Hello, welcome to Sickon Geeks. I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Kerry. And we are here today very honoured to be guests in the house of comedy legends.
As in not real, you mean? The myth that is very real because you're sitting next to me here is Barry Cryer. Hello Barry. Hello to you or ever your neighbours?
Yes, I'm Dave and here to talk to you. And we're actually, most people I think who listen to Sickon Geeks will know you. I'm Barry Cryer. You probably know me for, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue.
That's probably the main reason people know you. We really want to talk to you about your phenomenal writing career, which isn't something that always comes up. But I mean, we're just actually like to start by obviously talking about, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue, which is 45 years old this year. I mean, 72, yes.
Oh, the new day. It is. I'm afraid older than me. I'm younger than me, obviously.
I'm sorry, I haven't a clue. It was born before Jones. Yeah. And as strong and successful as it was from day one really.
I mean, I was lost as a spoof of panel shows. Yeah. Which I was talking about. You had a bit, you had a form with spoof panel shows, but I'm sure lots of people have asked you about, what do you think is the secret to the Lord of Liberty for show?
We've no idea. We're not complacent. We're just very happy. When it's basically was the spinoff from I'm sorry, I'll read that again.
And Graham Gardner, Tim Broktor, LaVillade, and the guy who got lucky, were doing telling stuff. And BBC Radio wanted a series. So Graham devised this chaotic panel show that didn't need scripting fully and didn't need a lot of rehearsal. And so that's how it came about.
And then lately we've been in a stage version of it. And the BBC said, you can't use the title. Graham hadn't registered it. He didn't own it.
He'd thought of it. A lot of the current the only ones owned those shows, which I think is great. But that's what happened. But when it started, I wasn't in the first series officially.
I'll explain what that means in a minute. It was Bill Ody, John Cleese, Joe Kendall, the actress, Tim Broktor, the permutations and all that. And there were suits at the BBC saying, Humphrey Littleton, he does jazz. That's, you know, he can't do a comedy show.
You know, they persevered with the great Humph. And Humph couldn't do two recordings of the first series. So they got me into the chairman. So I've got an old tattered cutting for the radio times.
Black hair. I was chairman twice. Then John Cleese, with Ody and Joe Kendall, they, oh dear, Bill used to throw up before recording. And then the crisis, Debbie Hatch, the original producer said that, oh, they could put this out on boxing day when everybody's pissed.
Yeah, it was a guard. It was not as much of a proposition, funnily enough. And then it got worse. People were leaving.
And they got me and Willy Rustin in. And then it started up. That's Tony. Happy, tackle Tony, happy.
Anyway, it was one four-time corner at the BBC. They did a first series and it seemed to click in and it's been there ever since. But it wasn't a more suspicious start. No, little, little, little, little, no, no, no.
Actually, Barry and I went to the same school, not at the same time. I should point out. But when I was a teenager in Leeds in the late 60s, early 70s, there was a show on Yorkshire television that was a huge success. The show was Jokers Wind, which was 1969.
Yes, we made about 200 or something. Some of these lovely guys called Harry Holland were sent me a load of DVDs of Jokers Wind, which I'd been watching. And boy, people who did it. All male.
I don't remember what I'm doing. That was another age. It wouldn't hurt that now. But, you know, Ted Ray, Arthur, Askey, Les Dawson, Ray Martine.
And then there were people like John, please. And I was just always around this moment. They'd get a subject. It's a bit like the week.
Okay, this next subject is Mother-in-law. And they'd all come on. And John, please, I remember he'd sort of sit there and reading the paper for that. I can tell you the origin of that.
We went to, we used to get a breakfast train from Queensborough to Leeds, or Newcastle, it was Cher, but it was you. You got to just call back then. Right? And then the opposite is commissioned.
Stop them for Yorkshire at a time. Anyway, John sat in the breakfast compartment and Ted Ray and Arthur Askey were only breakfast. Bang, bang, bang. The chat was going on.
John was sitting opposite with his hands over his ears, reading the book. And he apologized. He said, please, I was so nervous about doing the show and I couldn't cope with your company, because she had won the film and all this went on. So we got to Leeds and I said, John, do that on the show.
He said, what? I said, do it on the show. Be reading a book. LAUGHTER Yeah, okay.
So on the show, somebody told a joke. And I said, and your subject, Mr. Cleans, Mother-in-law. And he slowly put a bookmark in to the page, close with his head.
