The Rest Is Entertainment - Ben Elton on Blackadder, Rik Mayall & The Joy of Writing

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Richard Osman and Marina Hyde are joined by the sensational comedy writer Ben Elton for a wide ranging discussion about Blackadder, The Young Ones and his time working with Queen on 'We Will Rock You'. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Max Archer Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.ca. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond, but we have a third person in the studio. We are so honored to have one of the great comedy talents of all time with us, Ben Elton, who has a new autobiography out called What Have I Done? And asking him your questions from a career that span 40 years, TV comedy, stage comedy, books, musicals. There's very little you haven't done, Ben.

There's very little you haven't made a fortune out of, Ben. In the real, well, there's quite a lot of things I haven't made a fortune out of, but fortunately some things I did. It's all about writing, though. I mean, I've done a lot of things in the realms of writing comic fiction in various forms and a little bit of comic truth, or at least my truth, in terms of stand-up. But, yeah, it's all kind of the same job to me. It's all the same job.

It's putting words in the right order, isn't it? Exactly. So every single one of these questions come from our listeners, so forgive us. Why are you such a... Oh, you were hypocrite. Just to start in, oh, that is the first question. Put things in context at the beginning. We'll go sort of fairly chronological.

When the young ones came out, I think I was 11 or 12. And for anyone who is my age and for anyone who's younger, if I can just contextualize it, it was like a bomb went off. The school playground the next day, we had more of a monoculture those days. But it absolutely took the entire country by storm. like crazy. And I think, genuinely for me, changed the way I saw television, changed the way I saw comedy. It's one of those things that there was a time before the young ones, a time after the young ones. And so we will start there, but also from me and from my generation,

thank you. And for the generation below, if you want to know quite why we're going to be so simpering, it's because of that. So everything you've done afterwards as well, we'll talk about that. But we will start with the young ones. Andy Nielsen has a question. He says, the young ones is my favorite all-time sitcom and lots of other people's. How did you come up with something so chaotic and funny. And what was it like working with Rick Mayle? Well, Andy, Rick came up with the original concept. I'd known Rick from university days. I met him when I was 18. He was only 13 months older than me. He was still only 19, even though he was a third year, which affected our relationship somewhat. He always referred

to me as fresher in the early days. And I wrote a lot of comedy plays at university, and Rick did an awful lot of comic sketches and things. And I remember, remembered him and he remembered him. And was he very much Rick Mail even back then? Oh yeah. I mean, Rick was, I think of all the people, I've met a lot of really talented and some really charismatic performers, but of all the talented performers I've ever met, the one with the most instant star quality that overwhelmed you when you met him was Rick. And that was in his day. I mean, it changed. I mean, Rick's story is quite a, is a very complicated one and it's not all happy by any means.

The book is very good on all of it. It's a lot, how it all unfolds. Yeah, it's difficult. Meeting Rick was love at first sight for me. I think it was for an awful lot of people. Adrian Edmondson was also at Manchester, and they and a few other talented comic students did a welcome, freshest show for us,

and it opened with Rick, really doing a monologue about how amazing he was. And, of course, he was a spotty student in a great coat, cold breath hanging in the air, fag, everyone was cold. It was this old church in Manchester. And yet Rick lit up the room. It was unquestionable that he was. I mean, his joke really was that he was already a star.

He knew it. We knew it. Let's just get over it and start celebrating. And I mean, that was his kind of shtick. And I found it immensely exhilarated. And we became really good friends very, very quickly. A couple of years later, after Rick and Aide had had a couple of tough years doing, trying to do their gigs wherever they could.

They did a show in Edinburgh called Death on the Toilet. and I was up there for a student theatre I was in Edinburgh as well and I went and saw their show it was absolutely brilliant it opened with I don't know if this gag is I mean there's a disabledist element

but I think it's okay the first line Aid sat in his little room being like a sort of figure from waiting for Godot and it's knocking the door and the door opens there's Rick dressed as death with the big cowl

and the side and everything and Rick says Are we allowed to swear on this? Yeah go on and Aid said Who the fuck are you and Rick says I'm deaf.

And he says, all right, I'll speak louder. Who the fuck are you? And that was the opening gag of Rick and AIDS, like when they were 21, 20. Anyway, they got to London, alternative comedy was happening. And I graduate a couple years later, went to London also. And I got a call in January 81 from Rick saying, Farty, get down the pub immediately, I've got something to talk you about. And he was there with Lisa May, his girlfriend,

and they, between them, had to come up with this thing, to do a sitcom, a wild anarchic sitcom in which anything could happen, and it was to be based very loosely on some characters that he and Aide and Nigel Plainer and Peter Richardson, that's another story. It's all in a book, I'm not going to say that again. Well, I like how you go back and you say the bits that didn't work. I think that's always fascinating for people,

and there is an element of the young ones. Yeah, that didn't work. I mean, what was up with Mike was the first, I mean, Chris Ryan was a fantastic actor, generous to a full, brilliant, but miscast. Well, no, it wasn't it? He was miscast. He did it brilliantly, but the part had totally lost its way. And there's a long story about that, and I'm not going to go into it now. But it's interesting in terms of how comedy and relationships in comedy and the ability to improvise together are all hugely dependent on that moment, on the muse, that when you're on that role,

and if something goes wrong, if an atmosphere changes, suddenly, anyway, look, there's a lot that's great about the young ones, a lot that, in my view, isn't great about the young ones. Again, as I say, it went off like a bomb that show, and we'd never seen anything like it. We'll talk a little bit about why that was. But even as an 11-year-old, you're kind of going, but what's up with Mike? Yeah.

It was something of a poison chalice that was given to a great actor. I mean, look, I can tell the story if you like, but it's quite a long story. So Rick brings you up and says, so you are 21? Yes, I was 21. So this is the stage where you're supposed to sort of, for the next five or six years,

do the odd student review, you know, write a couple of games. for radio comedies, this up, the other, you know, build this kind of career and then maybe pitch a sitcom. But at 21, you go to the pub, Rick has this idea and you literally go home and write it that night. Yeah, it was immensely exciting time. I've always worked fast. Sometimes it's gone against me. Sometimes I've thrown too many words at a project and they've kind of all missed. And sometimes I've got it right. And this was one really wonderful night. Rick was inspiring in the pub. At that point, as I say, I loved Rick. I mean, it was.

It was a platonic lab, but I was sort of in love with him. I wanted, all I wanted was to make him laugh. I knew how to make him laugh. I knew how to write towards his particular talent. And the same a bit with Aide and Nigel. Rick's idea was this anarchic thing, and what it needed was flesh. And I remember him saying now, you know, like, you're a writer. You've written loads and loads of plays.

