Abigoliah: Hello everyone – welcome back to All British Comedy Explained. I am Abigoliah, and with me is Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there!
Abigoliah: We have a very special treat for you all today. We are thrilled to bring to the podcast Geoff Posner. He has directed Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, French and Saunders, The Young Ones, and of course, Victoria Wood. Geoff is a – just – formidable. Is that the word? Producer and director. If there’s a comedy you love in Britain, Geoff probably had a hand in it.
Tom: Yeah. He’s such a gent, and we’re so grateful to him for giving up some of his time.
Abigoliah: And before we go directly into the interview: you worked with Geoff on making something, and it didn’t come to fruition. However, we didn’t talk about what that project was. Tell us real quick – what did you work on with Geoff?
Tom: So, in the late 90s, early 2000, I was doing lots of improvisation, and we had a kind of… not a hit, but a hitette – a hitella – a show which got a modest amount of interest, called DreamDate. This was an improvised romantic comedy based on the lives of two members of our audience.
And one of the reasons I was excited when TV people started coming around is: most of the time, when you bring cameras into an improvised show, you end up with a worse product. It would have been funnier and more exciting and more interesting if you were there live. But because our show was based on the lives of two people in the audience, we knew that people sitting in the audience were always checking back in on our audience volunteers. They’re sitting at the side of the stage watching their avatars have this imagined life – and we knew, on TV, you could cut to a close-up of that person at exactly the right moment. So there would be a chance that it could actually be a better show on TV than it was live.
But we’ll never know, because ITV2 turned down the pilot. Well – we did shoot two episodes in a television studio, and that was the thrill of my life. So there you go.
Abigoliah: Did you get a copy of it?
Tom: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: Oh, I want to see that.
Tom: I’d have to disinter it. I’m not sure where it is, but I definitely have it somewhere.
Abigoliah: And I just want to… because you’ve told me this: it was such a successful live show that some of those dates turned into actual marriages.
Tom: Yeah. So, as a reward for our volunteers, we’d do a deal with a local restaurant or something, and we’d give them a date to go on afterwards. And I think they would be great dates because you’d have something to talk about: the two of you had just been on this extraordinary experience. You’ve been plucked out of the queue, or someone had come and found you on the streets of Edinburgh and asked if you were up for this.
And yes – at least one couple, maybe more. But the couple I’m Facebook friends with are now married with kids.
Abigoliah: That’s amazing. That’s so cool. Well, guys – that’s not what we’re going to talk about in this interview, but here is Geoff Posner.
Abigoliah: So, ladies and gentlemen: welcome to the podcast, Geoff Posner, everybody.
Tom: Hooray!
Abigoliah: Yay!
Geoff: I should go “hooray” as well, but I’m too modest to. Modest.
Tom: Quite right. Geoff, we met over twenty years ago, and we were actually working on a project together – an improvised television show which did get as far as a television studio, but did not get as far as the nation’s homes. I’m sure the fault is entirely mine and not yours, because you did nothing wrong.
Geoff: It’s their loss. Can I say: I still think very fondly of the project.
Tom: Yes, indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this, though: how did you get your start in television?
Geoff: Well, let’s do the time warp wipe – going back, back, back into the 1960s. So basically, I got hooked on television when I was still at school by a programme called Ready Steady Go, which was a pop programme. And suddenly a director called Michael Lindsay-Hogg came in to direct it, and he changed things so much, and did things that were unthinkable, that a 15-year-old Geoff Posner looked at the box and said, “Wow. This is something I want to do. I want to create the kind of excitement – and talk-about-the-next-day television – that Michael did.”
And he made a career of it because he directed videos for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and all of that. So I was bitten by television. And when everybody else in my school was saying, “Oh, I’m going to be an accountant,” or “maybe a lawyer,” or “a vet,” I was…
Tom: The kind of people you went to school with.
Geoff: Yes. They didn’t speak quite as camply as that, but I did. And I wanted to be in television. And nobody – I repeat, nobody in the world – supported me because it was such an odd thing to do. And my family said, “Geoffrey, why don’t you be a lawyer or something like that?” And I said…
Tom: Was your father Peter Sellers?
Geoff: No, no – they both came from Stoke Newington, which is a very puzzling way of speaking. But anyway: I was so determined to get in that I went to university, and that didn’t do any good. And eventually I got in as a junior, junior, junior – what’s called a runner now in the BBC – but in those days was called a call boy. But call boys had… connotations that perhaps people nowadays don’t know.
Abigoliah: I was going to say – that sounds like a very different part of the entertainment business, to be a call boy.
Geoff: Abi, it earned me a bit of extra money on the side, so I’m not knocking it. I’m telling you. And how do you think I got on in television in the first place?
Tom: Anyway.
Geoff: Having got into the BBC, I then found out that everybody who had got in was equally wanting the same thing that I was wanting. So there was a battle after I’d got in, because I only ever wanted to direct and produce. And I kind of worked my way up from the bottom.
And then eventually I got given a chance to produce. Paul Jackson – whom I know you know – and I were a kind of cohort of younger producers who cared more about the content of the programmes that they produced, not being traditional Saturday night entertainment – which was very male-centred and rather old-fashioned in its approach. And we wanted to promote what was then quite a new branch called alternative comedy.
But sorry – this is a long monologue. I’ll go into paragraph two now. I noticed that you identified, when you were talking about The Young Ones, a kind of split between the Oxford people and the Cambridge people and the people who’d come from the comedy clubs.
And I very much… in fact, my training thing at the BBC was a Footlights revue from Cambridge University. But I very much supported all the stuff that was coming out of the comedy clubs. They had female comics, double acts – it was a whole brand-new way of looking. And Paul and I kind of set about trying to change the way that entertainment was viewed on television.
Tom: Paul Jackson tells a story that he was editing – maybe it was the pilot of The Young Ones – and there was a knock on the door, and a young man came in saying, “What are you all laughing about?” And that was you.
Geoff: I didn’t say, “What are you all laughing about?” I said, “What the – is going on in here?” Because I should add a little nice bit for readers who like trivia: the dividing walls at the BBC – we were in sports editing suites – which had this concertina kind of… it was only made of fabric. It wasn’t by any chance soundproof.
And I was trying to edit “Nice Video, Shame About the Song,” which is something from Not The Nine O’Clock News – I know you’ve got all the box sets, Tom, so you’ll know that.
I was editing that, and suddenly there was this big crash coming from next door – and it sounded so real. I kind of opened the concertina, expecting people to be amongst rubble and all of that on the floor. And I think it was somebody coming through the wall in The Young Ones. And I said to Paul, “My gosh, Paul, this is something different.” And Paul then turned round and said, “Would you like to work on it?”
Tom: And that’s very nice of him.
Geoff: What was the answer that I gave, do you think?
Tom: “No thanks. I’m fine where I am.”
Geoff: Yes, yes. And I pulled the concertina back.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: But what we wanted to have you on to talk about specifically – The Young Ones is great, but we’re doing that tomorrow. You worked with Victoria Wood – with Victoria Wood As Seen On TV.
Geoff: I did.
Abigoliah: Which is now my absolute favourite show. Because, you know, Tom is teaching me all about all these British comedies and sketch shows that I have missed. And it’s so delightful. How did you and Victoria come to meet, or come to work together?
Geoff: I got a tip from a friend of mine who said, “You ought to go to the theatre that is in Islington,” which is a tiny little theatre behind a pub. And you kind of went in and the pub revelled itself – revelled in itself – by charging old currency long after Britain had gone decimal. They insisted on charging. This was the selling point of the pub. And they put on plays in the back.
Somebody said, “You ought to go and see this play. It’s very funny. It’s written by somebody called Victoria Wood and it stars Julie Walters.” So I went to see it. And I went to see it about two or three times, because I loved the angle that she came from – the angle that she wrote from – which was so different from anything that I’d encountered.
And I knew that she was about to do a series for ITV – which was the opposition in those days – so I sort of thought, “I’ll see what happens.” Anyway, she did the series. And then I heard that she’d been signed up by the BBC to do a series there, and so I put my name forward. And I’d only started producing a year or so beforehand.
And so they said to me, “Well, Geoff, you’re a bit young. This is a very important step for Victoria because she wants a bit more editorial control. She felt she’d been kind of ignored when she made the first series, and she wasn’t very pleased. There’s a lot hanging on your shoulders.” And I didn’t think of that aspect in those days. I just thought, “I love her humour so much.”
You have to – if you’re producing something and directing something, which are two different things, as you know – you have to kind of be in tune with the humour of the person you’re working with. And they’re all different. As Abi, I’m sure you’ve realised as you look through all the stuff you’re going to be looking through in terms of British comedy.
So you have to be in tune with it. And I thought, “Well, I’m perfect for it because I love everything she writes. Please, please, please.” Anyway, there was a bit of behind-the-scenes negotiation, and then I got allocated it. And I was so delighted that her and I stayed together for fifteen years.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Tom: It sounds like the BBC were quite protective of her. Were you wondering whether there was any resistance from any quarters of the BBC about building a whole comedy show around one woman, when that was the thing that really we hadn’t seen up until now?
Geoff: Not just a woman – but a woman from the North. And one… now, I ought to explain to Abi: you know what it’s like. I’m sure you’ve been immersed enough in British culture to know that humour from the North of England is substantially different. And it was even more different in those days, because the North of England still had kind of very strong roots about being different from the South. And we were all stuck-up Southerners, and they were hard-at-work Northerners – you know, working class – and very much uncatered for on television.
And it is important to note that Victoria’s first series was destined for BBC Two because they didn’t think that it was going to be mainstream enough for BBC One.
So you’re right, Tom: they did push the boat out a bit. And a lot of people said, “Well, you know, I hope it’s successful, because I’m not sure that she’s what people like.” The series on ITV wasn’t fantastically well received, and all of this. So there’s a lot of pressure on her. And it was also a lot of pressure on me to make things work because I was relatively inexperienced.
But, you know, I always think: don’t look at what you can’t do – look at what you can do, and look at what you’ve got to work with. And the writing… well, we’ll get on to that, I’m sure, later on. But I was so thrilled to do the job that it was a sheer labour of love, because I felt that I got her in a way that not everybody else did.
Abigoliah: And when you say it wasn’t mainstream enough, was that just code for “Londoners might not get it”? Because even today, it seems like the entire entertainment industry – the culture – still: the whole country revolves around London. So even though there might be more people who live in the North, if London doesn’t get it, they’re like, “Well, then we can’t do it.” Is that what that meant?
Geoff: I’m trying to think whether San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York and Florida are the same in the States – and there are different tastes. There is definitely an East Coast taste as opposed to a West Coast taste. So I suppose there is a similar kind of thing. But then you’ve got the industrial side of things. The North was very much the industrial powerhouse of Britain during the 19th century and early 20th century. So there’s another layer involved on that.
And the northern voice, as such, hadn’t really been exploited much on TV – certainly northern comics, and certainly female northern comics. There was one lady called Marti Caine, who was a comedian, but she was very much shiny floor – big hairstyle – different. Completely different kind of person to Victoria, who was much more down-to-earth and everyday. And those are the key words, really, that run through all of her work, in terms of the audience understanding and relating to her.
Tom: So let’s talk about the writing a little bit. Because one of the things that struck me, even when I was a teenager, is I’d watch a show like Not The Nine O’Clock News and see this long list of writers scroll by, and then at the end of Victoria Wood As Seen On TV, it just says “Written by Victoria Wood.” So she’s writing six half-hours on her own. So at the time that you came on board, how much of that had been written, and how much was she still working on?
Geoff: She was still working on it. In fact, I phoned up her agent and said, “When can I go and see Vic?” And her agent said, “Well, she’s not finished writing, and she doesn’t want you to see it until she has finished writing.” She doesn’t even want you to see bits and pieces of it, because she’s writing a series, and then she wants to go back and look at it and see what it’s like before she releases it to you.
So I kind of respected that decision – although I was dying to see what she’d written – because, of course, I don’t come by myself. I come with a whole phalanx of designers, costume designers, makeup, camera people. They’re all waiting to know what’s going to be the series.
And we were getting nearer and nearer to the time when I should have seen it. But I certainly respected… I’m never going to turn around and say, “It’s got to be here next week.”
And then one day I got the go-ahead, and I was told: “You can go up and have a little reading session of all the scripts with Vic and Julie Walters.” So I went on a train. I was met at the station by Vic – which is, I think, very important, really, because she comes out and meets me. And at the house, making tea, was Julie Walters.
So we settled down – sat on the floor. In those days I could, of course. I still can, I still can, but I’d be there still if I can…
Tom: Yes.
Geoff: …you know, not able to get up these days. But I sprung down to the floor and we read all of what she’d written, back-to-back, with a little break for a cup of tea in the middle – all read between Victoria and Julie. They played all the parts.
Abigoliah: Oh, fun!
Geoff: I’m proud to say I read the stage instructions beautifully. And some of the male parts I was given – but there weren’t many, deliberately.
And I was very, very privileged to hear that. Because your point about multi-writers is very important. You know, I’ve done loads of series where you get all the writers into a room, and then the star says, “I want to do this, I want to do that,” and they go away and write it, and it’s kind of okay. It has to be worked on. And how is it going to be performed? There’s not that kind of cohesion that there is when somebody writes and performs.
Now, it wasn’t just the script. She wrote all the music. She played a lot of instruments on the recording session. The theme song to Acorn Antiques was entirely her.
Abigoliah: Oh!
Geoff: On a stylophone. It was a little plastic thing bought in a very cheap shop, which she wanted the sound of. And so I realised that she had written in a way that she wanted it performed. It wasn’t a question of: “Right, here’s the script – somebody else go and do something with it.” She knew how every word should be pronounced, because she’d written it and she was in it.
Although I’ve gone on record as saying I had to persuade her, in the first series, to be in more sketches, because she kept on saying, “Oh, I think so-and-so would be great at this.” And I said, “You should play this part. It’s your show, Vic.” She was so into giving the parts to other people – so generous.
And they weren’t just yes-Vic/no-Vic parts. They were really strong parts with jokes, and lots of important roles. It wasn’t just a question of Vic being in the lead and whoever is playing with her. They were great scripts for everybody to do.
Tom: There are whole sketches that she doesn’t appear in. I’m thinking of Kitty, for example – Patricia Routledge. And then I also showed Abi Two Soups, of course.
Geoff: Waitress, actually.
Tom: Is that what it was called?
Geoff: Yes. I’m only being a bit of a nerd, but…
Tom: Yeah.
Geoff: Yeah. I want to pause now and turn the spotlight on you two. First of all, Abi: what did you make of the series when you first saw it, being from the other side of the Atlantic?
And I must say: I worked on the last series of Not The Nine O’Clock News. And I have great friends in New York, and about six months after it was transmitted it was being shown on a PBS channel. And I went in and sat down with them to watch it, and the programme was met with complete silence.
Tom: Oh.
Geoff: And I could have eaten the cushions and hidden underneath the couch, if it had been wide enough for me to do so. There was nothing that related to anybody. So I’m interested to see how you related to it.
Abigoliah: I absolutely loved it. As soon as it came on, I fell in love with her. I’m a stand-up comedian, and this was the first show we watched that started with stand-up – so I was in. I thought her stand-up was really fresh. I thought a lot of it was – what’s the word? – topical, but still relevant, because it wasn’t so political or so referential to the time. It still worked.
And I really liked the sketches. Acorn… what? Acorn Antiques – which Tom explained to me is the running soap opera. And if he hadn’t said, “This is a running soap opera,” I might have been like, “What is happening here?” However, after Tom and I watched it, I’ve gone on to watch the show. And in the first episode of As Seen, before they do Acorn Antiques, they say, “Now we’re going to take you to this soap opera.” So that’s your in for the rest of the show. So I was like, okay – I would have gotten that had I started at series one.
I mean, I thought it was great. I got it all. I have been in the UK for a while – despite the fact that I haven’t seen any television. I’ve lived here for eleven years.
And yeah, I immediately was on board. I thought it was so fun. And again, some of it is still relevant. I went back and watched some of it today, and there’s that short sketch with Celia Imrie where she’s playing a children’s presenter and she wiggles her fingers, and then she wiggles her other fingers – “let’s wiggle our fingers together.” And then at the end she just looks at the camera and goes, “This is very cheap for us to film. It costs no money and it’s for kids, so who cares?” Like – that’s still relevant to me.
Geoff: It had a message underneath it, because the message was: it’s just for children, so it’s not important. Yeah. And Vic always felt very strongly about what mattered – the targets that she gets.
There was one commercial for sanitary towels – there was an advert that ran on British television where they poured blue ink onto it, because they couldn’t find a way of describing how it works or what it did. So we did an advert where you actually said, “And I have some blue ink here, and I’m going to pour it on. You see? No ink is spilt,” and all that. So she was making a point underneath it all.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Geoff: And that’s what I love. But the one thing with Vic is that you all have noticed – certainly as a stand-up in terms of delivery – she used expressions that you probably found a bit strange, and proper names that you found even more obscure.
And I can tell you: even in the 80s, when the programme went out, she was using names from the 1960s, because there’s a line, I think, in the waitress sketch which says, “Please, please tell us if you’re related to Shirley Abicair.”
