Rory Bremner part 1

Craig Oliver: I was supposed to have not met you before doing this, but met you at a political drinks party, um, the other night. So you, where lots of people from lots of different parts of the spectrum were there. You're obviously still very involved in that kind of world.
Rory Bremner: Well it's funny because years ago, I used to kind of avoid the people I did or avoid politicians and, um, because I thought I don't want to get too close to them. And then lovely John Fortune, John Fortune said to me, he said, well, nobody ever criticized David Attenborough for getting too close to the animals. Yes. I thought, well, yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong because I observe. And that's what I do.
Craig Oliver: And do you like them?
Rory Bremner: On a one on one basis, and you'll know this, they are likable, because they're charming, and that's what they do. They're a particular kind of person, so one on one. And that's part of it. Sometimes I thought, well, I don't want to meet them, because I might like them.
You have to have an objectivity, I think. If you're doing political impressions or whatever, but you need to keep a kind of objectivity if you know them too well. And of course, if you know somebody, then you're inclined to forgive them a little bit and you, you might be a little bit softer. And it's also a bit difficult if you, you know, you meet somebody and you've said something about them in a sketch and you feel like you're carrying the script on your forehead as you come in that they'll remember exactly what you said.
Oh yes, Rory. Oh yes. You did that sketch where I was and you go, all right, did I?
Craig Oliver: I was going to ask you about this a bit later, but I'll, I'll ask you now. I mean, it seems to me that a lot of people say that about politics and satire is that often the satire thing doesn't necessarily think of them as human beings.
Rory Bremner: No, it's difficult because being an impressionist. My satire was almost by definition ad hominem because it would be a bit about the people themselves. The beauty of John Byrd and John Fortune and why they were so good is it's not satire about individuals. It's not, Oh, that's Rishi Sunak. Oh, that Boris Johnson.
No, you're doing satirical impressions of individual people and sort of blaming individual people. But with Byrd and Fortune did this wonderful thing about they found the new sacred cows. And their thing was particularly, they loved this whole idea of the discipline of the market. They loved satirizing that.
They had that wonderful format where John Byrd or John Fortune would play George Parr, and George Parr would be the captain of industry, or he'd be the man who ran British Gas, and had catastrophically made a failure, but was then paid off. And the punchline was sort of saying, so you, you were rewarded for failure. He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're rewarded for success, but you're compensated for failure. And they got into the culture. It was never ad hominem. It's a long way of answering your question, but satirically, because I was doing people, it was more about the people, but you kind of wanted to somehow distill it.
I mean, funnily enough, I knew you worked a lot with David Cameron. For me, the, a good example of distilling a character was David Cameron and the lines, was it? Yeah, when I became prime minister, and became, it was 2010, I was a bit, you know, slightly by accident. And I became prime minister and people said to me, they said, are you going to make the rich richer?Are you going to make the poor poorer? And I think we managed to do both. So I think it was a big success.
Now what that is, is for me, you know, there's the, there's the kind of smile is. John Langdon, my writer, used to say, you know, you have a smile and a laugh, but there's that smile of the recognition or the enjoyment of the impression. And then you've got the material and the content. And because it's those two lines, which are running through, there's a true line and there's a funny line. And that line, Rich, Rich or the Poor, Poor, we did both that line. Brings the two together because it releases. Think. But that's it. That's the truth.
That was the coalition. The coalition. Sorry Craig, I know you were involved in this. I'm not gonna get into a big argument about this thing, about the coalition. Well, I know we can talk about the, we can talk about Ginny, the Ginny coefficient and not, and all that. And Boris, I, Ginny, I, who's a great friend with Ginny.
I think we, we might even have children. I, yeah. But anyway, Jenny was a great lady. But you can argue about whether the rich got richer in the, but I think it was almost the sort of extraordinary thing about the coalition, which we thought of as being kind of quite benign, but it was a time where I think the rich did get richer and the poor got poorer.
And as a result of those inequalities, they were the seeds for Brexit and much that's followed since. But the example was there you are. It's the impression and the fun of the impression. But there is somehow or other you have nailed a truth and it's not just a belly laugh, it's a head laugh as well
Craig Oliver: Yeah, let's get into all that in a lot more detail later on, but let's start really in your childhood. What sort of child were you?
Rory Bremner: I was a show off is what I was. I had too much energy. My mum called me scatty. Yeah, I was just a little bit irrepressible. And I was slightly indulged. I mean, I used to watch a lot of television and do impressions of, you know, the Dick Emery show and the characters that he used to do. And at school, and I suppose, you know, you have a certain amount of popularity because you're the class clown in a way.
And then very quickly, if you overdo it, you know, you become unpopular because you overdo it. And I'm marking myself quite harshly now, because I realize now that some teachers now would say, no, I don't think you did have ADHD or whatever, because they didn't think it was that bad, but I can, a lot of looking back at my childhood, a lot of it makes sense, through that prism where I realized I did have all those symptoms of the short attention span of the impetuosity.
The worst thing was I was playing a football game at school because the rugby was cancelled. I was one of the forwards and our centre forward got the ball and was about to shoot. And I tackled our own center forward because I wanted to shoot, I took the ball off him and I shot about 10 feet wide of the goal. And it was one of those things like, what was I doing? What was I thinking? And I think that was absolutely impetuosity.
Craig Oliver: Did people say, look, this is a different child, you know, overly energetic, you know, did they understand that you maybe had a condition?
Rory Bremner: It wasn't thought of in those terms then. The reports that I've looked at from school, you can see those things about, you know, Rory seems determined to show the rest of the class how little he knows, and you go, Oh, right, okay, you got my number then.You know, there's a few things like that, which are quite painful to look at.
Craig Oliver: But it’s interesting that it was like, the critique is sort of like, that is slightly withering rather than understanding, isn't it?
Rory Bremner: Yes, it is, it is. And I mean, partly, I want to apologize, even at University….I was at university just up the road here at King's and I kind of even then at seminars I hated if there was a silence I would have to fill that silence and it was rather like Edith Evans as an actress and she was being directed in a play and she said she said to the director ‘What do I do during this pause?’ and the director says, well, there isn't, there isn't a pause. So what, what, what do you mean? She said the pause while that man's speaking.
Craig Oliver: But that's interesting, isn't it? That moment where suddenly things fall silent. A lot of British people do recognize that, but you're saying it's more than that, isn't it? Just that there's a sheer discomfort. What's coming next?
Rory Bremner: I want to keep it going. You know, I want to keep it going. without even thinking what you just, I think it is the irrepressibility. By and large, I think of my childhood as being happy. My dad was a, he'd been in the army, and that, I think, was the time of his life during the war.
Craig Oliver: And he'd been married before?
Rory Bremner: He had, yes - he had a relationship during the war, and the, it was kind of a romance, if you like. And, um, the result of that was my half sister who now lives in Canada. And then, in the letters that we discovered when we did Who Do You Think You Are? we found out that as he was coming back from Europe, from the war, when he was on leave, he would see his parents, but he would say, but don't tell her that I'm here. He didn't want his wife, in fact, to know that he'd come home. So the relationship was, was obviously, you know, it wasn't her….
Craig Oliver: That's interesting. I mean, it sounds like he's somebody who struggled with the truth, confrontation feelings, the way you describe it there.
Rory Bremner: That's very perceptive. I think that that's true. I mean, I think, obviously because we share a father, we got to know my sister who lives in, in Canada, as I say, and over the years have got to know her and we see what we have in common. And you know, she has a certain scattiness as well, like I have, and we recognize things about our dad and don't judge him, but just, you know, that.
Craig Oliver: And he died while you were still very young.
Rory Bremner: Yes, he did. He did. I mean, so this is the thing. I mean, even when I was a child, he wasn't around a huge amount because he liked to be off.
