Andy Hamilton

A gentle poke under the bonnet of Andy's groundbreaking comedy, from Outnumbered to Drop the Dead Donkey and Power Monkeys. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I'm sat here with the comedian, comedy screenwriter, director, novelist, amateur footballer, co-creator of Drop the Dead Donkey, and Outnumbered with Guy Jenkin, whoever he is. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Andy Hamilton.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

How are you, Andy?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

I'm very well. I'm a bit worried about your intro if Guy hears it, but yes, I'm fine. Thank you. Well, you know.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Do it again if he hears it. Always happy to print a retraction. So I usually, in a rather sort of obvious way, trot through my guest's biography. Trevor Burrus And I've written down here, grew up next to Bomb site. Yes. Cambridge, Harrods, Harrods. Post Office and the BBC. Why did you laugh at Harrods?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

It's the fact that it's in my C what you regard as my biography. I worked there during the Christmas sale, yeah. It was a very funny couple of weeks. Yeah. I enjoyed it hugely.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I worked there too. Very quick confession. Won't be much of a detail. Yes. But I worked there when the so-called gap year. Yes. You know, I grew up in Metropolitan Essex. Right. And when friends went off and saw the world, I only got as far as Knightsbridge. Right. And I worked in Harrods, and something happened which to this day I have never forgotten. Evita was on. I sold theatre tickets in Harrods.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

And Evita was on, and this particularly obnoxious American came up to the counter and said, I don't do accents. As regular listeners, no. I said, two tickets for Avita, please. And I said, in a way by then well rehearsed, I said, there are no tickets available for Avita, sir. If you'd like to get there early and queue, there may be some returns on the door. And he said, No, you misunderstand me. I want two tickets for Avita tonight. And I said, Well, I'm terribly sorry, sir. And then he went down there, but this is Harrods. And I said, Yes, sir. And you can get anything in Harrods. Yes, sir. And it escalated. And he asked to see my boss, who at the time was a stand-in boss from Manchester called Gerald. It was very, very camp. And Gerald had been listening to this and was very much, thank God, on my side. And so I called out in a sort of equally camp way, said Gerald. And he trotted over. And so the American was given his chance to pitch the fact that there he was in Harrods with money, wanting two tickets for a vita this evening. And Gerald just sort of turned on his heel and said, Well, tough Ted, Sunny Bunny. Which is not a Harrod's response. No. Which is why I've never forgotten him for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Well, at least you were allowed to actually interact with the general public, because they took one look at me and said, Right, I think you should work in the packing department. So I was in the packing department, which turned out to be huge fun. I was surrounded by lots of Iranian students. We would keep ourselves amused by lots of snobbery involved at Harold S. Oh yeah. So a dish the size of thumb would come down and they'd say they want it delivered by the van, you know, but just for the prestige of the green van pulling up outside the front door. So on our last day, we got one of these, like a tiny little tiny, tiny bowl, like a a gnat's B day. So we got the biggest export crate we could find, filled it with sort of straw and bubble wrap, and put this tiny bowl in the middle with a little complement slip, and then filled it with more straw and bubble wrap. We then we ha nailed down the rims, you know, because it's a tough export crate, and put it out. So I somewhere there was a very snobby person who took delivery of this massive export crate. We were told you had to put your packer's number on. And that meant that if your package there was a breakage, it came out of your wages. Well, what happened was you never put your number. Right. So I've got a vivid memory after about three days, this sort of convener character came in and said, Right, okay, gather around everybody. Listen. Listen. He said, okay, packer number eighty-two, you had a breakage. It was from China, and someone go, eighty-two, and say, Well, I I'm not China, I'm toys. You know. They go, right, packer number 41, glassware, you've got to break it. Well, I'm not glassware, I'm fabric. And in the end, this guy lost his temper and he said, Listen, how's this system going to work if none of you put down your real number? And it was perfect because you just there was a general kind of giggle as people thought, well, you've answered your own question there. Yeah, we never put down our own numbers. And the first day of the sale, I remember it was an interesting education in life. The first day of the sale, as I walked out, I was handed a lovely letter from the Harrods management, which in those days was House of Fraser, was it, I suppose. It was pre-alphire. But anyway, it was a lovely letter, dear I can't remember if it had my name, but you know, thank you so much for conjure helping to make the first day of the Harrods Christmas Sale such a resounding success. I thought, well, isn't that nice? What a nice piece of human interaction. And then I moved forward about three steps and this guy frisked me. In case I was nicking stuff, and I just thought that's sort of quite instructive, you know. Yeah. That's sort of the reality of the commercial world, you know. But no, I had a great time now. It's extraordinary underneath how as you probably saw it, is that extraordinary city of tunnels and and they've got names like and you know, I remember being allowed to drive, you've got these little vehicles.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Oh, we didn't know about the vehicles.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Oh, yeah. I crashed mine into a confectioner cage, and they wouldn't let me drive one anymore.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I think it's fair to say that in different ways for both of us, it was a very formative experience. It was. Did you not think then about writing a sitcom?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