Now you can write this. He was, you know, saying, look, you know, get all their insults wrong. You know, somebody insults him. He would say, look, I'm not a fed, you know. And I can still remember him saying that line. and that line went obviously straight into the show. But I went home and thought very hard about what was a very embryonic sort of quite rough and ready idea.

Quite a lot of the characters. I mean, Rick's poet didn't have any socialist pretensions. He was into theatre. Aid and Rick did these two kind of furious men, the dangerous brothers. But again, they could have been middle age. Nigel's Neil at that time was in his mid-30s and had already contracted herpes on an ashram in India. What I wanted to do was make it about youth in the early 1980s,

give it that Thatcherite, Thatcher's Britain slant. And it all happened very, very quickly. I mean, I was immensely fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I'm not unaware of the privilege of that. But, yeah, I definitely was on a role that night and in those early weeks. But you're also the right person in the right place at the right time. So you're being presented with something which is essentially chaos, which is four very different performers, all of whom have.

have certain things that they can bring to a role. Your job as a writer, which is often the job as a writer, is to take that chaos to preserve that chaos, but give it an A to B, give it a journey, give it some sort of structure. To preserve the chaos, give it some semblance of plot. But more than that, what was required was a contemporary edge. Because people think that the young ones, was this groundbreaking thing,

oh, you came and you kicked down all the walls and changed everything. And they always think about rats in the talking in the floorboards and Vivian coming through a wall and things. But actually all that is very much a part of the British tradition of comedy. You go and see the crazy gang. Well, you can't now. But if you've gone in the 1940s to their Palladium shows, they were beating each other up, smashing the furniture up.

Rick and Aid were obsessed with Laurel and Hardy. And Laurel and Hardy, this sort of calculated anarchic violence of their relationship. So much of what people think was groundbreaking being out. It was relatively new for a sitcom, not for television. The pythons, of course, you know, somebody playing a piano, the lid comes down and his hands are cut off and he's spurting blood. The Goon Show, completely all over the, you know, out, no walls for the Goon Show, they broke every one. But I think what was original about the young ones, and I guess I do, you know, it's certainly something I was very concerned to get in there, was its contemporary feel.

BBC sitcom in the 70s had got very middle class. It had a great tradition of doing more blue-collar comedy, Scepto and Son, till Death of Du Part, the likely lads. But by then, there were great shows, the likes of The Good Life, which I famously had a go-out on the young ones through Vivian, but I loved it nonetheless. But to give kids a sitcom, to do a sitcom based on exaggerated but recognizable youth types of the early 80s, the kind of hangover hippie who's still wearing flared trousers three years after punk,

the actual punk, you know, Vivian sort of wants to be an anarchist at all times. and of course the farty geography student who pretends he's a socialist you all know he's going to end up working in a bank and voting conservative Rick Vex's character would probably be voting reform by now so that was the...

He'd be standing for the fore. Oh yeah. He certainly have a GV News show. What I think was original about The Young was actually isn't the bit that kind of most people celebrate as it's groundbreaking nature. It was an enormous and almost...

I know you had a year or so between writing, you know, going home and writing that thing and being in the studio and it was an enormous hit, what does that do to you? You'd never really had a professional flop. You'd put on loads of plays and things have not worked for you. Oh, no. It does a student have all worked, hadn't you? But what does it do to you to have that

immediate success for a young? What does it do to you? What did it do to Rick and Aide and Nigel and Chris? I think we all, I mean, obviously Chris had a different situation because as we've just discussed, that was the sort of least-formed and least-recognizable character, and there's a lot of reasons for that. I think we all were too busy and too happy to notice. Also, there was a lot of unhappiness, well, certainly for me. I mean, the Younger's was written by three people. There's no question.

Rick and I'd work, Rick and Lisa worked together, and I work together. I know my bits, and I know their bits. And that was very unhappy for me, because originally I'd had a much closer writing relationship with Rick, and I think that that breaking up was, I think quite consequential for Rick going forward into the future of his career but leaving that aside

what was it like in 81 or 82 I think everyone was thrilled but we had no concept of how big it was you don't you don't go at first of no internet or anything like that you know we knew we were getting well I wasn't getting recognised and course they weren't so much because they were all covered in spots and makeup and all sorts

so I don't think it really impacted us we knew we could afford more beer and more curry and we were young we were celebrating life we love to go to the pub we love to go out I have always spent far too much time looking forward to the next thing and worrying about how good it is and did we get it right to celebrate enough. That's one of the things I learned right in the book that perhaps I haven't, I should have calmed down a bit at times. But, you know, whatever, it's been a very happy life, so I've got no complaints. But the fact that we became instantly so famous, well, I'll give you an example, right?

Yes, we were huge. The thing was talked about by everyone, everybody knew about it. And when we came to do the book, it sold three quarters of a million copies. The book, I still think, is one of the greatest works of literature. That was the last time, I think, Rick and I really kind of had fun working on stuff together. Again, Lisa and Rick were writing stuff, and a lot of it was great that went into the book. I was doing my stuff. But Rick and I sort did some stuff in the pub together.

That was fun, the book, and that kind of was the last time, really. Filthy Rich is another story. But the fame thing, right? So, obviously, young ones was huge. So they did a little tour. I wasn't involved. It was called Kevin Turvey in the Bastards School. was featuring the young ones.

Kevin Turvey was a rich character. I maybe did a couple of lines, but that was Rick's, one of his organic inventions that he really did himself. They went on tour. Now, if the equivalent of the young ones, not that they should, would be an equivalent these days, probably the last time you had anything remotely, nationally focused that had as big an impact, would go back to Little Britain or something that the kids were into. I mean, no it would be no question.

It would be absolutely arenas. Because while the media is shrinking, while television is shrinking, and, like, you'd be. Live, go figure, is getting bigger. People crave the communal experience because they don't get it off the telly anymore. They're not all watching the same show anymore. But the young ones back in the day, touring in 82, 83, after the first series,

they were playing 400 people in a half full student union. Live just wasn't the thing. I mean, isn't that absolutely crazy? Because it was the biggest thing. Yeah, I mean, they got to fill them out in the end, but it was still only 800. They did about two weeks, and it was student unions. It's so interesting to think.

Even, you know, Bowie was still playing Hammersmith. The biggest gigs you could do were still theatres. The arena thing hadn't happened. And people weren't used to that going out en masse. You know, because I guess there was too much good stuff on the table. And you got your community experience by just watching it and talking about it the next day. You've hinted a couple of times that your relationship with Rick didn't really survive the young one. Your creative relationship.

You remained close friends all our lives. And we worked together. We toured together as stand-up. in the 80s. I remember, I went to it. Oh, my goodness, did you, Richard? Oh, that is so cool. Suddenly there's this thing and saying, oh, look, it's like a two-part. It's like a life thing. And Ben Elton is doing half, and Rick Mayer is doing half. Yes, please.