He had a club in Edinburgh he'd go to in Princes Street and he would go there and he'd talk with friends and he'd have what they called intelligent conversation, which actually was, you know, he was putting the world to rights and he was talking with friends and he preferred that to life at home. And I think that's why he also preferred, he preferred the adrenaline and the action of war and being a soldier and all of that
Craig Oliver: The way you're describing it though. It sounds like he was an avoidant man. He avoided like the difficult family complexities.
Rory Bremner: Well, it's difficult because of course I didn't really, I mean, I didn't know him that well. But in fact, we had something we knew we knew each other instinctively if you like because he loved comedy. He loved Dave Allen, he loved Dick Emery. He loved all that and he loved sport. He was an army boxing champion. He'd been a squash champion as well. Polo and stuff. He loved sport and that's deep in me. And I love the sport. I don't get it if somebody doesn't love sport, I think, Oh, don't. And I, Oh, well, maybe we're not going to be such good friends. And yeah, cause it's so, it runs so deep in me. So that love of sport, that love of comedy. He liked politics, although his politics was more to the right. So I think we had an instinctive understanding, but I was only 18, and probably quite a young 18 year old, really. So not old enough to really analyze him. To the extent that you already have, perceptively. I mean, I haven't thought of him in, as, I think you use the words, avoidant. I haven't thought of him in those terms because, you know, age 16, 17, 18, I, I wouldn't have that perception.
Craig Oliver: But when he died, that must have, that's very young to lose your father still, you know, in your teenage years. I mean, that must have felt like a dramatic moment, obviously.
Rory Bremner: Well, yes and no. I mean, the funny thing about your childhood is that you think In a sense, you almost think, well, everyone's childhood is like that, until you realize and then you meet people at college or university or whatever, and you realize, oh, you know, your life, people have got very, very different lives to your own.
Craig Oliver: But you can’t have thought it was normal for people to lose their parents at that age?
Rory Bremner: No, not that, not that bit of it. I kind of just skated, jumped over that little bit of it. How did the loss of my dad affect me? Well, I mean, there was a deep irony at the heart of it, because he went on from, The army, he became an appeal secretary for the cancer research campaign.
Then it was called the British Empire Cancer Campaign for Research, and he was their appeal secretary and here's the irony. So he must have gone, cause I've seen, obviously I've done lots of charity shows and things like that, and there's that moment before the auction now where. Somebody from the charity speaks from the heart about this is what this is all about.
And they have these wonderful videos and people watch them. And then they have the, this is what it's about. This is why we need the money. And so Dad, I didn't go to any with him, but Dad would have been the person who at these dinners or lunches spoke about this is the situation with cancer. This is why we need your money. And then he gets cancer and Mum and Dad, and we didn’t talk about it. They were told, and they said, well, do we tell the boys? Cause I was 13 or 14 at the time. And there was this whole thing, and they would have been in those days probably sitting in a hospital corridor.
Craig Oliver: They did decide to tell you, though?
Rory Bremner: Well, no, they didn't. They didn't. Here's the thing, actually, interestingly. And mum had left a letter from a friend lying on a table in our sitting room. And I sort of idly looked at this letter, and it said, ‘So sorry to hear about Donald's cancer.’
Craig Oliver: Wow. Yeah, I mean that was presumably you assumed that that was just idly left there. Do you think on some level it was deliberately left there?
Rory Bremner: No, I honestly it wasn't. No, because I think she was, she was upset…but actually I haven't thought about that for many years actually. But yes, that's how I find out.
Craig Oliver: But that must have been an extraordinary moment where that's how you discovered them.
Rory Bremner: Yeah, thinking about it. Yes, it was.
Craig Oliver: And did you go and talk to them about it?
Rory Bremner: I think they were sort of just irritated or annoyed, not with me, but the secret was out, or whatever. But then he went through that thing as they did then, and fewer people are doing now because the treatment is so much better. If he'd have these checkups every six months, every year, then he'd be given the all clear. But, you know, he lived with it for three or four years.
Craig Oliver: The way you're describing it, and tell me if I've got it all wrong here, it just sounds so typically British. The whole sort of thing about There's a degree of stoicism there, but there's also a degree of, can we tell, you know, what are our feelings in this? They get pushed to one side. We're irritated by the fact that it's out there rather than actually, we've got, I mean, that is such a British thing.
Rory Bremner: It is, it is classically British. I mean…
Craig Oliver: And precisely the wrong way to handle it.
Rory Bremner: Yes, as we know now. But I mean, also, I mean, when you went For his last operation, my mum got a call from, from the British Temporal Cancer Campaign for research saying, I'm terribly sorry, but he can't keep his job.
Craig Oliver: The cancer campaign was saying that?
Rory Bremner: Yeah, so he lost his job in bed, in hospital, being treated for cancer. I tell that story now because that wouldn't happen now.
Craig Oliver: You know, I find that a whole experience of that generation. So, I've said this before, my mother was in the Metropolitan Police in the 1960s, and as soon as she was pregnant, she had to leave. And that kind of attitude within living memory is still around. But that, you know, you're out, you're done, and there's no protection, there's no rights, whatever. And you know, but that's an even more serious example of it.
Rory Bremner: So I did a thing a couple of years ago for Will Hutton at the Work Foundation, I think was it? And, it was all about the workplace. And like most of these things, I thought, God, why are you asking me to do this? I don't really know much about the workplace or it's that sort of imposter thing, which we can come back to. And then during the talk about how people are treated in the workplace, that story came to my head and so I kind of saved it and I thought I'll use it as a punchline.
It served a purpose at saying, you know, whatever we're talking about, things have got better, things, you know, that simply wouldn't happen now.
Craig Oliver: You say as an aside, you’re an imposter?
Rory Bremner: Yeah. Well, that's because, where I've been sort of more recently. When I was doing Brenda Bird and Fortune, I imagine that I didn't doubt myself, because there was no time to doubt myself because we just, you know, we had to get a program done in a week.
Jeff, my producer, Jeff Atkinson and I would meet on a Monday and within an hour and a half while the rest of the crew were coming in and devouring the croissants and drinking the coffee and waiting to be told what we were filming that week. Jeff and I, in an hour and a half, we think, right, we're going to do these eight characters. So then he would go into the production team. And he'd say, right, this week, Rory's going to be Trevor McDonald. He's going to be Prince Charles. He's going to be Tony Blair. So, so makeup would know that costume. And we would go off to a location on the Wednesday on a sort of country house, just outside, outside the M25, where one room would be Blair's office.
The sweeping staircase could be the inside of the White House or Buckingham Palace. A drawing room could be Buckingham Palace. And those are the locations, but, it was the discipline of it. I would literally…from the Monday, we had two days, Monday and Tuesday to write it, and I'd say, right, I've got to write that sketch by 11.30. I've got to write that sketch by 1 o'clock or whatever. So there wasn't, I just don't remember having the time to, to doubt myself. It's just what I did. And I loved it, and it was like I had a sugar craving, but it was great because I spent the first 20 years of my career in a sweet shop. So I was fine because, you know, here was this this boy who enjoyed showing off, but had found a way to show off.
So, instead of irritating people randomly, I had a way that people enjoyed the voices, and they would listen to teachers, and then it was indulged in a wonderful way. Channel 4, and this is where I touched on ADHD before, that the great thing with people who have ADHD is to find a job or a vocation where it's an asset rather than liability. So if you know, you're working in tax or corporate affairs or something and you need to focus and concentrate, ADHD is difficult. If you're a performer or a sportsman, it's your therapy, your work is your therapy. the job indulged me.
Craig Oliver: Is it your therapy or is it actually basically reinforcing it?
Rory Bremner: Quite possibly so.
Craig Oliver: Do you know what I mean? It's almost like I can see that it is a, you know, it's an out there and you've found your niche, but it also perhaps, you know, like accentuates it, catalyzes it.
Rory Bremner: But it's only afterwards, like only now I look back on my childhood and think, gosh, you know, you were the classic. ADHD irrepressible class clown, I didn't think about it in those terms at that time and similarly during the television thing because my irrepressibility was being indulged and I was being allowed to do it.
