Hugh Laurie - from upper-class twit to scheming baddie

As a fully-fledged adult, I have grown up with a wide range of talented entertainers of a similar age. Many emerged on television as part of an established duo or bunch of friends who cut their teeth as performers and writers on the university stage. For instance, Whitehouse and Enfield, French and Saunders, Mayall and Edmondson are long-standing household names for those of my generation. But few come posher than Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. 

Whilst Fry spent most of his public school adolescence getting expelled or imprisoned, Laurie followed the traditional upper-class passage of privilege from local ‘prep’ to Eton and finally Cambridge University. There, his educational achievements were suppressed by extracurricular activities but I reckon he’s come out of it all pretty well. Like Peter Cook, Eric Idle, Clive Anderson and various Goodies before him, young Hugh became President of Footlights where he and then partner Emma Thompson encountered a largely reformed Mr Fry, and the rest is history. 

Stephen could have sneaked into my list of TV Treasures but for sheer length and breadth of output I’ve leaned towards Laurie. In 1983, the two appeared with Thompson in Alfresco, ITV’s early toe dipped into the waters of what was to become known as alternative comedy. I watched a few instalments without being hugely impressed, unaware of the colossal careers most of those contributors would enjoy. They also included Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton, the latter clearly falling short in the acting department in the collection of sketches! 

Instead he excelled at comedy writing and was partly responsible for The Young Ones, which I did watch. Religiously. He even wrote roles for himself and the old Footlights alumni in the classic episode ‘Bambi’. That included the University Challenge skit pitting ‘Scumbag College’ (Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike) against the wealth-flaunting aristos of what else but ‘Footlights College’ featuring Laurie as ‘Lord Monty’.   

Lots of actors have over the years made upper-class twits their speciality. However, few have portrayed them with such childish and wide-eyed gusto as successfully as Hugh Laurie. The pinnacles of his aristocratic inanity were showcased in Ben Elton’s brilliant Blackadder canon of the late Eighties. As the foppish Prince Regent in Blackadder the Third, he propelled the simplicity dial to eleven but who could blame him for his bewildered befuddlement when faced with Samuel Johnson’s vocabularian verbosity?  Two years later, Blackadder Goes Forth saw his George as an upper-class WW1 officer, his stiff upper lip and cheery demeanour protecting him from the blatant horrors of the trenches. He was so stupid that he even allowed himself to cross-dress (as Georgina) and be wooed by Stephen Fry’s incompetent General Melchett. Rather successfully, it transpires…. 

That same year, the pair were reunited in the sketch show format for A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I felt it promised more than it delivered, but sometimes caught the zeitgeist, be it in the world of yuppie businessmen or coaching cheating footballers. I wonder if a young Neymar or Wilfred Zaha were in Hugh’s class? The football theme also cropped up in a 1991 Comic Relief news bulletin skit. Indeed, in the early days, he was a regular sight on Red Nose Day before other obligations took priority. 

At the start of the Nineties Hugh Laurie was extremely busy on TV, but he was also making a name in other entertainment media. There were various film roles, and one sweltering summer evening in 1990 I was with a group of friends watching his hilarious performance on the Theatre Royal stage in Gasping by – who else?- Ben Elton. Alongside Bernard Hill and Jaye Griffiths, he portrayed another upper-class twit in the yuppie satire but showed a gift for knockabout physical comedy too. He was clearly more than a mere sketch comedy phenomenon. 

I confess I can’t remember it, but my 1993 diary records my enjoying an ITV crime drama series All Or Nothing At All. Hugh starred as a feckless financial adviser, not with Emma Thompson but her mum Phyllida Law. Not a Fry in sight. The same was true when he appeared alongside Reeves and Mortimer in the 2000 reboot of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in the guise of a shady doctor at a psychiatric retreat. Both parts suggested Hugh Laurie was shifting gear from posh, loveable prat to posh, devious crook. It suited him like a sleek, shiny Armani. 

In the first series of Spooks, he was back in upper-crust goodie mode, although of the rather more intelligent kind. Which is a relief because he was the amiable head of MI6. His character’s work with the CIA also heralded the actor’s migration to the USA for a new and unfeasibly lucrative phase. 