Everybody in Britain was like, I'm so sorry, that might be the greatest evening ever. And it was indeed. It's lovely to hear. Again, we, even though Rick was, I mean, I still wasn't a star at that time. It's pre-Saturday live. I mean, I became famous overnight in 1980s. Because you became front of house. Yeah. Because before you were the writer, and then suddenly you were the writer. So, again, Fame didn't really, even though I was hugely delighted to have a sitcom on the BBC and to be earning some money,

and it led Richard Curtis to watch it and ring me up and say, do you want to come in on reinventing the black adder? Well, we're going to talk about that next. Fame was wonderful, but in terms of being famous, honestly, just didn't notice. And of course, I wasn't famous. I was a writer. And when I went out on tour, Rick insisted we had equal billing and he split the money equally because that's how we always were. But even though he was this massive star, we were still playing. some student unions, mainly town halls, 1,500 seaters,

but again, the equivalent now would be a week at the O2 for somebody of Rick's impact. So, yes, Rick and I did it, and we worked together on Phil feet. Well, you're always trying to get back to that feeling with him that you had in those moments where, creatively, but you could never get back there. I've really felt that in the book. There was that moment, a sort of pre-lapsarian thing

where you're just kind of perfectly fused as creative. The two of you in the pub. I start the book kind of at Rick's funeral because obviously that was a massive thing in my life as it was in many people's life, even for those who didn't know him. But the story I tell is that I'd actually tried to write a sitcom for Rick, sort of forum with him, because when you work with Rick, you know, you're always looking for his feedback. He would edit with laughter. He was the most generous laugh I've ever met.

And I'd read him my scripts. So I used to write in longhand, and he couldn't read my writing, and I'd read them. And he would just laugh. and his rich fruit, I mean, the exact opposite of giving Rowan a script. I mean, so diametrically, obviously. Two genius performers, their personalities and the way they kind of dealt with input from writers who knew how to serve them was very different. I mean, I love Roe, he's a dear friend, but there was no generous roars of laughter from Roe.

There's a book where you go and see Rowan Atkinson, and he just turns over the pages and puts them beside as he's going through the whole script. There's not a huge amount of feedback there. There's an idea here somewhere. I quite like the first word of this one. Literally, and that was like two comments over an hour, whereas Rick would roar and raw. And yes, because Rick and my relationships kind of schismed during the young ones,

he and Lisa went off and wrote the night. I mean, it wasn't any, we didn't acknowledge it, although there was a number of decisions made during the young ones, which Rick made, because he was the power. Rick was the golden one. It was Rick's show, and I was very lucky that he'd invited me in as writer, or as a writer, as it turned out. So, yes, that was a difficult time, and Filthy was perhaps an even more difficult time for various... Filty Ritching Catflat, which is a sort of follow-up version of that, much more theatrical basis.

Yes, whereas the young ones came from a place of truth. Comedy, no matter how big it is, as long as it's rooted in truth, as long as there's a kind of honesty to what you're doing, it doesn't matter how vast and grotesque the character is. and so you look at somebody like Mike Myers' creation of Austin Powers or the ex-Rick's flash art or whatever I mean obviously created with the writers but well you know let's not let's we forget take your credit Ben

but you certainly not getting it from the actors on the blackadder let me tell you but let's not go there I mean look my relationship with Rick was always one of love and it was unfinished business and I always dreamt that we would finish it I felt that his extraordinary talent was never fully blossomed. It shone so brightly. And then it kind of got a little bit lost and not everything he did was so great. And I could no longer busk with him. And of course, Bottom was a

wonderful thing. My view is the only two people who ever really knew how to write with and for Rick were me and aid. And both relationships were very, very complicated. And of course, Rick's drinking became a problem. And I can say this because I've talked to Barbara. She gave Barbara May or his wife. She's, you know, I said, do you mind if I talk about that in my book? And she said, she wrote me a beautiful letter and said, no, it was a part of all our lives, and particularly yours. And, you know, you must tell you a story. And so, yeah, Rick went on, you know, there was, his biggest hero of all was Hancock, and there were Tony Hancock. And there were elements of the Hancock trajectory to Rick, because he was slightly at the mercy of the

material. He could come up with great stuff, but he's, he always went too big, you know, he needed, he needed material. Yeah. And he needs that. structure and he needs a narrative and some of those great performers can just explode like like they want but you need you need to root them and some detail in character you know they can't be as broad as strokes as he would like to you know basically for both me and aid Rick's death deprived us both of an ongoing hope and indeed presumption that we would me with Rick and it not the three of us I mean Rick and I and Rick worked together and I and Rick work together. I've also worked with aid, but, you know, it's all terribly triangular.

We always thought we'd get there in the end. And I always thought I would get back to Rick in the end. And, of course, you know, we went for a jog and fell over in the shower and died. I mean, yeah, the sitcom that we've been denied of Rick in his 70s or just, you know, the beautiful thing you could have written. But, you know what? It still makes me very, very sad. But it exists for all of us who are fans because we can imagine it. Because, you know, we We know what that relationship is. So you've done the young ones. It's been a huge hit.

We'll get onto your stand-up in a bit. But if we can just keep talking about you as a writer, I think so. You've had this hit, and people have hits, right? We understand that, but it can be a flash in the pan. If you follow it up with another hit, an even bigger hit, then suddenly you go, oh, okay. So we have a good question on this from Ewan, who says, the progress between the Black Adder to Black Adder the second, the Black Adder is basically Blackadder season one, which you didn't write on. The progress between the Blackadder to Blackadder the Second

counts among the most astonishing transformations in any series of television, I agree, a quantum leaping quality. Was it sold to you as a brief when you joined that it would have to be a clean slate starting the whole idea again completely from scratch or was it more organic? There was no brief because it was a wonderful thing. I owe, just as I owe the young ones to Rick,

I think I paid the debt, but I certainly owe it to him, I owe Blackadder to Richard Curtis. One of the things I are most happy, about in my life is that I have, don't think I've ever not been friends in a professional where all the people I've worked with have, became and remained dear friends. And in fact, Richard interviewed me about this book, only in Cheltenham, just the other night, 40 years after or more, after the wonderful phone call when he asked me to join him on Blackadder 2. Now, whisper it not, I mean, I think Ewan has basically said it, but Blackadder 1 was, you know, was not

considered a comprehensive success. And, and, and, it was, it was. It was, you know, it was, It was cancelled, right? Well, yeah, that was a little later. That's another very good story. What happened for me was Richard, Rowan had dropped out, Rowan and Richard wrote The Blackadder. It was his nickname in those days. We changed a lot of things, not least he became Mr. Blackadder.

If I'd been Richard at that point, I would have written it on my own. I'd have said, thank goodness Rowan doesn't want to pretend he's a sitcom writer anymore. Now I can get down to it. To my great and glorious good fortune, Richard is a more subtle and perhaps more interesting person than me because he thought, no, I definitely still want to collaborate, and I know who I want to collaborate with. Richard doesn't collaborate very often.

