Me? Grumpy?
Unlike Victor Meldrew, Richard Wilson is upbeat about everything – except bicyclists, scooters and Donald Trump
What do I get grumpiest about?
I walk in Regent’s Park a lot and I hate people cycling in it. They are not supposed to. A couple of years ago, I pointed out to a young fellow on a bicycle that it was against the rules and he shouted, “Shut up, you old c**t.”
It was threatening and I was frightened. I said to myself, ‘I had better not do that any more.’
These days, if they’re cycling towards me, I just stop and let them go past me.
Electric scooters are just as bad. Oh, I hate them. They’re dangerous. I haven’t had any encounters with them but I don’t say anything to people on them either. One bumped into an actress friend I was walking with not so long ago, and she was the one who did the complaining. I never wanted to be grumpy.
Towards the end of the series of One Foot in the Grave, David Renwick, the writer, and I went out for dinner one night. The series had been running for ten years. He said he was thinking of killing Victor off and wondered how I felt about that. I said, ‘Yeah, kill him!’ I was fed up of thinking of new ways of being grumpy and was glad to see the back of him. I’m only grumpy when the weather is extremely cold, as it has been lately, and it gets into my bones. I’m very pleased it has recently turned milder at last.
I suppose I am also very grumpy with people who are right wing. I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for many years and prefer it to the present Government. There’s not much joy in being grumpy. A lot of people who are, are really just not behaving brilliantly.
One of the reasons I try never to be grumpy is because people might say, ‘There he goes!’ It’s too predictable.
I’m actually quite upbeat in many ways. I do get quite tired about not being able to walk as I used to and having to use a stick, but that is frustration more than grumpiness.
The same goes for my memory, which has got worse since I had a
heart attack four years ago in Hampstead, where I live.
I fell off a small balcony while I was waiting to meet a writer for coffee outside Maison Blanc. As I did so, I hit my head, which caused a bleed in the brain. That’s why my
memory has been destroyed a bit. As a result, I am more forgetful – but not more grumpy. ‘I don’t believe it!’ was never meant to be a catchphrase.
But Victor said it so much in One Foot in the Grave that it became one. After it did, David and I deliberately made sure he used it less often.
I never say the catchphrase myself because it would sound as though I was showing off. I’ve said it by mistake from time to time and apologised. I haven’t come up with an alternative.
People still say it to me, a bit less now than they used to when the series was on. But the final episode was over twenty years ago.
Occasionally people shout it at me these days – taxi-drivers mainly. I’ve got so used to it. If I hear it, I just wave and walk on.
I realise and accept that people associate me with Victor. I’d done quite a lot of comedy before, and acting and directing, but he was my first TV part and lead part.
I like sitcom. The filming’s quite quick – so I could direct a new play at the same time. It bestowed a new freedom on me and was very handy. I quite enjoyed it in a way.
But I am very different from Victor, even though David wrote it with me in mind.
For a start, I wasn’t a pensioner. I was 55 when the series started. Victor was older and had a miserable existence whilst I was a bit more active in a sense - not least professionally. And I was very interested in theatre. I don’t think Victor was!
David, who I still speak to from time to time, relied on his own father for the character, but also on himself, to some extent, even though he knew all along he wanted me to play him.
There was one episode in which Victor was all by himself throughout.
He was in the flat and it was raining. He couldn’t go out into the garden and was just blithering all the time. ‘I wish I hadn’t picked that wallpaper; I never liked it’ – that sort of thing.
I performed the episode as a show at the Crucible in Sheffield in 2015 and it was due to go to the Edinburgh Festival.
It had sold out. But then I had the
heart attack and couldn’t do it. I sometimes think I might still do it again some day after the pandemic, for all the people who bought tickets and were disappointed.
It was very good to do as theatre – easy. A lot of old actors worry about remembering lines. Although my memory is getting worse, I am lucky. I forget the names of actors and films I’ve seen but lines are not a problem.
In that episode, there was an awful lot of moaning!
I don’t moan much, although I
have to say I have not enjoyed lockdown. I’m quite sociable by nature. I like going to restaurants and to the theatre – even though I prefer cinema now because theatres are hopeless on the whole: so many stairs!
I go for a walk with one friend or another in the park a lot but it’s not quite the same. I’ve been cheating slightly and do allow the odd person into the flat for coffee or supper.
At the beginning of lockdown, I do remember thinking I wouldn’t be able to cope with it but then you do manage. Somehow.
I have been doing a bit of work. I
went to Romania to do some TV with David Tennant in Round the World in Eighty Days. I was his butler; just an old butler. And I have done a radio show, Believe It.
It helps that I’ve had my vaccine. I was in the first batch. There was no doubt that I wanted it quite badly. It’s very sad for the people who worry about it and don’t take it, because I think they’re wrong.
It’s amazing it’s been rolled out so quickly. They couldn’t have dealt with it better, even if the Government has dealt with everything else badly!
Of course, the main thing to have been grumpy about in recent years was Donald Trump. Well, I think he is a monster who did such abominable things.
It was extraordinary that Americans let him in the first time. He just didn’t know anything about running a government.
I was of course absolutely thrilled when he lost the election. They should have successfully impeached him second time round. I would have convicted him with pleasure. If he had got in again, I think I might have committed suicide.
I am 84 and can safely say that I have not become grumpier as I have got older.
I’m a bit more mellow in my old age. My memory may not be so good but of that - being mellower - I am certain.
The series writer was thinking of killing Victor off. I said, ‘Yeah, kill him!’