Griff Rhys Jones brings The Cat’s Pyjamas to Worthing

SussexWorld

Multi award-winning comedian, writer, actor and television presenter Griff Rhys Jones hits the road on his stand-up tour this spring with The Cat’s Pyjamas with dates including Worthing’s Pavilion Theatre on May 22.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. Well, it's an insane pleasure to be speaking to Griff Rees-Jones about the

00:07forthcoming stand-up tour. And you've got a fabulous title for this tour, haven't you?

00:11A brilliant title, such a cool title, Cats Pyjamas. And you whittled that down from quite

00:16a few different titles then, didn't you? I did, yes, but I have to be careful about

00:21the way... I want to say at this point that it's you, the audience, who are the cats pyjamas,

00:27not me. Not you. I'm trying not to set a standard for myself that everybody goes, well, I don't

00:35know, maybe it was the dogs pyjamas, but not quite the... Here's an interesting thing,

00:40because when I was looking up a little bit about this, these phrases, I discovered that

00:45the reference in the slang dictionary to the dog's bollocks is actually that it was first

00:52used in a play which Mel wrote. A friend of mine sent this to me, and it was in The

00:57Gambler, which he wrote. And I thought, it can't be the first reference to the dog. It

01:02just can't. It's everybody's hate, but there we are. It was probably the first time that

01:07the phrase was used. So then it became the sort of... It just became one of those sort

01:13of...

01:14It's a standard phrase, isn't it?

01:15Isn't that great? Wonderful.

01:16That's astonishing, isn't it?

01:17I thought so, but apparently it wasn't, no.

01:20And the whole notion of you doing a stand-up tour, that's something that you've started

01:24doing relatively recently, isn't it? After all the different things you've done in your

01:28career.

01:29It is.

01:30Now comes stand-up.

01:31I mean, I didn't do stand-up when I was a kid, and I was there the opening night, or

01:37the second opening night, I think we were all... And we all turned up to be on stage

01:41at the opening of the Comedy Store, which was the first... The beginning of the sort

01:48of what was called alternative stand-up, because, you know, I was a radio producer, and if we

01:53wanted stand-up comedians, and there were lots of brilliant stand-up comedians, but

01:56they weren't the Northern Clubs, they were the Bantley Varieties and places like that.

02:00And it was... There was no alt circuit, and that all sort of grew around the early sort

02:07of 80s, late 70s. And I remember I was being interviewed by one journalist who said to

02:12me, oh, if I had a pound for every comedian who told me they were there at the opening

02:18of the Comedy Store, and I thought, well, yeah, but I actually was!

02:25Now, as you mentioned the late 70s, early 80s, I can't speak to you without mentioning

02:31Not the Nine O'Clock News. That was my entire sixth form. We adored it. We just gathered

02:36around it and lapped it up. It was brilliant, brilliant television, wasn't it? And just

02:41looking at it again recently, okay, some references you don't get anymore, but so much of it is

02:46still absolutely red-hot, spot-on funny, isn't it?

02:50I know what's funny about it is it's not repeated very much. So it has been, it was, in many

02:56respects, the most successful comedy series for the BBC of all time. I mean, because it

03:02crossed all boundaries, you know, Python was a very big event, and Python completely

03:08changed sketch comedy. It was almost like there could no be, people said in television

03:13comedy, there would never be another sketch show because the last word had been done.

03:16And then John Lloyd and Sean Hardy got together and decided, of course, what hadn't been done

03:20was satire. And what hadn't been done was jokes with punchlines for a long time in a

03:24sketch show. So that's what made Not the Nine O'Clock News take off. And it got 18 million

03:30viewers.

03:31Oh, that's astonishing.

03:32On its feet. I mean, that's an astonishing number.

03:35I remember that, looking forward to it, just waiting, waiting, waiting. But it was also

03:39the convergence of these four people, wasn't it, that made it?

03:43Yes, and it was sort of like put together, but it was the convergence of writers. That

03:48was the thing that really made the difference. And coming from background, I've been working

03:53radio with John, actually, we knew that the real key to Not the Nine O'Clock News was

03:59that it was an opening for so many writers. You went on, you know, David Rennick, who

04:03went to write Wonderful in the Grave, or Richard Curtis, or Andy Hamilton, Guy Jenkins. Everybody

04:09wanted, there was nowhere else to go. We hung up a shingle and said, send us your best sketches.

04:16I've never been in a show where we'd have a read through of the potential sketches we

04:20were going to do, laugh so much at the quality of the writing and the stuff we were going

04:25to do, and then find ourselves having to lose really brilliant sketches, because we

04:29couldn't fit them all in. That was just, it was just the way it went.

04:33But it is still so very, very funny, isn't it? Do you watch it at all recently? Do you

04:36go back?

04:37No, I haven't watched it. I haven't watched it for a long time. But the funny thing is,

04:40it doesn't get, it doesn't get repeated, because...

04:44I suppose there are so many allusions on there, Ayatollah and Reagan and so on that people

04:49talk about.

