Ben Elton, a Comparative Study

No one under 50 has any interest in or idea of what things were like when I was young and starting out in the business we call show. Why should they, it’s boring.

And let’s face it, people over 50 are old. 

This disconnect was underlined for me when I recently listened to an episode of the very informative and entertaining Louis Theroux podcast.

“He’s very good at interviewing people,” said my ever supportive wife. 

I can’t help hearing the subtext, which I’m sure is me projecting. 

Statement:  “He’s very good at interviewing people,” 

Subtext:   ‘Unlike you.”

Anyway, moving on. 

Louis Theroux was interviewing a man I’ve known since 1982. 

That is, for those of you with as weak a grasp of basic mathematics as I have, 42 years ago. (I had to use a calculator to work it out.)

I was 26 and this man was 23. 

His name is Ben Elton and I’m confident that there will be some people reading this who have never heard of him.

For those not familiar with his work, Ben Elton wrote a game changing sitcom in the early 1980’s called The Young Ones, co-wrote an even more successful sitcom called Blackadder, he wrote a musical with Queen called We Will Rock You, another more recent sitcom called Upstart Crow, and literally a pile of best selling novels.

He was also a hugely successful stand up comic.

So if this comes across as a comparative study, I want to highlight the fact that he is way, way more successful than me in the business we call show.

So we met at the very start of our careers in show biz. I was in a 4 man comedy group called The Joeys, and we were literally rocking the comedy scene in London.

We had a regular Saturday night slot at a community centre in Covent Garden, London and we packed the house every night we were on.

Our ‘warm up man,’ who did a 30 minute set before us was Ben Elton.

Yours truly far right. This is a still captures from a ‘video tape’ That was an early form of data storage

Each week we did the same well tried and polished material and it went down a storm.

Each week Ben wrote a completely new 30 minutes of material which was a bit more up and down but, I have to admit, mostly up. He was still a student at this time, a ball of energy, a force to be reckoned with, manic machine gun delivery, very political and very, to use the term current back then ‘right on,’ or a more nuanced version of ‘woke.’

But he was always very supportive of what we were trying to do back then, 42 years ago.

Jump forward to 1989 and I was rehearsing a BBC sitcom called Red Dwarf, we were making series 3, the first series I appeared in.

Ben was rehearsing with the cast of Blackadder in the neighbouring room at the BBC’s old rehearsal rooms in Acton, West London. They were making the now legendary Blackadder Goes Forth series. I had lunch with him during that period and he was clearly having a whale of a time.

But then here’s where the similarities in our lives are a bit freakish even though I’m in no way trying to compare my level of success to his.

In the late 1980’s I fell in love with a woman called Judy Pascoe, an Australian circus performer and stand up comic.

Around the same time but in no other way connected, Ben Elton fell in love with a woman called Sophie Gare, an Australian musician in The Jam Tarts, described as an “all girl band out of Perth.” 

Both Judy and Sophie performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987 which is when I first met Judy and when Ben met Sophie. 

I never saw Ben in Edinburgh that year, I never saw the Jam Tarts but I remember hearing about them.

Ben and Sophie went on to have three children, Judy and I went on to have two.

They spent a lot of time in Western Australia with their small children, we spent a lot of time in Queensland with ours.

Okay, now I’ve totally run out of comparatives, because Ben has gone on to be hyper successful writing hot TV sitcoms, long running West End stage shows and best selling books.

I’ve been very lucky to have held down jobs on British TV for the best part of 35 years, I’ve published many books, some of which have actually sold a respectable amount of copies.

More recently I formed a production company which makes the Fully Charged Show and the Everything Electric series and live events around the world, so I’m really not complaining.

You should never compare yourself to others, as my annoyingly clever wife reminded me when we discussed Mr Elton’s career, there is “always someone more successful than you, and always someone less.”

True that.

But one thing that Ben Elton and I do have in common now is the our cultural references buried in our DNA are now unknown by a very large section of people who were born after 1990.

And here’s where I may just have the advantage over him for the first time. Woot. Punches the air in final victory.

I constantly remind myself not to use references from the 1970’s, 1980’s and now even 1990’s without some explanation.

What had happened before I was born was World War II and that was a massive lump of information we all grew up knowing everything about. Every documentary, every movie, every kids comic was all about World War II.

But now, who cares who Margaret Thatcher was, or Ronald Reagan, or Tony Blair. You might have heard of them if you did contemporary history at school, but they are boring and past it. 

I’ve been lucky enough to work with young people for the last 30 years, in the TV industry. I’m talking about film crew, editors, producers, directors. They increasingly tend to be younger than me, now their parents are younger than me and in once instant recently, their grandad was younger than me.

So I am aware that my weird old world of ‘right on’ political posing, gay liberation, support for feminism, alternative comedy and anti sexism is now a bit like looking at a Victorian music hall poster.

Cute but obscure.

I noticed that Ben Elton kept making references to things that were totally familiar to him, and Louis Theroux had to stop him and explain who these people were or what that three letter acronym of phrase used to mean.

It’s not a criticism, it’s really hard to be cognisant of the fact that you’re fairly old because other than creaking knees and a lack of hair, I still ‘feel’ the same as when I was 23.

I’m really happy and grateful that we are both still functioning, he clearly has enormous energy, he’s currently on stage every night in the spectacular musical, ‘We Will Rock You’ in London.

I’m about to go and see a community battery project in Australia, and to be honest, I’m very happy about that.