Craig Oliver: We should make clear that you went to boarding school, I think at eight? That's another thing that now there's an awful lot of work that's gone into studying people who were sent away at that age and that kind of thing, and the feeling that not a great thing to necessarily do to an eight year old. Do you feel that?
Rory Bremner: Yeah, because I can understand that. It was about, because it was the 70s. You arrive, and there a spies and they talked about, because you got very, day one You go back to, you go to your room and you'll start to snivel and start to cry or whatever. So, are you crying, Bremner? No, no, I'm not, I'm not crying. Do you remember that? I can, yeah, I can remember a little bit of that. And so you would, you would sort of, you'd find a coping mechanism. And some coping mechanisms would be, you would not deal with it. You would sort of just, you would, that door would come down.
You'd push it to one side. So, uh, that was that. And it's only, as I say, sort of much later on. This is eventually getting around to the question that we asked about four or five minutes ago. I don't remember doubting myself, but then since, uh, when that sort of fast train of doing the show and the necessity of turnover and stuff like that, when that stopped and I had a little longer to think about it, I found myself more recently thinking, God, I don't think I can do this. I'm not, I don't do that.
Craig Oliver: And the classic analysis of boarding schools is that the people who've gone there, basically they end up pushing their emotions down and not. Finding ways to be in touch with those emotions. Is that true of you? Or when, or has it been true of you?
Rory Bremner: Do you know what? I don't know, because I'm still not sure how well I know myself. And I think that's the thing about impressionists, is that, you know, it's almost kind of axiomatic. But if you spend your life doing impressions of other people, you know, you can, you can play all sorts of different personalities. And the hardest thing for an impressionist to be is themselves. And you said the best of my funniest moment as an impressionist, I was at the Royal Variety Show, this is true 2,0 years ago, maybe. And I was nervous and I was padding around, anxious, but I was anxiously pacing around backstage. And somebody came up and said, ‘Are you, are you nervous?’ I said, ‘Aes, I, yeah, I am,’ and they said, ‘Don't worry. Just, just go out there and be yourself,’ andI thought that's going to be great as an impressionist, that's really, really good.
But it is hard to be, it's hard to be yourself a little bit. So maybe that is that avoidance. And, you know, I can think of relationships or even, you know, when I was married, because when I was first married, I could think, well, did I really know who I was? I'm not certain even now that I know who I am. I know what makes me happy and what makes me happy is my work.
And because it's when I'm fulfilled and when I have a purpose. And I think if we're looking for happiness, it's that sense of fulfillment, that sense of purpose. And having something to do and of being able to do it. But the doubt is difficult. Even now, last year, I took a challenge on of doing a play, Quiz, being Chris Tarrant for months, which is great fun because he used to help me.
Craig Oliver: We interviewed James Graham, um, a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, what a wonderful man. Oh, wonderful man. And, uh, this brilliant play that he wrote of, you know, the cheating major, or did he cheat? Major and millionaire.
Craig Oliver: Yes.
Rory Bremner: We don't know how he cheated. If it was a Scottish case, it would be not proven. Because, you go on…30 seconds, you know, the case rested on a tape produced by the production company. On which there were 18 coughs at the right moments, but there had been 182 coughs during the recording. They'd isolated everything. They'd isolated, then they sweetened, then they heightened. And, and you know, there's still a doubt where did the voice coughs come from and stuff like that. So, something happened.
But anyway, so I did the play and, and Chris Tarrant was all, ‘It's nothing like me. Who are you even being?’ You know, I never say ‘T’and I never say ‘he’. But going into that, I thought I need a challenge and I went into it, and it's a great cast, but in the dress rehearsal, I forgot something, and I had a crisis, like, oh my god, oh god, you can't do this. Actors will know, I wouldn't, because I'm not really an actor, in that sense, but suddenly it was like, where, where am I coming on next, and the whole thing swirls round, where, and you almost lose your bearings. I thought, god, I can't do this, and I thought the headline's gonna be Rory who forgot his words, and this didn't work, and then they got somebody else in to do it.
And I went outside, and there was the poster with me front and center in my name and I thought you can't walk away from this. You've got to do this, I went back in, got back into it and of course loved it and through that as the run went on I know that it was great. It went really really well. And so this is where I am now I go in thinking I don't think I can do this I don't think I can do this and more often than not I do it. I come out going I love that. It really, really went well.
Craig Oliver: I think this is a theme that comes up a lot in that, you know, that you have those moments of huge doubt, but the resilience or the ability to actually just push through and 99 times out of 100 it is okay. And it's deeply uncomfortable, isn't it? At times that when you're like, you're confronted by something like this really uncomfortable and can be deeply unpleasant.
Rory Bremner: Well, here's the distillation of it. It's when, you know, a beginning and the imposter syndrome kicks in and you think, And then I do it and it works really well and I go, Well, you're an impressionist. You're a really good imposter. Yeah. Don't worry about that. So, um, that's why, you know, when the play finished, of course it finishes and then it after a while. You're only as good as your next show. Now, I'm between shows and I'm going, Oh, can I do this? Can I do that? But if you'd spoke to me two months ago, I was on top of the world because I'd taken it and I thought, I can do that! I can do it really well. Yeah. So if I say, I know that I'm really good at this stuff.
Craig Oliver: So, I'm interested in going back to when you discovered that you had talent. So you were saying you were watching things like Dick Emery and all that kind of stuff on the TV. When did you realize I can do credible impersonations?
Rory Bremner: Oh, it was, I would be in my you know, I'd be nine, ten, eleven years old, and people would come round for drinks parties or something, and I'd be wheeled out, and I would do my Margot Ledbetter from The Good Life, or whatever, so, yeah, and people, and Dad, I think, loved that, he was so priceless, he'd say, and, uh, the only thing I ever made at woodwork, because I'm completely impractical, the only thing I ever made at woodwork were, other kids were sort of running up chests of drawers and speakers and Cutler's and stuff like that. I made a pipe so I could be Harold Wilson. That was all I did. And of course, Mike Yarwood, who was the, there's got to be, it seems to me about being in precious.
Craig Oliver: You've obviously got to be able to technically do something, but you've also got to be funny, but the two don't necessarily go together.
Rory Bremner: No, they don't. And, but you learn how to do it because then I went exactly, I went on to boarding school and there are the teachers. And if you do impressions of the teachers, that's a good way to be popular. And even not amongst the kids, but amongst the teachers as well, who like to have their, their fellow teachers sort of quietly. So it was, I kind of knew I did show off or I was irrepressible, but voices. were the way to do it. I mean, this is, this is what I share in common. This is what I have in common with paranoid schizophrenics. The voices made me do it.
Craig Oliver: And what's it like when, you know, so you've already done some of like the greatest hits sort of thing, like Boris, you know, we can hear you can do that, but what's it like when somebody new comes along, like Rishi, I mean, do you feel, oh my god, I've got to be able to get this person?
Rory Bremner: Well, Yes, we're back into imposter syndrome. I'm thinking, can I still do it? Can I still do it? And then I go, then the experience kicks in. You think, well, where is he on the paint chart? If you think, you know, if you're mixing colors, you think I'll have a little bit of green, a little bit of yellow, a little bit of brown. So for Rishi, it's, he's got that sort of Tony Blair sibilance. But it's a bit deeper, and it's a bit more camp, and, but you sort of work away at it, and you realize that, you know, if you work a little bit, if you keep listening, and then you sort of hone it, then it sort of gets there. But I, I kind of, I use it as an excuse, perhaps, I think, well, you know, really, if I did Jeremy Hunt, or James Cleverley, or Grant Shapps, would people know who I was doing?
So you're very grateful for the William Hagues. You're grateful. I'm so grateful that David Cameron has come back, because I mean, now you know that's what I could do. You know, when Rishi rang up and I said, you know, should I do this thing? And I said, well, we disagree, Rishi and I, we disagree over, you know, Brexit and HS2, just little things.
