Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (36 page)

I once
answered a question about football and politics that involved Germany
acknowledging the Independence of Croatia. Gary simply refused to believe that
I had not been given the answer before the show, but I hadn’t. I do read the
papers. Maybe he thought I sat at home poring over
Heat
magazine. Well,
I do, but I read the papers too and I fail to see why the two should be
mutually exclusive.

Gary is
what I would call ‘a solipsistic ironist’; he seems to play up to the
footballer image of being not very bright and pretends not to know things. Then
he takes the piss out of you for assuming he was so thick.

Rory
McGrath used to delight and piss me off in equal measure. He’s a likeable guy,
a man’s man, but his never-ending jokes about sportswomen having moustaches
used to drive me nuts and I tried to counteract him at every possible point in
the proceedings.

Jonathan
Ross, who was a team captain for a while, was also very lovable but would
occasionally dive into comedy rants about things I thought were unacceptable.
He knew that these would never be transmitted as they were too near to the
knuckle, but sometimes his comments used to get on my nerves. Oh yes, yes, I
can hear some of you say, political correctness gone mad. However to me, the
existence of political correctness is a GOOD THING because it protects the
vulnerable. It is only a handful of silly people who have taken it too far and
have laid themselves open to well-deserved derision, taking with them the rest
of the gang who are only trying to improve the lives of those who have
historically been treated like shit. To me there is nothing worse than watching
white, wealthy, middle-class privileged men having a pop at people who have
less ability and confidence to protect themselves.

QI
is always a joyful experience. I love doing it. Alan Davies is a
friend, so I get a chance to see him, but it’s good fun working with Stephen
Fry too. Being in the presence of his gargantuan brain makes me feel about five
years old.
QI
has a gloriously loyal following and usually the audience
know more than the panel does. The recording takes a good two hours and how
they fit it into half an hour, I do not know. I think the feel-good factor on
QI
is down to the producer John Lloyd, who is a talented, highly intelligent
and lovable man who has a great sense of humour and has been behind many of
TV’s comedy successes like
Not the Nine O’Clock News
and
Spitting
Image.
You may think he has given me some money to eulogise him, but he
hasn’t.

Never Mind the
Buzzcocks

This was a show I always
loved doing because it was hosted by my friend Mark Lamarr and therefore, saddo
that I am, it gave me an opportunity to socialise. Like
They Think It’s All
Over
was a mixture of comics and sports-people, so
Buzzcocks
was a
mix of musicians and comics. I am hardly the world’s expert on music, so I
never really knew the answers to questions, but I suppose that didn’t matter
and that’s not why people were watching anyway. They wanted laughs.

It was
quite a blokey show and the few women performers from the music industry tended
to be there to be decorative rather than anything else. I remember though being
on the show with Sporty Spice as she was then known, and bloody hell, could
that woman talk; none of us could get a word in edgeways.

Sometimes
I would have a great time on it and things would go brilliantly, because as a
comic you cannot help being aware of the laughs-count in your head. Other
times, I would slink away from it feeling that I’d done really badly and they
wouldn’t book me again because I was so rubbish. In those situations I just had
to wait for a couple of days to pass and then I would forget about it and move
on.

I love the radio, always
have done. First of all, you don’t have to sit down and look at it and secondly
you can multi-task while you’re listening, which is what all us women love to
do.

I have
worked mainly on Radios 2 and 4, and also on what was once known as GLR and is
now called BBC London.

My
first foray into radio started fairly early on in my comedy career when I was
invited to do bits and pieces of comedy and stand-up on a show called
Hey RRradio!
which was presented by John Hegley and Patrick Marber. I have always been a
huge admirer of John Hegley, whom I have mentioned elsewhere in this book. He
is a comedy genius and I do not know why he isn’t really famous. He has a cult
following of people who absolutely adore him. This may actually be a more comfortable
place to sit on the entertainment scale, as once you get a telly profile, lots
of problems come with that. (This sounds as if I don’t like Patrick, which is
not true!)

Hey
RRadio!
was recorded in the charming rural hamlet
of Woolwich in South-East London at The Tramshed, which was an old tramshed,
handily enough. It was probably nearest to a comedy gig as anything could be
without being a comedy gig and therefore was very comfortable to do. Basically
we did the show to the audience while someone turned a tape recorder on, taped
it and then snipped out the crap bits and then it went on the radio.

As time
moved on, my comedy profile improved with the more telly that I did. Way back
in the nineties there was a show on the radio called
The Mary Whitehouse
Experience
which was an early version of the TV show of the same name. The
show consisted of me, David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Punt and Dennis (Hugh Dennis
of
Outnumbered
and
Mock the Week
fame) and a singing duo called
Skint Video who were big on the comedy circuit. The producer was one Armando
Iannucci who I’m sure you know
(The Thick of It).

The
show was recorded in front of a studio audience in one of the radio theatres
and had songs, stand-up and sketches in it.

One
day, as I arrived for rehearsal in the afternoon, I was handed a sketch to do.
Being the only woman, I tended to get all the ‘lady’ roles. The sketch (short
and sweet) consisted of me coming on stage to very loud American-style whooping
and cheering and saying, ‘Oh dear, I’ve forgotten to put my pants on.

Well, I
don’t know if I was feeling particularly arsey that day, but I protested about
why it had to be me who did that line, arguing that it would be funnier if a
man said it. However, this was not accepted and I was told it was a line for a
woman to do. So, rather grumpily I agreed to do it, but it niggled at me and
when the time came round for me to perform it in front of the audience, I
decided to take the line in my own way through to its logical conclusion.

So I
stepped on stage to the sound of whooping and cheering and said, ‘Oh fuck it, I
think my quim’s showing.’

Well,
it got a really big laugh with a few gasps thrown in.

Unfortunately/fortunately
it wasn’t live. Had it been, I would probably never have worked on radio again.

Other
favourite forays in the early years included:

Windbags

Windbags
was a show which I presented with stand-up Donna McPhail. Donna was
a very sharp and dry stand-up who had worked on the circuit for years, and her
fast speech and habit of jumping from topic to topic was a real contrast to my
rather slow and laconic delivery. We used a tune for the top of the show by
Rhoda & The Special AKA called ‘Old Boiler’ which is actually a rather
scary and unsavoury song about a woman who gets raped. Yes, cheery, I know. We
only had the instrumental lead-up in the show, so unless you were an aficionado
of Two Tone, you wouldn’t even have noticed.

We only
interviewed women on the show, and our guests included Barbara Windsor,
Caroline Aherne and Candida Doyle, keyboard player for the band Pulp. I asked
her a question about Jarvis Cocker with whom I had appeared in bed on the front
of the
New Musical Express.
(Well, be honest, that was the only way I
was ever going to get into bed with
him.)
Candida refused to answer the
question, saying, ‘He wouldn’t talk about me in an interview so why should I
talk about him?’ Quite right too.

The
show ran for a couple of series but sadly never got recommissioned for a third
despite having very high listener satisfaction ratings (whatever that means).

GLR/Radio London

I loved my time at
GLR/Radio London. Although it was a local radio station, because it was London
it felt quite cosmopolitan and we were able to get great guests on. Initially I
had a music show on which I was allowed to play what I liked — what a joy to be
able to impose one’s musical taste on everyone else. Although I am obviously a
bit of an adolescent as I tended to pick songs (completely unconsciously) which
had swear words in them. On one morning I remember I had picked ‘Little Boy
Soldiers’ by The Jam and ‘Working-Class Hero’ by John Lennon. Halfway through
‘Little Boy Soldiers’ I saw a strange expression cross the face of the techie
on the show. He realised a ‘fuck’ was coming up and leaped towards some dials
and just managed to dip the sound before the offending word blasted round
London. He wasn’t so lucky with the Lennon song, but we apologised and I don’t
think there were that many complaints anyway.

Perhaps
my favourite show on BBC London which GLR then became, was an interview show on
Sunday mornings where I would be given a pretty heavyweight guest to interview
from the world of politics or the arts. Among my best guests were Mo Mowlam,
Vanessa Redgrave and Michael Foot.

Mo
Mowlam was as full of life and humour as you would imagine. Very bright, sparky
and relaxed. Speaking to her was enormously enjoyable and fun. By contrast,
Vanessa Redgrave was scary as anything. Erudite, confident and as true a member
of the arts aristocracy as you could get. I felt as if I was interviewing a
headmistress, and was desperate not to put a foot wrong. Thankfully I didn’t
and we got on well, but I did feel like a naughty schoolgirl who hadn’t done
her homework.

Michael
Foot had been my hero for a very long time and we had corresponded on a number
of occasions. Our birthdays are on the same day and we exchanged cards for a
bit and little presents. He was an intellectual giant with whom I could not
possibly keep up. His career came to an abrupt halt when he was spotted at the
Cenotaph one Remembrance Sunday wearing a donkey jacket, God forbid, and the
press slaughtered him for not being smart enough in front of Her Maj. Oh, for
God’s sake, even if he had been wearing a donkey jacket, so what? It is the
coat of the good honest working classes. Anyway, it wasn’t a donkey jacket, it
just looked like one and was remarked upon in a positive way by the Queen Mum. So
there. (Obviously the fact that the Queen Mum’s taste in clothes made her look like
a drag queen will go unremarked here.)

By the
time I interviewed Michael Foot he was in his late eighties and it wasn’t easy.
His hearing wasn’t great and he became fixated on one particular area of Labour
policy. He was impossible to interrupt because he couldn’t hear me, so the
whole thing was a bit of a nightmare. But I didn’t care. He was Michael Foot
and he was wonderful. Everyone said he was too gentle and nice to be in
politics. Well, what an indictment of politics.

Radio Cover

For a few years, I covered
on Radio 2 with Mark Lamarr for Jonathan Ross’s holidays on Saturday mornings.
This meant Christmas, Easter and five to six weeks in the summer. It was really
great fun. Mark, as I’ve said, is a good friend so it was a real pleasure to
work with him. Bands would play live in his studio and we had a stream of
interesting, talented and occasionally slightly bonkers guests.

Mark
has an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and would sort out the playlist, which
he would bring in from his own collection, and every week I would bring along
some CDs and try to sneak them in, which was not easy, particularly if they
were performers he didn’t like. Morrissey wasn’t his favourite and he would
make his disapproval clear by disappearing to the lay whenever I tried to force
Morrissey on. Ditto Take That and Kate Bush and many others.