What? I said, Mother-in-law. Oh my God. What are you talking about?
And then told a joke that we'd be furthest in with. And he'd loved it in the film. I remember the joke. Yeah.
I wouldn't say, my Mother-in-law is fat, but she is. Yeah, that's one of those things, things taking a little moment. But do you know what that feels like though? That sound, that scenario sounds like, it seems incredibly modern, and I'm saying, oh, by saying that, is 8 out of 10 cats does countdown, where they have panelists doing completely their own thing, and sort of almost rejecting the show, and then, you know, the things that they bring as mascots and all that kind of things.
And they completely, and it is always amazing to realise that it's all been done before. Yes. And this is, what was this 1969? Probably, yeah.
Yes, it was 2003. Yeah. And it was shown endlessly after that regionally. Right.
And people would say, oh, I saw a token, I said, what? I said, we finished in 1973. Right. It was a wonderful character called Fred Enne.
Cigar smoking and monocle, comic actor and everything. And he did that in job, I remember. And yes. And Jack Douglas, who was carrying on films and everything, had been half of a double act and all that.
Jack was on, and he and Les Dawson was on, and as a resident Douglas, your subject, eternity. So he started talking, and then said, the best definition of eternity is waiting for Les Dawson to buy around. And whether they'd set it up, if they had, they didn't tell me or anybody else. Les walked off on the camera.
So the director apparently, David Malisset, keep rolling. So he started fooling about telling jokes. Les came back from the bar, was a tray of drinks for everybody, except Jack Douglas. But I mentioned Fred Enne, also involving Jack Douglas, that she is, I remember.
Mr Douglas, your subject, the seaside. So Jack Douglas starts, and we prepare the interruptions. Jack Douglas starts talking, and I welcome him some interruption by Mr Enne. Is this subject the seaside?
I said, yes it is, yes. I live at bottom of Regis. Just sort of like mentioned. Wonderful.
There's this great stuff that was actually going out there, and it felt more like, and it wasn't so much that there were that many comedy panel shows around. That's one of the most, I suppose, things that were around, like, there's a lot of questions for them. Yes, yes. Slightly old jukebox.
Oh, and then the state comedian, Sondra, rather. Yeah, that was more, just a guess. That's right forward. So what's my line as well, I mean, it's not that old joke.
But that had established a man for a long time, and to establish that as a format. And it was so successful, and it was watched by everybody. But you could then start to vary it, and everyone you want the rules were, so that when somebody went off to the bar to pry ground, the drinks come back with it. It was incredibly funny.
But they tried to revive jokes as well. Richard Morton, hair my colour, even that, and he was much younger than me. And a youngish Paul Merton, and they asked me and Ray Cameron, who worked on it to help with his pilot. And it didn't work, because it was younger comics doing material, not jokes.
And it's not quite the same when you interrupt somebody's set their routine. It's much easier to interrupt when somebody says, this elephant went into a park. It's all straightforward. It was done.
It didn't happen. There was a show somewhere called Gag Tag. Oh, yes. That required an elder statesman in Bob Munkhouse to really make that work.
We had a round on the Sorry I'm the Clue about heading for the type of a joke. And that was a child of a joke as well, really. We'd interrupt each other when we were telling jokes, trying to get to the punchline first. Right.
Because I was, again, taken as a point to get to this, to come back to talking about the writing career. But it seems to me that if I sum up your writing career, it's like, well, yes, I can write for all the people who get, I watch by millions and millions of people, whatever. I can do that. But I'm at my happiest when I'm subverting the genre.
Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. And I was always, I'd started as a stand up. We didn't call it that, then.
You were an act or term. Right. And then Lucky Break, Don't Buy Good Life Home Alive. I went into writing.
And I can't really remember how it really happened. But so the writing was a great period. But I was still doing bits of performing. And people said to me now, what I'm into, to say you wrote for everybody.
I say we wrote for everybody. There was a gang of us and I hardly ever wrote alone. It was wonderful. You know, Python before they were Python.
The good is for the good is the great Dick Vosn, really American I work with. And David Frost, who I call the practicing catalyst, brilliant with people. Graham Chapman always wrote with John Cleats. We knew that.
That was a set up. Frosty spotted something about me and Graham. And we become mates. And he put us together to write.
And we'd reminisce. What? We wrote over 50 shows together subsequently. Frosted that.
