If you thought Harry Enfield was content with lurching up to Peter Mandelson
in Downing Street and telling him to resign, you would be mistaken. The
comedian’s latest faux pas has driven the government of the Philippines to
exclaim: “Oi! Enfield! No!”
Actually, the Philippines’ ambassador to Britain did not utter the censorious
cry of the Self-Righteous Brothers, Enfield’s parody of pub bores. Rather,
the indignant envoy used the terms “very malicious” and “blatant display of
racial prejudice” to describe a sketch in the current BBC1 show Harry &
Paul.
To Enfield’s many fans, the show’s take on British life is hilarious and one
of the jewels of television. But explanations that the sketches on Harry &
Paul are absurd and liberating cut little ice in Manila, where the
authorities claim to be in shock.
In the offending sketch, Enfield plays a suave home counties man who keeps as
a pet a pyjama-clad northerner (Paul Whitehouse, his comedy partner), whom
he treats like a dog. Enfield is seen urging the lethargic northerner to
have sex with a Filipina maid. “Come on, Clyde, mount her!” he orders, to no
avail.
The point may have been that Clyde was the more degraded of the two, but it
fell on deaf ears as our man in Manila was carpeted for this “slur on our
domestic workers”, an official protest was fired off to the Press Complaints
Commission and the UK-based Philippine Foundation started a petition calling
for the “re-education” of the BBC.
Enfield has yet to receive apoplectic notes from such characters as Nelson
Mandela, whom he portrayed last week tipping Baroness Thatcher over a cliff
from her wheelchair, or the Polish waitresses whom he regularly lampoons, or
even posh scaffolders who discuss the finer points of British art before
pausing to grab their crotches at the sight of a passing woman. Jeremy
Clarkson thinks it’s the best thing on television and even AA Gill gives it
a good notice.
There was barely a flutter on the outrage scale when Enfield called for
Mandelson to be sacked at a No 10 drinks party. It was in the early days of
Tony Blair’s government, when Enfield’s sympathies with new Labour were
fading fast. Fuelled by champagne and an opinion poll showing that Mandelson
was the least popular member of the government, the comic confronted the
Prince of Darkness.
“I told him that he’d been credited with getting the government in power by
looking at what people wanted,” Enfield recalled. “And it appeared that what
they didn’t want was him. So I told him it would be a good idea if he hopped
it.”
Disarmed by Mandelson’s “sweet” grin, Enfield staggered over to deliver the
same message to Blair, but the prime minister merely smiled and offered a
soundbite: “People often forget I’m not just the man you see ranting at the
dispatch box.”
A sober Enfield would be incapable of such temerity. In person the 47-year-old
comic is reserved and polite, anxious to proclaim his “dullness” and
blissful subservience to his wife Lucy, a designer of children’s clothes.
The couple live in in Notting Hill, west London, with their children Archie,
10, Poppy, 9, and Nell, 5.
Enfield had previously acted as a surrogate father to the pop star Lily Allen
and her two siblings, Alfie and Sarah. He had a three-year relationship with
their mother, Alison Owen, an Oscar-nominated producer whose slate includes
Elizabeth and Brick Lane, and who had been married to Keith Allen, the actor
and comedian.
“It was a happy time when mum was with Harry,” Lily told The Sunday Times last
year. “We lived in a nice big house in Primrose Hill. We had Chinese in
Hampstead every Sunday and a nice car.”
While affirming that he has never been a hellraiser, hobnobbed at the Groucho
Club or driven anything more dashing than a Vauxhall, Enfield can be lethal
when in character. David Steel, the former Liberal leader, admitted as much
when portrayed as a tiny, sycophantic puppet in Spitting Image, to which
Enfield supplied the high-pitched voice. Steel claimed the show damaged his
image.
Nick Newman, the Sunday Times cartoonist, wrote for Spitting Image and recalls
Enfield as a young stand-up comedian who was making his mark as an
impressionist: “Harry was very different from the other voice
impressionists. Whereas they were very precise, he brought a caricature of a
voice. Douglas Hurd never spoke like that, but it worked very well with
puppets.”
