With perfect timing, towards the end of his excellent memoir, Nigel Planer reminds us that he once played Peter Mandelson in the 2011 ‘Comic Strip Presents…’ film ‘The Hunt For Tony Blair’.
The casting makes perfect sense but a key takeaway from his book is that Planer is hardly the mendacious or Machiavellian sort – by his own admission, ‘haphazard’ and ‘oversensitive’ would probably cover it.
Ben Elton nicknamed him ‘Niggle Complainer’ and he confesses that Neil – his famous ‘Young Ones’ character – was mainly based upon himself.
But ‘Young Once’ generally refreshes the parts other actor autobiographies can’t reach not just because it’s so well written – he’s a playwright, novelist, poet and songwriter too – but due to its unflinching honesty and sheer variety of ideas.
Planer details his somewhat bohemian upbringing in southwest London, early life as a slightly naive university dropout and long-term patient at the Hospital of Tropical Diseases, before finding his mojo at drama school, developing the Neil character and hooking up with comedy ace faces Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, Peter Richardson and Ade Edmondson during the punk era.
The book really gathers momentum at this point, when music and comedy were dovetailing and a political conscience was de rigueur. He’s completely honest about his sometimes tricky relationship with Richardson, and expresses regret about not doing more work with him, Ade and Rik, outside of the two superb ‘Four Men’ Comic Strip films.
There’s some touching stuff about Mayall’s tragic deterioration and the effect it had on his friends, and lots about the filming of other classic Comic Strip movies. Meanwhile Neil and ‘The Young Ones’ make Planer famous, a fame that hits him hard. He’s amazed that his TV appearance in ‘Shine On Harvey Moon’ gets three times as many viewers as ‘The Young Ones’ but no one ever comments on the former.
Around the same time he completely fails to recognise David Bowie during the Mexican shoot of ‘Yellowbeard’, describing a ‘lithe man with blond hair’ by the hotel pool whose movements are ‘deliberate and poised’. And then there’s the revelation that Bowie got Graham Chapman injured during the shoot thanks to an ill-advised, late-night Jeep ride.
But readers of this site will probably particularly enjoy the long section on music. Planer’s pressganged by Bob Geldof into attending the Band Aid recording as Neil, and we get the juicy muso details of recording ‘Hole In My Shoe’ – ably abetted by National Health/Bill Bruford/’It’s My Party’ hitmaker Dave Stewart – and subsequent ‘Top Of The Pops’ appearances.
There’s funny stuff about Planer and Richardson finding their comedy/rock double act supporting Dexys Midnight Runners, AC/DC and Motorhead, amazed to find the latter reading books backstage, and introducing a nascent Curiosity Killed The Cat in a tiny Chelsea club (Crazy Larry’s) wearing only pyjamas and dressing gown. We also get the full story of Bad News’s superb performance at Castle Donington in 1986…
It’s oft forgotten that Planer has enjoyed a formidable stage career too, and he discusses work on ‘Chicago’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Evita’, plus how he invented his comic alter ago Nicholas Craig, the ultimate luvvie.
‘Young Once’ is a must for anyone who’s interested in alternative comedy and ‘The Young Ones’ era, plus anyone who’s enjoyed Nigel’s work as a ‘serious’ actor (though surprisingly there’s nothing about working with Dennis Potter), writer or musician.
It’s a great London book too – Planer’s adventures take him from Richmond and Twickenham to Notting Hill (where he has a memorable dinner with John Cleese) and a drug-addled Chelsea Harbour.
There are also some quite profound life lessons – it’s ‘an object lesson in why you should never give up’, as the blurb puts it. An enjoyable, intelligent read, ‘Young Once’ is highly recommended.
Nigel Planer as Den Dennis, playing with Bad News at Castle Donington, 16 August 1986
If you were a British teenager in the mid-’80s, ‘The Young Ones’ and ‘The Comic Strip Presents’ were pretty much required viewing.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine that period without them. They fused comedy and music with anarchic zeal and have endured as bona fide TV classics.
Nigel Planer was an integral part of both groundbreaking shows, working alongside Ade Edmondson, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Peter Richardson and many more.
He brought the world such classic characters as the perennially-prickly hippy Neil and Den Dennis, heavy metal’s unluckiest guitarist. Since then, Planer has appeared in countless quality TV productions, written several books and plays and starred in the hit musicals ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Evita’, ‘Chicago’, ‘Wicked’, ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’ and ‘Hairspray’.
He’s also worked on several BBC Four music documentaries and is currently revisiting an early interest in songwriting. I began my chat with Nigel by asking him about his musical influences.
MP: There was a great punky energy about the early days of The Comic Strip troupe, but I’m guessing your own musical tastes weren’t rooted in punk. Did you play in bands before becoming a pro actor?
NP: I was more into psych-folk and new-age jazz stuff. I didn’t so much play in bands but I did make a bubblegum pop record with my brother Roger, and I had a publishing deal for my songs which were sort of sub-Nick Drake, soft, liberal, poetic things.
We all loved your portrayal of Neil in ‘The Young Ones’ (I think I still have ‘Neil’s Book Of The Dead’ somewhere…), but how much of that character was yours and how much of it Ben Elton and Lise Mayer’s?