Now, Shirley Abicair is some obscure singer from Australia who played a zither – it was like a harp or something – and she was a bit of a joke in those days. And Vic and I said, “Do you think anybody’s heard of Shirley Abicair?” And I said, “Vic, somebody will have done. And it would have meant an awful lot that they had.”
So there are lots of obscure references that she delighted in. And, you know, it’s the business about the type of biscuits that you mention – is Rich Tea funnier than Nice biscuits? And all that: delivery, tempo. Those kinds of things – as a stand-up, she finds really important.
Tom: It has the right rhythm, though, doesn’t it? It has just a nice cadence to it.
Geoff: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Abigoliah: I love jokes that have two layers – like, a name is funny enough and has a ring to it, but also, if you know who that person is, it’s like: anyone can get it, but then the really cool people get it on a second level.
Because I didn’t know that that name was an actual person until you just said it. So I love that.
Geoff: Can I tell you: nobody will – apart from Shirley’s family, who are probably still living in Australia. But that was what made Vic’s work special: there was a right and a funny version of a food; a non-funny version of a food. And as a stand-up, you’ll understand this: a lot was to do with the rhythm of the sentence.
And I always thought a lot of the sentences were like songs – they had a tempo, they had a rhythm. And in terms of the jokes, they nearly all landed exactly where they should be.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: So did you have any input? Were there sketches that were rehearsed and not recorded, or recorded and cut before transmission? Were you talking about that kind of stuff? Or was it simply: “Here’s three hours’ worth of material – let’s go and do it”?
Geoff: No, no, no. Flashback to earlier in our conversation, if your memories are still working.
When we had that read-through with Julie, Vic and I, I timed it. And it ran to something like six times 26 or 27 minutes. Now, I should add: in those days when you worked for ITV, you used to record 25 minutes of programme and five minutes of commercials, and you also had a break in the middle. So the programme had two places where it peaked, if you like.
When you did a BBC half-hour, it was, in those days, 29, 30 minutes. And so there was immediately about a five-minute shortfall in terms of how much she should have written.
But then I went and added misery to it by saying, “Vic, I actually want 33 or 34 minutes of material, so we’ve got a few we can play around with. If some either in their entirety, or parts, don’t go down particularly well, at least we’ve got the choice of selecting rather than having to put out everything that you’ve written.”
Not that I doubt in any way – but I don’t think anybody is so confident, given how many processes you go through before it’s recorded: casting, delivery, recording, what the audience feel about it…
So many processes that maybe it doesn’t work. At least you have the benefit of being able to select. And we recorded all the series beforehand, so I was able to sit down and put them all into a programme order. And have some that I showed Vic and said, “I don’t know how you feel about this, but there are others that are better, I think.”
So we had that luxury. But it did mean panic on her face, because she had to generate another five or six minutes of material when she thought she was there.
But she was extraordinary in terms of her ability to generate new stuff. And we did 33 minutes every week recording.
Abigoliah: What was her lead time for writing? How much time did she have to write the series before you guys taped it – before it went out?
Geoff: I’d say about a year, Abi.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Geoff: About a year. Because she started the moment the BBC signed her up. I think she had written some anyway, because she learned a lot when she did the series for ITV about what worked and what didn’t work.
And as this was a series parodying TV, she had a lot of genres she could work on. For example: mock documentaries that were shot in documentary style. We had stand-up. Now, Vic didn’t really want to do stand-up at the start of each programme because she was a little bit uncertain. And I said, “No – you have to. There have to be six programmes with six stand-ups.”
Tom: She was already doing stand-up live, wasn’t she? She was doing that on tour.
Geoff: Oh, she was. Yeah, she was doing stand-up live.
There are very few people I’ve met since her who were able to stand in front of an audience at the Royal Albert Hall for 15 days and fill it, and make it rock with laughter – and then sit down and write a film and write a series of sketch shows.
And, you know, everybody has a view on sketch shows. I know you’re doing a few in your series, but writing a sketch is really problematic. You’ve got three minutes. You’ve got to introduce who it is in the first 10–15 seconds, then have a few jokes along the way, but then please finish it. Don’t just kind of say, “And now for something completely different,” or some other false way out. Just have an ending.
It’s really, really difficult. And to generate all that stuff – I just thought: this is a miracle. And, of course, it had her voice in everything. Everything she did was generated by her. And that’s what gives it cohesion, I think.
Tom: So all that 16mm filming – would that have been done before you went into the studio?
Geoff: Yes.
Tom: And what was that like? Did you – did you or she prefer the control of the location filming? Or did you prefer the energy of the live audience?
Geoff: Both. Both. We loved it. Horses for courses.
Some stuff… you know, I always think if you’re parodying something, you actually sit down and work out what you’re parodying, and try and make it match as much as possible. So documentaries in those days were shot on film, so we shot our documentaries on film.
And what we’d do is: we’d go filming for two or three weeks beforehand to film all the sketches and the ins and outs – if they were required – of studio sketches. And then we had two days in the studio.
The first day was a pre-record, where we’d record lots of stuff that didn’t need to be done – or shouldn’t be done – in front of an audience. Like Acorn Antiques wouldn’t have been as good if we’d done it in front of an audience.
Tom: The audience wasn’t there for Acorn Antiques?
Geoff: No, we showed it to the audience, of course.
Tom: Yeah – to get the laughter.
Geoff: You showed it to the audience. It’s so technical, and we want the audience to watch what’s happening on the screen, not what’s happening on the floor – because you don’t see some of the tricks that I threw in. I call them directing tricks. They’re not really: cutting to the wrong camera and so on.
There’s one scene where somebody crosses over a room and they are totally obscured by a lampshade – which I can’t tell you how long that took to shoot, because every camera person has had it drilled into them to avoid that.
You remember there was a scene when Duncan Preston – the character Duncan Preston – got up suddenly out of his chair and hit the boom–
Tom: The boom.
Geoff: Right over his head. Well, that took about three hours to get right, because every time the instinct of the boom op was to go up, all of that stuff.