04:50Yeah, well, people think it's too topical to repeat. But in a funny way, I think that's

04:53slightly relevant. I think the other reason it doesn't get repeated is that so many of

04:57the writers who wrote it went on to become such enormous stars in themselves, you know,

05:02that actually getting somebody to sit down and do all, renegotiate the rights to show

05:08this thing again, is just a bit too much work for the people who organise these things.

05:14So yeah, it's a pity not to see it.

05:16Well, that makes sense. But you kind of feel that Constable Savage needs to be seen again,

05:19doesn't he, really?

05:20Yeah. In fact, maybe Rowan and I should go and do it again sometime. But I'm not sure

05:25that we can get Rowan out of his, out of his castle, really.

05:32That's not a little tour for next year, then.

05:35No, but I did write to him and say, I do this thing called Happy Christmas, Ipswich. And

05:38I did say, you know, what, do you want to come down and do some stuff? But he very kindly

05:42gave a donation, but declined the offer to come and be in the show, yeah.

05:46Oh, I must say, I think one of the things I remember most about Not The Nine O'Clock

05:50News, the week when John Lennon died, and just thinking, please don't do something tasteless.

05:55And you didn't, you just played at the end of the show, in my life. And it was absolutely

06:00beautiful, wasn't it? Do you remember that?

06:02Yeah. Well, in a funny way, it was the same when John Kennedy died. You remember, that

06:05was the week that was, did an amazing tribute to John Kennedy.

06:09Before my time.

06:10And it's sort of interesting that the show could sort of just turn a little bit into

06:15something.

06:17It was a tragic moment, wasn't it? It was just so finely judged, and so absolutely the

06:19right thing to do. And I thought, yeah, that's why we love Not The Nine O'Clock News.

06:23But you know, the other thing that's really weird, looking back, is that a success like

06:27that carries you along with it. And you get involved in it. And it's very entertaining,

06:33and quite an easy thing to be involved in, you know? I mean, you enjoy yourselves. Well,

06:40because the sketches are so good, the nights are well organised, got a lot of good people

06:43working on it. You're all working together, you know where the things are going, and it

06:47starts to feed on itself, which is great. And you look back on a career and think, I've

06:54never quite been in something. Oh, I've been in stage shows, and we had great times with

06:59Smith & Jones and things, especially in the early days. But there's a sort of sense that,

07:04and the early days of Talkback, when we sort of founded that and got going. And it's amazing

07:08when you're on a roll, and it rolls away with you on board, you know, how satisfying

07:12and good fun that is. And people say, what do you want to do? And you go, well, you know,

07:19it's not about what you want to do, it's what you want to be involved in, is one of those

07:23fantastic sort of gang show successes, you know, that's just, that's just...

07:28With that, you had the permutations, didn't you? Because it wasn't, obviously, it wasn't

07:31always all four of you, it was two or three, all the different combinations.

07:35Mel and I spent a lot of time working together, because Pamela had a certain sort of, you

07:43know, she was in a lot of roles and a certain role model in there. And Rowan had such a

07:49peculiar individual style that you were always sort of, you know, supporting Rowan in a funny

07:53sort of way in sketches. But the two straight men with the wonderful sketch by Colin Bostock

07:59Smith about, which then came true, which was the bank, you know, he goes in to get some money out

08:05and the man at the back behind the bank says, yeah, I'm really sorry, I'm afraid we've lost

08:09your box. And he goes, I mean, what do you mean? I don't know, your box with your money and it's

08:13gone somewhere, we can't find it. And then I look back on that, the audience roared with laughter

08:20at this idea that this is how banks worked. And then when the great crash came, that was exactly

08:25what happened. Well, were you freer in your comedy back then, do you think? Would it be

08:32tougher to do some of the sketches now? No, because in all shows that you do for BBC,

08:38there's always an element of edit and self-edit and control, you know, I mean, there's a language

08:42control in those days. It's very surprising to see people in shows, you know, swearing to the

08:47degree that they do sometimes now, because that's like, that would have been impossible. And it's

08:52interesting, because there's some comedians, some comic writers who want to be free, like

08:59Johnny Spade, to sort of say, to just record real language. Then you have this sort of struggle and

09:05fight with them saying that, why can't they say this? And it's just what they were saying, they

09:09were always, always. And that was true through the 80s. You know, there were always moments

09:16with Chris Morris or something like that, where the boundaries were met, and people would gather

09:20around and discuss what those boundaries are. And it's always a very complicated business,

09:26because, you know, that as a producer, there's some things that it's not worth going to the

09:35scaffold for, because you'll just, you will need to go to the scaffold, and you will need to,

09:41and you will, or you'll need to go to war, you'll need to pull out your broadswords and fight your

09:47way to that, to get there. But you have to try and explain to writers that, which is, which is

09:54unfortunate, but you have to say, I'm afraid this sketch is not the one that we're going to

10:02preserve, you know. There will be sketching, but it's not this one, I'm afraid.

10:06Fantastic memories. You've fired me up to get those DVDs out again tonight, and to be taken

10:11back. It's been really fantastic to speak to you Griff, thank you so much. And just to stress again,

10:16your local dates to us are Worthing on June 1st and Winchester on June 15th. Thank you so much.

10:23Thank you, thank you for talking, brilliant.

Category

Transcript

Recommended