But you've got to find the areas of agreement, Craig, and he said, would it, would I like a hundred thousand pounds a year at a peerage? And I thought, well, we could agree on that. So thank God because Cameron and, you know, I can see you're smiling. You're laughing, but yes, you're right. It's the new ones.
Trump is a gift. You want the big characters and they're useful for satire too. You know, you need the big ones and probably I'm the biggest ever.
Craig Oliver: And you gravitate towards politics because you could do any number of people like outside politics. Why politics?
Rory Bremner: Well, I think it was a conscious decision some years ago. I thought well if you could do voices you should do the people who matter and there was to some extent a conscious decision people do come together for the news So they might not know who some of the, but they do know who the news characters are. They know who the politicians are. And that then came together with, I'm such a news, I love news.
I love current affairs. I love politics. I love being informed with that. And so a combination of thinking, well, do the voices that matter, do the news voices. And then working with John Byrd and John Fortune, who of course were at the heart of the satire sort of boom of the 1960s. And so that again, took me in that direction where they were intelligent Cambridge satirists and I owe them a great debt.
Craig Oliver: And I was thinking as I was preparing for this, if the quote, which was like, satire died the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. And I though,t that that's actually a lot of people feel that about the current situation because there's been so many extreme things, you know, well, we talk about a post truth age.
Rory Bremner: But anyway, we're a post satire age aren't we? Because I mean my version of that which I used to do in the act was that Satire died the day that Tony Blair became the middle east peace envoy, you know?
Craig Oliver: Do you feel sometimes though that like there are things that are just too…it's become too serious or too ridiculous Is there ever a moment? Oh, well, there's lots of things there.
Rory Bremner: l I mean, somebody said about history repeating itself, that, you know, it doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. So, there was, as you say, Kissinger, and then 20 years later, 30 years later, Tony Blair, and now Trump, all the rest of it. There is that sense in which it becomes just almost too ridiculous. Well, not almost, but, but, patently too ridiculous. When you go to President saying, you know, you should inject yourself with bleach, that would be, that would do a great number. And you think, well, if you put that into the satire sketch, it'd be almost too much.
But how I always used to operate was I used to think, well, I need to make sense of things. And then you make nonsense of it. But you first of all, got to make sense of things. And so we'd have those wonderful moments where William Hague was in the House of Commons preparing for Prime Minister's questions.
But he'd be thinking up jokes for Prime Minister's questions. And the comedians would be sitting in an office, working out seriously what the politics were, what the strategy was, how you could understand. So, so the comedians are becoming the politicians, and the politicians are becoming the comedians.And there is a sense in which nothing was taken seriously anymore.
Craig Oliver: And we spoke to Rory Stewart the other day and he talked about his experience in politics and described it almost like as a comedy of the absurd. And that, you know, he was actually quite profoundly depressed by his experience. What's your take on the political class?
Rory Bremner: Well, there is a sense in which I think it's not funny anymore. It really, you know, what is we look at the world, you know, right now as we're sitting here in the January of 2024. And, you know, we're talking about, are we going to have to call people up? I mean politics is in a smouldering ruin with Trump on the other side of the Atlantic and Boris on this side and there's a sense in which there's a shamelessness
Craig Oliver: I don't disagree with you on that point. I mean look there's definitely extreme politicians who are awful but I also wonder if we talk ourselves into how bad it all really is.
Rory Bremner: Yes,
Craig Oliver: For example, something like Steven Pinker would say if you're gonna pick a time to be born it would be now because your chances of living longer your health actually broadly stuff does work. We tell each other it doesn't, but actually broadly it does. It's really not that bad. And I suppose what's interesting is, is there a kind of situation where media, politics, comedy almost conspires to make everybody think it's all bloody awful?
Rory Bremner: Yeah, I think I know I do agree with that. And actually I'm an optimist. I really am. I'm all I've always been. Um, In almost any situation, I can think, Oh, it'll be okay. We'll go, we'll get through. And this, I suppose it was just thinking in terms of when you do Donald Trump, for example, and I worry about, and Boris to a great extent, is I worry that by making fun of them. I make them funny and people in America, they love Trump because he's a character or people in Britain love Boris because he's a great character and it like it allows them…it's almost the entertainment way Absolutely, and that's and I think but actually what is going on? I'm still struggling to go back to what I said is still trying to make sense of it
Craig Oliver: But I'm really interested in the point you made about people seeing You know Trump and Johnson like almost as entertaining not everybody by any means thinks that but the people who voted for them perhaps did and I suppose You might say this is where you get to if Politics is always treated negatively, or if you're always taking the piss, what kind of politicians do you kind of expect to get?
Rory Bremner: Yes, I completely agree with that. I remember I came about that point, Tony Benn, years ago, and he said, you see, the trouble is if you start to make fun of politicians, he said, where does it get you? Um, and of course, I suppose the answer is it gets you the politicians that we have now. And I mean, I wouldn't go into politics because I, you know, I think on the other side..
Craig Oliver: I mean, like they can completely deserve it as well sometimes don't they? But I wonder if it is just like James, we talked about James Graham, he wrote a play about buying The Sun in the 1970s and what then was injected into journalism and this kind of atmosphere that they're all idiots and they're all terrible and it's constantly undermining.
Rory Bremner: Yes, I would sort of fight against that funnily enough because There are good politicians. I mean, I said a while ago about how, you know, when you meet them one to one, they're all charming or whatever. We tend to hear about the rotten apples, if you like. But let's say something like David Amis or something, and when he was assassinated a year or two ago, then out came this stuff about how loved he was in his community and how much he'd done for that pub and how he'd go out of his way to do this and that.
And you think, well, that's the real politician. And that's what people do. And actually, I think Joe Cox, similarly, again, but it took in both those cases, remarkably similar, both those cases, it took them being killed for people to see, gosh, these were good people trying hard for their constituents who loved them in return. So yes, they are out there. And we desperately need to have those kind of politicians. But unfortunately, the major players, whether it's Trump or whether it's with Boris, you know, who, you know, when he, he chucked out Rory Stewart amongst others and the Ken Clarks and the, the Dominic Greaves and, and all those people for those to be thrown out and say, we don't want you in the conservative party anymore.
Then you think it's rather light when people say, well, you know, you, or the lefty media brought down Boris. No. Boris brought down Boris. So if we're saying, okay, to some extent the satirists and people criticizing politicians have brought politicians down to size to an extent, but Boris did a lot of that as well.

Craig Oliver: Let's go back to like when you really broke through and you suddenly are incredibly famous, you're everywhere, well known, amazing success. How was your private life at that time?
Rory Bremner: I think to an extent that sort of success or the work that breeds success, in order to do that you need to be very single minded.Single mindedness in a relationship can be seen as selfishness. You know, you live in your head, and you are just thinking about your show, or you're traveling, or you're on the go all the time. And that's not always conducive to a good relationship, or a good marriage. And so I'm, I've blamed for myself.
Craig Oliver: Presumably you were on the road a lot as well.
Rory Bremner: Yeah, I was on the road a lot. I think I was single minded and I was selfish and ironically perhaps my times of greatest success if you like empirically were 95 and 96 when I won the BAFTA in 95 and 96 for best entertainment performance and those were the two years after my marriage had broken up. And I was single and I could throw myself completely into my work. I don't think it was entirely by accident that those years because it was just my work.
Craig Oliver: Because you'd been married for eight years.
Rory Bremner: Yeah, and, and we're still great friends and I have great admiration for Susie, who went and went on to write three brilliant novels.
Craig Oliver: Do you feel looking back that it was all about the career and you weren't investing in the relationship?
Rory Bremner: I mean, that's who I was, I guess, Mark Steele does a wonderful thing about somebody who marries an airline pilot and they come back from the honeymoon and he says, right, I'm off to New York this week and then next week I'm flying to the Far East. And his wife said, well, you're leaving. Why are you leaving again? You going you out of that? And he said, well, I'm, you do know I'm an airline pilot. That's what I do. And in a sense, it's no excuse, but a performer, they do live in their head and they do travel and they, you know, that's. what they do, but it's asking a lot of a partner to understand that.
