Just before Christmas, I got an e-mail from Rob Brydon: “Hi, I got your
address from [a mutual friend], and I hope you don’t mind me contacting you
direct.” He went on to ask if I’d appear in a television programme he was
making about being Welsh, in which Max Boyce (if you don’t know, he’s a
Welsh cross between Jasper Carrott and Eddie Waring) quoted something I’d
said about the Welsh “in their glove-shaped valleys full of depression”. It
would only take an hour. “Yours in yuletide hope. Merry Christmas. PS sent
from my iPhone that’s why it’s a little abrupt.”
There were three things that immediately struck me about that. First, the
freemasonry of celebrity: if a funny plumber or an accountant who did
impressions had asked for my address, they probably wouldn’t have got it,
but being on the telly means you can go anywhere, you’re assumed to be
benign and trustworthy – an odd assumption, really. Then there was the
glove-shaped valley. I don’t remember writing that – but, in a week, I won’t
remember writing this. And there was the PS. It wasn’t really an apology, it
was more a slyly Pooterish boast: I’ve got an iPhone, didn’t even have to
wait till Christmas. Very Welsh that. I wondered what the Welsh for “iPhone”
was... “yPhone”, possibly. He sent me another e-mail about contracts that
had the same iPhone apology on it; plainly, it’s a round-robin,
indiscriminate boast. It’s no accident that we talk about keeping up with
the Joneses, and not the Smiths or McDonalds. And I still haven’t been paid.
And then a fourth thing crept up on me. I would probably do this programme and
break my rule of never being a sound-bite wonk on soft docs, because Brydon
is the nicest small Welsh person I’ve ever met. In 15 years of being a
critic, I’ve had serious death threats only twice: once from Albania and
once from Wales. The Albanians just said they’d kill my whole family, rape
my sisters, cut off my head with a rusty bread knife and piss down the hole
in my neck. The Welsh promised all that and then went on to send me dozens
of used tampons, turds, bullets, garden furniture, replacement windows,
ornamental thimbles, wheelchairs, offers from lonely dogging enthusiasts,
complaints to the Commission for Racial Equality and the Press Complaints
Commission. And finally, a Welsh MP marched into a police station and
demanded a plod be dispatched to arrest me for principality treason. He’s
still out there somewhere, with a warrant chipped into a standing stone, or
possibly two standing stones, one in English, one in Welsh.
The Welsh bruise easier than ripe peaches; they have insult detectors more
sensitive than a bat in a thunderstorm. They can take offence at silence,
and nothing in the world has skin as gossamer-fine as a Welshman with a
grievance. Except for Brydon: he has skin like Cherie Blair’s buttocks.
Would you like some toast with your scrambled egg and bacon, I ask chummily,
as we meet for breakfast at the Wolseley. “No, no, thanks, I can’t have
yeast.” You’re allergic to yeast? “Yes, yeast, it gets to my skin and,
well...” What, you blow up like a crumpet?
“You were very good in the film, very good: my wife saw it and she said you
were very professional.” Thank you, but actually, I look like some sort of
smug, gay, patronising English git. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” he offers
uncertainly, as if to imply he’d leave out the “some sort of”. And there’s
Max Boyce going on about the glove-shaped valley, saying it’s deathless
prose. It’s embarrassing: I don’t remember writing it. In fact, I’ve only
ever written two articles about Wales – one was about Wales and the other
about the reaction of the Welsh to the first article about Wales, and that
was 14 years ago, and you’re still asking me onto the TV to explain it.
Brydon is unusual for a Welshman and a comedian. He is genuinely funny in
private. He’s also modest, self-deprecating, keen to offer no offence, to
see the best in life; he’s polite and interested, kind, and a touchingly
sentimental family man. Nobody has ever had a bad word to say about him,
which, in the entertainment industry, is beyond a miracle. Whenever I’ve met
him, he has always been charming and sweet-natured, despite my reviews.
