You are in the Special Features section - Jeremy Lloyd, Allo! Allo!, Are You Being Served? Help! A Hard Day's Night, Captain Beaky, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

Digger talks to Jeremy Lloyd. 

 

Jeremy Lloyd

 

Jeremy Lloyd is a writer and actor who has been working since the early sixties. A well-known face (and voice) in numerous comedies and dramas on the big and small screens, he often played a gangly upper-class toff, some may say twit. But this exterior screen persona gave little clue to the fact that Jeremy was a talented and canny writer. It was Jeremy who, along with writing partner David Croft, wrote the huge international comedy successes Are You Being Served? and 'Allo 'Allo!
Jeremy teamed-up with actor Keith Michell to produce the children’s book Captain Beaky and his Band.
He also has the distinction of being in both Beatles’ movies, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! 
Jeremy became a household name in the USA when he appeared as a regular on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In along with fellow Brit Judy Carne.
The list of Jeremy’s appearances is quite staggering and we have been very fortunate that he has agreed to undergo an interrogation with us here at www.retrosellers.com and to try to bring us up-to-date with Jeremy’s activities.

 

All images courtesy of and © copyright www.rexfeatures.com

 

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Digger: Your parents sound interesting! An army colonel and a Tiller girl. Can you tell us more?

Jeremy: Yes, I can. She was a Tiller girl, dancing with Fred Astaire in Evergreen and Blue Skies in 1928 and '29 and he wanted to rush her off to America. She, instead, married my father, and I arrived, extraneous to requirements, and was shipped out when I was about one-and-a- half to Manchester. I was born in London but moved out to live with my elderly grandmother and I was brought up by her. I occasionally saw my father but he used to introduce me to people as the son of bandleader Joe Loss. "You've heard of Joe Loss? Well, this is my son - dead loss", he'd say. He looked on me as a complete failure and said "As you can't learn anything at school, you're leaving." And he put me into a home when I was about thirteen and a half. A home for elderly people, which was a wonderful experience.

 

 

The Tiller Girls

 

 

Digger: Did he get a chance to see that you actually made something of yourself?

Jeremy: Yes, he did say when he was dying "I think you've done very well." I think it was because he wanted me to get him a pack of cigarettes! And my mum had two daughters but she never told them I was related to them. They didn't know because she didn't want them to know and I was never allowed to call her mother. She had them much later in life and she didn't want them to know she had a son of my age. 

Digger: You think of dysfunctional families as being a modern phenomenon but actually there were lots around in the old days weren't there?

Jeremy: Oh yes, and you were left on your own a lot and that was rather good as you had a lot of time to think.

Digger: Do you think it helped you in some ways?

Jeremy: Definitely. I thought it was the best result I could have had. I think I'm a stronger person as a result.

Digger: You wrote the script for the Adam Faith movie What A Whopper! Where did the inspiration for this come from?

Jeremy: I was a paint salesman at the time, trying to keep my grandmother. A metal sorter in Watford foundry and all sorts of things to try and earn some money. A road digger for a company of plumbers...

 

 

Adam Faith

 

 

Digger: Did you have that posh accent?

Jeremy: Well, when I lived in the old people's home, they were mostly retired old generals and naval people and so I probably 'improved' my accent from Manchester to posh southern.

Digger: Can you still go back into Mancunian if you have to?

Jeremy: I can do that in a fraction of a second, don't worry about it! (demonstrates) So I went to see a film called Down Amongst The Zed Men and I thought if that's comedy then I think I can have a go at that. While I was supposed to be selling paint I was busy, writing in my report book, a big a film script. And I turned up at Pinewood studios and rang the bell and I said "I've written a film and I'd like to see whoever's the head." And they said "It's Earl St. John and he doesn't see anybody." So I went to the 'phone box, put threepence in and phoned him up and said "Look, my name's Jeremy Lloyd and I've written a film and been turned away at the gate and I don't know how you make movies." And he was quite amused and he said "Have you had your tea?" and I said "No" and he said "Well come and have tea with me." And I went along and he had all these directors and producers  around him. Bill MacQuitty, who made The Black Tent and all these other 'heavies'. And I think they regarded me as a bit of a joke really. And Earl said "Mr Lloyd's going to read you a very amusing film script..." So I said "I am.." And I read the whole thing and he said "Crikey, that's just what we want for Adam Faith."