And John Cleats used to say to Graham, are you being unfaithful to me with bass? Oh, yes. Because I was just actually looking up Graham's autobiography, the Liars Autobiography, which was gold. And there was little bits that I vaguely knew.
One of the things we want to talk about is writing sitcom and advice to young writers. It's kind of reading Graham's version of the sitcoms that you wrote. It's like the advice that you could give is make sure you get the script written before the pub opens. Yes.
Bless his heart. Yes. I used to go to, it was all in course in Hamster and then South of late in Highgate. And I would arrive up 10 in the morning.
I went to a grave. I did drink much. No, I spilled most of it. And he'd be pouring something into a glass of something else.
And I said, OK, great. And we'd, now and a half or two hours, he was so creative. He was great on construction, which I wasn't about. Well, then I'd tell you what will happen.
He's like, and about noon. Ooh, just a one. And we go to the Angeline Highgate. And that was a day ago.
The friendship survived. It's on goodness. And then just. So don't involve you though going to the writer in me.
It's sort of twitching here. But he goes, you have a couple of drinks. And then you creep off and start writing up all the stuff and then you go, OK, so I would write up later what we'd actually talked about. And it would spark up one or two of all sorts.
And then we'd get together and knock it into shape. But bless his heart. It was trying to survive on an hour and a half or two hours a day. And it wasn't working.
And then of course, came to Christ's crunch with Dear Graham. And he was on a version of pills and everything. So he would throw up if he had a drink and Python. And we're all watching him.
And they went away to film, bless his heart. And that was it. He'd still come to pub with me when he stopped drinking. And I thought, going into the ambiance of a pub.
And he was one of like very obvious. You don't say I was an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic. I don't think anymore.
And Dear Graham would come to the ambiance. The ambiance of a pub must be quite upsetting if you use a drink and you don't. Here, they want another sudying down drop. Keith Moon.
Couldn't believe it one day. It's me and Moon and Graham in the ancients. And I think Keith had a louder or something. And he was talking quite quietly.
He was chatting away and I thought, this is Keith's Moon. Fine. And he suddenly said to me, I think they want a bit of mooning. Not dropping his trousers.
A bit of moon, like behavior. Anyway, and threw his glasses. Bro, promise them. They didn't evict him.
They said, Keith's behavior itself. And they cleared the mess up. And when we left the pub, Keith's Moon leaned over the bar and said, how much time you were for the glass? I said, your image has gone up.
Rock and roll. I'll have a read years ago where Parkey did a brief series on ITV. And I arrived at the green room and there was Ollie Reed. He wasn't drunk.
We were chatting away. Come on, you two. So we went down to the studio. Ollie and I whispering conversation on the camera.
And the man beckons that Ollie, it's his turn to go on. And he went into a zap. I walked on, punched a hole in the polister and said, Henry Cooper was sitting there with Wendy Rich at the actress. Ollie and Henry had done the film A Flashman.
And Ollie went, Henry, my dear, my dear. Damn, my name is Punch. And it was Jim. Chaos.
It was amazing. I was not going to go on and start again. And Henry said to me, after it was he said, the Punch was immaculate. It was a film punch.
He missed my chin by an inch where you couldn't see that on the camera. Making himself an unemployable, going into it. He didn't drink like a bean after it was really said, not when he was working. And I was with the man before he was in trouble.
It fascinated me. Anyone would think that he was a talented actor. But you're making yourself unemployable on television, aren't you? I'm interested to cry for help, what is it?
I'd be interested to go back to writing with Graham Chapman, but also writing with numerous people. And it does feel that this is one of the things that carries over into today in terms of now lots of writers will find work writing for a sitcom which has a comedy name in it. And I've worked with Omaranda with her, and I've worked with Milton on his radio show. But it'd be interesting to know from your point of view how to, you know, what your tips are for working with people where they are the star, and you are trying to help them and sort of, you know, create something that's even more them than they are or something like that.
What sort of, I mean, presumably everyone's slightly different. So there isn't a one side. When I said you like a tailor making suits, you've got to hear the voice in your head and see them. When John Chunk and I were writing for Eric and Ernie, there's also a sister and a walker.
I've talked to young ones about this, and it's still true. Now it'd be the laptop or whatever. In those days it was me screwing on a bit of paper or no typewriter. You know, it's an audience.