But I wanted some people to witness things as the viewer at home did. So we recorded that stuff on the first day.
And then overnight we’d put in what I call an insert reel – stuff that we’d shot on location, and first-day stuff, including Acorn Antiques – to show to the audience on the second day.
And the way it would run is: we’d have stand-up at the top of the show, live in front of the audience. Vic would run off to change. Then I’d show some of the insert reel, and hopefully, if the next two people were ready, I’d bring the lights up and they were in the set, and we’d run the next studio sketch. And when that had finished, I’d show another bit of the insert reel. That’s how the studio went on.
Tom: But you’re not necessarily filming material for one show in one studio day? You can mix and match?
Geoff: Yes. Because you want the privilege of – sometimes you’d build a set that wanted to run for different aspects. You change it slightly, but it’s like a dining room: you’d record all the dining room sketches on one day, and then change it slightly in between. And then you dot them throughout the programme. So if you came to a studio, you’d never really see a programme in its entirety. It was all put together later.
Abigoliah: That’s interesting, because I just kind of assumed that you filmed it episodically – like episode one: you filmed all those sketches, then episode two. But it makes so much more sense to film them while you have the set, as opposed to build up, tear down, build up.
Geoff: Also, you might end up having actresses in two or three sketches. And we definitely wanted every sketch to be self-contained, apart from the people like Julie, who appeared in two or three different sketches.
Mostly it was to give us maximum flexibility. And there is a shape to the programme which really only makes sense when you’ve recorded six of them and you can put them back together.
Usually it would go: stand-up, then a little quick – we’d call them quickies, less than 30 seconds – usually on film, which was spoof commercials; then a stonking great two-hander with Julie as the third item in the programme.
Then it builds up, and you’d have a strand of the soap opera; and then there’d be a film – a documentary film – and then there’s a song somewhere in there. And you’d build up the whole programme. And you’d have the flexibility of putting what song went best in the best programme, and all of that.
Abigoliah: Very cool.
Tom: So it was quite a big deal – for both you and for Victoria Wood. Were there nerves on your part? On her part? Either when you were making it, or before it went out?
Geoff: Completely. I had to disguise mine because you don’t want two people going and–
Tom: You have to be her rock.
Geoff: That was me, by the way, not her. And no – in the early days, Vic was very unsure of herself. She’d had a bit of a bad time at ITV. I don’t want to go on about that, but it wasn’t the way she wanted to work.
And I decided the best thing for me to do would be to say, “Of course I know what we’re doing, and this is what we do,” because that’s what I felt she wanted to hear. She wanted to feel in safe hands.
I wasn’t arrogant enough to say, “I definitely know what I’m doing,” because I didn’t. But I put together a programme that I thought was the funniest programme with the material that we’d got.
And if you’re fans of hers, I can’t tell you what a joy it is to hear six episodes back-to-back with two of the cast – and also witness that magic between Julie and Victoria. Julie would say, “What’s this sketch about?” and then Vic would say, “Do you remember that woman that we saw?” and then Julie would come back with the perfect characterisation and do the sketch brilliantly.
And I say “do the sketch brilliantly” because another thing I keep banging on about is the rhythm of her sentences – the cadence; the way it rises and falls and has a pattern at the end. And if you say it the wrong way, it doesn’t land. It doesn’t become funny enough.
She wrote everything along those lines. So I know that Julie had an inbuilt Victorian monitor. Everything she read from Vic was delivered perfectly first time round. She had that inner sense of the way that Vic’s mind worked.
Abigoliah: When you guys were recording it in front of a live audience, were there any backstage shenanigans – or things you’d always do before a shoot – anything like that?
Geoff: Not really. I was of the impression sometimes when you go to see studio shows, the audience is there and some people’s attitude is: you just provide laughs for us. That’s all you’re there for.
Tom: You’re a sound effect.
Geoff: You’re a sound effect – and they tend to get treated rather badly.
I went to a sketch show being recorded where they do a sketch, and then the audience would just be left sitting around waiting for everybody to come back on set.
I used to run studios – everything I did was as if it was a live show. So Vic would do the stand-up at the beginning, and then she very often ran off. In fact, in one programme you can actually see her starting to take off her clothes because she got changed to be in another sketch.
And then I’d turn the lights down so everybody was watching the monitor, and then I’d run the insert material. And hopefully, if the next two people were ready, I’d bring the lights up and they were in the set, and we’d run it as fast as possible to keep the audience entertained. Because if you’re sitting there for two hours and you’ve come a long way to see this, you don’t want to be kept hanging around. So there was no time for anything backstage. It was all rush, rush, rush. Makeup and wardrobe were going berserk to try and get everybody ready.
And then occasionally, when we did have little gaps where we couldn’t put in material, we’d have rather obscure warm-up people. And my most favourite is: I got hold of a guy who came on in lederhosen and played the accordion and stamped his foot and got the audience to join in. And then some of the cast came out of their dressing rooms to join in as well.
And it was that kind of atmosphere that I liked to generate in the studio, because I think if you get that kind of atmosphere, the audience is going to be on your side rather than just holding their arms saying, “Okay – make me laugh.”
And if I can throw in a little supplementary thing here–
Abigoliah: Please.
Geoff: When the audience see a programme for the first time, they have no idea what they’re coming to see. So we recorded stuff like Acorn Antiques on day one, and on day two when I showed it to the audience, Vic said, “This is our soap opera.”
And they had the lady beforehand saying they didn’t understand what they were watching. They just sat there in total silence.
And by chance, what happened when we were recording episode two is that Julie had to come out as Mrs Overall with a tray of biscuits. And I don’t know whether you’ve experienced this, but any actor with food immediately starts to eat it. So she started eating the biscuits, and she started to deliver her line – and spat them all out over Victoria. Everyone corpsed, and I had to stop. We had to go back and do the scene again. And this time she didn’t eat it, and it went okay.
