Humans are not as tough or clever as we think we are...
As he hits the road with a new tour, Ben Elton tells MARION MCMULLEN all about his comedy world
How do you relax after a live show?
When I come off stage my mind is buzzing with material and I’m always very self-critical.
It’s not like I’ve got a body full of adrenalin and I need to go out to a nightclub or anything.
Back in the 80s it was different. I used to tour with Rik Mayall and we’d find somewhere to get a drink afterwards. It was easy in the 80s, we’d drink after a gig, or have a curry or go to some horrible disco and it was great fun because we were young lads on the road. I don’t drink after a show any more.
I do love a drink, but it’s 11 o’clock after the show and it’s too late to start drinking, especially at my age (he turned 65 this month). I’ll have a drink on my night off.
Comedy sketch show Alfresco was one of your early TV appearances. How did that come about?
One day in December, 1981, I went to a meeting. Granada Television was proposing a new sketch show and I met Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. I literally walked into the room and the three of them were there.
We clicked immediately. They were already friends and they are now life-long friends of mine. Robbie Coltrane joined the company shortly afterwards.
I met some great people back in the 80s and I’m glad to say they all became friends. People say ‘oh, your friends are so luvvie’ and I tell them it didn’t start out that way. None of them were famous when we became friends, including me. We were just a very lucky generation.
You’re new tour, Authentic Stupidity, is taking you all over the country. What will you be taking on the road with you?
Isn’t packing a pain? I don’t think much about clothes. It’s T-shirt and trousers on the road, but I have washed many a pair of smalls in a hotel sink, let me tell you.
I suppose now the first thing I have to remember to pack is my sleep apnoea machine. I sleep tethered to a long hose and I wear this mask. My wife thinks I go to bed looking like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Dumbo.
I discovered my snoring was dysfunctional and my heart was stopping 10 or 15 times an hour. My wife would lie there listening to this awful snoring and then it would slowly stop and she would think I was dead and would kick me. Eventually I got it diagnosed and, yeah, I’ve got sleep apnoea. I would recommend anybody who is aware that they have erratic snoring to have themselves sleep tested because it means basically your heart is running out of oxygen and your brain is trying to wake you up in the night.
I call the machine suck and blow because I wrote a play for Hugh Laurie back in 1989 called Gasping and it was about a world were air becomes privatised. It was a satire about the way we consume our environment and the invention of the machine was called Suck and Blow. Now, all these years later, that’s what I call my sleep apnoea machine.
You’ve been called the godfather of modern comedy. Do you think it is the hardest thing you do?
It’s by far the hardest thing I do, both personally and emotionally.
Artistically? I don’t know. Writing a novel or directing a theatre company, or a movie – I’ve directed two movies – they are quite difficult jobs, but wonderful, wonderful jobs to have, but there is nothing as raw as standing alone on stage with a microphone and there are 1,500 people in front of you hoping you are going to make them laugh. That’s quite a pressure.
What drives you?
I’ve got this on-going compulsion to try and communicate and I don’t play vast arenas, I don’t know whether I could sell them out or not, but I really wouldn’t want to play one anyway.
It would be an experience, but it is not why I go on tour. I go on tour for the communication. It’s not a love-in. (Laughs) I’m not sure I’ve been loved by my audience, appreciated maybe... but to do that you’ve got to get really close.
It’s such a privilege to know you’ve got a full house of people who have given up their evening, spent their money and have invested their time in you and that’s where you find the energy. I have never once in 43 years failed to give 100 per cent. Anything else would be soul destroying.
What was it like making your stage debut recently in Queen musical We Will Rock You, which you wrote?
That was funny, after all these years – my professional theatre debut.
I did a lot of acting when I was an amateur I loved am dram. The only professional thing I’d done before was
[when] Ken Branagh put me in Much Ado About Nothing in 1992 and I never got offered another job. The only way I could do any professional acting was to give myself a job so I auditioned for the director of We Will Rock You, who happened to be me, and luckily I did well and I gave myself the part.
I just thought ‘why not?’ It was great fun... a part that was made for me... a sort of old rock ‘n’ roll guru.
Theatre is a genuinely lovely world, musical theatre, especially. I’ve been part of it for two and half decades and have written a number of musicals. I’ve directed The Beautiful Game abroad and We Will Rock You all over the world, but to be a part of it, right in it, was a special time.
I have never once in 43 years failed to give 100 per cent
Ben Elton
What will you be exploring in the new tour?
My whole comic philosophy is kind of celebrating our inadequacies. Humans are not as clever or tough as they think they are and actually we need to lean into that, as young people say, as opposed to sort of denying [it].
They say artificial intelligence is a real threat to humankind and I say I think you’ll find it’s the same old threat – it’s authentic stupidity. Apart from anything else, how stupid are we to let a bunch of geeks in California invent technology that they admit could well render humanity redundant within five years?
Authentic Stupidity tours from September 1. Visit benelton.live for ticket bookings