I mean, obviously, he wrote all his fabulous movies on his own. So what it was that led him to decide to share with me, I think it was kind of the young ones. It kind of comes back and rip my comedy DNA. So Richard wanted me in, and no, there was no brief. He said, look, we're going to do it again. The BBC say we can have another crack, but clearly it hasn't worked that well.

You know, let's have a go at it again. So the first series had been a sort of an historical epic, shot kind of very beautifully, shot sort of from a distance and just not... They were trying to make Holy Grail for a sitcom. I mean, a kind of medieval comedy film, but in sitcom, and as John Lloyd,

the producer very wittily said, it looked a million dollars, unfortunately, it cost two million dollars. And as I said, in the very first meeting, Rowan falling off a horse at 300 metres in Panavision is no different to the unit caterer falling off a horse. What you need is Rowan close up, but more importantly,

Is Rowan funny? And whisper it not, but Rowan's not very funny in Blackadder one. Because his idiot schick isn't as funny as his superior stick. I mean, Mr. Bean aside with that curious nihilism, you know, but even that sometimes was sort of like the kind of slightly worrying, you know. I like Mr. Bean, but I didn't particularly like the Blackadder. And I said, surely, the decision Richard and I made together on our first morning working together was to flip the status.

to make in the first series Rowan had been the idiot and Baldrick had been the smart one and we turned it on its head and made Rowan the smart one and Baldrick the idiot and certainly that was something

which was a deal breaker for me because when Rowan is being superior and supercilious there is no one on earth more funny you know you know if he's sat at a desk and there's a knock at the door and he goes

oh come in you just know something it informs all the insult comedy that comes later and so many people come in on the slipstream of that and there's so many great shows which you can see are entirely informed by his particular form of withering insult.

Yeah, and we, Richard and I kind of invented a language. The whole, you know, the thing, Blackadder speak, you're as small as a very small and small thing that's got a degree in being smaller, whatever, that everybody's been doing for 40 years. I mean, that started on our typewriters because there were no computers then. I mean, words have always been my obsession.

I mean, the young one's language also for a while. I mean, Smash Hits was basically written, the magazine, pop magazine, was basically written in girly swat language, you know, from 82 onwards. And is it often the case as a writer, because you're so prolific, that is it often the case that one line or one comic idea that you suddenly feel, oh, the taps are on? That you come across something, you think, oh, but if this were like this, and suddenly you can write, suddenly you get out of your own way.

In the same way of flipping those two, you go into the room thinking, if you flip these two, I see where the plots are, I see where the comedy is. You can't understand what it is. It has to be organic. Woody Allen, I think, spoke for all comic writers, probably all artists. When he said, when I write a joke, I'm hearing it for the first time. Basically, you don't know, it just comes and you have to let it happen. Just as a painter, you know, can't stare at the blank canvas forever.

You've got to commit a stroke. You can't plan it. You've just got to do it. And hopefully it will lead to another. And eventually you'll kind of find out what you're doing. but if you're working as I've had the privilege to do with some of the greatest comic performance comic actors of any generation then that makes the excitement considerably greater

because if you're working towards a talent like Rex or Roans or Melch it, you know, or Stephen, because I knew them all very, very well and you're working towards something you already understand and occasionally sometimes I think, well yeah, once or twice you know, actors did, you know, drop in a good idea. And you think, well, as so you should be. Every now and then we let them have one. Well, very much.

Well, can I talk a little bit about that? Because I do think that it's really interesting because everyone thinks that the writing in Blackadder was just beyond. And it just, as you say, it redefined a whole different form of comic writing, you and Richard. And yet it's quite clear in the book that it's a little, the pair of you have a little bit of a struggle. Even though all those guys are your great friends. And remain so, yeah.

And remain so. And we'm talking, you know, Hugh Lorry, Rowan. obviously Stephen Frye. All of them are and remain your great friends. But it was hard. It was a pretty unhappy experience, right? No, not right. Riding the Blackado was immensely happy. Richard and I, just the two of us, if we'd just done a podcast, we'd have had the loveliest time. We loved every minute of it. We became the closest to friends and it was, it was a wonderful experience. Then the first bump in the road was doing the scripts with John, John Lloyd, who's a very, could be very fierce, very clever man, often right, not always right.

That producer. One of the big producers did not the nine of cut. He did QR I am or lately, yeah. That was difficult because Richard and I felt we knew what we were doing, and John thought he thought he knew what he was doing, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. And John, of course, was the producer, and he was senior and the boss, and he'd always say, boy, his boys, Benji, Dick, you're both geniuses. I understand that.

I'm just the smallest, tiny producer. I'm a minnow simply here to enable your glorious talent, but can you just allow me to be right, jot this fucking once? And of course, it was always one more time. But we got through that and we produced the scripts. Then would you get to rehearsal? Now, what happens in rehearsal normally, first morning at North Act and BBC rehearsal rooms,

everyone has a table read, there's some polite laughter, then you get up and start to block it, start to work it. So at a table read, you've given the scripts, all the actors turn up, they sit around all next to each other, you read through, everyone sees what, works, what doesn't work, costume thinking, oh, what can I do here? It's just, it's a lovely sort of normally, that kind of, the first run of something. My first experience, I didn't go to Cambridge, I went to Manchester, but with the exception of me, and I suppose, Baldrick, there wasn't a single

non-Oxbridge graduate in the room. And basically, those table reads were like what I believe Cambridge tutorials were like, in as much as you've got your tutor, you're all seeing two, that's John, and a bunch of students, and then some Timmerer's student, produced. their work to be reviewed by the group. But, of course, only Richard and I were bringing our essays in. So the script would be read, and then I've got to be honest. I mean, Stephen knows I say it, you know, there's Stephen, you know. And Hugh to a certain extent, he was nice.

Stephen and Johnny. Some of our finest British public school actors used, whatever. Yes, they push their jets. Cigarettes would be like a great, weary sigh would sort of come out, and there'd be a half-hour discussion on whether the word whibble was funny or not. And it was like, it was soul-destroying. You know, you could spend hours, deciding which furry rodent would be most amusing to stick up Baldrick's bottom.

Would it be, you know, would it be a vole or a gerbil or what? I stopped going after the first week. I mean, I knew the script. Look, some, a little, every now and then, something good came up. I mean, Stephen, to his enormous credit, came up with the idea of calling, in Blackadder Four, calling Tim McEnone's character, Darling, which was just a work of, it was a stroke of absolute brilliance. But, you know, a couple of the things he didn't write. And there's some slight gall as the years go by, which they all know, and as I say, I'm very close to them all.