But then we're talking about 71, something like that, 72. I'd I had no idea what I was going to do then say.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Well, what you did do was you went to the BBC, worked on the two Ronnies.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yes. I in the interests of transparency. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Are you pausing because I've left out the post office?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

No. No. In the interest of transparency, that appears on my C V, The Two Roddies. And I did get a sketch on the Two Ronnies, but I was not a prolific writer for the Two Ronnies. I got I mean, I went to the BBC in the sense that where I started was on a show called Weekending on Radio Four, which was a topical comedy program. And that was where I started. But I mean I was never like all writers, you know, I was never BBC staff. Yeah. You were freelancers, but in those days, the place you went to learn and to do it was the BBC. So that's where I started, yeah. And then I drifted across to Telegram.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And eventually became one of the original writers and not the nine o'clock news. Yeah. Were you an early worshipper at the shrine of John Lloyd?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

I'd worked with him. If that's what you know. John was a young well, we were all young then. John was a young radio producer when I he was already there but not hadn't been there very long when I started. And so he produced shows that I worked on, like the News HUDlines, some let an election special, and various you know, so I knew John. And then John was given this job at BBC Television. I was already over there working on shows for Les Dawson and stuff like that. And then John rang me and said, They've given me an office and I'm supposed to make a topical show. So I went round to see him, and it was literally just an office, a desk and a phone. And then they paired in with Sean Hardy, which was who was from Current Affairs. And then yeah, I had a lot of fun. Working on any show from the ground up is a lot of fun, particularly if it's a show where by definition you are free to try anything. That was the first TV show that I really enjoyed a lot. I'd sort of enjoyed the others, but I hadn't been truly excited by them. I remember walking in one day saying, I've got this mad idea for a sketch, but we'd need to film it with dolphins. And that was the only show where I I knew that there was a chance they'd go, yeah, all right, we'd try that. And we did, and it worked. So being in at the inception of a show is always exciting, you know. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

This is going to be a stupid question. I'm very embarrassed, but I believe in being completely honest. I don't recall a sketch about dolphins.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Can you ad for it was around the time when everyone was saying the American people were being given the choice of Carter or Reagan. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. And as happens at every election, commentators were saying, Well, what sort of a choice is that? I mean it happens now, but it happened then. We did a political ad for a third independent candidate that was a dolphin. Yeah. And then we went and filmed with the dolphins at Woburn, I think. And it was huge fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

I'm not going to be the only one who goes onto YouTube in the desperate hope of finding.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

I think it ought to be there somewhere, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Well, I'll let you know if it isn't. You can help me chase it down. So since then I'm rolling on a lot. Yes. One of the things for which you're known on screen and on the radio is as a panelist. Yeah. And you've done all of them. Sorry, I haven't a clue, news quiz, have I got news, obviously, QI, all of those things. Which is your favorite to appear on?

SPEAKER_02 10:16

I don't know, Jeremy, if I'm honest. They're all slightly different. QI is attractive because you don't have to do any thinking beforehand. You just turn up and wing it. Because you don't know what the chairman's going to talk about or chairwoman. I enjoy Have I Got News for You a lot. I've done that a lot of times. I always have a lot of fun doing that. I'm sorry I have no clue is more like doing a lot of games, a lot of sort of comedy games. So that's slightly harder work, but it's also very can be very exciting. Well, it is very exciting to do. They get massive audiences in huge theatres. The first time I ever did it, Humphrey Littleton walked on, and it was like Springsteen had walked on. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

