Still grumpy after All these years
The TV series Grumpy Old Men hit our screens 21 years ago, giving midlife stars the chance to air grievances about modern life. It struck a chord with viewers. Its creator Stuart Prebble, 72, explains why he hasn’t mellowed
From the moment you open your eyes, it starts. Even before that, actually. Stuff that gets the day off badly. This morning, for example, I spent half an hour trying to ignore a beeping sound that threatened to drive me to distraction. I tried to deal with it in the same way I’ve learned to live with the joys of tinnitus, but short of smothering myself with a pillow (which I considered), I was doomed.
Could it be the alarm clock? No, I stopped setting that years ago when I eventually ceased having a proper job and began what is laughingly known as ‘working from home’. Maybe it’s the microwave telling my wife that her morning coffee has reheated? No, it’s more urgent than that. Is it the refuse collectors manoeuvring their dustcart outside my window? No, because it isn’t accompanied by the strident voice of a robotic sergeant-major bellowing the blindingly obvious fact that ‘this vehicle is reversing!’ It can’t be the dishwasher or the washing machine announcing that they’ve finished their cycle, because both of those woke me in the middle of the night. The smoke detector telling me its battery is running down? What the hell?
Eventually, I stumble to the bathroom and even I – hardened as I am to the never-ending procession of new irritations – am shocked. It turns out that my toothbrush is telling me off because it needs to be recharged. I’ve hesitated to use electric toothbrushes because they make my brain vibrate, but my dentist (who talks to me as though I’m a six-year-old) prevailed and now my day is off to a bad start.
It’s 21 years since I had the idea for the first series of Grumpy Old Men for
BBC2. At that time, a motley band of
entertaining grumpies got together to lament the seemingly inexhaustible list of provocations that plagued our middle age. Drawn from a coterie of 35- to 54-year-olds, our cast happily embraced the collective description, and entertained the rest of the world with their grumbling. Everything from absurdly tight spaces in multistorey car parks to ‘your call is important to us’. From preposterous and facile slogans like ‘Fanatical about Film’ to the greengrocer’s apostrophe. From the congestion charge to the insistent bass boom of ‘music’ leaking out of the headphones of fellow passengers on the train.
Our line-up included Arthur Smith, Bob Geldof, Bill Nighy, Tim Rice, Don Warrington, Rick Wakeman and a dozen others, and the first series eventually turned into 73 programmes (including Grumpy Old Women), seven books and a West End and touring stage show.
We had discovered a very rich seam.
Like many good TV documentaries, this one was based on a watertight scientific fact, which was that the 35- to 54-year-old age group was the grumpiest of any in history. Grumpier than their parents, who had grown up during the Second World War and felt lucky to be alive. Grumpier than their children, a great many of whom had been raised during a recession and were celebrating getting on the housing ladder and ‘loadsamoney’.
Ours was the group least likely to believe that healthcare was getting better or that our political leaders know more than we do. It was the generation brought up during flower power, with the idea that we were heading towards a world of peace and love.
A world in which robots would do all the hard work and we’d be free to contemplate higher things. Or even lower things. But that’s not how it had all turned out, and we were grumpy.
You’d think the passing years would have insulated us from overreacting to unwelcome surprises but, two decades on, the world has continued to deliver a perpetual supply of outrages. Indeed, if anything they’re
coming along thicker and faster than ever. Where to begin?
We could continue with the vexations of being bossed about and patronised by technology. The illuminated smiley face approving the fact that I’m driving at the speed of a salted slug – as if the weight of traffic hadn’t made speeding impossible. So-called ‘smart’ motorways reminding me not to drop litter or to ‘take a break’. The incomprehensible announcements by the train guard, repeated endlessly after every ‘station stop’. And if I hear a warning to ‘See it. Say it. Sorted’ one more time I’ll put myself at risk of arrest for civil disobedience.
At one time I foolishly allowed BBC News to alert me when there was an important story we all needed to know about, and was envisaging something along the lines of ‘take cover, the world is about to end’. Instead of which, it beeps to let me know that the idiot formerly known as Prince Harry has spoken to his brother, or hasn’t spoken to his brother, or might speak to his brother, or has passed wind in public. Like I could possibly care.
Other burgeoning irritations naturally include every aspect of social media, which bombards me with blandishments to review my pension, embark on a luxury sea-cruise alongside 5,000 other people aboard a liner with 22 floors, and the attractions of ever more ingenious stair lifts. When the reduced agility of my aged aunt caused me to google mobility scooters, I was treated to promotions for everything from incontinence pads to surgical appliances. Guys, when I need a springy toilet seat to give me a lift, I’ll ask!
Everything, I mean everything, is getting worse. Five years ago, my commute involved a pleasant drive across a leafy park, then across a large bridge, and I would park in the street outside my office. Today, wooden planters block the route around the park, the bridge has been closed for four years and parking outside the office is limited to two hours. All designed to make it harder for me to go to work, to earn money, to pay taxes, which fund the wages of the hatchet-faced officials whose sole purpose in life is to make mine more difficult.
It’s all gone to hell and we’re grumpy. Grumpy Old Men grew up singing ‘hope
I die before I get old’, but now it’s too late to die young. We’ve lived to find ourselves patronised by the lovely girl behind the pharmacy counter who kindly pretends to be surprised when I tell her my date of birth. I smile in the moment, but secretly
I’m contemplating homicide. My prescription is free, and I should be happy about it, but somehow I’m not. Or about anything very much.
Except still being alive. Mostly.
‘WE GREW UP SINGING “HOPE I DIE BEFORE I GET OLD”, BUT NOW IT’S TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG’