Hollywood star who fancied the Vicar of Dibley
Some years ago, when he was head of BBC comedy entertainment and I was a jobbing actor, Jon Plowman briefly toyed with commissioning a TV programme wherein I’d decamp to Hollywood with a cameraman to seek my fame and fortune, hopefully with hilarious results.
Thankfully for the licence payer the project never materialised. But the fact that Plowman even contemplated it shows just how far he’ll go to seek comedy gold. For make no mistake, despite the typically self- deprecating title of this memoir, Plowman has struck pay dirt more times than most.
In a career spanning 30 years he’s been behind some of the greatest comedy series of recent times — Little Britain, Ab Fab, The Vicar of Dibley to name but three. He was also the man who said ‘Yes’ to The office — a show that changed lives and comedy and made careers.
now, in this hugely entertaining and deliciously scurrilous memoir, Plowman lifts the lid on the comedy industry so we can peer inside and wonder how any of it got made in the first place.
Plowman defines his job as ‘trying to keep as many people happy as possible’ (‘no Griff, what mel meant was . . . no mel, Griff wasn’t talking about you when he said . . .’). Plowman’s real gift, he says, is ‘ to enable other more talented people to have hits’.
occasionally he’s had to ‘disenable’ as well, as illustrated by having to fire a member of Ruby Wax’s scriptwriting team who had been brought over from the u. S. at great expense, then fell foul of her.
The sacking led to said individual crumpling up in tears, passing out on the carpet and nearly cracking his head on the desktop (‘I’ve never sacked anyone else without first checking all the exits and the whereabouts of the nearest medical staff,’ Plowman notes).
In fact there’s virtually no part of the filming process, from com- missioning the pilot episode to walking down the red carpet at the awards ceremony, that isn’t part of a producer’s remit, be it trying to calm disgruntled local residents overwhelmed by invading film crews; driving through the night to locate a lost prop for a French and Saunders spoof on Thelma And Louise; or nursing the notoriously nervous Rik mayall through a live recording of Bottom (‘If you need to give me notes Jon, I’ll be in my dressing room throwing up.’)
Some of Plowman’s best stories are of his early years working with Terry Wogan on his live evening chat show — a man ‘whose preferred method of working would be to turn up five minutes before transmission, be told who the guests were, and walk on set’. Comedians were among Wogan’s least favourite guests (‘They’d drag their mothers out of the audience and chop their heads off if they thought it would get them a laugh,’ the great man once observed.)
The show also saw one of Plowman’s rare appearances in front of the camera — bringing on a tray of drinks while dressed as a waiter for singer/ songwriter Rupert Holmes (who penned the immortal lyric: ‘If you like pina coladas/ And getting caught in the rain’).
Plowman tripped and deposited the contents of both drinks — pina coladas naturally — into a Bechstein piano. ‘It’s always good to see somebody’s last day on television,’ was Wogan’s gleeful aside to camera.
Some of Plowman’s most affectionate writing concerns The Vicar of Dibley. ‘The show was under a kind of happy spell’, Plowman recalls; although it might have been so different.
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HoFFmAn, visiting London at the time, briefly showed an interest in directing series one. ‘Think how long it might have taken just to explain the gags to him’, speculates Plowman, before concluding, ‘There’s a time when a producer has to look a gift horse in the mouth. And then punch it.’
As to The office, Plowman believes one of the reasons it worked is simply because the show has an idiot as its lead: ‘The audience delighted in being able to say, “my boss is just like David Brent, he’s such a t***er”!’
He spends much of his time trying to fend off gimlet- eyed BBC accountants, and laments the recent decline of comedy output at the Corporation.
‘Does a diet of soap opera set in hospitals or episodes of Britain’s Best Hidden motorway Service Stations cover the BBC’s remit to inform, educate and entertain?’ he asks. ‘might I, if it’s all right with you, be allowed a laugh?’
You may, Jon; for goodness knows you’ve given us enough in your time.