When I came to edit it, I just thought: I wonder – this is not really the style of Acorn Antiques, but I wonder if I should leave in that corpsing, and the going back and doing it again.
So by chance I left it in. I put a couple of frames of black in between, and I started the scene again. And at that precise moment, the audience realised what Acorn Antiques was all about.
And then I went back and showed the first episode again – and they laughed in all the right places, because then they knew.
Of course, that happened every single week, because usually week two, there’d be a brand-new audience who’d never seen the programme before, and never knew what was happening. It was only when we did series two that people looked forward to Acorn Antiques and cheered – which, incidentally, I discouraged, because the audience at home feels they’re not part of a party in the studio.
But it’s only in series two that they realised who everybody was, and what everybody was doing.
Abigoliah: I love in Acorn Antiques the small little jokes – like it’ll go to the “credits,” and then it comes back to them and they’re looking at the director, like, ready to start the scene again. It’s such a small joke.
And as you said, all the camera angles – like Victoria is in front of the camera when she shouldn’t be, so she ridiculously leans back. You’re not just watching a soap opera, you’re watching actors in the soap opera. It’s so fun.
Did you have a lot of problems with corpsing on set? Because it’s so ridiculous – not just Acorn Antiques, but all of it. Did you have to do a lot of reshoots? Or by the time you got there, was everyone in character?
Geoff: I’m usually very calm, Abi, when it comes to corpsing, because not being an actor myself, I can’t imagine what it’s like learning a load of lines and then having to do them in front of an audience with all the pressure. It’s Victoria’s lines – you want to do well – you don’t want to mess up. And then suddenly you’ll say the wrong thing and you have to stop and go again.
So I never, ever would get in a bad mood, because I think that doesn’t help. And it’s not who I am.
However: there was one scene in Acorn Antiques where they have – for some mysterious reason, mirroring a radio soap opera at the time – they changed the shop into a health farm. So Acorn Antiques suddenly became the Acorn Antiques Health Spa.
And Julie Walters came on in a leotard. But none of the rest of the cast had seen her. And there’d been some rather creative work in the leg area, shall I say. And she looked so ridiculous – because Mrs Overall looked ridiculous anyway – but her dressed up in a leotard…
The cast hadn’t seen her, and they started to laugh. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get them to stop laughing. And the clock was ticking, and we were getting nearer to dinner break, and we had to stop and clear the scene. Everybody had to get changed, and they just couldn’t get it right anyway.
I am told they could hear me shouting in the studio: “I’ve only got two minutes to do this.” That was about the only time.
And I can understand totally, because when you see her now, it is hilarious. And she was very naughty, not showing them what she was wearing beforehand.
But we didn’t have too much, because, you know, comedy isn’t funny when you’re doing it.
Abigoliah: Sorry – it’s such a truth. Comedy is not funny at all when you’re doing it. It’s very serious.
Geoff: Most people say, “Oh, can you tell jokes?” I can’t tell a joke for love nor money. But getting it right is a really serious and difficult thing.
So I always worry, and put the pressure on concentration and delivery. It’s tough getting it right every single time.
And one of the things I said to the cast right at the beginning when we started Acorn Antiques was: “Look, here’s the key. None of the cast of Acorn Antiques think that they are in a tatty soap opera. They’re all doing it for real, and one or two things go wrong. So don’t treat it as a joke. Treat it as if it’s your lifeline, and you’re earning money from it.”
And I think it’s those little things that make them concentrate, and stop the corpsing.
Usually the laughter happens at the read-through – say on a Tuesday if you’re in the studio at the weekend – because that’s when the cast see the script for the first time, or hear others perform it for the first time.
And then by doing it every single day, several times, you sometimes lose the humour of it – but you’ve got that out of your system, and you can concentrate on getting it right, rather than revelling in whether it’s funny or not.
Tom: So is there material that you shot that didn’t make it in – and do you have that material?
Abigoliah: Can we see it? Can we see that material?
Geoff: I wish, I wish. It was very difficult in those days. I think VHS had just come in, and there was no way that I would get all of the stuff done in the studio and recorded on VHS for me to see. That didn’t happen until a couple of years later.
So I don’t. And I wish I did, because yes – there were sketches. There’s a book by Jasper Rees that came out a couple of months ago which had a load of scripts of Vic’s stuff which never went out. So there is a lot of evidence of it, but I’ve not seen any of the sketches.
I don’t think the BBC kept them, and there was no way I could keep them, really.
Tom: Shame.
Geoff: It is a shame.
Abigoliah: On the question of “do you have this” – and I’m guessing the answer is no, but I put this in our questions anyway. Purely selfish: I can barely play the piano, but I really want to learn the song “Count Your Blessings,” and you can’t find that sheet music. Do you have any of Victoria’s sheet music?
Geoff: No, not at all.
Abigoliah: Who hooks me up, Geoff? I need that sweet music because I can’t play by ear.
Geoff: It’s a beautiful song.
Abigoliah: I just thought it was so sweet. It’s funny, but it’s so sweet. Yeah – I really like it. I like the other ones too, but there’s something about that one where I was like: I need this song in my life. I need to play it when I’m feeling down.
Tom: What are the parts, Geoff – as you look back on that show in particular – I know you worked with Victoria on lots of projects, but looking at that first show: those twelve plus the Christmas special… what are you most proud of? What stands out in your mind?
Geoff: I won’t say a sketch – I do have a favourite sketch, but I don’t think that helps. I think it’s taking it as a whole.
I’m so proud of a series that was written from a woman’s point of view, and championed all the things that men can’t write about.
There’s a song called “The Ballad of Barry and Freda,” which is called “Let’s Do It” in common parlance. And if you examine what that song is about: it’s about a woman saying, “Can we make love tonight?” and the man saying, “Oh, I’ve just got to do lagging. I’ve just got to grout the tiles. I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.” And she is desperate because everything she does doesn’t seem to work.
