COMEDY WRITER BEN ELTON REVEALS C
BlackadderBlackadd creator, who is heading to Scotland for latest stand-up tour, tells of sadness over loss of larger-than-life pal who emerged alongside him and other stars in the 80s
WHEN Ben Elton returns to Scotland to perform stand-up there is always one man on his mind.
The genius that created Blackadder and The Young Ones became close pals with the late Robbie Coltrane, as part of a group of actors that would go on to dominate the comedy scene in the 80s.
And Ben, who walked miles across Scotland’s hills with the much-loved Harry Potter star before his death two years ago, said Robbie taught him how to enjoy every moment in life.
He said: “His death was a great sadness but not a great shock. The shock was how long he bloody lived.
“I remember Robbie saying to me in the early 90s, ‘If I carry on the way I’m going, I only have 10 years left’. He had a glass of whisky in one hand and an untipped cigarette in the other and added, ‘But what a 10 years!’
“He lived for another 30 years but he definitely enjoyed life. We were good friends and had great experiences walking together. This one time I was lent a kilt and I went commando and walked above the snow line for several hours.
“It was surprisingly warm yet liberating and my balls didn’t chafe. I also remember swimming in Loch Lomond and Robbie standing on the shore laughing at me.”
Ben and Robbie, who first met at the Edinburgh Festival, worked together on the TV series Alfresco and were part of a clutch of comedy and acting legends including Hugh Lawrie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson who all found fame at the same time.
But Ben, who is coming to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen with his new show, said Robbie retreated from public life towards the end. He said: “Sadly, I didn’t see him in the final years of his life as he had retired into himself but my wife and I remain friends with his ex-wife Rhona and will see her when I play Glasgow.”
The comic, who in the 80s took Margaret Thatcher to task, said he plans to try to keep away from politics in his stand- up show Authentic Stupidity but it’s clearly going to be tricky.
With convicted felon Donald Trump looking to become president again and both the Scottish and British governments in turmoil, he reckons the world has gone “stark raving mad”.
He said: “The verdict’s in. Humanity is thick. We need signs to tell us to step off escalators, we elect gibbering fools to lead us and now we’ve invented Artificial Intelligence which is actually going to replace us.
“I’ve spent 45 years in comedy exploring the outer limits of human idiocy and my mission has never been more timely as the world and its people have gone stark raving mad. You just have to look at what is happening here in Britain and in the States never mind the rest of the planet.”
“The American election is terrifying on an existential level as Trump’s attitude to the environment is so cosmically wicked that there is a possibility that it might spell the end of the world as well as the end of American democracy.
“It’s so bad I don’t even want to talk about it but maybe we will have to from caves with the water rising and the bombs falling. These are more dangerous and terrifying times than anything we have ever lived in before.
“The Cold War era was scary but there were sort of grown- ups in charge. If it was Putin and Trump dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of Khrushchev and Kennedy, I dread to think what the outcome would have been.”
Ben, who co-wrote cult hit The Young Ones with Manchester University pals Rik Mayall and Ade
Edmondson, admitted the only thing more terrifying than Trump back in the White House and another Tory government is AI.
He said: “Scientists and technologists should f*****g well read Pandora’s Box and take a good look at themselves. It is not good enough to say it was there so I invented it.
“AI cannot do us any good. ‘It’s going to find a cure for cancer,’ they say. If it has killed democracy and rendered the human race redundant I would rather not be alive anyway.
“If Apple and Google and this f****ing AI bloke Sam
Altman were terrorists saying we have invented a machine we believe has potential to put humanity out of work and render humans redundant we would send in James Bond.”
“If Putin said he was releasing something on to the internet which would allow everybody to pretend to be everyone else, could steal intellectual