The two were often confused when Humphrey was alive. It surprised me one day when a I don't use this phrase very often, but an ex-friend of mine.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Okay. We won't go there.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

We can, I don't think to hide. We were friends until I invested in his film. I won't say any more than that. Oh, okay. And he sent through a briefing document for sorry, I haven't a clue. And said, you know, if you I sent it to lots of people. Anyone's got any ideas for blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh, well, this is fun, much more fun than what I'm doing. So I spent a few hours thinking, is that funny? Is that funny? All right. But at the same time it made me feel well I I thought it was a bit less prepared than this. And it made me quite cynical after that.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Oh right. Well, some of the games obviously you had to prep. But there are games which genuinely you don't prep for. The greatest fun is invariably in the games where you don't prep. Yeah. I would say. Of course. If it works, if it flies. But yeah, things like the book titles and stuff. I mean everyone always says, oh, you're all so quick and everything. They're also we're edited. Everyone sounds quick if they're edited because they don't believe in the thinking time. Sorry, I'm just going to make a note of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

So moving on. You wrote and appeared in a wonderful radio comedy show called Harry's Game.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Old Harry's Game. Old Harry's Game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Where you offered yourself as Satan. Comfortable in that role?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah. It was a bit of a stretch, but not as much as it should have been, maybe. No, I was comfortable in it. And it and it won a very loyal and committed audience. And it's funny because I was coming up the escalator yesterday at a London Bridge, and as I emerged at the top, this person who was going the other way said, Ah, you should come up from hell. And I get a lot of interaction with the public from that show. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

That's really nice interaction. I like that. What about there's another character that you do I I confess I've never ever watched it. But you're the voice of Dr. Elephant, the dentist in Pepper Pig.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Can you do the voice for me?

SPEAKER_02 13:19

It's my voice. Oh, okay. I thought it might be. I I I'm not a good enough actor to take on the persona of an elephant who's trained in dentistry. Disappointingly, he never does any dentistry in the street. Well, why is that? I don't know. I've I've asked the writers to write me an episode where I'd do some root canal work, but I'm intrigued how an elephant would do it. But no, I'm the dad of one of the kids, Pepper's friend. Mostly I'm dropping him off at parties and things like that. But there's some quite good little adult orientated jokes. Like quite often, you know, you'll be dropping him off at a party and and the mum will say, Oh, do you want to stay? And you say, No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. No, no, thanks, but uh I'll be back later, you know, to pick him up. But yeah, I've yeah, I've been him for a while. But I don't do them very often. I I mean it's it's once in the blue moon I get caught in a studio and I do um lines. And of course now it's a huge global success. When they started, it was in a little urban farm. The studio was in a little urban farm. And so they would say, Okay, Andy, can you do line seven? And then they said, just wait for the chickens to calm down. You'd wait for a gap in the chickens and then you'd do it. And then you know, then they'd uh write down line eleven, just wait for the peaks to go quiet, and then you'd wait, and then you'd And that was the first series. By the time the second series came around, they were in a nice plush studio in Soho and Yeah, the rest is obvious.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So I'm skirting around outnumbered and drop the dead donkey because I want to go back and talk about those. But you've written a couple of novels, at least.

unknown 15:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I'm covering myself there.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

I only know about two of them. You're right. I've written two novels. I wrote one called The Star Witness, and I wrote a novel called Longhand, which is unique in the sense that it was published in my actual handwriting. So we think that that's the first time a a narrative work I mean obviously you've got things like Waynewright's walks and stuff, but I think that's the first time since William Caxton put all those poor monks out of work that that's been done. I wrote out the whole novel in my handwriting and it was published in my handwriting because it is a letter that's been left behind by a character.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

But a mutual friend of ours tells me that you write everything longhand.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yes, I do. I think there's a few writers like that. It's a sort of generational thing. In fact, my co-creator, Guy Jenkin, he also he starts longhand just because now that feels the most natural thing to do. There is some kind of equation, some kind of process going on at work when you're setting it down on paper. There's something to do with the physical action of handwriting that gets me in a certain mood.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