Now, at the time we did it, those kind of songs would have been completely reversed: it would have been the man saying, “Come on, love,” and the woman saying, “Oh, I’ve got a headache,” and all of that.
But what Victoria was writing about was much more real. And from a woman’s point of view, I don’t think that was really appreciated at the time. We just thought, “It’s a funny song, and it’s got lots of funny words that Vic likes to use,” like “Beat me on the backside with the Woman’s Weekly” – and incidentally, again, that’s a rhythm thing.
But that’s what I’m most proud of: it was the first series that really, I think, was a funny series performed by somebody who wasn’t the traditional female performer – being extremely funny – in work that she’d written and created, and music that she’d written and created – and that it had a lasting effect.
Because I still get asked to do these kinds of things. And although I’ve done a bit in my life, this is the thing that keeps coming back. Everybody seems to love that. And that itself is a great plus for me.
And it was the first real major series that I’d produced.
Abigoliah: How old were you when you produced it?
Tom: If it isn’t an indelicate question.
Geoff: Seven.
Abigoliah: If you don’t feel comfortable answering that–
Geoff: Oh no, no – listen, listen. My Wikipedia entry reveals all. I don’t know how people get this. But: it happened in 84, so I must have been 35.
Abigoliah: Very cool. And this was the first big project.
Geoff: This was the first big project that I’d kind of been given. And immediately after that I did a series with Lenny Henry – who is a Black comedian – and again, we broke a lot of traditional stereotypes in that series.
And I loved what I was doing at the time. It was just the kind of stuff I used to love to do.
And Vic was interesting because, as I said right at the beginning, she wasn’t alternative in inverted commas, but she wasn’t mainstream either. She just had a category all of her own.
Do you agree, Tom? Because you’ve seen how it all divided into the Oxbridge lot and she…
Tom: I see her as belonging to… one of the things I find interesting is: Ben Elton, in his autobiography, talks about the fact that the kind of stand-up he was doing on Saturday Live – which is kind of what we think of stand-up as now: people making observations and telling stories about their life – very few people were doing that.
But Victoria Wood was. And then there were a couple of other people – Jasper Carrott, Billy Connolly, Dave Allen – who were all doing that. None of whom were part of that alternative comedy scene either.
So it’s just these different influences coming together from different strands. But that’s one of the questions Abigoliah asked when we started talking about Victoria: French and Saunders were down at the Comic Strip – where was Victoria? And I said: Manchester.
Geoff: Well, she was writing plays, probably. That was the way she got into it: writing plays. And she came in via the theatrical route – she met Julie in a theatre.
Tom: So are you working on anything now, Geoff?
Geoff: Just looking back over my life and writing it all up because…
Tom: Are you doing a book? You must come on and plug your book when it’s out.
Geoff: Oh – will you still be around then? It’s so difficult. It’s so difficult because every time I sit…
It was a long time, you know. Victoria was forty years ago. And when I was talking to Jasper Rees about his book, he kept on saying, “Do you remember that?” – I don’t remember, because it was forty years ago. One tends not to.
But I’ve done so much since then, and I really want to pass on – this is not a kind of “I worked with this and I worked with that” – but: this is how you make a TV programme; this is what you do; this is what you go through. Because nobody imagines we go through anything. But I promise you, we do.
It’s written from the point of view of somebody who’s made TV all their life – what it’s like to make TV all their lives. And incidentally, on the way I work with these fabulous people. So it’s semi-autobiographical, but only in that respect.
Abigoliah: That is one question I wanted to ask: do you have any advice to people who are trying their hand at directing and producing television comedy – maybe how to get into it, or how to find people to collaborate with? Do you have any advice for the kids?
Geoff: If you look at what it appears online now – on TikTok and everything else – I think people have found their own way. They do it differently. They don’t link up like we used to in the old days and make formal connections.
You find somebody who can hold a phone and shoot you in this way and that way. A lot of them are really professionally made and edited. I think that’s the way you do it now. You make a series of those kind of things, and maybe it comes to the attention – as a lot has – of broadcasters who think, “This should go further. We should take this further.”
In the old days you used to have to make pilots, and they were very hit-and-miss things. Sometimes they didn’t work. I made a few in my time. But nowadays you just pick up a phone, get together people around you, write in an informal way. It’s much easier than it used to be, because there are so many more platforms to show your stuff on.
Tom: Yeah. If you were a sitcom writer in the 70s, you could sell your show to the BBC or ITV – or end of list.
Geoff: That’s it.
Abigoliah: And also – my partner is a filmmaker – and we’ve talked about how kit has become more and more accessible and less expensive. You can film so much on one of these. In the 70s, that wasn’t a freaking option. And distributing it through online platforms – you’re right, we do have that nowadays.
Geoff: Young people…
Tom: They don’t know they’re born.
Geoff: Oh, honestly. All this was green when I started.
Vic wrote a series of plays in the mid-1980s – sort of half-hours, unrelated narrative half-hours – and I didn’t want to shoot them on film because at the time video was taking over from film, and I hated that habit: the moment you went out through the front door it was on film. A lot of standard sitcoms had that.
Because a film camera obviously isn’t tied to anything. Do you know that in those days you weren’t even able to see what picture the film camera was looking at? Because monitors showing that were virtually unheard of. You had to trust the camera person that they would shoot what you would want. And it wasn’t until the next day when you saw it back that you’d know for certain.
It was unbelievable – the difference. But the moment video came in, there was this kind of halfway house. And I said to Vic, “I want to shoot this series on video.” And she said, “Well, you’ll be interested to hear I’ve written one about hiking on a moor” – like mountainside, completely in the middle of nowhere – and the problems of people hiking.
You remember what programme I’m referring to?
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Geoff: Tom – it’s one of the Victoria Wood half-hours. Now, to get that on video required a video camera, a huge video recorder that had to be put on a sledge to drag around the countryside, and a man who monitored the picture that was receiving – under a black shroud.