Altogether, he’s an interviewer’s worst nightmare. As we talked, I saw this
page stretching ahead of me like a featureless desert smelling faintly of
leeks.
So, Rob Brydon, how did you start? Where did it all begin and why? What made
you want to be a comedian? “Welsh drama school – I never wanted to do
anything else.” Really? I’ve never met a kid who says: “I want to grow up to
be a comedian.” They all want to be film or pop stars or Big Brother
presenters. But whoever says: “I really want to be Ben Elton”? Anyway, he
applied to Central and Rada – English drama schools – but they turned him
down. What was your audition piece? “It was from The Homecoming, Pinter –
actually, there’s a story about that. I was in the Ivy once with my wife and
Melvyn...” I’m sorry, hold up. Bragg, Melvyn Bragg? “Yes, my wife made
programmes for The South Bank Show, so we were in the Ivy with Melvyn – oh,
and look over there, Harold Pinter and Anto-nia Fraser. Melvyn goes over,
and we sort of tag along, and Pinter says, ‘What a coincidence, we were just
talking about the nature of laughter in the theatre,’ and so I say, well,
it’s your fault I didn’t get into Rada: if you’d written a couple more jokes
in The Homecoming, they’d have had me. Then there’s this silence, and I
think, God, I’ve done something terrible. And then Pinter laughs, a great
big laugh.” That must have been one of those famous Pinter pauses, then?
“Yes, I suppose that’s what it was. You don’t often get one of them.”
One of the very best things about Brydon is his timing. It’s not the boom-boom
drumbeat of a thuddingly delivered punch line, more the Fred and Ginger
syncopation of immaculately paced sentences, and that may have something to
do with being Welsh. The language may be drivel, but the silence between
words is golden.
Marion & Geoff, Brydon’s most famous creation, is one of the most
memorably searing series I’ve ever seen on television, often lumped together
with other shows such as The Office as the comedy of embarrassment. It was
far, far more than that. It used a fixed shot of a cab driver who talks
directly into the lens about his wife and family. While we understand that
he’s being cuckolded, and everything he loves is being stripped away, he
relentlessly continues to see the best in every demeaning situation. Later,
after the divorce, he goes on hopefully about his absent children, the
little smashers. His desperate optimism and groundless good humour make for
true heroic pathos, an emotion that’s almost impossible to conjure on
television, where almost all humour and drama are coated with irony or
sentimentality. It was at times as painful to watch as any documentary.
I mention a particular scene. “I remember doing that,” he says. “I was trying
to get something from Death of a Salesman. You know, that last scene where
he’s wishing the best for Biff and Happy, and it’s not going to happen.
Death of a Salesman is important to me: it’s been very influential.” Really,
first Melvyn Bragg, now Willy Loman. We walk out into St James’s Park to
have our photographs taken in a field of daffodils. Brydon’s in a brown suit
– that’s brave; there aren’t many men who can carry off a brown suit. “Oh,
don’t start. It’s the bag I don’t like. I don’t want to be photographed with
this bag, I wish I hadn’t brought it.” What’s the matter with it? “Look, it
says ‘Prada’. I don’t get things from Prada. It was a gift from David
Walliams.” Willy Loman, Melvyn Bragg and hand-bags from David
Walliams. Curiouser and curiouser. How screamingly unfunny was Little
Britain? “You can’t ask me that,” he squeals, as if I’d just inquired
whether he was circumcised. “They’re my friends.” You can still have an
opinion. “No, no, no, no.”
Okay, let’s talk about the Welsh programme. Why did you do it? “It was to see
what I felt about being Welsh and the stereotypes we all have about the
Welsh, about us being miserable and touchy.” And two-faced, I add helpfully.