But at the time, I just didn't go. But Richard went the whole time, and he would sit there, and he said, can we just rehearse it? And often, you know, you'd just come back round to the original script. Sometimes it'd change a bit, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes for the worst, I think Blackadder's Christmas Carol was a considerably better script on the page, and it was after it had been tutorialised to death for three days. I need to go back and watch that immediately now. It was, you know, it's not bad, but it goes way off the rails there.

I mean, it was the only time I was really, I got as angry with John as he regularly got with me and Richard because I really thought they fucked it up. I mean, it's okay, but it's not as a good deal. Can I just say, I love that you all constantly have dinner with each other forever now. There's all this water under the bridge, which is great. You know, I love that whole kind of creating. Well, I mean, the nice thing is, in the end, it was a hit. And that's a very satisfying hit, many friendships.

But as I say, when you write towards. This is just quick interesting sidebar, right? So you've got all these actors, and as I say, Richard and I were glorying in their talent. We kind of knew how they were going to deliver all these lines, which makes it so much more exciting to write the lines. You know, you know, if you're giving Stephen Fry a Maltchit line, you've got a pretty good idea how he's going to do it, and it's going to be even better when he does it.

Even with the genius of Rowan, we always pretty much knew what was coming. The one actor that you never knew how they were going to project, going to present the speak to speech and never asked question in a single syllable was Miranda Richardson. She's amazing. We loved us so much. She just took the script and invented her own private madness.

You never knew what random emphasis she was going to hit next and every time it was a stroke of organic genius. And it was interesting. Richard and I always used to say the one black adder actor who we didn't kind of know how they were going to sound was Miranda. That's amazing, isn't it? I love that.

So many people, believe that the final scene of Black Island goes forth is the greatest ending of a comedy series. In some case, the greatest ending of any TV series they've ever seen. Did you know when you'd written it, but you didn't even go and watch it being filmed? I think I was there on the last episode. Look, the thing is, all good sitcom is a community effort and studio sitcom is above all a community effort. It really does take a village and a very large village. to make a studio sitcom. Just to be clear for your listeners and viewers,

studio sitcom is a theatrical presentation. You present a half-hour comedy to a live audience. The only thing is between you and them is seven or eight cameras, booms hanging over their heads, and it's being mixed live. It's a beautiful thing. People say, oh, the laughter sounds canned. It's not canned.

When you hear that laugh, when the German says, what is your name, boy, and mannering says, don't tell him, Pike. The laughter you're hearing is the genuine life, just the same as with all our shows that sometimes, of course, you do a second take, so you might put the first laugh on, but basically the actors are timing their work. Anyway, it's a beautiful community experience, right?

And the reason I bring this up, not just because for some reason, the success of single-camera sitcoms like The Office, brilliant, oh, they are, because we're British, we instantly have to see a downside and say, well, we hate those old-fashioned studio sitcoms like, what? Well, like faulty towers, only fools and horses, Dad's Army. Anyway, it takes a village to make a good show and it took a village to do the last scene of Blackadder. Richard and I wrote, I think, a sensitive script,

we were very aware, through the whole of Blackadder goes forth that this was a very different comic dynamic. I mean, millions dying of the plague in the Elizabethan era, you know it was a tragedy for those people, but you can't really feel it. You can't really, I mean, when I was doing upstart crow... Better a bit now. Yeah, I guess now we've had her own blades.

Give an events. Yeah. But when I was doing Crow, I tried to do that, you know, tried to make Hamnott's death, you know, like they were parents, but sorry, I'm leaping like a mounting upstocked from point to point. The point was Black had the final scene. We knew that, you know, but don't forget, it was only written in 88. So a lot of veterans were still alive from that war, let alone the family. Both my grandparents fought in the war on either side in my case. So, you know, we knew it was real tragedy and the most appalling death of a generation. So we were writing with, I think, some care and an instinctive need to do a different

form of comedy about the deaths. But then, of course, we bring in John, the producer, Richard Bowden, the director, the brilliant as was, BBC in-house special effects, they had a tiny studio, they had so little facilities, costume makeup. I mean, a vast number of people put their talents into creating that moment. I would probably say Richard and John, the producer and director, are definitely led it. They are the heroes of that moment. Our script said they, you know, I think it's a great last line. You'd have to be, you know, you'd have to be mad to be here.

No point pretending to be mad. So Richard and I teed it up nicely and we say, they go over the top. You know, I think we might have put silent drum or something like that. And so then Richard and John are planning it. And then they bring in a team and something truly beautiful was produced. And I feel, there is no false humility here. I know what I did on the blackadder, but I feel... hugely privileged to have been a part of a team that produced not just that final scene,

but the whole thing, because it really does take a village to make anything worth having. This world where we look to leadership from strong men, be there, movie directors or presidents, is madness, it's communities that make the difference. I will say this, though, and everyone remembers the poppy fields and what have you, but if anyone wants to go and get the scripts, you look at the script for that entire last episode, I don't think there's a word out of place in the episode, which comes from you've created these characters who you loved and you created so many comic worlds

that you could go anywhere with them but I don't think there's a word out of place and particularly in that last scene I think it was one of the greatest comic scenes in British sitcom because it's so beautiful and it's real people who we care about and they've been so city and so ridiculous for so long but we loved them and we believed in them

and so I think the script does well that's really lovely to hear and we were proud of it and then watching Hugh realised that all his friends are dead and watching Tim's character darling realise that the Tiddly Winkers are no more. You know, it's 1970, the Great War of 14 to 17.

I know, which is an amazing love. You know, anyway. It's very beautiful. Can I, we finish the Blackadder thing with a question from Nicholas, which is a different note. How much money would a streamer need to offer yourself, Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson

to make another Blackadder series? I honestly don't think that it is, it is in any sense of question of money. All of us are fine, you know, we're all very comfortable. I mean, not as, you know, we're not all the same level of comfortable. Rowan, thank you very much. But Blackadder was a Labor of Love 40 years ago. I mean, we did the last one, wrote the last one in 88, it was made in 89.

Any little efforts at doing anything since, I think, have been pretty grim. I've never been, you know, happy even with the idea of doing it, let alone seeing what happened. I mean, all right, but, you know. I mean, the only reason we would ever do anything Adderish again, would be because we wanted to. Yeah. And there is no desire to do it. As I say, I mean, I know it sounds all like I'm overplaying it.

But, you know, I literally exchanged two emails with Rowan only yesterday, trying to see if we could, you know, meet before I go back to Australia. We remain all such close friends. And I think one of the reasons that we are there is that we aren't going to do another series of blackout. I mean, listen, how can you follow? How can you follow the end of the last one as well? It's beautiful. This episode is brought to you by Sky and the brand new series All Her Fault.

