people came in and out.
So actually the things people think of as groundbreaking for The Young Ones, I don’t think were particularly… Certainly it came along at a point where sitcom had got a little bit cosy. But if you go back, the great working-class sitcom – Till Death Us Do Part in the ’60s – was really radical. Really dangerous. Cross-generational warfare explored in depth. They were really angry with each other. That wasn’t cosy, like Sid James in Man About the House.
In Till Death Us Do Part, the battles between Alf Garnett and “the Scouse git” played by Tony Booth – with his girl, Una Stubbs – and also the exploration of race and bigotry and working-class people who see themselves more as identified with Tory lords… Alf Garnett was like, “Winston Churchill – he’s your man.” Never mind “that Harold.” So there has been so much radical comedy on the telly, and in terms of sitcom in the ’60s – but in the ’70s, less so. And perhaps that’s why we were seen as breaking traditions, whereas in fact we were picking up a ball that had only been dropped a decade or so before.
What I think was more interesting about The Young Ones was that it was a youth sitcom. Even Till Death Us Do Part couldn’t be called that, even though it had very strong young characters. Sitcom hadn’t tended to feature young people in anything other than peripheral roles, frustrating older people.
But we did a sitcom about young people – specifically about a bunch of young people in Thatcher’s Britain – and with the exception of Mike, the character, which didn’t really work, but I go into that at length in my autobiography because it would have worked… But let’s not unpack that now.
If you look at the hippie, the ageing hippie – well, the hangover hippie – the punk Vyvyan, and the nascent Tory councillor that Rik’s character is (pretending he’s an anarchist when clearly he had deep conservative…) I think they were really true, if exaggerated, youth types in the early years of Thatcher’s Britain. A very specific type – middle-class students – but I think that was quite groundbreaking. It was a sitcom about people in their very early 20s, and that I think was new. The bands playing and the rats talking, I think, was part of a lengthy tradition of blending variety with sitcom.
Tom: Now you play a few small parts in some of the episodes. I know you said in your autobiography that there was a time when it looked like you were going to play Mike, and that didn’t happen, and people can read your book to find out more about that.
Ben: It wasn’t just a moment – but anyway, carry on.
Tom: Okay. Yeah, yeah. There was a time when… yeah. But how much of the rest of the filming were you on set for? Was it: you handed in the scripts and went away, or were you part of…?
Ben: Well, I mean, I didn’t hand in the scripts because after the very first episode – which I pretty much wrote on my own, the “Demolition” episode, which is the pilot and episode one, where they think the house is going to be demolished and Rick crucifies himself on front of the house and starts reading his poetry – after that, the writing… Look, it’s a long story, the writing of The Young Ones. But the scripts tended to be submitted by Rik and Lise, the other two writers. I just gave them my stuff.
I stepped back from The Young Ones quite early on because of a fracturing of my relationship with Rik. Not personally – we remained very close friends – but my creative relationship with him fractured, for various reasons. I talk about them in my autobiography because I love Rik and I miss him dearly, and I miss our creative relationship. And I think it fractured during The Young Ones. It’s funny – it sort of peaked and fractured at the same time. And there are reasons for that that you can find out if you want to read it.
What it resulted in was me not feeling as close, and my influence on the show waned as it got closer to production. And I didn’t hang around much. No – I didn’t go to Bristol much when they made the first one, and the rest… I don’t think I ever went… I think once I went with them on location, and I went to a few of the recordings. I did a bit of extra writing.
One time I went into rehearsals and they were stuck for a scene, so I wrote the launderette scene where Ade’s socks follow him down the street. They needed that, so I wrote it. They went off to the pub for lunch, and I wrote that over lunch.
But look – it was great. It was a smash hit. Not everything in it was the way I think it should have been. But you can’t argue with a smash hit. Ade and Rik remain – well, Rik’s gone now – but two of my dearest friends. Ade and I remain dear friends, and I’m very close to Nigel. Well, very close – but we’re friends – and very close to Ade.