Apparently, so good was his accent that Hugh Laurie was considered a quintessential American when first auditioning for the role of Dr Gregory House. No matter. He got the gig and proceeded to star in House for eight long seasons, becoming in the process one of the highest paid stars on the US network. Who’d have thought it? Thankfully Channel 5 snapped up the UK broadcasting rights and I could take the opportunity to experience the Brit’s superb performance for myself. The character was a beguiling melange of eccentric pill-popping hospital specialist, irascible boss and frequently obnoxious human being. His saving grace was a Sherlock Holmes-ian brilliance when it came to spotting rare infectious diseases, albeit after a few near-fatal misdiagnoses, in each episode. With greying stubble and walking cane, this was a new-look Laurie, and he pulled off the difficult task of making such a walking contradiction both credible and charismatic. I persevered on and off for a few series before the format began to seem repetitive, and didn’t once see him on subsequent American hits Chance, Veep or Avenue 5. On the other hand I did witness his nice turn in 2019’s Catch-22 adaptation, including the funniest scene of the whole series. I was torn: it was reassuring that a Brit could succeed across the pond but a little disappointing that he needed to arm himself with transatlantic drawl to do so. 

It’s been evident for ages that Hugh Laurie is a real Renaissance man: not just a comedy writer/performer, cartoon voice artist and serious actor, but also Cambridge Blue at rowing (his dad won an Olympic gold in the same sport), novelist. passable guitarist, drummer and sax player, successful jazz-blues singer (but not my cup of Tetley’s) and accomplished pianist. In retrospect, his musical skills have slipped into quite a few comedy programmes over the years, from Comic Relief Country singer to tickling the ivories on Jeeves and Wooster. 

More recently he’s slipped back into the bodies of egotistical bastards, and has deserved all the plaudits. He was superior to any Bond baddie in 2016’s The Night Manager and an engaging duplicitous, ambitious Tory politician in 2020’s Roadkill. More Blackadder than Prince George, perhaps, but his Peter Laurence was another great Hugh Laurie character to be treasured.

Roger Sloman - forever nuts in May

One of the first TV Treasures I detailed was Alison Steadman and now he’s joined by Roger Sloman, her co-star in Mike Leigh’s 1976 Play For Today, Nuts in May It chronicled the increasingly fraught camping weekend of middle-class nature-loving couple Keith and Candice-Marie and, for me, Roger Sloman’s performance as the irritatingly controlling Keith was a revelation. What’s more, for weeks it was hard to finish a meal without recalling the ‘chewing 72 times’ mantra, so hilariously challenged by the childlike innocent played by Steadman! His banjo-accompanied folk ditty was also delightfully excruciating but he was usually relegated to backing vocals when amongst the supporting cast of early ‘80s sketch comedy A Kick Up the 80s.  Tracey Ullman and Robbie Coltrane tended to bag the main parts but when the script demanded a prematurely-balding officious Establishment figure, Roger Sloman was perfectly cast. And this reputation has stayed with him for years. 

I’m pretty certain I was amongst the audience for the introductory episodes of the BBC’s groundbreaking school-set soap, Grange Hill in 1978. While most of my contemporaries were focussing on the antics of Tucker et al, it didn’t escape my attention that the dapper PE teacher with a penchant for punctuality, Mr Foster, was played by Sloman. 

With his shiny hairless pate and boggly eyes, he appeared older than his actual age. Consequently, despite being in his early thirties, Roger was usually cast as older men. He was an irritated dog owner in an early episode of All Creatures Great and Small and the nasty TV licence officer Mr Bastard in The Young Ones, in which he showed he could do physical comedy, too. He was back with Rik and Ade in the Nineties sitcom Bottom as the grocer desperate enough to ask the lead characters to mind his shop, and even made a fleeting appearance in the classic Christmas special, Holy. 

There have been other, more conventional situation comedy roles. I remember nothing about the 1981 series Coming Home, but my diary records that Roger Sloman “rescued” it! He was in a 2014 Inside No. 9 and back in over-zealous man-from-the-council mode getting punched from Roger Lloyd Pack in The Vicar of Dibley. Leave the poor man alone, Neville; he’s just doing his job! 

I can’t find any clips but I’d be surprised had I missed watching with relish his guest parts in 1990s dramas Bergerac (as Jim’s boss Inspector Deffand), Cracker, Lovejoy and Wycliffe and he appeared in the enjoyable 1982 run of thriller Bird of Prey. However, for fans of EastEnders, he may be best known as undertaker Les Coker, a regular character earlier this decade. 