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Now, moving on to We Were Rocky, the whole idea of the Duke Box musical, Nadia Hills are saying, what were Brian May and Roger Taylor's first reaction to your plot for We Will Rock You? It does capture the bombastic nature of Queen, but they've never really thought about them having a sci-fi vibe. Where were you struck by that? Their reaction, Nadia, thank you for that question, was wonderful. The pitch I made wasn't really sci-fi-y. How did it come about? It was one of the great gifts of my life.

I was in Stuttgart with Brian. The night before last, as we opened a new production in Stuttgart that I've directed over there. So it is a wonderful thing. You're a busy man. You're a busy man. You're a busy man. You're a busy man. Well, I love Brian and Roger.

We formed a part. I mean, you've made friends and everyone. I have. I work with people, you know, it becomes a bond. And when you're putting your heart and soul into something, you go very close to people, and they did too. So what happened was some 25 years ago now, one of the great good fortunes of one of my representatives,

one of my agents, a fellow called Paul Roberts, he's from Preston, he said, man, Queen of Fold, they want to do a, they want to do a greatest hits musical, they want you to write it. I thought, oh my God, I can't believe it. It turns out what actually was the case. He'd gone to Queen and said, if you ever thought of doing a Greatest Hits musical,

would you be interested in Ben writing it? And their manager, Jim, had said, well, maybe, we could talk. Oh, my God, that is all the show business. That's exactly one interaction. Slightly different reaction. But what had happened was Queen were already looking. Jim Beach was already the manager, played by Tom Hollander in the movie. Queen were already looking at doing a Greatest Hits movie based on a life of Freddie.

They'd even done a workshop with De Niro's company, Tribeca. He's a big fan. Why wouldn't it be the exact generation to be a huge queen fan? And I think anybody who says they don't like Queen is just kind of mad because there's songs you don't feel like every song, but there's so much in it. Anyway, they've done this workshop about Freddy's horror, you know, this great tragedy of Fred's death from AIDS.

And Brian and Roger had gone over and seen it and said, well, that's not us. That's, you know, that's not who we are. That's not what Freddy was. You know, we're not a tragedy. we're not a death from a disease, we're queen. Yeah, we are the champions. Yeah, they didn't like it. And above all, they hadn't liked the fact there was no comedy in it.

They said, well, Freddie was the funniest man on earth. We've always had a laugh. Look at us. Look at what we wear. Look at what we, you know, we are fun. We are not being serious, I promise. They do take themselves seriously, but in a good way, in a proper way. They love entertainment.

They love showbiz, and they love being rock stars. And anyway, so, Jim are really. originally came to me and said, look, the main thing is, we've got this script, but there's no laughs in it. And can you put some gags in? I said, what, put some gags in the script about Freddie dying of AIDS? You know, I mean, it can be done. No subject is beyond comedy. If it's done sensitively and properly, I could have put some good laughs into it. But I didn't think it was the right idea. I said this, the Queen should not be Freddy's story. Queen belonged to us all. It's not even queen. Queen shouldn't be Queen's story. Queen is everybody's story.

I left home when I was 16. I lived in really quite depressing digs for the first. term, I was doing my A-Levels away from home, and I was- It's good when you get the caravan, though, in the road. I'm happy when you get the caravan. When I finally move into my own little caravan, and it's beautiful, and I started making friends and everything. But yeah, I had a very lonely star as a 16-year-old on my own, and Queen were number one with Bohemian Rhapsody for the entire first term that I was away, the autumn of 75.

So everybody has Queen in their DNA, in their hearts. And I said, the show has to reflect the vibe of the band, not the story of Freddie or the story of Brinal, the story of the band. It reflects the vibe. So I said, you need a great legendary, a colossal, an Arthurian epic. And Jim said, sounds good, write it, but I was very, very busy writing a musical with Andrew Lloyd Wehr at the time, and making my movie maybe baby. No wonder I irritated people. And so it took a year, but then I had this idea. I'd been to see The Matrix, and I couldn't, I mean, it's great fun, but I couldn't understand. What is the purpose of keeping humanity enslaved in computers? There's always these films about

You know, humanity's by some dark force, control. But where's the profit? Basically, humanity is only any use to dark forces if you can profit from them. And I think in the Matrix, they end up eating them or something. You know, we're being stored for food. I never really, maybe that's rubbish. I don't know, but I got this. The Matrix is good, Ben.

It's a good film. It's a wonderful film. But I thought, really, a dystopian future if it's not World War III, you know, it's not just, you know, anarchy and Mad Max, would be actually endless consumerism. It would be a point where the computers were used to trap people's brains and keep their attention and give them endless pap. Never going to happen. I can't see it.

I can't see. So this was 1999 and I wrote them a synopsis about a world in which machines produce the music. They're performed by holograms and beamed directly through personal communication devices to the punters. So the kids remain continually locked in an entertainment spiral controlled by a vast media conglomerate.

That was 1999. That's essentially this podcast every week. Yeah. And I said, but somewhere on this planet, in this future world, a one guitar has been, and I said, because the one thing this media conglomerate would never want to see would be the kids making their own music. They want punk rock.

They don't want rock and roll or hip-hop because they want to keep producing this endless computer-produced pat, which will keep them. And I said, so this hairy, legendary bank rock collective have left one guitar buried in rock, and he who can draw it forth and play the mighty riffs will free the kids and live music will be played again. And that was a kind of pitch I made to them.

And they loved it. And they loved it. And so that was the beginning of We Will Rock You. And it was quite prescient because we said it 300 years in the future. And four years later, the Napster case happened, then the MP3 was invented. The iPhone came five years after We Will Rock You opened. And the rest is a very sad dissent.

The kids still do make their own music, but my goodness, they're making it harder to make a living out of it, you know. Yeah, and we were just, funnily enough, we were just talking about that on our other episode this week. It's been an enormous hit everywhere around the world. And you've done things, by the way, that you're proud of that haven't been hits. I'm sure you've done things that you were less proud of that were hits. This has been the thing that probably financially is the thing that's made the most money. Four musicals, three lost money, but if you've got, You've got one that does. You're all right.

What is it, do you think, that makes a hit? What is it? Have you at any point, because you've seen every side of that coin, do you, how do you know, when do you know, what's the much ingredient? You can't plan a hit. I mean, this is this, I mean, the only thing any artists can do, they might want a hit. And I think all artists do this. I don't want to make in America. Yeah, like, you know.

Basically, everyone wants a bigger audience, and of course they want to get paid for it. But you can't plan that. You have to be prepared to fail. you have to be true to yourselves. Wheel Rockie was not a bolted on hit. Queen were actually in their biggest dip at the end of the turn of the century. You know, they were kind of...

