Martin Freeman interview

UKTV Gold is opening up a national debate on when we were funniest, which rejoices in the inventive title When Were We Funniest? A crack band of comedians have selected their favourite comedy decades, and have been meeting in battle all year in the struggle to have their chosen epoch declared the finest of them all. On Thursday 31st July, the honour falls to Martin Freeman, he of The Office and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to make the case for the ‘60s. ShortList.com sat down with him to find out what was so great about the comedy of the decade which brought us the contraceptive pill, Eric Clapton and the Apollo programme.


You’re advocating the ‘60s as the finest decade of comedy. What do you think sets them apart from the others?

I like the ‘60s because when I was growing up, that stuff was still an influence. When I was very young, I was learning about it through my folks and seeing it on repeats. It was so influential on what came afterwards. Starting the decade with Beyond the Fringe, then you’ve got Hancock, and at the end of the decade you’ve got Monty Python- that’s not a bad run.


Out of all those shows, which would be your favourite?

I love all those shows. I like Pete and Dud, Til Death Do Us Part- Monty Python is wonderful. I grew up a massive, massive fan of Hancock. The last couple of series he made with Ray Galton and Alan Simpson were incredible. Morecambe and Wise were doing very well too, in black and white- people think of them in the ‘70s in colour, but they were going strong in the ‘60s. That’s when they made their films. They’re all close to my heart because they were the first things I encountered when I was growing up.


Do you think comedy dates faster than other TV?

It does date- things which would have seemed outrageous and radical then can seem pretty toothless now. If you look at That Was The Week That Was or The Frost Report, which caused quite a stir, they seem pretty lame now. We have to remember the importance of context- the only reason they look lame to us is that somebody was doing it 40 years ago and we’ve been trailing along in that slipstream ever since. Very few decades or times or people can lay claim to something truly original, but satire wasn’t big in the ‘50s or ‘40s or ‘30s. It was a direct result of little smartarses coming out of Oxbridge with the wit and wherewithal to be able to take the piss out of the queen and the prime minister and the church and the military, which is all over the place in comedy now. I don’t think it was like that 1959.


What do you think changed to allow this?

I think Beyond the Fringe changed everything. It conquered the West End, and then conquered Broadway- it was quite a big deal. Taking the piss out of Harold Macmillan had not been done previously, people were much more deferential to their elders and what they were told were theur betters. It’s hard for us to imagine today- at nine o’clock you can call the queen a f***ing c*** these days. It’s all passé to us, but 40 years ago people were going mental over this stuff. It was less than 20 years after the war ended, where a certain generation would’ve just expected gratitude. I think we’d all agree that comedy would be much duller without it. You can’t imagine going back to comedy pre-1960.

So things don’t date if they are still influential?

For me, something influential like Monty Python seemed like it was beamed in from space anyway- much like the Goons must have seemed in the ‘50s. Some of it is fantastic, but some of it I just don’t find funny. Not many things change the course of comedy, and they did, but so did more mainstream things like Hancock’s Half Hour. At the time he was on, there were only two channels and people really did make an effort to see it. They couldn’t Sky Plus it, and it wasn’t going to be repeated- for all they knew, it was going to be wiped. The writer were as much the stars- the deadpan humour can still be seen bearing its influence now. You see the doom-laden facial expressions everywhere- I’ve done a few myself.


Are there any programmes you’d have loved to be in?

I’d love to have done some of those Hancock scripts- Steptoe and Son too. Til Death Us Do Part as well- I think people today don’t get the satire of it. The brains of it were amazing- it was half an hour of really vitriolic left versus right politics masquerading as a sitcom. It was often quite uncomfortable, and you can see why people are scared of it today- you can’t really call people racial terms for comedy. In those days, it was a live debate going on in every pub and every house up and down the country. Today it gets misunderstood by both sides, the far right see it as a rallying cry and the ultra liberals think that material has no place in comedy. I disagree- you need to know the context. The writer, Johnny Speight, didn’t make up those terms- you heard them everywhere. We’re uncomfortable with that now, we’ve got rid of all these words, but it was only our parents’ generation.


Do you think comedy was more brave then?

I don’t think you can tie it down to one generation- there are always brave people and there are always dullards. It was more amateurish- it wasn’t knowing or postmodern or ironic, it was real. It wasn’t trying to be self-referential. It was only five minutes ago really in history, but it was a completely different world. I love The Mighty Boosh and things like that, but it references fifty years of popular culture- it’s not as innocent. People had to be on their chops more- if it wasn’t live, it was filmed as live. It wasn’t filmic, you couldn’t spend months tinkering with it. You had to be so much more on your game. I don’t know if it was braver, it was just less knowing. It was so exciting because noone knew what the rules were in telly- it was the decade when telly grew up. People were making up the rules for what comedy on TV was- in 1960 it had only been 12 years since TV returned, and if you think about what the difference was between now and 12 years ago, it seems like ten minutes.


Is there any truth to rumours that you’re involved in the new film version of The Hobbit?

There’s no truth in those rumours, no. Would I like to be? I’ll definitely read the script…


When Were We Funniest? The 60s is on UKTV Gold on July 31st at 9pm.