The other one would be walking about. And John Chunk and used to walk around the room, wagon his glasses being Eric Morgan. Oh, right. And it's just, that's all I could say.
You're Max the client, the same routine or plot done by four or five different people would be totally different because you're writing for them. The breakthrough was when the sitcoms and things, they didn't have a comedian style, step tone style, you know, two actors. This was a breakthrough at the time. If you had, you know, Ronnie Corbett or somebody starring, a comic style and you'll sitcom, but suddenly it's all different, no actors.
And not jokes, it's character. It was a fascinating great, God and Simpson. Oh, just superb. Oh, do you want to mind a favourite funeral story?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, you can drink funeral story. No, see, I'm almost relevant if you're late. Alan Simpson, we just lost Big Alan recently, earlier. And Dennis Maine Wilson, the great producer of Hancock Steps on everything.
Marlon's character used to have a glass in the crook of his arm, another glass in his hand, and he was his other arm for waving at you. The great character, Dennis Ghost, we're all at the funeral. Dennis is there in the coffin. Big Alan Simpson stands out to speak.
We thought this was going to be dry and funny. No. It was that corny old scene by the Reverend, somebody around there. I'm not going, I'm just around the corner, laugh as you always did.
You know, a pin drop. We thought, OK, respect. And he finished it. And he turned to the coffin and he said, I told you, Dan, I'm fucking laughing.
LAUGHTER That's great. I told you, that's all you know, isn't it? There's a few plums. Silence, then laugh.
That's what I talk about, getting it right. It was a wonderful moment. That's a great commitment. But you're right, in terms of that, they really did bring something new in with the use of actors.
And it feels like we've now moved away from that. To some extent, at least as far as studio sitcom producer. There's Lee Mackin going out, isn't it? And all that.
It's interesting. Graham and I wrote sitcoms, which are quite proud of them. Sorry by our mates, you know, in a pizza. It was brilliant.
But we were pretty sorry. Well, that's what I was really thinking about. And he and Peter, we're all friends. They just said, oh, he nicked the dominating mother from you and Graham.
Played by the same... What was he going to realise? I knew that's me over here. But I didn't know about, now, look here, which was the, which was the the follow-up.
And in both of these shows, Rolly Corbitt's playing, put upon the sun, Rosamie Leach's playing his mum. And both effectively were the prototype for Sorry. Yes. And that was the other thing that was really interesting.
I thought that Graham mentioned in his autobiography. He said, David Frost managed to get this show commissioned, the first one, that's me over here. He said, because nobody had ever done a middle-class sitcom. And he said, and that's how he got a commission, though.
I was trying to think, if there had been anything, it was a long time ago. Well, Terry and June, was that after that? That's what I've been after, which I assume. And then good life and all those came along, which shows.
We never were analysing at the time. I'm just happy to get some work. Yeah, exactly. That's what I am.
Is it on? Great. See you Monday. I'm curious also to know, I mean, I know, the only way that I knew David Frost, again, in those two days and the 70s, David Frost was this joke character that everybody took the piss out of Monty Pie, turning on the radio.
He always does badly in the memoirs. And the more I'm hearing the thing, he sort of, as far as effectively controlled, large entertainers. He was superb. I'm sorry, the mild line of practicing catalyst.
He was superb with people. He just could mould a team and say you could work with him. He was just amazing. And his memory, he always remembered when he last met you, what your wife, partner's name was, what you were doing.
He was just astonishing. And he was massive. I mean, what other TV hosts held to bring down an American president? And he used to do a joke about David.
He had an open top convertible car. And he used to say if it started raining, David pressed a button on the dashboard and it stopped raining. It's amazing. It's something like that.
It's a sort of person that he's getting up and he's crying minutes to or something, isn't it? Well, yes. I was at Ronnie Corbett's memorial a few days ago at Westminster Abbey. When we saw Frosty off of Westminster Abbey, the former satirist.
Oh, God. Charles and Camilla, former Prime Minister, the turnout of the establishment for Frosty at Westminster Abbey. We were just laughing. And he had this amazing knack, which I think is underrated.
But when you see it in our industry today with people, we're just able to see this going with these people, working with those people. And also, I know that he worked with him relatively recently before, not long before he died. They were making some TV special and it wasn't going to be anything interesting particularly. But he made everybody, he gave a speech to the whole crew and everybody.