 

 

Pinewood Studios

 

 

Digger: How old were you at the time?

Jeremy: About 28. I don't think they made it until '61.

Digger: Faith famously appeared on Face To Face and surprised everybody with his intelligence and maturity. Did you come into contact with him much?

Jeremy: Yes, because I was writing Six-Five Special later on and of course I met him. So they bought it and I thought "Well, I'm a writer now." And the next week I went to a party and I met Jon Pertwee and he said "What are you doing?" and I said "I'm just making my first film at Pinewood." And he said "My writer's left me, will you write for me, I'm on Six-Five Special next week?" So I went along and met the director. And he said "Our man who writes the show is leaving, can you take over?" It was Trevor Peacock who was leaving and I'd never heard of him and so I said "I've lost Trevor's number, can you give it to me?" And the director said "Certainly." So I rang Trevor up and said "I've got your job and I don't know how to do it. I'll give you half the money." He said "It's a piece of cake, come on over." And he showed me what the necessary terms were that I needed. 'Segue to so and so', 'introducing so and so' and so on. And I was writing it for two years and met everybody. Then I got a job working for Brian Tesler doing New Look which was a big show for Bruce Forsyth and Lionel and Joyce Blair at the Wood Green Empire. And we had all the actors on there... Morecambe and Wise, I wrote for everybody. And at the same time I was writing Crackerjack.

 

 

  

Jon Pertwee and Eamonn Andrews

Joyce and Lionel Blair

 

 

Digger: The Eamonn Andrews manifestation?

Jeremy: Yes I was on his show a couple of times - but that was as an actor which started when I was writing for the Billy Cotton Band Show. I was actually appearing in that, as they were looking for an idiot in a bowler hat who could speak well as opposed to Billy Cotton who was all sort of 'meat and veg'. And so I would go on and do stunts, lie fencing, wrestling, anything. The most unlikely person to be doing it. 

Digger: You're not sporty?

Jeremy: I am, but I looked the most unlikely person to be doing it.

Digger: Like an early day Crouch?

Jeremy: Yes, I had to learn ju-jitsu from the Robinson brothers and it was a great success. And it was all live, of course. So, then I was asked to be in a movie as a result... the one about gamesmanship with Alastair Sim...

Digger: School For Scoundrels?

Jeremy: Yes, that's it. And then I was in about thirty films after that.

Digger: Including a couple of Beatles' ones where you didn't get a credit.

Jeremy: Yes. I used to bump into people and they'd say "Do you want to be in a movie." 

Digger: I hope you got paid for your Beatles appearances ('Tall Dancer at the disco' in A Hard Day's Night and 'Man in restaurant' in Help!)

Jeremy: Once I got paid as the car driver and it improved after that.

 

 

Fab gear

 

 

Digger: I just remember seeing you bopping about in A Hard Day's Night. How did you get the 'gig'?

Jeremy: Well, I belonged to the 'club'.

Digger: The Beatles inner circle of friends?

Jeremy: Yes, and they said "Do you mind appearing and dancing with Ringo?" And I said "No, not at all." Because I was actually leaping up and down in the air at the idea. And so people say to me "I remember you in that film" and I say "Well it's hardly memorable." Then I did the next one - Help! as well. I had some dialogue in Help! But they were just for fun really. Then I did We Joined The Navy and all sorts. I was doing Plays Of The Week - two handers with Amanda Barrie. And Saturday Night Theatre. So I was quite successful in a way. And then I was put up for the stage by London Management and I walked into Robert And Elizabeth which was one of the most successful musicals in London.

Digger: So you had the golden touch.

Jeremy: (Laughs) I would sing and dance and without any training. I never had training for acting, writing or anything.

Digger: So your father was wrong.

Jeremy: Well, he was an engineer. He wasn't a professional army man - he became a colonel during the war. He'd ask me mathematical questions and I'd burst into tears because I couldn't answer them. 

Digger: In that sense we're alike. My dad was a petroleum engineer and he had a special maths tutor for me.

Jeremy: Oh, I had that too.

Digger: They got frustrated didn't they?

Jeremy: Totally frustrated. I'd say "Well I still don't understand it." Not my line of work at all. 