It also gets things into the memory, I think, for most people. Right. I always used to tell my staff to sit there with bloody laptops making notes. Yeah. You'll remember it if you write it.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, I found it it was strange actually, because a lot of people said, Oh, it must have been a terrible grind writing it out. There were some days when I found it very relaxing. I have a reasonably regular sort of italic style handwriting, and I knew what I was going to write. I didn't just stick it down. So it was quite a relaxing sort of therapeutic exercise. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I get that completely.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

So we haven't talked about live shows because you are coming to my hometown in September. So do not let me forget to ask you about live shows. No, okay. Come back to that. And I I I never talk about people's awards because I've worked on so many award ceremonies. No exaggeration, but the high hundreds, possibly even more. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. So I'm quite cynical about awards. Yes. But I did note that you were given a lifetime achievement award, lifetime achievement in television award by the RTS. Important award. Lifetime achievement. In 1993. Yeah, I know. At the age of 39. I know. What was the bloody point in going on after that?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

I don't know. I think they were just trying to psych me out. It'd make me wonder what they knew that I didn't. Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise, if I'm honest. I looked older than I was, to be fair, by that stage. I'd gone bald and, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Right. Now, listen. Drop the dead donkey.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Does that really properly make your name and get you noticed everywhere?

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Um Well, it certainly helped. Yeah, that was the first big sort of breakout show, I'd say, that me and Guy had been writing as a pair for a while. We wrote and we still do wrote as individuals on our own projects, but we paired up on various shows. And that was the first one that really took and it did change things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

It's possible There are a few people listening, perhaps our Belgian fans. Who are not familiar with Drop the Dead Donkey, although I think there have been other European kind of attempts at the same thing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. In a nutshell, give us the mise en scène, as it were.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Aaron Ross Powell It's a workplace sitcom about lots of dysfunctional characters working in an office, but it just so happens that the office is a a news company making TV news programs. That was the starting point, was Guy and I wanted to write a workplace sitcom, because there hadn't been one for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Trevor Burrus But it wasn't just a workplace sitcom. It was a topical workplace sitcom.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah, we left That was the other thing, was we thought, well, it's attractive because the currency that they work in, the thing that they make, is the news. So we thought it would be exciting to do a show where people watch it and think, well, that just happened. He's just made a joke about Robert Maxwell falling off his boat. That's just that only just happened. We just thought that would give it an extra sort of frisom. That was actually secondary to a character-led office sitcom, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Did you do a joke days after Robert Maxwell drowned?

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Aaron Ross Powell We had to we no, not after he drowned. He went missing just like a couple of hours before we were about to record. We had a running joke at his expense. You did lots of jokes about Robert Maxwell, particularly early on, partly because he always sent a cease and desist letter. So, you know, he operated very Trumpian sort of way of operating. You always got a letter saying, if you do this again, I will sue you for vast amounts of money. So there was a little bit of fun to be had in just sort of poking the nest a bit. He was a comic figure to us. But in this particular episode we had a running joke about him, and because there was uncertainty about what had happened to him, I think we ended up taking it out, you know, at the edit. So he was quite inconvenient of him. Sort of typical of the man. But then afterwards, in the weeks that followed, yeah, we did do jokes about him. Well, partly because what came out into the public domain was that he was a crook and stuff. But we kind of knew.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

So if it were in production now, and I won't be the only one who devoutly wishes that it were. Let's say the five million pound man, Mr. Farage. How would you be handling that story? How would the newsroom be handling the latest revelation?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Because if you work in news and if the if that's the sort of the grist of your day, I mean, you obviously develop a sort of fairly skeptical, at least, attitude towards him. I mean Farage is quite comic already. Yeah, yeah. You know, because all characters who take themselves seriously or who are a bit delusional are already intrinsically comic. So quite a lot of powerful people have inadvertently already made themselves comic, and he's one of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

My sense, I don't know if you share this, but my sense is that he's overstepped the mark. They're obviously going to be cultural. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

I'm not sure he's got that. You know, the Trump syndrome whereby his hardcore would follow him even if he went out and sort of murdered nuns. I don't think Nigel Farage has that incredibly tight hold on his followers, you know. I think there are a lot of people who approve of him and stuff. I think he clearly likes money a lot. I mean it was always sort of laughable that he dressed himself up as a man of the people, he was merchant banker, wasn't he, who boasted about boasted about the long lunches he had in the city and stuff. It was always slightly ludicrous that he portrayed himself as a man of the people. But I think going out and basically hoovering up a lot of money and buying expensive suits and just generally and he's created a lot of questions, of course. And I remember b having conversations with journalists a few years ago where they would say money could be the downfall of Farage, you know. Because it's all a little bit vague where the money's been coming from. Also I I would have thought it might have pissed off some of his particularly Richard Tys, the fact that he had this massive five million gift at a time when there were people at UKIP and Brexit Party that were putting their hand in their pocket to keep it going, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