So it’s all good, but no – I didn’t hang out much with The Young Ones. I thought some silly decisions were made, and… but as I say, we had a fantastic hit. Flawed. But then perhaps, you know, anything good has to be flawed. Everything’s flawed.
Abigoliah: As a writer, have you ever submitted a script – be it The Young Ones or anything else – where you’re like, “I’ve written it, it’s perfect,” and then maybe you’re not on set, or maybe you are, and the actors are reading it wrong? You know what I mean?
Ben: Reading it wrong… Look, it’s the lot of the writer to always be frustrated. If you write scripts for other people and you don’t direct it, you’re always going to disagree with some things. And I think that’s why Richard – my dear friend Richard Curtis – ended up directing his own movies, starting with Love Actually, because he just couldn’t sit there any longer trying to persuade the director to do it the way he knew it should be done.
And I think when you write comedy, you’re pretty clear. And I’m kind of jealous of David Mamet. I believe he actually includes every cough and every pause and insists the actors do it. You put a beat here or you’re not in it.
Tom: Can I tell you a story about that? I don’t know if this is true, but this is a story I heard. Another big influence on me was seeing his play Oleanna in the West End, and I was just astonished – having not seen it done like that before – how much drama you could wring out of just two people talking about something that had happened offstage, but in a really interesting way.
This might make you think better of Harold Pinter, because Harold Pinter directed that, which is a really interesting confluence of theatrical minds. But when he went into rehearsals, the first thing he did was have the entire script retyped so it had only the dialogue. All of those stage directions and punctuation and so on – all of that directing the actors from behind the typewriter – was gone.
Ben: Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me. Pinter would do that. I mean, he’s right – he’s the director. But he would certainly… I mean, if ever there was anybody who would say “It’s my way or the highway,” it’s Pinter. I would trust Mamet’s timing more. I would trust his timing because his writing is – it cheats, because it basically puts pauses in, which makes everybody think, “Oh, that equals enigma, which equals dry wit.”
But look, don’t get me wrong. I’ve also had the most joyful experiences handing my scripts over. So yeah – Blackadder, The Young Ones. There were times when I was frustrated – well, no, not with The Young Ones. The Young Ones was performed the way – apart from the character of Mike, which let’s not go into it – the actor was brilliant, Chris Ryan, but the character and the way it was presented had completely lost its way by the time it got to the screen. And that saddened me greatly, because that could have been a fourth great character. Chris lavished great love and great talent on it, but it was a completely poisoned chalice by the time it had gone through a mill that was not of my making.
But with the rest – with Rik and Nigel – I think all the scripts were performed exactly as I would have imagined them to be. And I don’t think there was ever much question about the scripts on set. I don’t think they debated it much. I think they should have debated it more, because I don’t think all of the scripts were great.
Blackadder – as you know – this myth developed, which Richard and I both find slightly irritating, that there was some kind of wonderful actors’ writing room going on during the rehearsal period. There was an awful lot of sucking of cheeks and debating about whether the word “wibble” was funny enough or not. But on the whole, they pretty much stayed as they were. They got knocked around a bit and then ended up often the same as they’d been.
Sometimes the odd good bit came up in rehearsal, as indeed it should when clever actors are working with scripts that have been literally tailor-made for their voices and talents. And sometimes mistakes were made. I talk about it in the book – I think it got to its nadir, this unpacking of scripts and then putting them back together, on Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, which I can assure you was much funnier on the page when we submitted it, and after it had been torn to bits during a particularly pompous rehearsal week.
But much good work was done. And the great news is they all remain some of my very closest friends – John Lloyd the producer, Stephen and Hugh. Friendships were formed during those quite difficult and edgy times which have really stood the test of time.
And as a writer, getting the chance to write towards those brilliant voices – I mean, sometimes I write into a vacuum when I write a play or a novel. I’m at the mercy of casting or a director, or in terms of a novel, the imagination of the reader. But when you write towards a sitcom team you know – who are your friends, your colleagues, whom you work with and respect – it’s a joy.