Enfield was also the voice of Frank Bruno, the boxer, Ken Livingstone (whom he
supported as an independent candidate for London mayor) and Jimmy Greaves,
the footballer.
Of the many sketches Enfield wrote for Spitting Image, only one was accepted –
Prince Philip as a Greek popping round to his brother’s kebab shop. It was
enough to get him on Saturday Live, where he became a success as
Loadsamoney, the foul-mouthed cockney plasterer who personified 1980s greed
– he waved wads of notes at those less blessed – and from whom Thatcher felt
compelled to distance herself. “We are not a Loadsamoney economy,” she said.
Newman, who later wrote for the long-running series Harry Enfield and Chums
with his collaborator Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, said: “Harry
was just very normal, not someone like Rory Bremner who bombards you with
impressions non-stop. He was always up for new ideas, but quite modest,
sometimes lacking a bit of confidence in his own abilities. Basically, he’s
a good egg.”
Born in Billingshurst, West Sussex, Enfield was the only boy among four
children and had a middle-class upbringing. His father, Edward, was a local
government officer who later, on the back of his son’s success, achieved
fame on the consumer programme Watchdog and hosting holiday shows. Deirdre,
his mother, worked in the fine art department at Sotheby’s.
Enfield’s early ambitions were limited: “At three, I wanted to be a cow, at
five a train driver, at seven a fighter pilot, at 10 a footballer, at 13 a
pop star, at 15 anything but a virgin.”
The nearby Worth Abbey public school was “horrible”. The teachers were “dumb”
and he loathed sport: “I was crap at games, couldn’t hit a ball and still
can’t.” He became a punk, manifesting the insufferable behaviour of his
later creation, Kevin the Teenager. “One day I woke up and thought, I am a
total genius. I became a Christ-like figure in my head.”
Moving at his insistence to the sixth form of the local grammar school, he
passed A-levels in history, economics, English and politics. Yet the girls
“wouldn’t be seen dead going out with me” because he was younger than his
classmates and still not shaving. “I was a bit of a soft snog.”
Things looked up when, at 17, he became a milkman in the school holidays. The
flirtatious antics of elderly women – “Ooh! You’ve got eyes to die for,
Milkman” – were the inspiration for his Lovely Wobbly Randy Old Ladies. A
few younger women were more explicit: “One particular woman appeared in a
state of undress a few times. Her negligée would just casually fall open as
she bent over to pick up the milk. She’d invite me in for a coffee but I’d
always politely decline.”
He went to York University to read politics. With a friend, Brian Elsley, he
started to do stand-up and their double act, Dusty and Dick, based on old
Ealing comedies, was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival.
The duo ended up in Hackney, east London, playing the local venues. They sold
a few sketches to BBC radio and supported the punk group the Stranglers on
tour. In his television debut, Enfield sold clothes to Dawn French in Swank,
her 1985 documentary on fashion. His second television performance was less
auspicious: he and Elsley came bottom in a talent show. “We were before our
time,” Enfield claimed.
It rankled that the former Cambridge Footlights stars seemed to dominate
everything: “That had created a kind of class divide. For the middle
classes, there was alternative comedy – clever comedy. But for the working
classes there was light entertainment – which was totally crap and very
patronising. I thought I wanted to do something about that.”
In a succession of popular shows, Enfield created a rogues’ gallery of
characters. One of the most enduring was Stavros, based on a kebab shop
owner in Hackney who would reproach unruly customers with such gems as: “You
two cheeky monkey-sod! Plis kindly stop behave like your bottems are on top
of your neck.”
The joint inspirations for Tory Boy were a classmate named Parkins and the
young William Hague. “When Hague made his famous ‘Let us woll back the
fwontiers of thothalithm’ speech, he became our bête noire.”
The Scousers were based on the early days of the soap Brookside – their
catchphrase, “All right! All right! Calm down!”, is still thrown back at
Enfield by Liverpudlians.
By keeping his feet planted firmly in the world of Morecambe and Wise and The
Two Ronnies, Enfield has been left behind by contemporaries such as Ben
Elton and Stephen Fry who have written plays and novels. He’s simply good
for a laugh. That is the price of being one of the funniest men in Britain.