Digger: It was their fault for not being able to explain it properly.

Jeremy: Yes, that's what I said. They said at school, "If you can't do Latin then how will you get on?" and I'd say "Well. I don't see what's on the menu in Latin." It meant nothing to me.

Digger: Which of your screen appearances gave you most pleasure?

Jeremy: I think things like A Very Important Person where I was acting along with people like Leslie Phillips and James Robertson-Justice in a prisoner of war camp. We had great fun doing it. I always had great fun in films actually. Whether here or in Africa or wherever I've done them.

Digger: Did you do any in the States?

Jeremy: No, I've never done a film in the States but I did act a lot there in Laugh-In ...

Digger: Maybe we can touch on that later?  What are your memories of working on The Avengers?

Jeremy: Well, interestingly I just saw the first episode 'In Color' two nights ago and they said this was the first time The Avengers had been in colour, so they had obviously gone to some trouble with casting. And I had a marvellous part in it as a chimney sweep, popping down the chimney and doing so much dialogue I don't know how I remembered it all.

 

 

    

Joanna Lumley and Dame Diana Rigg

 

 

 

Digger: Didn't have cue cards?

Jeremy: No, no cue cards. (Laughs) I thought I was terrific! And as a result of it I got very friendly with Diana Rigg and I used to take her out to dinner occasionally. And then we found ourselves doing a film in Prague, just before the Russians rolled in, so we had to do a quick escape from there. And she was a very good friend to me. 

Digger: Do you keep in touch with these people?

Jeremy: Sometimes. Certainly with Leslie Phillips.

 

 

Jeremy in two stills from Doctor In Clover, with friend Leslie Phillips,
 James Robertson-Justice and Fenella Fielding

 

 

Digger: He's having a bit of a renaissance at the moment. It's funny how people become elder statesmen.

Jeremy: Yes, well if you live long enough they remember you.

Digger: Did you tire of the upper class twit roles? 

Jeremy: The thing was, I was tall, thin and I looked the part and I could play that part quite well. I thought it was fairly limited in a way.

Digger: Did you do adverts?

Jeremy: Oh, I did LOTS. Everything from bouncing about in busbies to ... yes, I did lots of adverts. I always seemed to be working. I was writing all the time I was acting.

Digger: Which do you prefer, stage, film, TV or writing and why?

Jeremy: The stage for acting because you get a terrific reaction from the audience.

Digger: When I go to plays I always feel that first couple of minutes, when you have to make that connection with the audience, and they're shifting and maybe a little bit nervous and wondering whether they've come to 'their sort of play'...

Jeremy: There's great adrenalin. I much prefer that. In film, you wait around for HOURS and you're on page 22 and when I was on The Orient Express, for example, they had to move the river boat back about ten times for me to do my dialogue because the sun wasn't in the right place or something was wrong. It was exhausting. It's totally different on stage and I'm very happy on stage. And I do concerts from time to time with all my Captain Beaky things, either at the National or somewhere else. It's been made into a wonderful ballet now, by the National Youth Ballet and playing at the Palladium and all over the place. My ex-wife Joanna (Lumley) was on the board so she put it up to them. They made a wonderful job of it and it got a standing ovation. Wayne Sleep said to me "By God you've got a hit here." The most satisfying thing I've ever done. Almost.

Digger: Almost?...

Jeremy: The most satisfying things was the west end stage show of my children’s poems set to music by Jim Parker. It was on at the Apollo, and an emissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury came to see it. And he 'phoned me up and said "All your animals, they'd be great to tell the story of the gospels for children. Would you write something that I can use on Christmas sermons?" So I wrote the whole of the gospels as told by animals, put it through the letterbox of All Hallows by the Tower, which was his church. And the next week a letter arrived from the Archbishop saying he wanted to write a forward to it. Suddenly it was published by Faber's and I have been all around the world, toured America with it. It was an amazing success and I think the best thing I ever did. The worst thing I ever did was put it on stage at The Playhouse, with a wonderful set which I paid for, and it was at the time that the IRA were bombing and you couldn't get around London. It was losing money every week but I didn't like to take it off. Then I was absolutely bankrupt, but everybody who saw it thought it was wonderful. And I was crying when they burnt the set because I couldn't afford to store it anymore. It was still a success - I think if you please one person then you're a success. 

Digger:  What roles would you have liked to have played that you didn’t?

Jeremy: Well, I was offered a marvellous role in The Servant by Joseph Losey. And I suddenly thought that I wasn't really good enough for it. And I was in the south of France at the time making a movie and he saw me and knew I was an actor and called me over and said "I just know you'd be perfect in this film." 

Digger: Do you know the Foxes?

Jeremy: Yes, I know them very well. James is like me - a car fanatic as well. And I probably foolishly turned it down, but in retrospect I'll tell you what would have happened. If I'd have taken it and been any good, and because he was a good director I might have been, I would have gone on acting. And if I'd done that I would have been a successful actor but never getting any repeats for my acting. But sticking to writing has turned out to be a far better thing emotionally because I'm not being bossed about by anybody or told what to do or told that I'm crap. And I get residuals which I wouldn't have done as an actor. So I'm very happy to have done that.

 

 

    

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin

The Rowan and Martin joke wall

 

 

Digger: How did you get involved with Rowan and Martin and how did you deal with fame in America?

Jeremy: I had a taste of fame in America. 5000 letters a week, all from girls and some with saucy photos!

Digger: Did you deal with them all?

Jeremy: They had secretaries but wherever you went people stopped you. Before that I'd been in America working for Harold Robbins, a very tough guy because when I was in Robert And Elizabeth I was allowed a day off to film a part in The Wrong Box. And all I had to do was stand in front of a line of cannon and be shot. Unfortunately the cannon that shot me was full of plastic explosive and rust and I was on fire from head to foot. Being blown through the air with 63 pieces of metal embedded in me and bombardier Billy Wells the ex-boxing champion had just taken up the job as first aid. He stood up and started walking towards my body and fainted. And somebody said "Are you alright?" and I said "Yes, it's solved my overdraft I'm sure." 

Digger: So what were Rowan and Martin like?

Jeremy: They wonderful to me, terrific. I was very sad to hear that Dick Martin has just died.

Digger: Did you stay in touch with Judy? (Carne)

 

 

   

Goldie Hawn and Judy Carne

 

 

Jeremy: No, I didn't, not because we weren't friendly but because she was being pursued by a very heavy actor at the time!

Digger: Burt Reynolds?

Jeremy: Yes. I got the job in a rather remarkable way. I was in an agent's office. He was a gambler. He was gambling away on TV and I answered the 'phone.  It was the Rowan and Martin show producer George Schlatter who said "It's my last day tomorrow in London and I'm desperately looking for a writer/actor and do you have anybody?" And I said "The best possible person you could get is Jeremy Lloyd and we handle him" And George said "Is he available?" And I said "I'll just check his book... just a second... he's got a day off from filming tomorrow and he can see you" I wasn't filming at all, of course. "Can he be at the Dorchester at 9?" And I said "Don't worry, I'll make sure he's there" I walked in the next day and he said "My God you're tall" And I said "Yes, but I can walk under your table like Toulouse Lautrec and appear on the other side" and he said "If you can do that, you've got the job" and I did. And I played Toulouse Lautrec in the show occasionally because I was able to draw my knees up under my chin and being thin pull myself along. It's an extraordinary sight!

Digger: Was it a happy cast?

Jeremy: Very. They were all great. I was writing and appearing and so I worked with all the best people. Danny Kaye, Goldie Hawn, Roger Moore, Sammy Davis, Sinatra, Bing Crosby. People were queuing up to get on the show, including Ronald Reagan who was governor of California at the time. And so one knew everybody. Of course you weren't allowed to bring... it was a non-audience show. But they had a good laughter machine and you could bring a couple of people if you wanted to. So I used to meet girls occasionally and ask them if they wanted to come and see the show. And one day the producer came up to me and he said "It's all very well Jeremy, but you've brought 42 girls in today and they're better looking  than what our casting agents have sent." So I was busy casting the dance section after that, which was really quite exciting. 

 

 

Sir Roger Moore

Sammy Davis Jr.

 

 

Digger: Where did 'Allo 'Allo! come from inside the heads of you and David and how much fun was it to write? 

