The Inside Story of Viz by Chris Donald

Author:Chris Donald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A Night at the Welsh BAFTAs

You always remember where you were when you first heard a momentous piece of news. I was on my way down the stairs in Lily Crescent when Simon told me John Lennon had been shot. I was delivering newspapers on Jesmond Road when I heard that Malcolm MacDonald had signed for Arsenal. And I was sitting in our office reception drinking coffee when I heard that Peter Cook had agreed to voice our Roger Mellie animation.

Unfortunately the budget for the animation did not reflect John Brown’s TV ambitions. Once again the Welsh miracle-worker Tony Barnes would be making the film on a shoestring, and once again the all-important sound recording which would form the backbone of the whole thing was to be made in one short studio session without any prior rehearsal. When I arrived at the studio somewhere in Chelsea Harbour I was extremely apprehensive. I would never have had the nerve to write these crummy cartoon scripts if I’d known they would one day be spoken by my all-time comedy hero. I was also worried that Peter might turn up drunk, or that he might not turn up at all. I seem to recall having diarrhoea that morning. But then the great man rolled into the room and I was quickly put at ease by one of his opening remarks. One of the studio engineers had greeted him slightly sycophantically. ‘Hi, Peter. You’re looking well. Have you lost weight?’ Cook looked pretty awful and I’m sure he knew it. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he muttered beneath his breath. ‘A few more stones and I’ll be a sixties icon again.’

Harry Enfield was there too. His recent rise to stardom had been meteoric and he was now the star of his own successful Viz-like TV show. Despite his celebrity status Harry kindly accepted our invitation to do all the voices except Roger’s (including females) for peanuts. Well, cashew nuts at any rate. There was no time for a proper run-through, there’d been virtually no preparation and I think it was a bit early in the morning for Peter. Someone went out and got him a beer and he eventually began to get into the part a bit, but the pressures of time – and possibly the fact that Tony Barnes and myself were both in awe of him – meant that we couldn’t be as fussy as we wanted to, often settling for takes that weren’t nearly as good as they could have been. But I did pull Peter up on one thing. For some reason he insisted on pronouncing the word twat as twot. I had to stop him and insist he say twat. I even had to coach him through the intercom until he got the emphasis right. It was bizarre, me trying to tell Peter Cook how to make a rude word sound funny. When we were finished I kept Peter’s empty beer bottle as a souvenir and asked him to sign my copy of the script.

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