Ben Elton makes you think, and laugh as you do
As he returns to the stand-up stage, the writer of hit TV shows, musicals, novels and films says he fears being misunderstood.
Ben Elton is eating a falafel when I am ushered into his dressing room at the City Recital Hall in Sydney. He apologises for being a bit grumpy and tired, which is understandable given he will have done more than 100 stand-up shows in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by the end of a tour that began in 2019 and was interrupted by COVID-19.
But it does not take much to get him wound up as he explodes with opinions on political correctness, identity politics, cancel culture, Donald Trump, the vaccine rollout, the MeToo movement and the dumbing down of public debate. It prompts another apology from him for talking so much.
“Every interview I do, journalists ask: ‘Has comedy changed, has political correctness made comedy impossible, are you all being counselled on subject matter?’,” he says. “It’s complete rubbish. I’ve always taken a moral line on stage that if I don’t believe a line is worthy of the audience then I’m not going to say it and I think that has not changed.
“The idea that subject matter is taboo is not the case. It is only attitude that is taboo. But I’ve always known that massaging prejudice within an audience, basically isolating certain groups at the expense of others, is not only easy comedy but it is dishonest comedy, which makes it bad comedy.”
Elton sees himself first and foremost as a writer. He wrote or co-wrote television classics The Young Ones, Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line and Mr Bean.
He has written acclaimed novels and plays. He wrote musicals We Will Rock You and Love Never Dies. He has written a movie about William Shakespeare, All Is True, and a sitcom, Upstart Crow.
On stage, just as on television shows Saturday Live, The Man from Auntie and The Ben Elton Show, he combines a manic energy with harsh language and pointed socio-political messages. Elton’s stand-up is not just a series of rolling gags. He aims to stir the audience, make people think and challenge their world view.
He has always pushed boundaries and on this tour he tackles the power of the internet and big tech, issues of gender and identity, economics, politics and culture. The theme of this tour, as he and his audience grapple with change, is: “I do not get what I got.”
He confesses to knowing less at 61 than he did at 21. It strikes a resonant chord in the mostly over-40 audience.
Elton has often been portrayed as being at the 1980s vanguard of radical, alternative, anti-establishment comedy. But he bristles at the categorisation.
“I’ve never been as left-wing as the right wing claimed I am and I’ve never been as remotely right-wing as many whiny lefties have tried to characterise me,” he insists. “I’ve always followed my own truth. Every single time I wrote anything or did anything, I wanted to do it, not because I wanted to look left or to look less left, or to make money.
“You can’t be anti-establishment if you’ve got a sitcom on the BBC when you are 21 years old. I was anti the wicked bits of establishment. I recognise how much my privilege as a white middle-class kid allowed that to happen. I was the youngest sitcom writer ever at the BBC — a mix of luck and hard work and some talent.”
Although he lampooned Margaret Thatcher as evil incarnate during the 1980s, Elton now acknowledges a degree of respect for the Iron Lady that he does not extend to Boris Johnson.
“Thatcher was a politician of genuine principle,” he says. “I disagreed with her principles enormously but they were genuine, she did risk deep unpopularity to pursue them and I’ve always respected that. The problem with a Trump or a Johnson is that because they are apolitical and without any real principles, they are driven by venal self-interest and that alone.”
Success has brought Elton fame and wealth never dreamed of in the days of The Young Ones. We Will Rock You, his musical based on songs by Queen, was a huge success in Britain, Europe and Australia, even though it was initially panned by critics. Now eyeing success in the US, where Elton concedes to not really having “made it”, he recently completed a script for a Bee Gees biopic to be directed by Kenneth Branagh and produced by Graham King, who made Bohemian Rhapsody.
“While I have no idea of what the secret of making a hit is, I know that the secret of f..king up your work and your life is trying to make a hit,” he says. “When we approached The Young Ones we just wanted to have the best laugh we could and at the time nobody thought it was going to enter the culture the way it did.
“When Richard Curtis asked me to join Blackadder, I just thought Rowan Atkinson is funnier when he is being supercilious and sneery, rather than when he is being an imbecile. Blackadder in the first series was kind of an imbecile, a kind of a Mr Bean-ish character, and I thought that was the wrong way to go.”
Will we see a fifth series of Blackadder? “No,” Elton says.
Elton, a dual British-Australian citizen, has been living in Fremantle with his wife, Sophie Gare, and their three children since 2009. While he is no longer the Pom at the barbecue who gets blamed for Gallipoli, he does feel that he has often been misunderstood.
“Everybody feels unfairly done by at some point and I’m no exception,” he says. “I’ve long since learnt to realise that nobody else cares so probably I shouldn’t either. I’ve had an immensely successful time so I can honestly say I have no cause to complain. One of my favourite songs is Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
Ben Elton performs at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on Monday, Canberra on Tuesday, Bendigo on Wednesday, and Perth on April 26.
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