Jeremy: Well, I tell you I'll start with Are You Being Served? I came back from America and back with Joanna Lumley and I really didn't have any money when I came back from America. They didn't actually pay you very much you just got a lot of fame. I was desperate to do something and Joanna said "You must think of something you know" and I said "I worked at Simpsons for a while, I could do something about a store."

Digger: Simpsons of Piccadilly. Is that where Tower records is now?

Jeremy: Yes, exactly. So I wrote an outline and gave it to ITV, I think. Then I bumped into David Croft and told him about it and he said "Can we get it back?" so we managed to get it back and he said "Let's do it" and we did and it turned out to be a great success. So that ran for ten years and then we stopped doing that and we tried to think of something else. And I was working on another show and I 'phoned him up at midnight and told him I wasn't enjoying the show I was working on but that I'd had another idea about the French Resistance. And he said "My God, that's a good idea, can we start tomorrow?" And I said "Yeah sure" and so we wrote 'Allo 'Allo! I didn't deliberately nick Secret Army, I just thought it was a very good setting. A cafe where everybody had to come with a problem. Like Are You Being Served? people had to come in, but a much wider range of things could happen in France. And so that pilot turned out to be a great success.

Digger: There's great interaction between the characters and they have some great quirks. 

Jeremy: Wonderful characters. And David Croft came up with the idea of the policeman who spoke bad French. So good I wish I'd thought of it really.

Digger: I saw the guy who plays Herr Flick the other day and he doesn't look anything like him.

Jeremy: No, I saw him on Sunday because I went to a big thing in park Lane on Sunday for Vicky Michelle. For the Heritage Foundation. And he really doesn't look like Herr Flick at all.

Digger: No, you wouldn't recognise him if you didn't know. 

Jeremy: We rather based him on the character from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. 

Digger: Why was Are You Being Served? so successful in the USA?

Jeremy: No idea, but It's still showing on eighty stations in America. Fifty countries around the world. Just as 'Allo 'Allo! is. And of course we've just sold 'Allo 'Allo! to the Germans.

 

 

 

Gordon Kaye René Artois in 'Allo 'Allo!

Wendy Richard and Mollie Sugden as Miss Brahms
 and Mrs Slocombe on the movie set of Are You Being Served?

John Inman as Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served?

 

 

Digger: Renowned for their sense of humour but not for their timing. Well hopefully this is making you a fortune.

Jeremy: Yes.

Digger: Good! (Both laugh)

Jeremy: It's certainly making a better pension than the one the government pay. Otherwise, I'd be living in a cardboard box underneath the arches at Waterloo.

Digger: Comedy writing must be one of the hardest things to do. You came up with these ideas and ran with them, so good on you.

Jeremy: It's as hard as drama really. In the middle of all that I was writing in America -  the Whodunit detective series. Which got terrific reviews in the LA Times. And the interesting thing was that F. Lee Bailey who on the OJ Simpson trial - there was a $64,000 prize if one team guessed who did it and he got very cross with me because he said I was making it very hard for his team to win. (Laughs) Got hold of my lapels and got me against the wall - they're very aggressive people really.

Digger: The Americans are often very 'what you see is what you get' and in your face. He was, quite literally.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Digger: Who would you invite to a dinner party – the guests can be real or fictional, living or dead. And why?

Jeremy: I would have had Churchill.

Digger: Is that for obvious reasons?

Jeremy: Yes, absolutely. He had led an amazing life and had a biting wit. And a woman who was arrested for witchcraft in the war because she had a vision of a sailor who had been sunk in a ship that noone was supposed to know had gone down - Helen Duncan. She was accused of witchcraft and sent to prison and she was the last person to be sent to prison for witchcraft. She was a medium and I've always been interested in mediums because I was told when I was nineteen all of the things that have happened to me. I was told that I would become a writer and then an actor and that I would give up acting and continue writing and go to America. All the things that I never imagined could possibly happen.

Digger: A cynic could say that it's self-fulfilling. 

Jeremy: Yes but it happened and I wasn’t particularly interested in writing when I was nineteen. I was up factory chimneys and down the drains and shipyards of London selling industrial paint and I survived it all.
Funnily enough, when I went for the job they said "What qualifications have you got? You need science for selling our special paint." and I said "None at all" and they said "You don't have the job" so as I walked out of the factory on an estate in Ruislip I picked up a brochure, walked next door and sold 50 gallons of paint to the factory next door. And then they said "You've got the job" You've just got to have great optimism. And today the kids don't seem to have that.

