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Plays and Players Magazine
September 1992
Bare Faced Slattery
William Cook meets the real Tony Slattery as he rehearses for "Radio Times" opening at the Birmingham Rep this Autumn.
Think of a format. If it's got anything to do with Light Entertainment, Tony Slattery has probably already done it. He's appeared in a mainstream musical in the West End and a musical revue on the Fringe, he's improvised on the cabaret circuit with the Comedy Store Players and on TV in "S & M" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" He starred in a prime time sitcom and wrote an afternoon soap opera. He's presented several quiz shows, latterly the BBC's etiquette quiz - Ps & Qs. He's acted onstage and onscreen. The only thing he doesn't do is stand-up comedy.
And now he's rehearsing for "Radio Times," which opens at the Birmingham Rep this autumn prior, hopefully, to a West End transfer. "It's a musical written around the songs Noel Gay, who wrote 'Me & My Girl,'" says Tony, still sweating from his morning workout at Sadlers Wells. "It takes place during the live transmission to America of a radio variety show, recorded at the height of a bombing raid, in the basement of a West End theatre which is being used as a safe house by the BBC. I play the MC/Producer. He's the cheeky chappie in the radio show and charming but bad tempered outside of it. He doesn't even turn up at his own wedding, because he has a show to do." The work rate sounds like Slattery's, but TV's David Harper isn't quite so volatile. "Of course it's an absurd activity to start singing in the middle of a tense emotional confrontation," he chuckles, "but I love it. It demands conviction from an actor. You can't do it half-heartedly, you have to go for it."
He's swift to defend his more populist career decisions. "I almost did them out of a sense of devilment," he says of his quiz shows and sitcoms. "There's nothing wrong with quiz shows, and in principle sitcom is the most brilliant format ever invented. Casting directors - of whom I generally don't have a high opinion - tend to play very safe, and the type of casting director who wouldn't cast me because I'd been the host of a quiz show is not the type of person I'd want to work for anyway."
Happily, there seem to be plenty who couldn't give two hoots. Hence Tony's appearance in two contrasting films this autumn. The former is "Carry On Columbus" - the first movie from the British slap and tickle stable for a full 15 years. "It's probably a hard nosed marketing ploy by the producers who want to reinvent 'Carry On' for a new audience," he says, of the film's "alternative" cast. "A lot of people will go because they want to see Julian [Clary] and Rick [Mayall]. I love 'Carry On' for all its campness but I have to confess I'm not sure whether it will work. It's as if someone tried to do a new Hammer horror."
The second is "Peter's Friends" directed by dramatic wunderkind Kenneth Branagh. "There is something special about him," says Slattery, "though it's difficult to put your finger on: immense energy and charm, a brilliant gift for mimicry and a common touch. He's very controlled and contained. He's also the best director I've ever had."
Slattery's most ambitious project so far was "S & M," together with gigantic American impro maestro Mike McShane. Their two-handed sketch series was built entirely on improvisation. "It was certainly a different way of generating comic material," confirms Tony. "Neither Mike nor myself knew what the either was going to say next." Like most groundbreaking experiments, this show was flawed but fascinating. "I have a feeling that we've gone as far as we can with two people," agrees Tony. A future series may incorporate evergreen impro duo Sweeney & Steen.
Yet TV improvisation is a world away from improvising live. "You must not block, you must give and you must create a character," says Tony. "That's fine for stage impro but on TV the most important part is not to hang about." But arguably impro's biggest figt is to genres like stand-up and straight acting. "It frees you from the constraints of that intellectualised sort of Simon Gray acting, where characters stand flinging epigrams at each other while pouring scotches," says Tony. It's ironic, then, that Tony started acting at Cambridge - oft regarded as the bastion of British head and shoulders delivery. Yet Slattery was the exception that proves this thespic rule. "I balanced the sparky word play of Stephen [Fry], the clever characterisations of Hugh [Laurie] and the brilliant comic acting of Emma [Thompson] with anarchic physical stuff," he recalls. This dream line-up won Edinburgh's first Perrier award, were filmed by the BBC and all signed up by the same agent.
The other three traveled straight to London, while Slattery - who was in the year below - went back to Cambridge to swot up for his finals. Nobody would deny the talents of his inspired team, but when he arrived in the big Smoke a year later, he experienced some prejudice, nonetheless. "I really resented the Pavlovian sneer I got from some people whenever I mentioned the Footlights," says Slattery.
"In the beginning I deliberately avoided mentioning it because there was such a backlash. Folk have lots of misconceptions about Cambridge. They think it's all wankers punting up and down in boaters with wind-up gramaphones. When [John] Cleese and [Jonathan] Miller did it, they were completely slated as well. It's disparaged as undergraduate humour. They're undergraduates! What do you expect?"
There was certainly nothing elitist about Slattery's background before Cambridge. He was brought up on Harlesden's Stonebridge Estate - currently a no-go area for the police: "Grim, ghastly 60's social experimentation architecture." He discovered the Varsity on an education day out. Thereafter he longed to attend "this fabled wonderland" so badly that he ultimately won an exhibition to read Medieval & Modern Languages at Trinity Hall.
After finals, Slattery went into sketch shows, soaps and current affairs in a double act with Richard Vranch. They broke up when Tony landed a part in "Me & My Girl" - Vranch now plays piano with the Comedy Store Players. Yet at their last gig, the other acts on the bill were Rory Bremner, the Joan Collins Fan Club (aka Julian Clary and Fascinating Aida, starring Dillie Keane). Seminal stuff. "The main motor was anti-Thatcherism," muses Tony, "but it's now swung towards the recognition that idiosyncrasy is most important."
Tony stresses the importance of the Gaellic oral tradition that his parents brought with them from Gallway after World War Two. "Irish people love the crack," he says. "They like drinking and telling voluble jokes and expansive stories and creating their own entertainment." He denies his Catholic schooling was stifling. "The Jesuits still like to see themselves as the intellectual stormtroopers of Catholicism. They disparage the idea of repressive sheep-like following of doctrines. They use sarcasm and irony a lot - that sharpens your responses." His argumentative education was to stand him in good stead for Light Entertainment.
Thanks to Enaybler for this lovely gift. :-)
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