So to the gentler environment of Outnumbered, which trust me, Andy, I'm not just saying this to flatter. It is genuinely my favourite sitcom since I was a teenage fanatical fan of Reggie Perrin and one or two things like that. It has brought me back to sitcom. I think it's wonderful. And I don't know if that's to what extent that's down to the casting, whether it's down to the way you got the kids to be in verticommas themselves. Maybe it's the gentleness of the whole thing. The fact that it's not depressing.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

It's interesting. I mean, if you actually boiled it down and looked at the topics that were tackled in the episodes, a lot of them were quite sort of serious topics and occasionally quite edgy. But because the show created an atmosphere of a chaotic but fundamentally happy family, then I think it didn't distance people. I think people were drawn in, you know. It's a show that had a cross-generational appeal. Well, after the first series went out, there was a website, I can't remember what it was called now, but this guy got in touch, he said, I think you need to see our message board. He sent us a cross a copy, and all these messages were from people who loved the series. But you realise it ranged from twelve-year-olds to grannies. And that was when we realized that actually the show had a huge reach. And the naturalism was a kind of wonderful accident in some ways. So I was making a show called Bedtime, and in it I needed a scene between the actor Kevin McNally and a seven-year-old girl who was his daughter in the scene. And I decided to cast my daughter as a seven-year-old girl for two reasons. One that she had a kind of comic presence about her, and the other one was I thought it'll be faster. I was on a tight schedule. I thought I won't have to get to know the kid, it'll just be quicker. Nothing whatsoever to do with money. Or nepotism. Anyway, I was chatting with Kevin before we shot the scene at Ealing Studios. I said to him, Ah, I've never been happy with any performance I've got out of a kid on tele, you know? I said, they never look right, they never feel like a kid. I don't know what it is. And Kevin just said, Well, don't show her the script. I said, What? He said, Don't show it to her. Just tell her the sequence. So that's what we did. I told Isabel, my daughter, the sequence. And then Kevin responded, you know, Kevin was able to stick to the lines and and she gave us roughly the lines, but in a slightly customized version. But I remember being at the edit, and I was sort of reading the newspaper while the editor was looking for some stuff, and I heard him let out this whoop of triumph. And I said, What? What have you found? And he found this table. He said, Look at this, look at this, look at this. And it was a shot where Isabel was talking, like a seven-year-old girl would talk. And while she was talking, she got the palm of her hand and she r rotated it on her nose. So she was rubbing her face while she was talking. My editor Steve said, I've been editing for 30 years. I've never had a kid do an unconscious, natural moment like that while they're doing it. So when we started to have the idea of doing a life about the chaos of a family with small children, it was Guy who said, why don't we use that technique you used there? And the the advantage of it was what makes kids look unnatural on tele or what did was the fact that they look at the adult and look at the person speaking to them. To most kids, the adult is the least interesting thing in the room. They'll talk to you, but they won't be looking at you while they talk to you. That is that. They were told to stand on a particular spot for the shot. They had to learn the lines the night before. They had big men in puffer jackets shouting action. We thought we would just strip out all the things that make filming a chore for kids. We had various techniques that gave them some room and the crew bought into it brilliantly, you know. And and all the things that everyone obsesses about on television, you suddenly realized how unimportant many of them are. For instance, you know, people talk about continuity and when Ramona Marquez, who played Karen, well when we did the the sample, the pilot, she was four. Whenever she was drawing, I mean for her the scene was usually about what she was drawing. That was the most important thing. But obviously we didn't do retakes and pickups and stuff, but occasionally when we had to go back over something, her pencil changes colour every shot. And I remember one lovely exchange we just started, and we had a lovely PA. She was very well trained, very professional, and we were picking something up, you know, we'd seen and Sarah I could hear her, I had the cans, the mic, I could hear the conversation, and I could hear her saying to Ramona, Ramona, we're just about to redo something. Could you pick up the blue pencil that you had? And Ramona just said, But I'm doing the sun now. She said, yellow. And the PA said, Yes, but it would be helpful if you just had the blue. She said, Well, I can't do a blue sun because there'll be a blue sun against the blue sky. You won't be able to see it. Yeah, we just went over to Sarah and said, Look, don't worry about it. No one will ever notice. And no one ever has noticed.