Digger: It's difficult because they're always being told they're rubbish. 

Jeremy: Or they're told it's all marvellous and so they don't need to worry. That's a shame. Over protected, over monitored and given everything that they ask for. As if it's all going to fall of a tree, but it doesn't.

Digger: Who else would be at this dinner party?

Jeremy: I'd have loved to have had Fred Astaire there to ask him exactly what went on with my mother. He wrote a lovely letter saying he thoroughly enjoyed my poems because one of them was about him. Called Daddy Long Legs. My favourite sort of films. 

Digger:  What makes you laugh?

Jeremy: Very few things today. But I have to tell you that Bilko still makes me roar with laughter because it's such good writing. There are things that you used to laugh at when you were younger, for instance I used to laugh at Danny Kaye. And then when I was a working with him I wouldn't laugh at all because I thought he was a rather difficult person. And even in his later films, when I see them now I don't laugh. When you're younger you laugh at The Goons and all sorts of things and later on some of them are still funny - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. I'd love to have them for dinner because I knew them both and they were hysterical. Peter would take over but they were very funny. I would also have David Niven as we were great friends and I wrote Vampira in which he played Count Dracula. I'd also ask my old headmaster who once wrote on a school report “ his writing has improved so much that we can now read how little he knows! “

 

 

   

Dudley Moore and Peter Cook and Phil Silvers as Bilko

 

 

 

Digger:  What makes you sad? 

Jeremy: What makes me sad is the fact that I won't be here to find out if there's any alien life. 

Digger: Maybe you'll be somewhere where you will know all about it.

Jeremy: Well, possibly, I have had a lot of out-of-body experiences. But I haven't met any alien life 'though I have travelled a lot. 

Digger: You might have met some aliens and just not realised.

Jeremy: Yes, quite. 

Digger: I think if there are aliens then my view would be why the hell would they come down to this place?

Jeremy:  Well, they'd be mad.

Digger: Yes, they certainly wouldn't see us as being the most intelligent beings on this planet. 

Jeremy: Communicating with the dolphins.

Digger: Or the trees or the ants. Or insects or something that's doing a lot better than we are.

Jeremy: Yes, we haven't mad a very good job of it really.

Digger: What makes you angry? 

Jeremy: The fact that we have a garden of Eden which we have rather ruined actually.

Digger: What makes you hopeful?

Jeremy: I'm hopeful that people will realise in the end that everybody, whatever colour, creed or religion they are - we're all the same people. And that if we don't get on together then it's never going to be right.

Digger: They say that in a few generations we're all going to be coffee coloured.

Jeremy: It doesn't matter what colour we are. I've got friends who are from every race and background but they seem to want to form their own groups. And if you've got a flag that's a different colour flag to theirs, they want to burn it which is a great shame. And I don't think I'll be here when everything settles down. I suppose the only thing that would solve the problems really would be - and I think Reagan said it - someone form another planet coming and saying "If you don't behave yourselves then you won't be here in about half an hour."

Digger: Who are the great comedy writers and comedians in your view?

Jeremy: I think Galton and Simpson were wonderful and they had it down to a fine art. It's very difficult today to become a comedy writer.

Digger: Do you like some of the contemporary writers like Armstrong and Miller and Mitchell and Webb?

Jeremy: In a way, but at my age I suppose I'm rather old-fashioned. And I don't appreciate any comedy that has to have projectile vomiting because it's not necessary and you can be funny without. I think seeing a banana skin and knowing someone is going to slip on it. Or someone missing the skin and then falling down a hole. Comedy moves on but it has a shorter life. I mean, for instance there were over 70 Are You Being Served? shows and if you count the sequels there were 80 or 90 and there have certainly been about 90 episodes of 'Allo! Allo' which is pretty unheard of with two writers. Half way through David Croft was unwell so I had to finish them off. Oh, Larry David is very good, I like his stuff. I'm also a great admirer of Boston Legal which is a “must watch” programme by David E. Kelly.

 

 

 

 

 

Digger: I should imagine you have an affinity with American stuff anyway because you spent a lot of time over there.

Jeremy: No, I think if I'd never been there I'd still enjoy it.