So you had this big material, big box, and a man under a black shroud, and a whole host of things behind. Nowadays it’s this–
Abigoliah: It sounds like you’re describing one of those old Victorian cameras, where you had to stand still for five minutes.
Geoff: It had smoke coming out when you took the photo.
Abigoliah: Yeah!
Geoff: Yeah, absolutely.
Abigoliah: Wow.
Geoff: It did seem – and this is part of what I’m writing about – it’s all changed so dramatically in my lifetime, and for the better. It’s hard to comprehend what we used to do in those days.
Tom: Geoff, there are two questions we like to finish on. Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time.
Abigoliah: Yeah – thank you.
Tom: It’s been absolutely incredible. It’s been so nice to see you again. Question one is: what else should we be watching? Obviously we’re going to watch things like Only Fools and Horses, Blackadder. Those are on the list – those are all coming. Are there any forgotten gems we might have overlooked? And you are allowed to nominate your own work.
Geoff: Oh gosh. I can’t really think of anything you haven’t covered, because I’ve seen the areas you’ve covered. And I know your brief is to explain programmes that were extremely popular.
I know The Good Life and all of those kind of things you’re probably going to cover – what they showed about Britain and social things. And of course Croft and Perry’s work, I’m assuming, is included in your list.
Tom: Spoilers for season two: but yeah, both The Good Life and Dad’s Army are on the list.
Geoff: Those are the classic ones everybody looks to. Still, I liked Steptoe and Son.
Abigoliah: What’s that about?
Geoff: We have an expression called a rag-and-bone man. They used to go around the streets with a horse at the front and a cart at the back, and invite you to chuck things like old boilers or cookers – anything you had to throw out – and leave them on the van. They’d take them away, get them melted down or something.
It was an early form of recycling – though they never thought of it as recycling. They were thought of as rubbish people.
And this was a father and son who owned this business. The father was old school, played by an actor who removed his teeth every time he was in front of a camera, which made him look fifty years older. And the younger son thought he was really the man about town and tried desperately hard.
Please do that, because I think what that programme illustrates about Britain in those days is so important, brilliantly written, and hilarious.
Abigoliah: Who was in it, or who wrote it?
Geoff: Galton and Simpson wrote it. And Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell – Wilfrid Brambell played the old man, Harry H. Corbett his son.
There were lots of moments where the son would try to break out of the house and live his own life – leave his dad, find a girlfriend, settle down – and his dad would always block it somehow. Sometimes by appearing to be incapable of living without the son. It’s full of extraordinary writing. Please, please – there’s my nomination.
Tom: Lovely. There was an American remake – I don’t know if you saw it – Sanford and Son.
Abigoliah: I know Sanford and Son!
Tom: Yes. That’s the American version of Steptoe and Son.
Abigoliah: Yes! Let’s watch it. We should do a – sorry, podmin – we should do a series of what everyone we have on recommends.
Tom: That’s in the back of my mind.
Abigoliah: Okay, good. Tom’s actually in charge. I’m just here to be the foil – the one to be like, “What’s a Victoria Wood?” He’s the brains behind this.
Geoff: Well, here’s an idea for you for series five and six.
Tom: Yes.
Geoff: I’ve always been very intrigued by a programme like The Office. Because, as you know, The Office started in the UK, but was then adapted to the States and has had fifteen, sixteen different versions made of it.
And what’s really interesting is: when you examine how different countries translate all the characters that are in the office – how they view their equivalent of our stereotypes, and what their stereotypes are.
This is a bit nerdy, perhaps, but if you can get a translation, it’s fascinating to see how different countries view the hierarchies of people working. Working in an office is pretty standard throughout the world, but different countries have different ways of looking at different people.
And I always thought that was really interesting because I did see a translation of a couple of them – who they cast, why they cast, why the stories went where they did. Interesting. But that’s a nerd’s thing for a future series.
That’s question one. What was question two?
Tom: Question two is: we give this podcast away for free. We don’t make any money out of it and we haven’t offered you a fee, Geoff. But we wondered: in lieu of that, is there a charity that you support that you think our literally hundreds of listeners should donate to?
Geoff: Well, it depends when this goes out, but I used to do a lot of work for Children in Need. And I would recommend that everybody keeps that going, because it’s such an amazing, huge organisation. I love everything they do. I’ve been part of Children in Need on a couple of occasions, and I loved it. It was so rewarding. So please, please, please.
Tom: Excellent. That’s what we’ll do. Geoff Posner, thank you so much for joining us. This has been an absolute honour and a treat.
Geoff: Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Take care.
Abigoliah: Thank you.
Tom: That was Geoff. How nice to see him again. And how interesting that he brought up The Office, because that – if you remember, Abi – is what we’re going to be watching next.
Abigoliah: I know – I’m looking forward to it.
Tom: And you’ve seen the American Office, haven’t you?
Abigoliah: Yes, I have seen the American Office. I haven’t seen the British one. I’m very excited. As he said: how are they different? How are the archetypes different? How do they portray them in America versus Britain? I’m going to go ahead and guess: far more upbeat and happy in America.
Tom: That would not be unfair. Yeah – no spoilers.
I mean, there’s still quite a wide streak of sourness running through the American one, but yes. Just imagine how far they’ve had to drag the lever in order to make it palatable for mainstream American television – and now think where that lever started.
Abigoliah: I can’t wait to see. I can’t wait to see, guys.
Of course: thank you as always for listening to All British Comedy Explained. If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe on your podcatcher app. And if you have time, maybe give us a five-star review – it helps other people to find the show.
We are on social media: britishcomedypod on Instagram and TikTok. And we also have a Substack.
Tom: We do, yes. So you’ll get one essay every two weeks, complementing the show we’ve been watching the previous week.
Abigoliah: All right, guys – we will see you next time.
Tom: Until next time.