And it's all very well when you're, you know, if you're bringing up children or something like that, it's all very well if the performer can go off and get this, you know, the adulation and the praise and the success and the joy of performing and being away and traveling and all that. And at home, there is a house to run and there are children to bring up and it's…uour work requires you to be single minded.
Craig Oliver: So it's interesting you're saying about that's what I do and that's what it takes and I totally can see that. But I also imagine the part of it is slightly convenient that I can avoid this of course I can go away and I can go and I don't have to absolutely deal with all the stuff and the difficult parts of emotions.
Rory Bremner: Absolutely, and a bit. I mean this Andy Zaltzman said it's wonderful because he's managed to make a career he's a wonderful comedian a so inventive and surreal and creative and satirical and he talks about when his wife her waters broke in the bathroom on the bathroom floor and he had to deliver the baby and he said, you know, my whole life has been about avoiding any responsibility. And Andy, this is just, he's just so wonderful. So he said, ‘I searched for the hero inside myself only to find a whole lot of unopened mail indicating that he'd never lived at that address.’
Isn't that wonderful? So, search for the hero inside yourself and there's unopened mail. But the point is there, is yes, there is a sense in which, you know, it's easy to avoid the responsibility. And I suppose going very deep here, I found it difficult to be the sort of person that I need to be for my work, and the sort of person that you need to be to be a good father and a good husband. And they are different things, and I'm amazingly admiring of people who manage
Craig Oliver: Have you learned to do that?
Rory Bremner: You should ask my wife. I don't think ever entirely successfully because you know success at the level of not wanting to fail. I mean, if you've got to go in front of an audience and there have been times in my life actually when, you know, in many years ago, and you can remember you've just come off the phone, you've had an incredibly difficult conversation and you have literally got a turn on the sixpence go in front and make a room of people 1200 people laugh. You've got to compartmentalize, you've got to compartmentalize, but sometimes you've got to compartmentalize for work. But if you like for home and for children, you've got to come out of those compartments and you've got to be a different person and sometime it's, I don't think it's easy and I certainly haven't cracked it and the context of all this is it's that's my fault.
Craig Oliver: James Cracknell talked about being present, no, not really being there. And Clive Myrie talked about his father and said he lived among us, but he wasn't really there. Is it that kind of thing?
Rory Bremner: Yeah, I live in my head, but my wife is an artist and you know, she needs to, when she's working on a big project, you know, she needs to do that and she needs to find the time that I'm in that sort of space now of, struggling to get back to the day job because it, you know, creating it does mean a lot of time of sitting into space sucking the end of a pen or pencil and just thinking time. And children or you know not gonna give you a tremendous amount of thinking, you know, there's always stuff to be done.
Craig Oliver: Can I talk about one thing I read about your first marriage, it said that you were like driving in the car and you heard a news bulletin and you were on the news bulletin because you're marriage had broken up. I mean that must have been a moment where A, that's weird my personal life makes your news but B, oh my god, this really is over and it's a…
Rory Bremner: You're absolutely right, I mean it was a surreal moment. There was a sense in which I could I couldn't believe that we'd had that conversation where we were going to separate and it was from that moment on.
Craig Oliver:Was it you or her that wanted it, or both?
Rory Bremner: I mean I was spending more and more time in London and working and I don't think I would have been easy. To be with and I just, but it was almost like an out of body experience. But I mean, I'm so incredibly grateful that we are able to have a good friendship and able to really support and praise each other's work as well.
Craig Oliver: I suppose one of the things is that you don't immediately learn the lessons. And that actually, afterwards, you know, there's a period of time where there's difficulty and stuff. And you said that my self esteem was in tatters during the five years between getting divorced and meeting Tessa, your wife, relationships tended to involve me handing a gun to somebody and saying, here, have a shot. Work was going really well, but if the person I was in a relationship was giving me a hard time, my confidence would be entirely dependent on that person.
Rory Bremner: That's a while ago, but yes, it makes me laugh now. But I mean, there was the truth in it. I mean,
Craig Oliver: How handing a gun, I mean, that's a very extreme metaphor that literally handing a gun to somebody and saying, look, shoot me. And that's also reveals quite a lot of, you know, pain
Rory Bremner: I suppose that's about lacking confidence in myself. And so my confidence being entirely dependent on somebody else. So therefore they had the power.
Craig Oliver: But entering into relationships that are destructive or toxic, it sounds like, that it's almost like that was the natural fit. That was what, the way you were psychologically or emotionally, the way you describe it
Rory Bremner: It's unfair because none of them were homicidal. None of them actually shot you. None of them actually shot me. But It is an extreme, very extreme metaphor, and I'm surprised that's why I laugh at it now, but I suppose, and it's, I can't remember that emotional frame of mind, but I think it was looking for validation, or looking for giving somebody else complete control over how you feel about yourself. And so if they, if that relationship faltered, or if that person, if the relationship went badly, that that was a reflection on you, me, not a good person.
Craig Oliver: I don't want to push it too hard, but it sounds like it was a really difficult time. So, I think you had an eating disorder, and like you said
Rory Bremner: That was a weird one actually, because I mean I never..
Craig Oliver: Was this all at the same time?
Rory Bremner: That was a weird one because that was actually when I just when I first got married actually and I don't know what it was I really don't know what it was factually, it was just a period of only a couple of months or whatever where yeah I just Who'd open the fridge and just I didn't like the smell of food or of just eating a sandwich the the chew chewing chewing chewing And it would just be I would chew but not swallow and I think somebody said to me. Oh, that sounds like bulimia No, oh, right. Okay Er, is it all right? I thought that was a country and uh, I kind of accepted it, those darker moments, but they'd be obviously contingent on things.
Craig Oliver: No, but I'm so interested in, in the way in which you're talking about it, and I'm not a qualified therapist and one of my worst habits is like amateur psychologizing. But I would say that if you go to the fridge for a month and you only wanna chew the food and spit it out or whatever, and you know that is a song. that something isn't quite right and I would say one of the lessons I feel I learned is that you have to deal with the past or it will deal with you and often it bubbles up in quite ways and that actually if you haven't actually approached things.
So I'm interested in the fact that you did go to therapy. Did you immediately take to it? I mean, I went to therapy and I think I spent quite a few months just like not quite getting it and then the penny drops, but did, how did you?
Rory Bremner: Well, it was funny because the therapist that I saw was John Cleese's wife, who he divorced. He said, ‘you know what? He said, I'm going to get divorced. It's going to cost me about a million dollars, but it will be worth every cent,’ - he wasn't a fan. And it was good to have a counselor and a talker. Um, you know, we had some interesting conversations, but I never felt, I never broke through. Then she was away one day and she sent me to see this guy called Hyatt Williams, who it turns out is quite well known and very well regarded and it's a Hyatt Williams. So off I went and it was north london. I arrived there and We chatted around and in the course of one conversation, I said, well look, I am a bit of a chameleon. And he just immediately, he just said, well, you shouldn't sit on a patchwork quilt. And this image of the chameleon on the patchwork quilt was so arresting and so funny that I felt like I was freed.
I felt that I could laugh at it. I could laugh at myself and say, exactly, that is it. I try to fit in wherever I am. But actually It's comic and exhausting being that sort of person who's constantly changing. Right. It's what I do professionally. I'm very good at it.
Craig Oliver: But just unpack that. So basically, obviously the point of a patchwork skill is it's got lots of different colors and patterns on it and you're sitting on it, which means that it's having an impact. So he's basically saying that the life that you have chosen for yourself is making you change or react or behave in certain ways constantly And he's obviously it would sound like he's advising you to minimize that. Did you take it as advice?
Rory Bremner: No, I took it as a compliment. I took it as a compliment.