By this time I was no longer a regular viewer but did happen to see Roger Sloman’s distinctive face and gawky frame in one scene. A few minutes later, there he was again, only in a dress and make-up. As an actor of forty years’ standing, it was probably his first role as a transvestite and it certainly surprised me! 

At least it demonstrated to me that Roger is more than just a bald head and that wonderfully whiny voice, but he will live on forever as the camping control freak Keith from Nuts in May whose sayings have stayed with me for forty-four years and counting.

Griff Rhys Jones - Tops with this Smith

I’ve already written about one Oxbridge-educated member of a successful TV comedy group who proceeded to enjoy a follow-up career making documentaries. But, if anything, Michael Palin has actually been eclipsed in recent years by Griff Rhys Jones. 

The latter has certain advantages. He’s closer to my age (albeit still seven years older), was like me once employed by the BBC, went to school in my home town of Brentwood and was born in my current city of residence, Cardiff. What’s not to like?

Also unlike Mr Palin, I have witnessed Griff on the West End stage, performing in An Absolute Turkey back in 1994. It still puzzles me why, despite the stellar comedy cast and Rhys-Jones’ Olivier award, I can recollect remarkably little about the show. 

By that time, he was a TV veteran. I first came across him in 1980 when he replaced Chris Langham in the established satirical comedy quartet of Not The Nine o’Clock News. Forty years later his racist chump of a cop might still strike a chilling chord in this era of Black Lives Matter protests. Back then we Exeter students just found it funny, despite the notorious reputation of the Met Police’s Special Patrol Group. 

The show ran for, I think, three seasons. Rowan Atkinson’s unique style was always the most eye-catching but occasionally Griff moved to the fore, such as in this word-mangling courtroom sketch (“A tissue a tissue….”). Of course, NTNOCN also launched the career of Mel Smith, with whom Griff forged an enduring writing, acting and production relationship. Their Talkback company made a whole raft of successful entertainment programmes, from Brass Eye and Alan Partridge to Da Ali G Show and Through The Keyhole. It also made their own comedy series beginning with Alas Smith and Jones. 

It wasn’t as topical as NTNOCN nor usually, to be honest, as funny, but there were a few decent sketches. However, the duo became most associated with their ‘head-to-heads’. With Griff playing the gormless, man-child on the right and Mel the only slightly more intelligent one sitting opposite, these scenes, whether they were discussing sperm donation or The Beatles, were for several years amongst the most amusing on the Beeb. 

In 1984 they also guested in the classic ‘Bambi’ episode of The Young Ones In what in retrospect was a veritable ‘Who’s Who?’ of eighties alternative comedy (including Ben Elton, Emma Thompson, Fry and Laurie), Griff portrayed a version of University Challenge host Bamber ‘Bambi’ Gascoigne trying to referee the contest between Scumbag vs Footlights colleges. This half-hour on BBC2 had everything, from Ade Edmondson literally losing his head, to Motorhead blasting out ‘Ace of Spades’ in the living room. And Griff Rhys Jones played the title character! 

A year later they found themselves contributing to musical history. Most people will be familiar with Queen’s legendary Live Aid set at Wembley, whether from personal experience or the recent Freddie Mercury biopic, but guess who performed the on-stage introduction? Yes, there were Mel and Griff in ill-fitting police uniforms, battling against the band’s deafening soundcheck, warning the crowd about the noise levels before Smith announced: “Her Majesty, Queen….” So began one of the most famous rock performances of all time. 

Griff starred with Mel in a few comedy films that decade but also appeared without him amongst a formidable cast, including David Jason and Ian Richardson, for ITV’s Porterhouse Blue. Tom Sharpe’s riotous novels were all the rage back then but being the perverse oddball that I am, they weren’t quite so hilarious in my eyes. I actually took against Jason’s mischievous porter Skullion but I don’t remember any opinion about Rhys Jones’ Cornelius Carrington. 

I have clearer recollections of some of his roles in TV commercials. He’s been in great demand over the years, flogging us anything from Vauxhall cars to Prudential pensions, but surely the highlights were his adverts for Holsten Pils beer “where the sugar turns to alcohol”. Griff would be spliced into scenes with black-and-white movie idols from Wayne to Bogart but it’s the one from 1987 co-starring Marilyn Monroe which stands out. 

There have been straight roles, too. I can’t find anything on YouTube but my diary records I watched him star in a Screen One film Ex in ’91 and just a few years ago, he gave a sensitive performance in the Beeb’s ensemble drama series Ordinary Lies as a middle-aged man suddenly confronted with a long-lost son. Like so many comedians Griff has demonstrated many times he doesn’t need loads of jokes to be a good actor. 