“There are people who’ve said that, yes.” In the film, he goes back to
rediscover his Welshness by doing stand-up. He starts off in a comedy club
in Cardiff (an oxymoron). You died on stage in that first gig. “Well, yes,
but no, not really. We just edited it to look like that, because that gives
the film some drama, a point.” So you edited out the laughs? “Yes, most of
them.” It wasn’t because you died on your arse with crappy Taff jokes? “No,
no, ha, ha, ha.” And the last one, where you changed all the material to
being a Cymru sycophant and they’re all laughing fit to pass their kidneys,
that really was like that, then? “Oh, yes, that was great.” You didn’t edit
it to look funnier? “No, of course not.” He makes a face that looks
remarkably like Stan Laurel. If you’ve ever wondered what Laurel and Hardy
were doing in bed together, it might well have been Rob Brydon.
But why did you bother getting in touch with your inner Welshman? You live in
England, you work in England, you eat English, you wear trousers with a zip,
your mates aren’t all miserabilist, recreational shepherds: why not ignore
it and enjoy being a Welshman in remission? In the programme, Brydon grows
to love his Welshness: the accent gets thicker, the sharp observations
softer and more flattering. He even comes around to the absurd language. How
do you think that Welsh performance would play in the rest of the country –
in, say, Glasgow? “Well, it might do okay.” No, it wouldn’t. It’s like those
ridiculous road signs. Welsh is the only language you learn to be able to
talk to fewer people. There isn’t a single human being you can talk to in
Welsh you couldn’t have spoken to before in English. You can say just the
same things, but it’s uglier, clumsier, with fewer words. If you’re going to
arm-wrestle between English and Welsh, there is no contest: my dictionary
buries yours.
“I just found that the stereotypes aren’t true. We’re not sad, stupid,
whingeing gits at all.” But isn’t the defining characteristic of Welshness a
hatred of the English? They really do hate and blame the English, and when
you do Englishmen in your act, it’s always the same cartoonish, clichéd,
upper-class twit. Don’t you think the racism goes the other way? Brydon is
very good at voices. “Yes, you’re right, I do have a go at the English, but
I make fun of the Welsh as well. I do that bit: when an Englishman says
‘Hello’, he says ‘Hello’; when a Welshman says ‘Hello’, he goes [Pinter
pause] ‘Alright then’.” It gets a big laugh in Llareggub, but you’ve really
got to catch it live.
We walk down to Buckingham Palace, where they are changing the guard. How do
you feel about the Prince of Wales – I mean, getting fobbed off with
second best? “He’s not second best, he’s the top prince.” But he’s not
monarch, is he? She’s English and Scots; doesn’t even have a cottage in
Wales. You’ve just got number two. What do you think of him? “Nice man, very
nice man, decent. I don’t know him personally, of course, but I think he’s a
decent, caring, nice bloke.” Do you like being famous? “Well, my sort of
fame is quiet. People are just nice to me generally. I don’t get bothered
much.” Do you like being liked? “Oh, yes.”
And as if on cue, a family bustle up and ask for an autograph. They are Welsh,
and the daughter has brought her book with her, just in case, the streets of
London being paved with celebrity. I take photographs of the happy little
group, then we progress down Piccadilly and stop in at Hatchards. Do you
have a Welsh section? I ask. “There is History upstairs, Travel on your
left.” History has seven books. That’s a bit pathetic –
you’ve got less history than Belgium. “You see, that’s what’s wrong: nobody
writes about Wales.” Well, not in English.
The Travel section is no better: there were more guidebooks to the Channel
Islands than to Wales; the principality just noses ahead of Northern
Ireland. I buy a book called I Never Knew That About Wales, which includes
things like: “The churchyard in the little village of Aberarth is the proud
possessor of the ashes of SirGeraint Evans”, and, “Haverfordwest means ford
of heifer with west tacked on to distinguish it from Hereford in England”.
“Would you like me to sign it for you?” asks Brydon shyly. Thank you.
“By the way, the glove-shaped valley – it’s Auden.” Auden? “Yes.”
Not me? “Well, it was Auden’s first.” He smiles, a Laurel smile of Welsh
sweetness and innocence. Bragg, Loman, Walliams, Auden: who’d have thought
it?
Rob Brydon’s Identity Crisis is on BBC4 on Friday