Craig Oliver: Let's get to the bottom of this, because you keep talking about imposter syndrome. What I take by imposter syndrome is somebody who feels I'm not worthy, I'm not capable. But you seem to be using it as like I'm an imposter in that I pretend to be something else.
Rory Bremner: I kind of enjoyed that. We've touched on the ADHD bit, but that's what makes me, you know, my brain just jumps all over the place like a pinball machine. And so I've talked about sort of taking meds and stuff for that and I've, I do lots of stuff now with the ADHD foundation who are brilliant.
But I've kind of, up to now, resisted meds because I kind of like The chaos. I like spinning plates. I like being the chameleon on the patchwork quilt, which is why I obviously took it as a compliment. Yeah, I'm more at ease now. I understand because I get that fundamentally, I'm a people pleaser. My fulfillment, my happiness. So now I've just, I've just, I've kind of farmed that out to everybody out there. And I mean, I can, I can walk into a shop. I can see a shop assistant who's just, you know, sad faced and I say, come on. I bet you can make her smile, or I bet you can make him smile. Or somebody in a bus queue, or something like that, I'll challenge myself to make them smile, or to make them cheer. And, and just do something to make them a little bit happier. And that's the people pleasing. And then I go right back to Voltaire, and Candide, and the French lessons that I had with Derek Swift, who was the teacher who changed my life by Challenging us to do advanced French proses, he taught us Russian, all these sort of things.
And Voltaire, the final line in Candide is, um, you know, he's been talking about these great grand philosophies, and, and at the end of the day, the person says, well, all that may be so, but, you know, we must cultivate our garden. And people say, still to this day, they think what did he mean? What did he mean?
And I take that to mean that you're not going to change the world. If you just do your best in the circle where you are to make the world a little bit of a better place, or to just make it a little bit happier, then that's a good thing. And I think that's where I have some kind of self realization that that's what you do, Rory Bremner. You're not a fighter. You're a useless fighter. You're terrible at confrontation. You love to make people happy.
Craig Oliver: That's true, I think. And I think that that's really, the very profound when you say like the realization that you can't necessarily change the world, that you're just part of a bigger thing, all you can do is just like, be the best you can be in your area and that kind of thing. And I think realizing that is like a sign of real maturity.
I'm just interested in picking up your people pleasing bit, though, because you're right, obviously, it's nice to be able to make somebody smile who's not very happy, but a lot of people would say that the flip side of being a people pleaser is that you go round trying to live in other people's heads and make them happy or behave in a certain way, and it actually is very negative for you. So actually what you've got to do is confront the fact that there are positive aspects to that and there are negative aspects to that. And that the mature thing to do is to realize this bit of it's okay, but I'm not going to max out on it across everything.
Rory Bremner: Do you know, I can be honest to say that as you were saying that, my brain was instinctively not listening and drowning you out. That's the most honest thing that I can say to you because…and almost I need you to say that again and I need to process it properly because I felt I'd reached that kind of…
Craig Oliver: Is that actually, ‘I don't want to hear it?’
Rory Bremner: Well, that's what i'm asking myself now So which is why but of course I didn't hear it..
Craig Oliver: Okay, I'm gonna have another go. Are you gonna look me in the eye while I…
Rory Bremner: As opposed to look out? I think I've reached some what's the word i've reached an arrangement not an arrangement. What's the word I've reached?
Craig Oliver:An accommodation
Rory Bremner: An accommodation is exactly what I've reached. an accommodation with myself where I know what I do, and I know I realize that for all my stupidities that I'm most fulfilled when I'm making people happy and that I'm happy with that and now that you've questioned that I'm starting to go.. ‘No, no, no, no, no, honestly, I think I think I'm I think I'm okay I think I found a way’ but you're saying but are you really and i'm now saying god I do I want to open that door?
Craig Oliver: It's hard, isn't it?
Rory Bremner: Do I want to open that? It's like Tony Blair with Iraq. Do I want to open that door and say well actually maybe you haven't cracked it, it and maybe there's all that stuff in that room that you really need to go and sort out?
Craig Oliver: I will repeat it but I do think you've actually done quite a good job of summarizing what I said, but I will repeat it. Obviously pleasing people can be a very good thing. But it can also be a profoundly bad thing in the sense that you go out of your way to accommodate another person and that's not necessarily always a positive thing that they can dominate or push you or you end up overextending yourself and exhausting yourself and resenting it. That's a very common thing It's codependency, isn't it
Rory Bremner: Guilty as charged?
Craig Oliver: You did start looking out the window again then.
Rory Bremner: I'm gonna well, I know I think I think guilty as as charged I do, but the things you did, fulfilment and purpose, I think there is that thing about don't beat yourself up, because there's a tendency. Well, I keep talking about, a bit too much about ADHD, so if we just unpack it for 30 seconds. So attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and the two things are like, deficit, it's not attention deficit. It's not that I'm not paying attention. It's that I'm paying attention to too many different things. And while you've been asking me questions, I look out of the window and think of two or three different answers on what I want to say. And I think there's a, there's a, there is medication out there which I could be taking and which I think I will go on that journey because actually ultimately people pleasing…because I talk a lot with schools and with companies about ADHD and about neurodiversity. And there's an element, when people talk about medication, I thought, how can I talk about medication if I have not done it myself?
Craig Oliver: When were you diagnosed?
Rory Bremner: Oh, about seven or eight years ago during the course of a documentary.
Craig Oliver: So forgive me, how, so how old were you then?
Rory Bremner: Early fifties.
Craig Oliver: And so you'd lived, a lot of your life, obviously, not realizing. So what was that moment like when you suddenly, was it like everything suddenly fell into place?
Rory Bremner: Yes and no. Because, well, as with most people who go for a diagnosis, it doesn't tell you, it just confirms what you know already. And it's just basically, it's like passing your driving test. And somebody has this thing, okay, right, okay, so I can drive the car. Now I know, you're all given the car keys.
Craig Oliver: So you suspected it?
Rory Bremner: Yes, you suspect it. And when somebody confirms it, you think, okay, great. I've got, I've got, I've got my driver. I passed my driving test and now I can go in a drive. But the difference is the next day I was on the bus. We were making a documentary. As I said, the diagnosis was part of a documentary about ADHD. And I was on a bus going to the next location and I just burst into tears and I thought why was that why?
And I realised it was because there is no blood test or something for ADHD. It's very subjective and part of it is a questionnaire where you assess yourself and it's that thing about, do you find yourself interrupting people sometimes, always, very, all those sort of things. Do you find yourself finishing tasks?
And I was marking myself harshly. Partly because I thought, God, that is true. That is, yes. And partly because I thought, this is going to be a bloody useless documentary about ADHD if you discover that you haven't got it after all. But the result was that I'd spent the whole day of the diagnosis concentrating on, on my failures. And my life has been about projecting success.
Craig Oliver: But it's so interesting that you say, you describe it as failure because you've also already said, don't beat yourself up. It's like a big thing. And so actually it's not a failure, it's just The reality of your existence and you're suddenly in start understanding, but it's interesting that you see saw it as a failing.
Rory Bremner: Yeah, I mean, it's difficult living with somebody who has ADHD and, and, you know, you another failing or whatever. And so somebody has a real go at you, you fail, you drop the ball again, you forget something again or whatever. And if somebody's. You're already beating yourself up already because you're saying why do I do that?
Why did I do that again? Why am I always making that mistake? So what that's what I say to try to lift the load of the people that I'm talking to I want to say look don't beat yourself up because it does make you who you are.
Craig Oliver: But it's also important for other people to understand what they're dealing with and I think that a lot of it is before we used to assume that all sorts of conditions were just people being stupid or lazy or aggressive or arrogant or whatever and actually it's a condition there and actually when you understand that that person has that you stop blaming them and start understanding them.