Which brings me back to another Palin-esque change of direction in the new millennium. In the early Noughties I was captivated by a new BBC2 series called Restoration. Each week, Griff introduced reports on, I think, three endangered buildings. With UK TV audiences now accustomed to voting for budding pop stars or moronic Big Brother housemates, viewers of this altogether more upmarket programme were invited to vote for the historic relic they felt most worthy of saving. In some respects, everyone was a winner, as the publicity generated often resulted in desperately-needed investment. Actually I happened to be at Hampton Court Palace when Griff was rehearsing a link for the 2004 grand final but I didn’t give him a wave. I doubt the US and Japanese tourists would have recognised him! 

Since then he has campaigned off-screen for the restoration of many Victorian buildings and has made documentaries on a huge range of other topics, from art treasures to mountains, great cities and literary heroes. Most were off my radar but I did witness several programmes featuring Griff on or around waterways.  I dipped a toe into his 2009 Rivers series and in 2006 watched the whole of the original travel series Three Men in a Boat. 

This featured Griff’s beautiful replica wooden skiff, in which he, Rory McGrath and Dara O’Briain rowed up the Thames in a recreation of Jerome K Jerome’s novel. Inevitably there were some amusing exchanges but some of the best bits came from their encounters with people and places along the route, and all seemed suitably starstruck on entering Dave Gilmour’s famous waterborne studio.

Griff Rhys Jones does have a genuine common touch, more even than the estimable ex-Python. Also, he is even more inclined to get his hands dirty – and feet wet – during the making of his documentaries. I’m pretty sure Michael never dared participate in the notorious Fastnet yacht race. 

Mel Smith is alas no longer with us but with Rowan Atkinson an increasingly bizarre right-wing grump and Pamela Stephenson Connolly a successful psychologist and writer in the USA, Griff Rhys Jones remains one of our greatest ex-Not the Nine O’Clock News relics and should he ever find his TV career waning I would definitely vote for Griff's restoration!

Ade Edmondson: Mr Versatile

While at university, the most popular TV programme amongst fellow students must have been Not the Nine o’Clock News.  It seemed different from anything we’d seen before, with stars not much older than we were. Within six months of graduating, even that iconic show was made to look ancient by the arrival of The Young Ones.

The situation comedy rule book had been ripped up, incinerated and buried beneath a mile of concrete, and yet it was hilarious. Still is. The characters, whilst a tad cartoonish, were nonetheless recognisable amongst undergraduate acquaintances, which was down to the observation and brilliance of main writers Ben Elton, Lise Mayer and Rik Mayall and the cast of then-unknowns, Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer and, once Peter Richardson bailed out, Christopher Ryan.

The series was surreal and subversive yet remaining true to both its sitcom roots and the ‘alternative comedy’ circuit which spawned it. When BBC2 first screened it in November 1982, I recognised a few of the actors from another memorable slice of laugh-out-loud comedy shown on Channel 4’s launch night the previous week, The Comic Strip Presents…Five Go Mad in Dorset. In particular there was the psycho-punk Vyvyan from The Young Ones playing Dick. This was Ade Edmondson, and since then he has rarely been off our screens.

For much of the Eighties and Nineties, he was inextricably linked to Rik Mayall, a crazy double-act to complement their mates French and Saunders who had portrayed Anne and George in Five Go Mad…. To be honest, it’s Mayall who stands out the most. He’s the force of nature with the flaring nostrils, boggly eyes, most extravagant gestures and showy delivery, whether as The New Statesman’s Alan B’stard or Blackadder’s Flashheart. And yet it’s Edmondson who enters my personal lounge of legends. It doesn’t help that Mayall died tragically young in 2014, not by an exploding gas oven or head-on collision with a frying pan, but a heart attack. It’s just that Ade has slowly but surely evolved into one of England’s most lovable, quintessentially British character actors and all-round good eggs.

His stage persona has always been a bit bonkers. In The Young Ones, I tended to side with pompous poet Rik rather than the Hawkwind studded double-denim-wearing Ade but, along with Planer’s hippy Neil, they shared out the best lines, as in this classic routine. He always made the most dramatically violent entrances and of course Vyv was the character who literally lost his head after sticking his head out of a train window – as you do – before kicking it along the tracks.