Digger: It's weird that our comedy doesn't seem to do as well over there generally as their stuff over here, isn't it?

Jeremy: Yes, but mostly in America they have 7 or 8 writers on a show, sometimes more. 

Digger: Sometimes they put it in front of an audience and find out what works and what doesn't and re-write it there and then and try it out again.

Jeremy: Yes, they do. And here, now I believe, you don't actually get to make a pilot like when they said to David and I "Whatever you want to do, just do it." Now, they sit round a table and listen to what you want to do and they tell you if they think it's funny. The people who do this have probably been to Oxford or Cambridge and they don't really know what's funny because they're not the general audience who are going to watch it. A lot of people can't even see from a script whether something's funny or not. 

Digger: No. Scripts don't jump out at you like that. You have to see it acted out or at least be able to visualise it.

Jeremy: So it's a very tough world for writers today. They have to have another job and nobody is going to train them. I have taken on one or two people who I've seen have had talent and once you point them in the right direction they can do it. It's no good just going to a writing school trying to write comedy. I get calls from students of comedy writing asking me how I do it. And we talk for an hour and one of them said "When you've done all that, who tells you if it's funny or not?"  and I said "I'm telling myself it's funny. If it amuses me it will hopefully amuse somebody else. If it doesn't amuse somebody else then I've failed, but at least I've done it" Only if it works for you then it might work for others. That's all you can hope for. Of all laughs we've had in Are You Being Served?, 'Allo 'Allo! and all the other shows, including Mrs Slocombe going into outer space...

Digger: Did she still have her pussy?!

Jeremy: (Laughs) ... She didn't, no. (Can't speak)

Digger:  What would you still like to accomplish?

Jeremy: I'd like to write a definitive book finally on what I think of the world of comedy and the world as it is generally and how to get on with people really. 

Digger: Are you making any attempts at that?

Jeremy: I make notes about it. I never keep diaries or anything but I do make mental notes of what I think I'd like to do. I do scribble notes and occasionally I get a rush of inspiration and write down several headings. 

Digger: Please describe yourself in a sentence or two.

Jeremy: Oh! I'm one of the luckiest 'nearly orphans' in the world. 

Digger: Last question. What are you working on at the moment and what projects do you have planned?

Jeremy: At the moment I've got a film in America which I've been working on. I just plan to survive really and look forward to doing another project - probably. But you have to be careful what you do because I don't want to fail at this stage. It would be awful to have these big successes and then suddenly end up doing something that turns out to not get good reviews. 

Digger: You have to have courage and belief there.

Jeremy: Yes, it's a great shame because everybody's doing their best.

Digger: You could 'do a Ronnie Barker' and do it under a nom de plume.

Jeremy: Yes, I had thought of that. You can't fail under a nom de plume. Somebody copied out The Cherry Orchard under another name and sent it into the BBC who sent it back and said that it wouldn't be successful. I've had four West End openings, I've written about seven books, I've covered religion, comedy, detective stories, I've acted and done everything I can do within my abilities of imagination.

Digger: You can't ask for more than that. 

 

 

   

Larry David and Ronald Regan

    

Noel Edmonds

Galton and Simpson with Harry H Corbett

 

 

Jeremy: I've also been a very keen motorist. I broke the lap record of all time at Brands Hatch on the Grand Prix circuit and I had my reading glasses on by mistake.

Digger: Oh yes, you mentioned your love of cars before. What were you driving?

Jeremy: I was driving a Ford Mexico. It was for the Lord's Taverners and it was a celebrity race. Noel Edmonds organised it. It was him who put Captain Beaky on the map by playing it all of the time.

Digger: He's another one who's had a rebirth.

Jeremy: Yes, I was chatting to him on the 'phone the other day.

Digger: Oh, it's you on that 'phone is it?!

Jeremy: Yes, and I told him I had a film of the whole race and he asked me for a copy. I said yes, particularly the bit where you knocked me off on the last  lap. "You were going off anyway" he said. He's a lovely bloke.

Digger: Well, talking of lovely blokes, it has been great talking to you Jeremy and we've got a lot of material here.

Jeremy: I hope so. It was good talking to you. Thanks very much and you take care.

Digger: Thank you Jeremy.

Jeremy: Okay boy.

Digger: Bye.

A recent photo of Jeremy