There are lines I’ve written for Rowan or for Rik that you could never write for anyone else. They wouldn’t be funny, but they are sublime in their mouths. And I felt I had a good ear, as did Richard on Blackadder. On The Young Ones I did an awful lot shaping the character of Rick, because Rik’s talent excited me so much. It brought out the best in me. There’s no question in my mind. I wish that had gone on for longer.
I found Rik inspirational as a comic performer, and to a certain extent Nige and Ade as well. Their very special comic qualities – unique to them – were an inspiration to a writer. You move on to Blackadder – same thing, writing for Rowan, and bringing Rik into Blackadder. I mean, no other performer–
Tom: Must have been written with Rik in mind, right?
Ben: Of course it was written for him. There was never any question of it being cast with anybody else. And it would never have been a tenth as good had it been.
Tom: Billy Wilder talks about the fact that sometimes when casting falls through, he wrote countless scripts with Cary Grant in mind and never got him in one of his films, but they would always revise the dialogue once the actor was confirmed.
Ben: Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re dealing with actors who are not comic hurricanes, then they can be brilliant, but somebody else could probably be equally brilliant. But if you’re writing for a genuinely unique comic star like Rowan – you couldn’t write a script for Rowan and then say, “Oh, he didn’t want to do it, I’ll give it to Matt Lucas,” or whatever. No. Matt Lucas is brilliant, but he’s not going to do Rowan’s stuff.
When you write for Rowan, you’re writing for a very specific talent. It’s like an instrument. And Stephen – Melchett – Melchett could have been played by other actors, but it never would have been as good as Stephen’s Melchett. Partly because Stephen is simply brilliant, and partly because Richard and I understood that brilliance. There was a simpatico.
There is a time and tide in the affairs of writers and actors, and every now and then it all gels. And I think me and Richard writing Blackadder, and my original relationship with Rik – those were moments when talents combined and produced something bigger than either of us.
Abigoliah: Do you prefer writing for an actor, or, as you said, writing into a void? Do you have a preference between writing towards someone’s talents or writing from your own creative mind?
Ben: I mean, normally I’ve written sort of into a void – a play or a musical. You know, I’ve cast and recast my plays, Popcorn or whatever, numerous times. And with novels, you never ever cast it – the reader’s imagination is doing that.
So I’ve done more writing where I don’t really know how the outcome is going to sound. When I write for Rowan or Rik – I mean, Rik’s obviously gone – but I’ve got a pretty good idea how it’s going to sound. And it’ll be even better, because they’ll always find some sublime height to achieve.
When you say “What do I prefer?” – I write because I write. It’s a kind of ongoing need in me. So “preferring” doesn’t really play much of a role. But there’s no doubt about it – writing Flashheart for Rik, knowing what Rik was going to do and knowing how Rowan would react to Rik… not knowing exactly, but having a very good understanding – a simpatico with their talents – I felt we were all locked in.
And may I say, as a little parenthesis here, a myth has developed since Rik’s death that Rik “won” the Blackadder battle. That he came in and Rowan had to fade into the background. This is a complete myth. Those moments were ensemble pieces. Rowan’s reactions to Rik playing Flashheart – “Is that a canoe in my pocket or am I pleased to see you?” – Rowan’s reactions were absolutely equal and opposite and essential.
I think Rowan’s performance in the Flashheart scenes of Blackadder is sublime, as is Rik’s. You have two colossal talents – truly century-level talents – together. There are only a handful like that in a generation. And this idea that it’s all about Flashheart – no. It’s about Flashheart and Rowan, and Stephen and the rest, and their reactions.
Blackadder Two’s Flashheart is sublime. And it’s sublime because of Flashheart and Rowan and then the rest.
Tom: So when you do stand-up, you know exactly whose voice you’re writing for, because you’re writing for you. And I think I’ve seen you say – and I’ve seen other people say about you – that when you started, you developed this sort of motormouth style in order to just get through it and try not to leave a gap that a heckler could jump into.
Ben: That’s true.
Tom: But again, I remember watching you on things like Saturday Live when I was a teenager, and one of the things that really struck me – maybe as you relaxed into it a little bit more – was how theatrical some of it was and how you play with timing. And I remember being incredibly impressed, and quoting this to people in the playground the next day. There’s a routine you did about hell – about what Dante imagines to be in hell – and you sustain the tension for so long. That must have been very exciting to do, knowing the punchline you had, knowing what you were building up to.
Ben: Ah, it’s so lovely to hear that. My wife would be really cheering you on, because she’s always saying, “Stop running down your stand-up style – you’re actually a good stand-up.” She thinks she loves you.
Tom: You’re an amazing stand-up.
Ben: Yeah, well, it’s kind of you to say so. And I do tend to say, look, it’s all about the words. It’s what I say that matters. I’m average at the delivery, but because I understand the material – because I’ve written it – that’s why I’m on stage.
I think I probably am more of a natural comic doing what I do than I’ve given myself credit for over the years. I’m quite a good mimic. I can do a little bit of acting in my sets, a bit over the top – but that’s what comedy requires.
But when you ask, did it feel great to take that teasing moment – I remember going to the bottom and then it’s “the editor of The Sun underneath Judas”–
Tom: That’s the one, yeah.
Ben: But no – I took no pleasure. Just fear. Just thinking, can I afford to pause? Can I afford to keep a moment of silence? Because the shadow – as I talk about in the book – the shadow of the gong was so long.
Those formative experiences compering at the Comedy Store, in that bear pit, in that horrible tiny little club – that strip club in the day, or in the evening – and we were there at midnight. I did develop a fear of interruption, because my material requires people to follow what I’m saying. You’ve got to go along, and sometimes you have to go quite a while before I’ll drop the laugh in.
And of course the enemy of everything is the heckler. I’ve never heard a clever heckle. I think all hecklers are idiots.
Abigoliah: I so agree. Whenever – sorry – just whenever you’re in an interview and someone’s like, “What’s the best heckle you’ve ever had?” And it’s like – they’re all bad. They stop the show. It’s like if you went to a theatre – an actual play – and someone stood up and shouted, “Show us your dick.” Even if it was in the middle of Pinter, you’d be mad about it.
Ben: I would. Because Pinter would be funnier than that.
And this is a problem with Twitter and the internet, because it’s legitimised the heckler. No journalist 30 years ago would have thought their job was to quote hecklers. But now they’ll quote Twitter saying, “Oh, so-and-so stand-up – the jury’s out.”
But leaving Twitter aside – live heckling. Yes, occasionally there can be witty put-downs – the famous “Taxi for Mr So-and-so” – but even that’s so fucking what? Nobody’s paid to listen to some drunk in the middle shouting.
Nobody’s bought a ticket to listen to another member of the audience. Like people singing along in musicals. You want to say, “I want to hear the people who are actually doing the show.”
So no – I think all heckles are shit. I hate all hecklers, particularly for my material, because I don’t really do jokes. As a compere, I’ve seen hecklers ruin delicate, sensitive acts. Jenny and Dawn did the Comedy Store once – why would they go on stage when an audience feels empowered to shout “Show us your tits”? Fuck off. I won’t do it.
But I did have to learn a combative style to protect my material and protect the material of others. I was the compere, and I had to let a small group of bad apples know they weren’t welcome interrupting people’s material.
That scarred me. But I’m very pleased, Tom, to hear you think my delivery is worthy of the material, because it’s the material I’m proud of – but I need to deliver it for anyone to think it’s any good.
Tom: Do you ever wish you’d done more acting?
