Before the show tonight I met up with a guy who is writing a book about Chris Morris and the various people who have worked with him to mainly discuss the seminal radio show
On The Hour.
Writing on this was one of the first jobs that Stew and me did. We'd been working for a few months on the poor, yet strangely missed topical sketch show
Weekending, but
On The Hour was a very different kettle of fish and in hindsight we were amazingly lucky to be involved in what would prove to be one of the most influential comedy teams of the decade.
It was strange to have to reminisce about those times, not least because it was so long ago (I think we started work on it in 1990), that it was quite hard to remember specific details, especially when trying to determine what shows we had been working on in which order. Stew and me worked incredibly hard in those days, writing about 30 hours of comedy between us in two or three years. We were young and ideas were spewing out of our brains like so much brain vomit. They were exciting, exhausting and depressing times. I hated working on
Weekending in the end and as I may have mentioned before, once got so fed up with it that I got into a plastic crate usually reserved for old newspapers, put another plastic crate on top of me and refused to come out to write jokes about John "Grey" Majors. There was no such reluctance with
On The Hour. I think we knew pretty early on that we were in the middle of something pretty special. Armando Iannucci did an amazing job of putting together a team of some of the most talented writers and performers not yet really known by anyone else. Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Patrick Marber (well not all of them could be brilliant) to name but a few.
It's hard to believe all that happened 17 years ago. Although there were lots of great things about being involved with the show, ultimately we had a disagreement about contractual issues - Stew and me believing that we should have part ownership of characters we had helped to create- and we ended up not being involved in the equally brilliant TV show,
The Day Today. But the radio show had been put together in such a collaborative manner - the actors improvising off ideas provided by the producer and the writers - that it was hard to work out who had done what. In the long run it was probably better for Stew and me to bow out of it all, as it meant we could concentrate on out own stuff. Yet if we had stayed on board might have ended up working on the various spin off projects involving Coogan and Chris Morris.
Anyway it was interesting to chat about the show and to consider the various careers of all the participants, before then having to dash off to do my show. I think it was the best performance tonight and the crowd was small but responsive. The weekend gigs are selling a bit better so hopefully it will be even more fun tomorrow. I still can't understand why the Spring sold so well and this run is more of a struggle - it doesn't really make sense - but there are still 7 shows to go and I feel confident that word will spread. Hope to see you there.