I remember when I first met Bri, I said, how you doing, mate? He said, oh, still pretending to be a rock star. You know, I mean, like, they'd... You know, Freddy was gone, and so it wasn't a slam dunk by any means. And in fact, you know, we were... It took a long time to make money. It took five years before it broke,

well, maybe about three and a half years to break even. You can't plan a hit. Obviously, in terms of... having the Queen's songbook, you've got about the best head start you could possibly imagine. I mean, the reason Rocky was a huge hit is mainly because Queen's music is so utterly fabulous and it brings people together and makes people feel. Sorry? Did you call it Rocky? Rocky. Rocky? Rock Hugh? Sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought it was some nickname you'll have had for it. No, no, we call it Rocky. But it wouldn't have worked with Just Queen.

There's plenty of Queen tribute shows. Like Abba, the biggest thing Abba was the Bjorn again and they were big. They'd play one Wembley Arena or whatever. But to make a Mama Mia, you needed the right story. And for Abba, it was perfect. The sunny holiday romance, you know, a girl who's wondering who a father is, she wants to get married,

but she doesn't know who's going to give her away. Perfect for Abba. And if they hadn't got that right, I'm telling you know, Mama Mia would not have been a hit, and the Beach Boys one wasn't a hit. There's lots that have been hits when you think it's a bolted off.

Most of them are not. So I actually think I did get this story right for Rocky. I think it is, and they, and Brian and Roger do too, and Fred is family. Fred is a set, after the reviews hit, Fred's mum, who saw the show, first night, wrote the cast a letter, because it was pretty devastating. I mean, we were predicted to close in one week. It's bad, bad, bad reviews, right? Very, very bad.

We were on the news. Queen to close within a week is the critics' verdict. As I say, 20 million people have now seen this musical. It was very, very brutal, and of course, 100 people were staring immediate unemployment in the face. and a lot of the critics say they were very angry on Freddy's behalf they all said Freddie would have hated this as if Brian and Roger who were his brothers

and Deakey also big thumbs up I mean John Deakin he doesn't get involved he stays at home apparently I met him once when he told me you know don't fuck it up he said and he said he loved the story I always think John Deacon's got the perfect life he's got all that queen money

doesn't have to be recognised ever if he doesn't want to be I just think he would be recognised if he went out. I imagine he's just sitting at home watching the snooker. So he gave us a big thumbs up. And so Queen were behind it. And Freddie's mum wrote after the reviews, and we were predicted on the news to close.

I mean, we were a news story. She wrote, Freddy would have loved this show. I know it up by heart, because we had it upstate, back on the stage for 12 years at the meeting. Freddy would love this show. It's set in the future. Freddie always looks to the future.

And above all, it's a comedy. Freddie always saw the funny side. And she said, if music be the food of love, rock on. And we did for 12 years at the Dominion. That's good. Your relationship with critics is sort of throughout the book, we often come across critics. What is your, because a lot of people would never read any of their criticism. What is your relationship to the British critical community? Well, I certainly don't read it either.

I mean, I learned a very long time ago you cannot read reviews, good or bad, because phrases will live in your head rent-free. You'll never stop writing letters of rebuttal. You'll never stop being angry. Obviously, you know, we live in a free world, and actually I read reviews, and sometimes they can be great and interesting. I wish they would admit that they were subjective.

I do wish they'd say, in my opinion, rather than this is A. And with me, it has always been quite personal. Because I became a famous comedian, everything I've ever done as a writer has been sort of reviewed through the prison. Yes, how did the stand-up just sort of invert all of that? from being the backstage person, you then became a public target?

Yeah, but I suppose because I was political and, you know, I've always used, when I'm doing my subjective writing, which is my stand-up act, I'm saying this is me kind of thing. You know, I put my kind of, sometimes put my principles, the things that outrage me, and the delight me into it, and certainly the 80s was a very divisive decade. We were young, you know, who wasn't, you know, angry about thatch from where I came from. In my topic already, but I used to say I can do two minutes on Thack. and an hour on my knob and everyone says you're a political comedian. No, I'm a sexually repragist, farty comedian.

I do Thatcher and Nob Gags. And certainly the reason I, yeah, so I've always had to deal with the fact that, you know, sparkly suited Thatcher bashing Ben Altner's written a new novel or whatever. Isn't it? You've written 16? 16 novels. Can I ask you something about writing? Sorry, Joey Kay says, you've been basically non-stop for the last 40 years as a writer. How do you have so much self-discipline?

Can I add my thing onto it because I want to know this too? Can you explain to me how you write? How do you, what do you do? You go to your computer in the morning and how long do you sit at it? Yeah. Because I'm really intrigued because you've done so much. And how many times do you rewrite it? Were there ones where you almost like had three drafts or something and that was it?

And were there things where you've done, I don't know, 20 drafts of the same script? Both, yeah. I mean like a demolition, the first episode of the young ones, was basically really, written in one go and was very was virtually unchanged that's interesting um novels plays because sometimes i do i mean particularly with novels i mean sometimes i'll tinker for a very long time well long time for me how do i write you've got to sit down and you can't walk around waiting for inspiration you've got to sit at your desk like you said make the mark yeah and then change the mark and then that's fine the only advice i'd ever give to any writer or indeed any artist is make the mark

start. Don't try and write the perfect sentence. That image of the screwed up paper in the waste paper basket. That is, that's the wrong way to go about it. You could, don't, don't rip it out. Carry on. It's okay. So it's a shit first sentence. You can come back to it. Maybe the whole first five pages will be shit, but eventually you'll get on a roll and then you can go back and fix it up. And certainly that's the way I work, very rarely does something leapfully formed. Occasionally it does, like the example I just gave, and more so when I was young. But very quickly, I learned. So, but, so I do do a lot of editing and I listen to my... Because you didn't know what you don't know as you've said in one of your sake. I was working in my younger days

towards these fantastic talents that were exciting me and I was in the pub with them as well. We're up, not Rowan, obviously, I'm not sure he's ever been in a pub. But, but, you know, so it was all very organic and very wonderful. But slowly you sort of start to grow up, people have their own lives and you're more working on, you know, you're working on your own. But yeah, you get up, you go to your study or wherever. And if it's, if it's, if it's, on your knee on a bus in a cafe. I've done plenty of that. You know, J.K., she famously had to work in a cafe.

It was the only warm place. You know, you can't say I can't work unless I'm at my jit in France. If you're a writer, you can write anywhere. But I'm lucky. I've got a nice study, and I go and sit in it, and I try and stay there and try not to make too many cups of tea. I mean, honestly, when I'm writing a novel, I'll drink nine pints of tea a day. Not because I want the tea, but because if I go and make a cup of tea,

that's five minutes when I'm not staring at the bloody screen. Jack Thorne says he likes to get between three and five. He sits in his office all day, but he says he likes to get between three and five usable pages of dialogue. How much do you, you don't, someday, you don't as a target. A lot of people say that, and I've never, and Stephen tells a story of some great 19th century novel, is who always wrote 100, or whatever. But if he finished a novel, he'd just start the next one so that he'd done his number of words. That day.