Ben: No. Because my delivery as a stand-up isn’t acting. It’s comic performance. I can do funny voices, I can shape things physically, but I overact. I tell this story – Ken Branagh’s only direction to me when I had that little role in Much Ado About Nothing was “Don’t act.” Everyone else got five minutes of intense notes.
I have no performance vanity. I find movie sets boring unless you’re the director. It’s a lot of waiting. If I wanted to be an actor, I would have done it. I’m a writer. The only reason I do stand-up is as a vehicle for my material.
I think stand-up is a great art form. Gag-telling is a craft, and I respect it. But the best comedy is born of truth. To get truth, you have to expose yourself. When I’m on stage, I’m saying: this is what makes me angry, this is what scares me, this is what I believe. That’s a unique privilege as a comic writer.
Abigoliah: The thing that drew me to stand-up is I went to school for musical theatre – not writing, the acting bit of it. I was in New York at the time, and a friend and I decided to try an open mic at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. It was at the People’s Improv Theater, called The PIT.
It was one of those things where you think you stormed it, and then you look back and you’re like, “Oh, I failed miserably.” But the high of it – for me, I was like, “Oh, this is it.” Because with musical theatre, although I absolutely love it, it’s like: I need to get a pianist, I need to get other actors, I need to get this and this and this.
But with stand-up, it’s just me on stage with a notebook. Whether I show up or not, it’s all on me. And that’s what I really like about stand-up – I don’t have to rely on a lot of people in order to make the art form. Is that one reason why you started to do stand-up, in between writing novels and scripts?
Ben: I was lucky. I had – well, look, in a way, yes. When I first started as a stand-up, The Young Ones had just been commissioned as a pilot. It was a year before that was made. So it was absolutely the very beginning of my career. I needed to make a living, and I wanted to alert as many people as possible to my ability to be funny.
So yes – as you say – a lot of performers go into stand-up because it’s a cheap way of showing your wares. All you need is a pub and a microphone. Or a very small room – there used to be a gig called the Earth Exchange, part of the circuit in the early ’80s. That room was small enough not to require a microphone. It was a kind of hippie restaurant. If the rice hadn’t been sufficiently soaked overnight, people chewed too loudly and you couldn’t hear the comedian.
But everyone was very nice at the Earth Exchange, unlike the Comedy Store.
So yes – there was an element of me doing stand-up originally as a cheap art form, the only way available to me to show my wares. But very quickly, I was incredibly fortunate. Suddenly I was writing a sitcom for some of the best young talent in the country, and then another sitcom for the rest of the best young talent in the country.
I had the world as a writer at my oyster. I had access to the best performers. I could put Jennifer Saunders in something called Happy Families in 1985. I was only 25. It was a whole comedy-drama series starring Jennifer and Dawn and Stephen.
So I was very fortunate. I had no need to carry on doing stand-up. Originally, I did it to put my wares around and make a bit of a living. Within a year or two, I no longer needed to do either of those things. And I still hated stand-up. I found it very scary and taxing, as we all do when we start.
But by then I discovered the beauty of really pure stand-up comedy as a medium of ideas. Not gag-telling – which is a craft – but as a medium for exploring emotions, outrage, and ideas. It’s like poetry, but with jokes.
And I think good stand-up is like rap. They’re beginning to recognise that rap can be poetry – Kendrick Lamar winning a huge literary prize, and I think rightly so. I’m not saying stand-up is poetry, but it’s prose. It can be important.
I’ve tried to use stand-up as a way of seeing the world.
Tom: And when you do stand-up, because I’ve got lots of friends who are stand-ups, I know this varies quite a lot – there are some who know the shape of the routine, but the exact choice of words changes each time. Others have not just memorised the words, but the performance is basically identical every night. Everyone finds their place on that continuum.
Ben: I think most comics are closer to the latter. If you’re doing a 60-date tour, the chances of it being significantly different every night are slim. It’ll be different from the first night to the last night, but it’s a series of Chinese whispers.
My act – you’ll see the same thing the second night. I’ve written it very carefully. How do you feel about this, Abigoliah? Do you go on stage and wing it sometimes? I certainly don’t.
