Margaret Thatcher Was Prime Minister When Ian Hislop Started On ‘Have I Got News For You’

today's guest is someone i've wanted to have a proper conversation with for a long time met him a few times uh once went on his most famous show he's been the editor of private eye since 1986. he's been on have i got news for you since 1990 never missed an episode very interesting man please welcome ian hislop [Music] there he is hi rob how are you i'm fine thanks i've got slightly funny eyes so um forgive the glasses providing i'm recognizable um let's go with it i've done something to my right eye you look like ian hisslop i would say oh that's fine then that's the best i can offer how are you i'm very well how are you thanks for doing it i should say to people that we're recording this one quite close to transmission and we want it to be sort of current because you've got what sounds to me a fascinating play which i want to talk to you about but there's a million things to talk to yes so whatever you like rob okay well we'll come to the play because it's a subject matter that that fascinates me um as it does frankly anybody in comedy but but we'll come to that in a bit i was looking at the um the statistics and everything and and and although you know that you've been on a viagot news forever you don't realize quite how long 1990 yeah mrs thatcher was actually prime minister and it's it's it's like we started in black and white well it's true because mrs thatcher is the stuff of historical documentaries yes and and revisionism now so yeah no it does seem an incredibly long time ago um oh now then let let me let me say no is that you pinging and popping do you still have mail open perhaps i i'll close that yeah i'm so sorry it's just in case boris has actually resigned uh well do you know what oddly enough he's somebody else i want to talk to you about in the fullness of time um have you got a tech person there well all you've got to do is you've got to find go to your toolbar and just close mail i suppose because if he and his slop doesn't have a busy inbox no i'd be um right the bbc now offers a range of courses to help the elderly with modern technology [Laughter] i really should go on one oh no here we see ian hislop grappling with mail he's trying to close the program are you seriously telling me that you don't know how to just close down mail no i've never closed my mail never in the whole time i've used a computer by closed mail what you see you shut the lid of the computer with it on and you open it with it on yeah wow that sort of thing my wife does it drives me crazy um now this is going well i really haven't clue rob tell you what we'll do we will view the pings and the pongs as a beautiful phil spector remix and that and that ages me doesn't it so mrs thatcher was was in power good god when you started let me give you a very straightforward question this interests me how have the politicians that come on evolved or changed i'm thinking particularly about kind of media awareness since you started yeah well in the very early days um it was considered very bad form for anyone to come on um so it's very difficult to get people and essentially you could only get people who were desperate or um in need of rehabilitation and in the very early days we used to get trade union leaders on we had people like norman willis came on thinking it was time that the unions reformed and reconnected um with a more popular audience so he was very tentative to start with and these were quite sort of quite sober figures and the idea of that being in politics you had to be funny he hadn't hadn't really caught on yet and then over the years a lot of people tend to come on if they think they can uh win their argument um on primetime telly often that turned out not to be the case which is actually the most amusing ones for us it's interesting you say it was before politicians had started to be funny yeah well i think back to my childhood you'd see a politician on on the television humor wasn't part of the equation and they would just they would take their time to to deliver their message and they would sort of expect to be listened to wouldn't they yes there was a great deal more deference yeah um and also the idea of parliamentary wit i remember when i was a young man i thought parliamentary humor was just humor that wasn't funny and took took a very very long time to say i refer my um honorable opponent to the answer that i made previously and then everyone would laugh and you have no idea why right let's let's go to the comedic then um you knew and and worked with someone that i was fascinated with as a younger man still am uh peter cook a sort of giant of of of comedy tell me about him and and how you got to know him well peter uh cook was for about 20 or more years the proprietor of private eye he actually owned the magazine this had happened because the magazine had gone bankrupt in the early 60s unsurprisingly peter cook then um was a famous television star and had some money and he guaranteed the overdraft for a couple of issues of of the printing of the magazine and for that he became the owner of most of the shares uh which was a fairly brilliant uh investment by peter so he was the owner of private eye and when i was a student i ran a satirical magazine at college in the desperate hope of being funny um and it gave me the excuse to interview my heroes in the middle peter cook was one of them and i went to to interview him where did you meet him we met her an in north london at an italian restaurant just around from where he lived oh yes yes he'd used to do a few things in there i think that there's an interview with him and dudley from about 1973 with mavis nicholson and i think that or maybe when they got together in the 80s again but i think he did a few things at that restaurant yes i think it was a sort of office for him yeah um but again because i was 20 i had no idea that lunch with peter didn't involve any food again because i was that age i i tried to keep up with him and i thought you know a couple of double martinis at lunch i mean we can all handle that and of course i i couldn't handle it at all and um i was using a tape recorder which didn't work um and i hadn't made any notes so at the end of lunch i had literally no interview um and i was thoroughly thoroughly um legless having had the most exciting lunch of my life just um hanging out with peter good but in fact i had nothing at all and i had to write back to him and say i've lost the entire interview can i cover an interview with you again sometime and what did he say he was very generous about it so he gave me an hour uh when i wrote some things down she was incredibly funny and generous and you know i later found myself working with him because it was one of the stepping stones to getting a job at private eye was actually meeting peter because he recommended me to the editor richard ingrams yes and said you know i've met