I'm not like that at all. I'm very relaxed. No writer works as hard as somebody who's got a normal job. If you work at a checkout or you, you know. It's not going down to mine. Yeah, it's not. It really isn't. A no writer, even you who are currently on this phenomenal role.

It's firstly you're at home, it's nice, you can get up. And also, when you want to go and have dinner or go to the pub or not work that day, you don't have to. And I have a really full life. I've got a family and friends and I enjoy them to the health. So I don't work all the time at all. I know we've only got seconds left and we've hardly dealt with enough. I do want to finish what you asked about the critic thing because I've never talked about it. And Rob Bryden read the book, and he, I don't know him very well, he read it, and he rang me, and forgive me the action.

He said, you know, but I had no idea you had so much shit thrown at you. I thought the Thinburne was a critical success. And he basically said, why did you feel you have to bring it up? Because it's my autobiography, it's my story, and that has been a small part of it. And it's only a small part of the book, but I do talk about it because, you know, to be constantly in a public eye and trolled for 40 years. I mean, these days, everybody gets trolled. If you're on the internet, you're going to get trolled just at school. You were a pioneer, though.

But, yeah, I was a pioneer of being trolled. And, you know, sometimes it got me down a bit for a day or two. You know, critics have said, you're very thin-skinned. My wife thinks I'm very thick-skinned, because, you know, you get quite a lot of it. And you try and avoid it, but someone will tell you, someone will tell you a review in order to express their outrage. I thought it was awful when they called you a hypocritical, no-tal and shit. I couldn't believe it. I nearly wrote a letter.

And, of course, your day is ruined because you only read the review. When people go, I'm so sorry about that Sunday Times thing. Exactly. I didn't know about it. Why are you talking? I'm just talking about a life in the public eye. Because, Ben, you have like one million wins that we are very happy for you to take. Well, that's not.

Yeah, and I'm very happy for them. But even the wins tend to be castigate. You know, it's quite, it's a lot. I don't want to go any further into it, but I don't talk about it except in the book. And it's because it has been a companion. And in the absence of any real tragedy, up until Rick's death, I mean, now with people, people getting older in my family, I'm experiencing more sadness and unhappiness. But Rick's death was the first genuinely terrible blow that I felt.

So, yeah, maybe I've had such a lovely life. I've had time to get really annoyed about being slagged off in the papers. I mean, the reason we wanted to speak to you is because of this extraordinary career you've had and the extraordinary amount of successes you've had, what you've been through. And as you say, I think sometimes in the public, people see the shiny suit and go, or he's the guy from Saturday Night Live. And actually, to my mind, you're one of our great writers and everything you've written for so many different medium.

And no one has that many hits by accident. It's unbelievable. It doesn't happen. But lots of people listening to this, a lot of young people listening, younger people listening to this, it is quite hard these days to create, to make things. You know, we're living in a slightly different world.

But the one thing that never changes is the creative impulse. It's the bit in the head, the bit where a creator goes, I have something I want to say what's the way that I can say it and how can I get people to see it? What is your advice after a kind of a lifetime of doing these incredible things

to anybody who's sitting there thinking, I just want to create something. I want to do something that people are going to love. I bet I never can. What's the advice? The thing is, you can. You can create. Anyone can create.

The question is, will anybody else see it or read it? And that obviously is the great imponderable. And when I, somebody wants to be an actor, I always say that the obvious, which is you've got to ask yourself, if you devote your life to acting, basically working in bars, et cetera, et cetera, getting the odd role, et cetera, when you come to be an old person and you look back and you say, and I had some nice parts and did a bit of fringe that was really satisfying, but you never made it, will you still think you made the right decision about your life? Because if you can't honestly say that, then you should not be an actor. I think it's easier for writers, because Because you can always find something of an audience with writing. You can self-publish, you can get on blogs. In the old days, there was fanzines. I know I've been unbelievably lucky. I don't need to check my privilege.

I drip with it. And I am genuinely grateful and astonished for every opportunity I've had. Just being born, middle class with, you know, a stable family, whatever. But I also know that my instinct to write was organic and instinctive. It started when I was 11 or 12. And had I not been successful, had not Rick made that phone call, I would have tried in every sense. I'd have sent my plays off as I was doing it.

And had that, I'd have written for Amdram. I did Amdram all through my teens. I loved Amdram. My artful Dodger is still fondly remembered in government. We haven't talked about your Artful Dodger, but of course we must. Well, I don't think we're sadly going to have time today because I've witted on and banged on. But the truth is you have to believe it's a vocation, not an ambition. You have to believe that you want to create.

You want to express yourself artistically in some manner, acting, painting, writing. and you're doing it first and foremost for yourself. And if you're successful, you continue to do it for yourself because that's the only way you can fulfill your contract with the audience, which is to say, this is what I think is good, this is what I believe in. If you don't like it, well, that's a shame. But at least I know I wasn't a hypocrite. I did my best.

I'm not trying to please you. I'm trying to please myself. And you can do that, you know, in private. You can do that with friends. You can do that, get up in a pub. And I'm not saying I would love not to have made. Of course, I'm grateful. I've had a very successful career and found an enormous audience.

And I've had to work, you know, hard to maintain that. But I also know that had I ended up getting a normal job, I think you used to terms civilians. Had I ended up being a civilian, I listened to the project. I would be writing and I would be with my local Amdram Society. I'd be trying to get and put my play on or just do a sketch for a little review for charity. It's easy, you know, if you do it for charity, you'll get an audience. You know, I'm not saying, there's a lot of people out there thinking,

And I just, you know, it's easy for you. You have to believe that a life as an artist is this, you'll take, you'll accept any, any kind of disappointment to pursue it. And if you can't face that, then, then don't. Ben, thank you so much. And thank you so much. Absolutely pleasure talking to you. And we had so many questions and not enough time to get through to all of them.

So thank you to everyone who sent questions in. But the one thing that became apparent from the questions is, forget the critics, the love the people have for you, and the joy you bought people over the years. We haven't even talked about the joy your novels bought me, for example, which they absolutely did. But all of the questions... You've done too many things, Ben.

And I really have forgotten. And I've had some good reviews as well. It's come up a lot. I've some good reviews as well. I've had some good reviews as well. I've only ever addressed it in the book, and I wouldn't want anybody to think that's what I go around thinking. I am aware.

I wish I'd been more aware at the time that some things I've done have meant a lot to people and it's just lovely to know that now so thank you for that and to your listeners thank you so much for coming talk talking to us thank you ben thank you this episode was brought to you by sky skyglass is the new television from sky the kind that makes your old teddy feel like a dresser This is the big screen premiere right there in your living room. Because it's not just about pixels and settings, it's about the experience.

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