Rory Bremner: This was the second, the D for deficit, but the final ADHD is disorder. What I try to say now is that it's not a disorder, it's just people who think differently. See, this is the thing, I couldn't make these connections if I didn't have ADHD. And you make those random connections, and I was listening to a thing about Apple and the first launch of Apple.
The 1997 launch of Apple, when it was ‘think different’, a little part of you is going, well, that's not grammatically correct, is it? But anyway, ‘think different’ it was about, let's hear it for the people who are different. Let's hear it for the, the crazy people or whatever it was. And I thought you could lift that out of an And use it as a slogan now for people who are neurodiverse, because our time has come and people, tech companies out there are busy recruiting people who are neurodiverse, who have ADHD, who have autism, who have Asperger's, because these are huge strengths in an organization, which wants people to think differently. It wants people to have a different mindset.
Craig Oliver: So I'm interested in hearing about it at its extremes though. So are there moments where it just like. Gets out of control or is it? Oh, yeah. So how does how does that happen?
Rory Bremner: Oh, I mean it well…most conversations that I have…you're talking 19 to the dozen and he'll say something and I'm thinking rather like I've done doing this conversation. I'll think of three different tangents.
Craig Oliver: So I met your wife Tessa at the party the other night and she said I could tell he was talking to somebody else with ADHD because all I could just hear was these people talking about 100 miles an hour to each other and they wouldn't stop and interrupt each other.
Rory Bremner: Oh, no, you've got inside information Well, yeah, there you go.And so so, you know, that's it's living with somebody And I, you know, often, you know, now I come back from conversations or meetings and I go, will you just shut up? And yet, I'm sometimes happier when that's irrepressible thing, because I'm just going with a passion or an interest or a curiosity or something which is burningly urgent.
Craig Oliver: I remember you saying it’s like the grit in the oyster. That, creates something and that you worry about the medication. 'cause it'll stop the grit in the oyster.
Rory Bremner: Just let, I want to explain. Yeah. That was a, a metaphor that Brecht uses in The Life Of Galileo, where it talks about, I think it's genius or whatever, as being the, the grit in the oyster. The oysters have grit, which forms a pearl. And he's saying that, is it that people who are talented is that the result of some disorder within them? And he's saying, do you want to have a healthy oyster? And, but if it was a healthy oyster, it wouldn't have a pearl.
Craig Oliver: This grit in the oyster is an irritant, isn't it? It's something that causes pain and suffering. Yes. Then create something good. If I'm hearing you right, is that you're willing to pay the price for the suffering it brings in order to actually have the outcome?
Rory Bremner: I remember having sort of extremes of emotion and I thought, well, I'll live with the lows because I love the highs.
Craig Oliver: And what would you say to therapists who would say actually you need to get used to balancing it out and maybe not getting the thing that gives you the prize but actually just be living on a more even keel?
Rory Bremner: I'd say, oh gosh, is that the time? I've got to think about something else. I remember when I was much, much younger, maybe teenagers, and I used to think that worrying too much about your problems was like biting your fingernails.
And you know, when you're biting your fingernails and you keep thinking you're going to get down to a bit where it feels good and there's no snaggy bits and it's like that, but actually you never quite do. And you just keep biting and biting and biting till you, do you know what I mean? Am I talking nonsense here?
I suppose it's, I have a real fear and I've got to be very careful here that if I went too deep into my own personality, it would start, it would completely fall apart. And actually I've, as I said, I've reached this accommodation. And it's a conclusion I reached only a few days ago, and I thought, ‘God, Rory Bremner, you're an outsider, aren't you?’ Because you've just done this play with a whole lot of brilliant actors who then go on and do another play, and you don't, because you've just dipped into being an actor. And I'm a comedian, and there's all these other comedians who are working day in, day out in comedy shows, and I sort of dip into it and dip out of it.
And maybe, you know, this chameleon is still on his patchwork quilt. That's all I've ever known. And if I'm not that person, who am I?
Craig Oliver: So, we talked about me meeting Tessa, your, your wife the other night. And what I thought was interesting, even in the short period of time that we met, I could tell you've got a very good relationship.
You were, you know, talking to each other, batting back and forth, that kind of thing. But I also discovered that you met her and married her within eight weeks. I mean, that's some going, isn't it?
Rory Bremner: It is some going, yes. Well, yeah, but, I mean, that was at the end of that period of low self esteem or, you know, those years. I'd been divorced for five years or so. And I met this person who, she was good to be with. It felt like I didn't want to play games anymore.
Craig Oliver: But how could you know in that situation that you could trust your feelings?
Rory Bremner: Well, it just felt right. I mean, we'd gone to Portugal. I kept an old car there, an old Alfa Romeo classic car in Malaga with friends, we used to go on car rallies and we flew down there and picked up this car and on off we went and of course being ADHD I got lost on the Spanish Portuguese border. Do you know where we are? Yes, yes, of course I do. I don't really, I don't know where I am. And we turned the corner and there on one of these side roads, out of the dust, came, it was like, there's a wonderful French novel called Grand Monde, where I think a character, he has this experience of going back centuries and, and, and seeing a, a, Something that happened at that in the 18th or 19th century or something there and he's but this the duskly and there were all these people in Spanish costume with horses.
And I thought, what are they? And it's it was the Rocio Rocio, which they have at Pentecost every year where they converge on National Park on the Spanish. Portuguese border with thousands and thousands of horses and oxen carrying the local virgin, the virgin from the church, not, not the woman, the altarpiece, they take the virgin out of the church and on an ox cart and they, and then thousands and thousands of horses.
Now, Tess is a horse painter and sculptor now. And so suddenly we saw this thing and We parked the car up and we became part of this extraordinary people, the national costume, the boys of 12 showing off their horsemanship, the men offering a sangria and, and Tessa was in her element because she knows horses, she understands horses and all the rest of it.
And, and I just, I know, I just, I thought this is, I don't want to play games anymore. This is somebody who has a happiness. I suppose in the past I'd known people who were young people who pretended to be older and Tessa was an older person who was still a still, there was a child in her which I loved. There was an enthusiasm and a playfulness and then we were staying on a sort of golf resort.
I love golf, but let's get away from this perfectly watered lawns. Let's go up into the countryside. We end up at a hunting lodge somewhere for dinner and the next table was laid for a coach party, which never arrives. There was just the two of us on a beautiful evening overlooking a rosemary hedge, which sort of, there was a beautiful, there was a scented air. And it was just, I thought, well, this is somebody you want to be with.
Craig Oliver: And so, it sounds like it's worked. How is it being an older father?
Rory Bremner: Interesting. My dad was an older father. It's difficult because I was never a younger father, so I can't compare the two. But I suppose I remember doing Peter and the Wolf. Well, so I remember people bringing their children in at the back of the hall and thinking, gosh, I want, I'd love to be that person bringing a young person into here, an orchestra for the first time, or to open their eyes to say, and say, this is something that's rather wonderful. And I felt wistful as that was before I'd met Tessa.
And I thought, God, I wonder if I ever will be a father, but being a father was never part of it. It was never the equation. It's everything. Oh, I want to marry Tessa because I want to have children. That was absolutely not part of it, but I, it's a part of me thought, oh gosh, I wonder what this is like, sort of introducing, um, children.
Then when you have children and it's not that simple, it doesn't work out, and you have children who say, don't want to listen to what you're going to say, and I've never had that time.
Craig Oliver: Don't want to go to Peter in the wharf.
Rory Bremner: I did take my daughter and her boyfriend to the Opera House about four years ago to see Toska. And Placido Domingo was conducting and they split up but he then decided that's what I want to do and he went to Glasgow and he's joined the Royal Academy of Music or whatever it is in Glasgow because of that evening in the Opera House thinking this is what I want to do. So it wasn't my daughter. But it was her boyfriend and it changed his life and that's what I always kind of I was, I wanted to do that I wanted to be the father saying look I can teach you stuff.