this thing he's quite funny why don't you have a look at him working with peter was that very strange experience of of thinking i basically used to listen to records of um beyond the fringe um that my parents had bought in 1960 i'm now in an office and eventually when i became editor when he came in basically saying right come on peter be funny um and i'll see whether i'll put it in it's a great turnaround in life first of all you work for private eye you didn't go straight in as editor obviously no no i worked for them and i wrote jokes and um i did journalism for them and then about five years after i just got a foot in the door and i'd hung around in the way that you do um uh rich singer has decided to leave and um he offered me the job oh right so it was him he passed the king anointing the the new king as as he leaves there was a sword and a stone and there was an initial problem no and then and and then i took over and then i can see now um there was a huge stinks a lot of uh middle-aged men thought what on earth are you doing giving this boy uh the editorship it should be me and now that i'm a sort of middle-aged man yes um i'm rather older than that now i can see their point um but at the time you know bridging say would you like to take on the job of this satirical magazine it's very successful um become very associated with me um and it's very difficult to do and i said uh yes oh yes yes fine you know one one is ridiculous then okay so spike milligan now there is a sort of link here because um um my friend nick newman and i have written this play about spike milligan um and we found out during the research for it that when peter cook was a school boy he was 16 he wrote a script which he sent to the bbc the person at the bbc said this script is completely brilliant but it is essentially a goon show script and i can't believe the 16 year old has written this and he sent the script to spike spike milligan then invited the teenage peter cook to come and have lunch with him wow i don't think i don't think i've heard that story was that out there no i mean i had no idea and it explains the collaboration later because spike appeared in peter's shows and peter put spike in his films and the two of them um had a sort of huge mutual respect i mean i think based on and peter would always say you know spike milligan was the most enormous influence on me yeah so tell us about the play what what part of his life does it does it address this is for your younger viewers which is specifically why i agreed to come on this podcast uh is that i feel that spike milligan and um his um colleagues in this 1950s radio show the goons by the time most people were aware of them they were old men and harry second was on songs of praise and spike was getting crosser and crosser um in his various um uh um campaigns and and um uh vendettas and furies and um peter sellers had become an incredible film sir and then made a lot of bad choices and became a rather sort of less good film style so there was a sort of a sense in which they'd become known for their later life yeah and not what they were originally known for and nick and i really wanted to go back and say you really should have a look at spike milligan when he was writing the goons and he wrote three quarters of it um you know he was an incredible force these were four men who came out of the second world war they were all in the army they were all working class they all were given just a touch of showbiz at the end of the war when they were touring and performing and then they arrived in london and mostly they hung around in a pub called the grafton arms thinking how can we get into showbiz how can we do this um thing that we know we can do um and the answer was radio and the answer was this incredible thing called the goon show and spike milligan who uh is the most brilliant writer i mean if you think it's silly voices and oh dear what's that about no no it's whistle sharp i mean a lot of it is is very early satire um and it was born out of the war the play mum does it all better um and with jokes most of which we've taken from him so they are very so have you so so you so you you recreate real goon jokes scripts etc etc and we just try and tell the story of the first couple of years from when they started doing it to when they were a huge sort of national success so it's a it's a very upbeat show and it's about i feel we have an awful lot of tears of a clown type comedians and we wanted to say well um yes spike had mental health issues but um quite a lot of other people do which is interesting but not a lot of other people produce the most famous single comedy in britain and why was that what what made it what made it sing and they were very interesting interesting collection of personalities now this is happening at the is it the water mill it's the water mill theater in newbury where nick and i wrote a play called the wipers times which um then toured and went into the west end a couple of times well i'm intrigued by it for obvious reasons when does it open january the 27th splendid and it's running for about five weeks um it may well be running somewhere else after that i i will say that at the same time as it running there uh rob brydon is on tour with with a band doing a show of songs and laughter and and if if a family household audience then are we if if a family household only had the budget for one show i i'd i couldn't in all conscience but let's say for the household that can afford two nights out then please yes what a pleasure to talk to you ian this is the longest we've uh spent in each other's company i've thoroughly enjoyed it yeah no and and a real pleasure and i'm just um i don't get to ask you anything which is quite annoying really well because i i i'd like to hear more about would i lie to you apart from that and um and then i'd like to ask when do we get another gavin and stacy which is again the question you won't answer because it's so boring and everyone asks it and all those sorts of things but as it is do you watch that then do you watch gavin and stacey you certainly do oh lord wow comedy yeah i know but comedy is very it's very uh selective isn't it and and you can especially when you've had such a popular hit you can sometimes be a little rudely awakened oh yeah when people don't care no i i always get people who say oh is that still on all right listen ian thank you thank you thank you yeah my pleasure and um i i hope i i run into you again very soon it's something lovely and we can look back on this and say didn't we enjoy our interview together um really nice to spend time with you ian good luck with the play and i hope i see you soon yeah thank you [Music] you

Channel: Rob Brydon

Views: 288,953

Keywords: Rob Brydon, Rob Brydon Interview, Rob Brydon Spotify, HIGNFY, Have i got news for you, ian hislop, comedy, british comedy, stand up

Id: jc-XeahJe8U

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022