Slapstick violence was very much his bag. Even when arriving for his interview with Wogan in 1985, Edmondson struck a blow for the new wave by crashing through the studio ‘wall’. Let’s face it, with Mayall, The Dangerous Brothers were constantly behaving – well – dangerously on that other showpiece of mid-Eighties alternative comedy, Saturday Live. And then there was Bottom. Yes, it was frequently crude, rude and showed a shameful disregard for the welfare of TV sets and household implements, but I loved it.

A few years earlier, much of the same Young Ones crew had been involved in Filthy, Rich and Catflap which has survived more as a footnote than a chapter heading in the history of British comedy. Personally I think that’s a shame. Written again by Ben Elton, Ade played the alcoholic minder to Rik’s talentless TV personality in a series which cleverly ripped the piss out of the old-school luvvies like Tarby and Spike Milligan who had so vehemently criticised the alternative comedians who were threatening their careers. Perhaps it lacked the loveable and identifiable characters, but the slapstick was ever-present and I preferred it to Elton’s more successful nineties comedy Thin Blue Line which starred Rowan Atkinson. It also gave us the Catflap catchphrase “Oo-er, sounds a bit rude” which I have been known to trot out on occasions. Thanks again, Ade.

Of course, this isn’t the kind of comedy one can sustain well into middle age. He could also do ‘proper’ acting, be it on screen or stage. Though I watched him star in a 1990 BBC Screen One film News Hounds, I can’t remember him as another lead. While contemporaries like Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, Rowan Atkinson et al made it big, dear old Ade has enjoyed an enduring career as supporting actor and entertaining gameshow staple.

In the Noughties, Edmondson claimed a recurring role in Jonathan Creek and, though I didn’t watch it, Holby City and in recent years I have welcomed his appearance in thrillers like ITV’s 2014 thriller Prey and 2017’s Bancroft (in each case almost unrecognisable as a top cop), the Beeb’s One of Us and this year’s Cheat in which we all willed him not to become the villain’s next victim, not necessarily out of loyalty to his character but because he was Ade Edmondson, for heaven’s sake. He can’t die!

Unsurprisingly he has enthusiastically embraced the modern mania for celebrity challenges, demonstrating along the way what an admirable all-rounder he is. Back in the Eighties I watched Ade sing and play guitar in the guise of Vim Fuego in The Comic Strip’s Bad News, which Ade also wrote. I daresay he was no Eric Clapton but he wasn’t miming when they recorded albums (produced by Brian May, no less) and performed genuine gigs, including the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival. As a mockurockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap was funnier but Bad News got there first.

He didn’t only play guitar. I was in the Orchard Theatre audience when his ‘folk punk’ band The Bad Shepherds played Taunton in May 2009. At the gig, Ade introduced himself on ‘thrash mandolin’ which seemed to require tuning every five minutes. Never mind; the pauses were just as entertaining as the music itself. Unfortunately the ensemble has since been disbanded. According to its website, “We'd prefer to leave the whole project as a brilliant memory, rather than flog it to death, and end up being a bit shit”, a perfectly Edmondson-esque explanation.

Apparently he’d also founded a jazz instrumental band in the early Nineties and directed several pop videos, while his latest musical venture is The Idiot Bastard Band. I haven’t heard any of their material but given that it also features Phill Jupitus, Rowland Rivron and Neil Innes, it probably does what it says on the tin.

What I did experience – and I cannot believe it’s fourteen years ago – was Ade’s contribution to Comic Relief Does Fame Academy. His version of the Sixties standard ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ included a manically chaotic chorus which earned him third place in the final. Then-Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman won, but I bet few remember her ‘Champagne Supernova’. I know I don’t! In 2011, Ade was back on the charity night, this time triumphant in a tutu, dancing the Dying Swan surprisingly well for a 54 year-old bloke.

Since then he has gone on to win Celebrity Masterchef, certainly not part of my TV repertoire, and predictably took on and beat ‘The Beast’ for £100,000 in a Celebrity Chase show last year, which is. It wouldn’t have mattered had he got every answer wrong but of course he’s no fool and also carried the audience with him through sheer fun and personality. Sadly, though, I don’t think the team won the huge prize.

But that sums up Ade Edmondson. Like his marriage to Jennifer Saunders, he is such a durable character, full of Olde English eccentricity. The Young One may now be a sixty-something grandad but the anarchic spirit of Vyvyan lives on.