And he just made them feel like they're about to make the most significant and exciting things to television. They never made in their lives. And it's the most remarkable thing to see how we could just have that face on people. But who else was making two series of months, one in England and one in America?
Including on Concord. And they're giving a joke about the stewardess saying, sorry, Mr Frosty's caviar again. And we used to say it's just off the plane face. The face is the colour of porridge.
But the eyes would light up and immediately started working. And John Major said, being interviewed by David Frost was like sitting in a warm bus, but wait for the cold shower. He was a relaxist guest, very affable. He really genuinely liked people.
But he relaxed them. And then in the same tone of voice, there would be the sort of deadly question. And they were so relaxed, they'd fall for it. I mean to persuade the President of the United States to apologise to the United States.
David was giving up on it, it was a Sunday night, holding over the weekend. And that was a killer punch. And getting him to say, well if the President does it, it's not illegal. Yes.
Oh Frosty. I'm going on and on about Frosty. Well we did ask. He was superb.
The Frostnix and movies are actually pretty decent. I don't know if you've seen that. I saw it on stage before. Right, like Geller at the next.
They're great. She. Again, sort of talking about people starting out. We don't have people like David Frost anymore, do we?
I mean how do you think you're a young writer like yourself? Like suddenly somebody says, there's something about him, not in his own. I'm going to put him in a room with him. You can see that we got on.
You can see what Paul's Church Hall in Marleybund me was to Frosty Port and all that. We used to play football at tennis ball at lunchtime when Frosty was in gold. And he encouraged all this. He said, why shouldn't making a comedy show be fun?
And we took the job seriously, but we laughed a lot. And I remember the last job I did years and years ago was Ross Abbott with Peter Vincent. We edited it and wrote for it. And we took the job seriously, but we laughed a lot.
And those years were about, I was invited into studio one day. They were running through the young ones. I was fascinated by what it was. I'm not laughing, I'm not.
Very intense atmosphere. Brilliant show. That's a whole lot snuff. I've got to be smiling.
I wonder if the lack of... I think if you do have a David Frost now who had this ability, I think it's a movie like the Jeffy Perkins of the world as well. I wonder if there is less scope for this sort of person because now comedy is so fragmented, not only in terms of the audience, but in terms of previously there was the BBC who made all their own comedy. And you had IT regions, but mainly it was Yorkshire and a few others.
And then you had LWT and then Channel 4 came along. But it was mainly BBC and the ITB network. It's like 4. And there were sort of 3 or 4 people and these names we keep hearing going through the annals.
A lot of stories getting back to the same people, but now you have the BBC making comedy for 4 channels with BBC studios and 15, 20, 30 other independent production companies who are also doing the same for ITB and Channel 4 and UK Gold and Sky. And so it feels like everyone has been completely atomised and therefore the scope for someone taking the long view, as it were. And just saying, well we'll do this show. I'm sorry I haven't the clue.
In the very first instance I was like, this is going to be terrible. I'm not a boxing day, no one will notice it. But you can take a risk in where the channels are crucial to it. It's such a massive world out there.
As you were saying it was clean cut, it was BBC, ITB when I started. In fact it was BBC when I started. ITB kicked off in 55%. And you could almost have someone, fairly senior, spot some young talent and sort of plan their career for them because they knew what the parts would be and you could see something, they could get onto this show, then they come up with their own sitcom and then that goes and then they do this.
And now, not only do we not have those parts, but the people who were commissioning those shows seem to change jobs every three years. So there is no loyalty. Now I talked about it past, I don't know if it's there, but looking back we had bosses like Bill Cotton at the BBC. They were showmen, they'd actually done shows.
They had a real feeling for performers. Old bird, Lou Gray, Lord Gray, and he was a showman. And if they liked a show, he'd got the green light and Bill Cotton told me his story. He said he was sitting in his office one day and he thought, Dave Allen has been on television for quite a while.
So I said, I ran Dave and his agent, amazingly named Bonnie Lewis and I took him to lunch. He said, I came back to the office and announced during six day balance. He said, now it'd be three months with a committee and no decision. And I'm romanticising it, but you had bosses who would get a green light.
Who was it, go to green light to split an image and do it? Just do it. A splitting image only came off because the budget got out of control. It was so expensive to make it.
And I think the audience took a dip to a round of $11 million or something. Boy, you need a splitting image now. Absolutely. They're doing pretty well by themselves.
That's the problem. I know. I think the audience took a bit more from Barry Krier next time.