Abigoliah: Well, actually, yeah. What is your process? Because you do a lot of script writing. When I have an idea for a joke – new material level – I’ll maybe write out the idea and some bullet points, but I don’t script a first draft. I’ve never scripted a first draft. I just go up.
Ben: And you go on stage with that map and that’s all you’ve got? Scary!
Abigoliah: Yeah. I might have a couple of one-liners, or I’ll know the story and tell it and find jokes within it. I record it, and it’s not until draft two or three that I start writing it.
My last director for Edinburgh was the first person who said, “You have to write it as a script.” And that helped me line-edit, because that’s when I picked up all my repetitions.
Ben: So between drafts one, two, and three, you’re doing it on stage?
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Ben: Okay. So you’ve got the first map, you go on stage, you play around, you get some laughs, something dies, you come off and work it again. I think that’s probably quite a common way of working up material for young comics.
That’s definitely not how I work. I write a script in considerable detail. I’m pretty clear where the jokes are the first time. I’m not saying I always get it right, but it’s not made in performance – it’s made in my head and then performed.
It does morph a bit – things get expanded more than dropped. And suddenly you’ve got a three-hour show and you have to start killing your babies.
I don’t do warm-ups to work material up. I do warm-ups to learn it. It’s a two-hour monologue, all on the page, and I need it embedded in my head so I can perform it well. That’s learning it, not working on it.
I’m interested in your method, though. Maybe I should try it.
Abigoliah: I’m interested in your method because I think it’s rarer. I know George Carlin did that. I’m pretty sure Mike Birbiglia does that. But you come from a background of playwrights – you know how to write yourself talking.
If I start with a script, I end up writing words I don’t actually say. It becomes flowery and literary. I get a thesaurus out. I need to start with how I actually speak.
Ben: And to know how you speak, you need to hear yourself saying it. I get that. Maybe as you get older, you’ll become so familiar with your voice that you can start closer to the page.
Writing is improvisation. I had this argument with Tony Allen back in the early days of alternative comedy. He hated that my act was the same every time. He felt his was more authentic because it was free-form. I never understood why there was ethical superiority in making it up on stage versus making it up earlier on a typewriter.
It’s all improvisation at some point. Why is it wrong to do the work earlier so it actually gets funny?
I think you’ve got a good compromise. You’re not just winging it – you’re discovering the material within the material. I do that too, just earlier.
Ben: I’d be interested to compare the transcript of the tour I started with to the one I ended with. I’ve just done a huge run – 150 dates – and by the end, a lot of it would be very similar, except for the bits that were cut because it started going on too long. People come up and say, “I saw you twice and it was exactly the same,” and I go, “For fuck’s sake – do you think I can make up two hours of material every night?”
Tom: You know, people don’t go to see We Will Rock You and say, “This is the same as when I saw it a month ago – I want my money back.”
But I also think one of the reasons people have that ethic around stand-up – that it’s better if it’s improvised – is because one of the greatest gifts a good comedian has is the ability to make something seem spontaneous. As an audience, we want to buy into the illusion that this person on stage is just having a conversation with us. Knowing it’s planned and written can slightly take the magic away.
Ben: Of course. I understand that. But I’m not lying on stage. I am rediscovering the material each night with the audience. To rediscover the arguments and land the ideas, the words are the same, but I have to find the truth in them again.
My wife’s a bass player, and there’s a term – being “in the pocket.” Two bass players can appear to be playing exactly the same thing, but one’s funky and the other’s wooden. You can’t always tell why, but one’s in the pocket.
I have to be in the pocket with my material every night. It’s like a musician playing the same song – Brian May playing the solo from “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He’s playing the same notes, but it’s alive. A good comic delivering the same material is exactly the same. If you do it mechanically, the audience knows.
So yes – it’s the same show, but it’s new to me every night.