unknown 29:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

In all those years. No one has ever come up to me and said, God, it's full of continuity errors, that show.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

No. And you know how many people would love you to do more outnumbered, even if they're simply Christmas specials. But presumably the age of the kids. Well, it would be a different How'd you do it? I mean, we did one.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

No, we did loads of Christmas specials when the kids were kids. But we did one Yeah, went out last Christmas with them as adults. So the stories were, you know, because your kids are still your kids even when they're adults. We had quite a big storyline, which was that the dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer because we thought the show always set out to reflect all the rites of passage. And, you know, if you get three kids in their and who are now in their twenties, then statistically there's a reasonable chance that one of the parents might have a problem. And so we wrote around that topic. And we might visit the family again. The trouble is the audience don't want them to grow up. You know, the audience would l like to freeze them in aspic and and for them to always be that kid that they remember, you know. But but they're a fantastic cast. Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner were brilliant in terms of their performances, but also in terms of their attitude. They're f two very kind people, and so they always created space for the kids. You had to do for reasons to do with some very actually very well designed regulations about children's filming. You always had to do the kids stuff first and get out of the way, you know, uh stay within the hours, you know. And the kids were actually great. They were lovely as kids. And doing the Christmas special last year, they've grown in a lovely adults. So it was a really nice, really enjoyable experience.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Aaron Ross Powell And you're not just writer, you're co-producer, co-director. We co-direct that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Well, there's a very particular style of working with the kids that you know it would be difficult to hand over. Well, that's what you need.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

A lifetime achievement award. Oh, all right then. When you've done a whole new series. Not until then. Also, before we get to the live shows, which you're going to remind me about in a minute. Yes. I can't forget the whole ballot monkeys and power monkeys stuff. Because I just love that. How do they make it so topical? It's kind of obvious. And yet, why does it work? Why does it hit the mark as often as it does? And why can't we have more of it? So I've come up with an idea for you. Okay, go on. And you know, you talked about somebody shouting at you on an escalator the other day. This must happen absolutely the whole time. But surely I'm pitching to you now. Because I want you to go away and bloody write this. Okay. Surely the next one is with Burnham most of the time on the train. Yeah. The pretentious kind of stick is the sort of Deus ex-Manchester. Which I think, you know, probably on his family crest when he eventually gets one. So you've got sometimes the train breaks down, what happens then?

SPEAKER_02 32:27

So is this in the context of the next general election?

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Trevor Burrus You find the context. I don't know, it just needs to be made. No. I mean it doesn't require a general election, just the running of government or the process of devolution. And the mayors all going on their various trains to the wrong parts of the country. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And beautiful Burnham, as somebody might refer to him with his gorgeous eyebrows. There's so much going on there, surely.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah, you are right, there's a lot going on. I mean Monkeys. That feels like a show. I didn't mean that. I'm gonna make I'm gonna cop out and say, I think that's a show for a younger man to write there. Going back to what you were saying about ballot monkeys and power monkeys, that was like topical writing on steroids. Because what we had were those in the case of ballot monkeys, those buses, they were all in the car park at Pinewood. And then in Power Monkeys the sets were all built in little offices at Pinewood. And the writers, because it wasn't just me and Guy, we had three other writers, four in fact. And we were staying in a hotel and we would get up at six in the morning, look at the papers, look at the news. You know, about half the script had to be filled in with topical updates. So we we then wrote like crazy from sort of half six, seven till ten. Then the they got dropped into the scripts, these new bits, the cast turned up at eleven, there were four buses with four directors, four casts, and then you film from like eleven till two, maybe three, then you went to your editor, four directors, four separate editors, you went, you edited your separate segments, then we had to join all the segments up with one editor to make the show, and we did literally one of those shows. The first half was being broadcast while the second half was being sent over to them. That's how tight it got. At ten o'clock at night. So we delivered the first half, sent it across on the wire at ten, but we hadn't completed the second half. The second half just made it in time, yeah. That was like Guy and I had sort of worked out what's the most frightening way of doing a topical program. But it was great fun, and it it was a very happy show, partly because no one had time to worry about anything. Yeah, yeah. There was no time to worry about anything. You just had to get it done. And we had some wonderful actors, they all really bought into that ethic.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I know my idea is it's already passe and it's it's only Thursday. When you come up with a grown-up idea, would you do it again?

SPEAKER_02 35:11

I don't know. I mean, possibly. I think the the election or something like that gave it an energy, because one Ballot Monkeys was about an election, and then Power Monkeys was built around the Brexit vote and the possibility of Trump winning, it was very close to the American election. Trump hadn't won yet, and then we had another storyline set in Putin's Russia. But having an event that's kind of drives it like that is useful. So maybe I don't know. They were long days. And I'm not scared of hard work, but I'm a bit more strategic now about how hard I'm prepared to work.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

On behalf of your army of fans, I merely beg you to consider it. Now, listen, sadly we don't have time to talk about that's a joke. Let's talk about the live shows because what is it, September? 29th of September. I will be at the Apex in Berris and Evans. So for those around the rest of the country, you'll have to Google and find out where everybody's going.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

I'm going to Colchester. It's not a massive tour. It's not a rock and roll tour.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

It sounds quite genteel.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Yes, genteel is a good word. It's funny. It's not genteel on the night. It's called Night to Remember, and it's about memory. It's about the phenomenon of memory, and I kind of explore the wonder and the curse of the human memory. At the end of the first off, I leave a bucket on the front of the stage and invite the audience to write out defining memories or memories that have particular significance for them, and then we comically explore and discuss those. So it's funny. The main theme is laughter, but we do get to sort of kick around and explore some of the interesting aspects of how memory works. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

So again, there is an element of seat of your pants.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Less so than some other things I've done. But yeah, there is in the after the interval, yeah, when we when we go through the audience's memories. Because I did three in the spring, and what was interesting was how varied people's idea of a kind of salient memory. It varied from sort of almost forgot long-lost childhood memories to adult memories and quite a lot of guilty memories, quite a lot of people remembering things they did as a kid that they're secretly ashamed of, but they're prepared to tell us about.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Memories are a fascinating thing. I've just done a podcast with my aunt, who is 105. Wow. And has very sharp memories of being in the army as a radar girl. And remembers with absolute clarity why she chose the army, because the colors suited her. And hitching a lift on a hay cart to come up to the West End to meet some American GIs. And you don't doubt any of that and the freshness of that in her mind. Yeah, yeah. Which is what we think we know about old age. And you're more likely to forget the things you've done recently than the things that happened at the nearer the outset. It's extraordinary.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Well, I had the idea for this show when I was writing a memoir, and I suddenly realized even though the memoir was quite a narrow one, it was about my relationship with football from being obsessed with it when I was five to being slightly disenchanted with it. Now, but what was interesting as I was writing it was it brings home how the plasticity of your memory, you know, because some of the memories you thought, I'm not sure it happened that way. Because they're all stories that you tell yourselves, aren't they? And each time you bring them out, you probably decorate them and embellish them and improve them. So there's quite often I thought I'd better put a disclaimer on that one. And there was one in my initial draft I had, and then one day I was just sitting there looking at it and I thought, actually, I think that happened to my mate. And the other thing that struck me was when I started doing the research, memory gets a very bad press now in the scientific community. You know, it's always, oh, it's very unreliable because it's filtered through the prism of consciousness and and actually there's no such thing as consciousness, you know, in even reality might be an illusion, it's all that sort of stuff. And I kind of wanted to show that gave memory some credit for the good it does, you know, like keep us alive and help us survive. But also it provides us with sustenance and sort of resource. You know, I I had a period where I was a bit poorly and I was in hospital, and I was conscious that that's how I was idling away the hours, was actually just having a quick troll through lots of memories, thinking, well, I'm very lucky to have that resource.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

I've started doing that quite consciously rather than waiting for a memory to pop up in my mind. Yeah. I sort of take a period or a experience and go, what really happened? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to be there. I'm going to fill your bucket. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

And you're going to ignore all of them because it'll be bloody obvious they're from the Aaron. Well, I I mean torture. What happens some nights is the bucket is very full and I I can't get through them all. You know, I try and do about fifteen, but I'll do my best. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

You take something out of the bucket.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Yeah, at random, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

And do you engage with that person?

