20 years since Victor put both feet in the grave... I don’t believe it!
on one person – Annette Crosbie. David, whose novel, One Foot in the Grave and Counting, is published later this year, says: “I just sensed a truthfulness and intensity that would lift all this above the level of the conventional sitcom.
“I just knew she could bring incredible weight to the show.”
Ratings quickly rose, peaking at 20 million for a 90-minute special, One
Foot in the Algarve, on Boxing Day 1993.
In every episode there was always a surprise in store for Victor. One of the most extreme came in The Pit and the Pendulum episode.
After a disagreement with an aggressive gardener, Victor is planted up to his neck in a hole the gardener had dug in his garden. In reality, Richard was crouched inside a wooden box buried in the earth with a supply of hot water bottles keeping him warm. But it took three attempts to shoot the sequence.
He recalls: “It wasn’t very comfortable, mainly because I couldn’t do anything, even scratch my nose.
“It was miserable because I was in the hole for long spells – two or three hours – and to top it all, there was a wind blowing.”
After writing a fifth season, David believed it was time to quit after one more series.
Annette was saddened by the news. She says: “I would have liked it to run forever because I enjoyed it so much. But it was becoming a burden for David, with people constantly writing, ‘He’ll never top the last one’.”
Having decided there was no alternative but to kill off Victor, David still had a lump in his throat watching the death scene being filmed.
The image of Victor’s arm falling into shot as his cap drifts away in a rivulet of rain was, says the writer, “suddenly very chilling and for a moment I felt the dramatic loss of a close friend”.
Letting go after so many years was a wrench for everyone. Richard says: “One Foot opened everything up for me. Doing something that cultish means there is a price to pay, of course, in as much as sometimes people find it difficult to cast you. Yes, it closed a few doors as well as opening them, but I feel extremely lucky to have played a character as popular as Victor.”
Would a show like One Foot be commissioned today? David says: “The route to acceptance in those days was a whole lot simpler.
“What’s certain is that were the same scripts submitted now they wouldn’t be allowed to coast through unaltered as they did then.
“Sadly, with comedy, there’s rarely any right or wrong. All too often you’re just bending to someone else’s taste.”
While David regards himself as semi-retired now, Annette and Richard still work when the right projects come their way.
Annette says: “I loved the tiny bit I did in After Life with Ricky Gervais, that was great, the nicest and happiest job I’ve been near for a long time. But the TV business is so different, too commercial and impersonal.”
As for Richard, he is considering revisiting his one-man show, The Trial, based on an episode of One Foot.
He had planned to stage the show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017 before suffering a heart attack.
He says: “I was sitting, waiting to meet a writer and then it happened.
“I fell and was taken to hospital, but don’t remember anything after that.
“I’m lucky to have survived, being 80 at the time. I appreciate how lucky I am to still be here.”
■ David Renwick’s novel, One Foot in the Grave and Counting, will be published in hardback by Fantom Publishing (fantompublishing.co.uk) later this year. A stage adaptation of the sitcom is also planned.
Every man owned up to being a Victor in one way or another
ANNETTE CROSBIE PLAYED WIFE IN SHOW