Abigoliah: That makes total sense. You play the audience. When you’re in the pocket, it’s like throwing a ball back and forth. You give them something, they give it back. If you go on stage robotically, even if you hit all the marks, it doesn’t feel real.
Ben: Exactly. Audiences smell deceit. Their laughter is half the dialogue. You’re in conversation with them. So yes – my method is to write it, learn it, and then rediscover it every night, like an actor rediscovering a Shakespeare monologue.
Tom: Ben, we should let you go soon, but I’ve got two final questions.
Abigoliah: Before you ask yours, I have a very important one. Shag, marry, kill – Rick, Neil, or Vyvyan. Go.
Ben: Hang on – I have to do something to all of them?
Abigoliah: Yes. Characters, not actors.
Ben: Right. Well, there was a critic who said The Young Ones was basically a nuclear family – Mike was the father, Neil the mother, Ade the son, and Rick the daughter. Based on that, I guess I’d marry Neil, shag Rick, and kill Vyvyan. Lovely.
Abigoliah: Thank you. I appreciate it. Tom – your questions.
Tom: I’m taking Abigoliah on a tour of British comedy. We’ve done The Young Ones, we’ll obviously do Blackadder. Is there anything else you think we should watch that we might overlook? You’re allowed to pick your own stuff.
Ben: Well, if you’re talking my own work, I’d say The Thin Blue Line – a tribute to studio ensemble sitcoms – and Upstart Crow, which I think is my finest work. I loved researching and writing it, and hearing David and Lisa and that cast deliver it. I was older, less anxious, and it was just joyful.
Outside my work, I’d go back to the ’60s. Till Death Us Do Part was extraordinary – that it was on BBC One is astonishing. Johnny Speight. Galton and Simpson. Steptoe and Son. If you want working-class reality done with love and humour rather than brittle nihilism, that’s where to look.
Abigoliah: We were actually talking about doing a season on class, so that’s incredibly helpful.
Ben: You can’t escape class in Britain. It shapes culture and commissioning. Other great examples: The Likely Lads – both the original and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? And Carla Lane – The Liver Birds. Two working-class women going it alone. Extraordinary for its time.
Tom: And finally, we don’t pay guests. So instead, could you recommend a charity you support?
Ben: That’s a lovely idea. I’d say Scope – the disability charity and campaigning organisation. I’ve been a patron since my novel Gridlock in 1990. If people want to donate, that would mean a great deal.
Tom: We’ll put a link in the show notes. Ben Elton, thank you so much.
Ben: I hope I made sense. Lovely to meet you both.
Abigoliah: Likewise. Thank you.
Tom: He’s the ideal podcast guest. You ask one question and get a ten-minute erudite monologue.
Abigoliah: It makes our job very easy.
Tom: I was struck by the conversation about your different stand-up processes. Yours is probably more typical, but everyone finds their own way.
Abigoliah: It made me want to try writing it first, just to see what happens.
Tom: Stewart Lee talks about planning to lose his way so it feels genuine. And Rik and Ade’s Bottom stage shows – they go off script in exactly the same places every night.
Abigoliah: Probably found it in rehearsal and kept it.
Tom: Exactly. The illusion of spontaneity is the gift.
Abigoliah: As an MC, audiences think you’re making it up, but really you’ve got stock lines in your back pocket. Don’t tell anyone.
Guys, that was Ben Elton. Thank you so much for listening.
Tom: We hope to do more interviews like this. If you make comedy and want to be involved, email us at allbritishcomedy@gmail.com.
Abigoliah: Especially if you’ve worked on one of the shows we cover.
Tom: We’re on TikTok, Bluesky, Threads, and Substack.
Abigoliah: Next up, we’re covering Victoria Wood As Seen on TV. And our next interview is with comedy producer and director Geoff Posner.
Tom: He’s worked with everyone.
Abigoliah: Till next time, I’m Abigoliah.
Tom: And I’m Tom. Cheerio.
Abigoliah: Bye-bye.