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Well, no, I I d I don't want to embarrass them. Occasionally I'll I'll see if someone wants But no, I try not to do that. I used to do a lot of that. I used to talk directly to individuals in the audience a lot. But as time has gone by, I find I do it less and less. I mean sometimes it happens, you know, sometimes it happens naturally. But I don't seek it out anymore. Mellowed.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Yeah. Th there's a very mellow vibe enveloping this conversation. I often finish with some allegedly quickfire questions.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Okay. I'll do my best. I don't do much quickfire nowadays. I may need a week's notice.

unknown 41:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

I'll ask you the first one. If you can't answer immediately, you can answer during the outro. Okay. What's the funniest thing you've ever seen?

SPEAKER_02 41:22

The funniest thing I think I've ever seen was I was at a horse race meeting and they had a mascots race, like football mascots, you know, dinosaurs and massive frogs. They all had a race, and at the end they had to get on the back of a lorry to be driven off. And they, because of the costumes, they were all hollerably unbalanced, and they started to topple and fall off the lorry and everything. I was with my daughter and I was in pain. It was just the purest form of slapstick. So I think maybe that's the funniest thing I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Aaron Ross Powell Question number two Will you miss Donald Trump? No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

I'm not blaming you, by the way. Trevor Burrus, Jr. No. But a lot of people said, oh, he's great value for you, isn't he? And I I think, yes, he's quite easy to write jokes about, but I think the planet comes first.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

So say all of us. Final question, Andy Hamilton. Have you ever met another Andy Hamilton?

SPEAKER_02 42:17

There was someone who posed as me many years ago. It wasn't that funny at the time, if you know. It was a pain in the arse, if I'm honest. In retrospect, it was funny. But I never actually met him. I was just very aware of him because it created various problems. There is another Andy Hamilton who does shows about foraging and making beer and stuff like that. And he builds himself as the other Andy Hamilton and he he gives the audience an opportunity at the beginning. He says, if you come here expected to see that little bloke who's on Have I Got News for You, you're free to leave now. And he seems very nice. We've exchanged emails because he got sent a check by the Guardian for an article that I'd written. So he sounds like quite a good cove. There's a darts player.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

I Google. And there's somebody who lectures on the aesthetics of jazz.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

Oh, okay. There was a very famous saxophonist called Andy Hamilton, but he's deceased now. Because I once got rung by someone at Time Out who wanted to interview me, and I thought, that's odd. I'm not doing anything at the moment. Why don't they want to interview me? And then we got about 90 seconds into the interview, and she said, And are you looking forward to playing Ronnie Scott's? And that's when the And that's when the penny dropped that she'd got the wrong one.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

I'm afraid I was unashamedly self-interested in asking you that question because my guest a few episodes time is going to be my own namesake. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The well-known best-selling chef, Jeremy Lee.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

And I've been mistaken for him several times.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Trevor Burrus It would never have happened the other way around, obviously. I've not met him yet, and I'm very much looking forward to it. So this is the tease. The other stories of mistaken identity are better, I promise you. Trevor Burrus. But the tease is every year, for the last three or four years at least, I get a phone call just before Christmas from the Today program on Radio Four asking me to come on and talk about cooking Christmas dinner. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Every yeah. Just go on. You can be like that bloke who they thought was an expert on IT.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yeah, just go on and bluff. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I might. There you go. I've been looking for the lesson, and then suddenly it appears like the shining edifice. That's it, ladies and gentlemen. As you prepare for your day ahead, in Belgium or other parts of the world, this is the message just between us. Just go on and bluff.

SPEAKER_02 44:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Well, I must thank you, Andy, for almost certainly changing my life.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

For listening patient. You've got your own cookery series on BBC Two. Yes, yes. Just remember this conversation. Remember where it began.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Okay. Well, now you've put the idea in my mind. I will say it might be kosher. Is that BBC Two?

SPEAKER_02 45:16

They like niche stuff, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 45:17

It's a niche. Yes. No, it is a niche. Andy Hamilton, you're a joy. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Jeremy.