Craig Oliver: And being older you become more reflective and probably a bit more you know willing to just go with the flow a bit. But you just on that point about getting older in the research you were seeing that you know, during COVID, you lost a couple of friends, that kind of thing. And I think as you get older, that starts happening to you more and you see that kind of thing. Just wonder how you've reflected on that.
Rory Bremner: Don't start me, because that's really painful. Yeah, I mean I, in the last seven or eight years or so, I've lost the eight people, men who were closest to me in different ways.
They were the three people who made me who I am in television terms. And that was Terry Wogan, who, I did my first break was on Wogan's chat show, and he was friendly then, I mean, not close friend, but, you know, it's like he said, you know, we will always have Paris, you know, I always had Wogan and he knew that when we met, there was a. And then David Frost, who got me on to do his morning programs, and so we went back a long way, and he used to love his parties, you know, super to see you, come and meet the Pinochets, all that, and it was great, and… And then Michael Parkinson. you know, again, he was sort of, as a child watching Parkey in black and white and seeing these incredible, you know, Lauren Bacall and, and yeah, Bing Crosby or these, and then, you know, getting the call to go on Parkey. Then John Bird and different before them, John Fortune, the lovely, gentle, John saved my life. I mean, I'm sure he literally saved my life when I was in a bad relationship with somebody who'd, who I'd given the gun to, and who'd pulled the trigger. And I arrived at work that morning to do a full day's filming, and I burst into tears in the makeup chair, and I was marched off to a doctor who said, you've got depression here, have these.
And I was driving back from the filming with John Fortune, and he said, look up in the sky, Rory Bremner. He said, look up in the sky. Up in the sky, written in letters, 50 feet high, are the words, you are being taken for a, and you're looking at the last word and going, what does, does that say right? Or, and again, like the chameleon on the patchwork quilt, I laughed and I was free.
And he was saying, you're being taken for a ride here. Why are you allowing this person to make you feel so worthless? And it wasn't, it was just, I was in a, bad relationship. Then John Bird, recently. And John Langdon, who was my writer, who taught me everything about writing, was a wonderful man. So there we go.
Wogan, Frost, Parkinson. Byrd, Fortune, John Langdon. My lifetime's writer. Wrote together for 30 years, all of that. And then my two best friends. Ronnie Armist, who died of cancer. About 10 years ago, he fought his lung cancer for 10 years, a great, my closest best friend. And then my other closest best friend, Graham Cowdery, cricketer, who scooped me up at a time when I was feeling low, that period of low self esteem, and became the most wonderful friend, was my best man when I married Tessa.
And I waited for Tessa to come into the church. And at that moment, you know, you're waiting, is she going to turn up? Is she going to tap? And Graham turned to me and said, big moment, Rob. They're going behind at Lingfield and it was this wonderful because meaning, you know, they're under starters orders at new Market, but he didn't say, go, they're on, they're going behind.
It's a very horse racey expression. But he didn't say Newmarket or Ascot, it was Lingfield. So this is a big moment, a roar, rhey're just about to start the, the three 15 at Lingfield. And it made me, he was, he made me laugh more than. And he was, you know, my best and closest friend. And he was very close to Van Morrison. He'd seen him so many times. So there you go. There's the eight people, three who made my career, who got me started on television, three who I worked with in television for 20 years and wrote with 10 years, and two best friends. And they're irreplaceable.
Craig Oliver: I don't want to be glib about it, but what occurs to me just listening to you saying that is it all ends, but you can be grateful that.
Rory Bremner: They've made me kind of based up to that possibility, and I think the crystallization of it was, was David Frost. Because his funeral, he died suddenly. The funeral must have been within the week, I think. And it was a country church in Oxford somewhere. And very small congregation, maybe 40, 50 people. But Andrew Lloyd Webber, Michael Caine, Ronnie Corbett, Stephen Fry, these extraordinary, Greg Dyke, all these people.
And afterwards, you know, the coffin went outside, and there was, it started to drizzle, and it was grey and rainy, and we were standing around, and this box was lowered into the ground and he thought of David and all of the life and all of the, you know, the transatlantic, the biggest in show business, the scope from American presidents, you know, as far back as, you know, you know, all of that, all of that.
And it was the silence. It was, and there is this coffin being lowered into a ground on a, on a, in a sort of rather bleak day in a churchyard in Oxfordshire. And I thought, Oh. You know, what is it all about? And I was, there was an almost sort of angry
Craig Oliver: Are you able to answer that question when you say, what is it all about? Is it you able to go, there is a point. I mean, it seems to me like somebody like David Frost lived life to the full, was conscious on this earth and did some amazing things. Yes. That's a great thing, surely. It's not, it's not actually, Oh my God, we all end up here and in the ground and it's all terrible.
Rory Bremner:You're absolutely right, Mr. Pinker. Let's be grateful,
Rory Bremner: You're absolutely right. I think it was that great philosopher, Eric Idle, he said always look on the right side. But no, I suppose it's just, I was struck by the contrast between all the noise and the silence.
Craig Oliver: And when it happens, it's like it brings you up very, very short, doesn't it? It's like, it's a very sobering thing.
Rory Bremner: Well, but then you get an album after that in your brain where somebody hands you an album or a DVD of the moments. And over the next few weeks and months, and then less regularly, you just play those moments of your life when they, when you remember them and you realize that actually life, when I say what it's all about and what it's all about is memories.
It's about moments. It's about those times when you, you laughed, those times when you were together, those times when the sun shone or those times when you those fun times.
Craig Oliver: We're coming to the end and we always ask at the end. Like what's the one piece of wisdom? Have you got one?
Rory Bremner: I've got lots of different pieces. I mean there's things like I mean there's a practical one of things are always seem worse at night
Craig Oliver: Things almost seem worse at three in the morning.
Rory Bremner: So there's that. That's a sort of slightly facile one, but they really do. And if you're worrying something about three o'clock, or even if you're going to bed worrying about thinking something, or if you're worrying about something at three or four, the perspective when you're up and awake will be totally different. So trust that instinct.
I suppose, as I said, don't beat yourself up. That's important. The advice I've always given to my children is do your best and be kind, because I think those things, because you, if you know, just try your hardest, do your best, but importantly, be kind. I think we've touched on the false hair thing about, you know, cultivate your garden.
You can't change the world, but just do what you can to make your part of it. I just looked down to see if there's anything I jotted down, and there were a couple of John Bird ones. One was, um, about writing, and he said, ‘You'll worry about looking at a blank sheet of paper, what am I going to write? And he said, don't get it right, get it written.’
Craig Oliver: And that's a really, really good piece of advice. No, that's so true. It's so much easier to deal with something that exists than rather than something that doesn't exist.
Rory Bremner: So if I could offer you that practical piece of advice, don't get it right, get it written, don't be frightened about where's this going to go, just get it, you know, you've got to, was it Mandela said, the longest journey starts with a single stride or whatever it was, single step. Might not have been Mandela. It might've been. Might've been Richard Madeley.
Craig Oliver: I think it was Mel C. Toney, actually. I may be wrong. No,
Rory Bremner: Eamon Holmes. Eamon Holmes. So, but a lovely John one he loved, and this is a, just a comic thought to end with it, he and John Fortune, they did their writing in a pub. And they would often hear conversations in real life as a way of being much happier much funnier I mean I heard a conversation yesterday with two people were talking and one person was saying to the other said this woman said ‘But patience is a virtue,’ and this man said ‘No it isn't!’ very impatiently,
Vut John they were in a pub and they overheard these two women talking one said to the other side So well, I don't know what I'm really worried about and the friend said well I think, I think, you know, I think you should, you should, you should look at it much, you should look at it much more philosophically and just put it out of your mind.
John loved this idea, that the idea of philosophy was forgetting something altogether. He said, and John, I remember saying, you know, this great thing, I'm doing this British thing about the life of the mind. He said, just forget about it.
Craig Oliver: Cultivate your garden. I think that's what will stick with me. So Rory Bremner Bremner, thank you very much. Thank you.