Well, the original Neil comes from a show I wrote and performed with Peter Richardson and Pete Richens called ‘Rank’. Many of the characters later to appear in Comic Strip films stem from this show. We first did it at the Roundhouse and then on tour with various bands. We were trying to be like Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias or The Fabulous Poodles, if anyone remembers them. We ended up more like a Mike Leigh play with a rock band in it. When we made our double act, Neil came along with us and so he was my character in the ‘Young Ones’ setup. He was mostly my character but Ben and Lise made him more stereotypically hippyish.
Your cover of Traffic’s ‘Hole In My Shoe’ got to #2 in July 1984! Any good memories from Neil’s ‘pop’ period?
It was an incredible experience, to be a pop star all of a sudden without having to take the consequences of that decision because I was in character. I learned that I would hate to be a pop star.
Who or what was your inspiration for the brilliant Den, the hapless rhythm guitarist from The Comic Strip’s ‘Bad News Tour’ and ‘More Bad News’?
I’m afraid Den Dennis comes from deep inside my soul…
You famously played the 1986 Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington with the News, how was that? The festival was probably at its peak during that time.
It was our first gig. We were terrified. It looks pretty good in the film – you see all the usual spoof documentary gags, we argue, get ready for the gig, go up the stairs onto the stage. And then in one panning shot you realise it’s real, there are actually 40,000 people there baying for our blood and throwing bottles of urine at us. The compere (Tommy Vance) had to wear a helmet and face guard, but we just walked out there like idiots.
‘Bad News Tour’ famously appeared on British TV long before ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ was released. Have you ever met any of the Tap guys? Are they aware of ‘Bad News Tour’?
I think both ideas were in germination at the same time. Funny how things happen like that. I never met any of them but have a huge admiration.
In Ade’s Comic Strip film ‘Private Enterprise’, you play this great character Derek, a bow-tied, extremely effete A&R man. It’s a brilliant portrayal of a lot of those public school types who got into the music biz in the late-’70s and early-’80s. Was Derek based on anyone you knew?
Not really. I didn’t think of him as a public school type, I just came up with this weird voice. A lot of the time things are just done on instinct and it’s best not to work it out too much. I did feel I knew the kind of person he should be, ie it wasn’t exactly a stretch.
In later Comic Strips, there were cameos and musical contributions from the likes of Jeff Beck, Kate Bush and Lemmy. Any printable memories of working with them?
We used to do this gag where one of us, probably Ade, would turn down volume on his guitar and mime, and out would come the most amazing solo. Then out from behind a speaker would walk Brian May, Jeff Beck or whoever we’d managed to con into doing the solo. Then Ade would stop and shout at the guitar hero: ‘I paid you a fiver to stay behind that speaker, you bastard!’ At The Marquee, we did it not once but twice – after coming out, Brian then turned down volume on his guitar and out walked Jeff. Jimmy Page did the gag with us once too, but I can’t remember where we were playing. Ah, memories… I do remember an early morning filming call in a hotel in Devon on a Comic Strip film. There had been a lot of drinking the night before. I’d gone to bed early, being a professional ‘actor’ you know, but others had stayed up trying to keep up with Lemmy. The next day at 6am, I get down to the lobby for pick-up time – none of the cast are there, not even the runner nor the driver. In fact, the only other person turning up on time for work, with his lines learned, was Lemmy.
You’ve been in the original casts of several very popular West End musicals (‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’, ‘Hairspray’, ‘We Will Rock You’) in the last ten years or so – what are the challenges of singing live night after night?
It’s a slog doing eight shows a week on a raked stage. Lots of injuries and physio and the like. The singing is the nice bit. One is also fighting boredom on a grand scale. It’s hard to stay cheerful. But on ‘We Will Rock You’, I remember thinking to myself: ‘Shut the f*** up, you are about to go on in front of 3,000 people and sing a beautiful song with a band of incredible musicians handpicked by Queen and then do about 20 minutes of jokes and make everyone laugh and you’re complaining?’ I’m good at complaining. Ben used to call me Niggle Complainer.
In recent years, you’ve been the go-to voiceover guy for music documentaries on BBC4 – do you enjoy them and are there any more in the pipeline?
None in the pipeline at the moment unfortunately, but they are a really, really good gig. You get to sit for a day listening to all this brilliant music and hear some people talking who maybe meant a lot to you when younger. I particularly enjoyed ‘Blues Britannia’ which I thought was very interesting. The idea that the Brits re-imported the Blues back to America where it was dying.
What are you up to at the moment? A little bird told me you’re working on a music project alongside the acting…
I have a couple of musical projects at the moment. One is a stage musical I have written with Hannah-Jane Fox and Andrew Holdsworth who I met in the ‘We Will Rock You’ days. We’re trying to place it in a theatre now. It’s not usual musical theatre fare. It’s heavy-rock/pop based, a very dark gothic horror story called ‘She Devil’! The other is a psych-folk band called Rainsmoke I have formed with my musician brother Roger and a guy called Chris Wade who is behind the Dodson And Fogg albums. We have one song up on Bandcamp now, and are hoping to finish the album by the new year. Most of the songs are based on all those songs I wrote in the early 1970s when I was a young, green, poet-type guy.
Thank you Nigel.
Nigel receiving his Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Edinburgh Napier University in 2011
With perfect timing, towards the end of his excellent memoir, Nigel Planer reminds us that he once played Peter Mandelson in the 2011 ‘Comic Strip Presents…’ film ‘The Hunt For Tony Blair’.
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