John Howard Davies: A Life In Comedy

And now for something completely different.

Tonight, BBC2 celebrates the life and work

of the late John Howard Davies.

You may not have heard the name

but you've probably seen it on countless television credit rolls.

Thank you, thank you very much...

John Howard Davies produced and directed comedy classics

including Fawlty Towers,

The Good Life...

Bloody load of old rubbish!

..and Steptoe And Son.

You're dirty and crude and horrible.

As head of comedy at the BBC, and later at Thames Television,

John launched some of the best TV shows of all time.

Like Hi-De-Hi...

Jeffrey can't hear you. Hi-de-hi.

..Yes Minister...

-The truth and nothing but the truth.

-The whole truth?

-Of course not!

..'Allo, Allo...

Oh, my God! The gateau from the chateau!

..and Mr Bean.

John brought us over 30 years of the best of British comedy.

He was, by far and away, the most successful

British television comedy producer and director that we've ever had.

In August last year, John Howard Davies sadly died.

He was a wonderful man and a great friend of mine.

He spent most of his working life here at BBC Television Centre,

but his show business career began when he was just eight years old.

In 1948, John landed the title role in David Lean's definitive screen version of Oliver Twist.

Starring alongside Alec Guinness as Fagin, John put in

a performance so memorable

that the comedians he went on to work with couldn't resist poking fun.

That line, which has simply passed into legend and which,

at every opportunity, we threw straight back at him.

Please, sir. I want some more.

I have that vision of John very much going, "Yes, yes, yes, very funny!"

And that's my most abiding memory!

John's career behind the camera began in 1968

when he arrived at BBC Television Centre as a production assistant.

John's first taste of real success behind-the-scenes came in 1969,

when he produced and directed the first four episodes

of a surreal and silly sketch show

which was, well, something completely different.

John did a couple of key things, like casting Carol Cleveland,

which was tremendously important

for all the subsequent series,

but he created a safe, cheerful, relaxed atmosphere

where all the Pythons could play and discover what the hell it was

we were going to do, because we didn't really know.

With the help of John Howard Davies on those first few episodes,

Monty Python went on to become one of the most influential comedy shows in TV history.

Mr Frampton, vis-a-vis your rump.

-I beg your pardon?

-Your rump.

-What?

Your, er, posterior.

Derriere.

(Sit-upon.)

-What's that?

-Buttocks.

-Oh, me bum!

-Sssshh!

Certainly, when I was a student, Monty Python was the big thing

and John Cleese, undoubtedly, was my big hero.

Of the words coming out of the mouths of the boys of my generation,

about a third of them were Monty Python.

And now for something completely the same.

Because it was a complete breakthrough in style,

as indeed was the Goodies,

the Goodies were the poor relation in that story.

The Goodies were equally important in the way they changed

the way you could use TV and the way you could do funny.

# The Goodies! #

After Monty Python, John Howard Davies produced the first two series

of the Goodies, one of the most popular TV shows of the 1970s.

We developed a childlike -

which is very different to childish, he said,

although some would disagree - world, in which the Goodies operated.

It looks like a children's show, the Goodies, but it so is not,

because it's so clever and so inventive.

And John's very good at mixing those genres up.

The Goodies was filled with anarchic, madcap and surreal

visual gags, which may not have been entirely to John's taste.

I would have suspected that his taste in comedy

really ran to something more traditional.

I often think he must have said, "I don't know what they are doing, never mind. OK."

In 1972, John was given the chance to direct

the seventh series of Steptoe and Son,

the BBC's most popular sitcom,

written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

At least five of those shows

are among the ones

that are best remembered.

And that's down, in no small measure, to John's direction.

S-O-D, sod!

LAUGHTER

He had empathy with actors, and they knew that.

And also, he knew exactly what they have to go through.

We know as well, but we don't know from our hearts, or inside,

what happens to actors.

All right, all right, don't knock the bleedin' door down!

Oh, hello, vicar!

-You need a John there to sort of calm them down.

-And understand them.

Understand them, exactly.

-Here?

-No, more.

More.

-Well, here, then?

-No, no, back a little.

No, too much!

'I first met John Howard Davies in 1974.'

Richard Briers had been cast in a new situation comedy that John was to direct,

and he suggested that John go to the theatre

to see Felicity Kendal and me in an Ayckbourn play.

He did, and cast us both in The Good Life.

John produced and directed every episode of The Good Life.

It ran for four series from 1975-78.

It was the most delightful cast. The crew were wonderful.

Everything about it rings with pleasure.

I look back on my time working with John as one of the happiest times.

That's what you'd think of as John, middle class, comfortable,

very charming, heart in exactly the right place.

For me, The Good Life was really an expression of who John really was.

The ooh-ah bird is so called because it lays square eggs.

I don't understand that!

One of the most memorable and exciting times we had

during the making of The Good Life

was when Her Majesty the Queen was due to visit Television Centre.

And she was asked which programme she'd like to see,

and we were told that it would be The Good Life.

So, there we were, in our best bib and tuckers

on best behaviour, very nervous, I must say, and John, as usual,

was really calm and collected and just said good luck to us all,

and, "Don't worry, anyone who makes a mistake goes straight to the Tower."

Resplendent in pink, Her Majesty was introduced to cast and crew.

John Howard Davies and his wife.

John is head of comedy light entertainment

and has come back especially to produce this show tonight.

That's Tom and Barbara, then Margot, Penelope Keith.

She is there.

14 million viewers tuned in to see that episode,

although the series may not have been to everyone's taste.

No, no, no! We are not watching the bloody Good Life!

In one particular episode of The Young Ones, Vyvyan breaks through

the front titles of The Good Life, and has an absolute rant about...

Felicity Treacle Kendal and Richard Sugar-Flavoured Snob Briers!

You know, this is what's wrong with bloody British comedy,

middle-class, da-di-da-di-da, really big rant.

And I hate them!

That was a highly articulate outburst, Vyvyan.

The week after, I was walking down the corridor and I saw John,

and he gave me this little pained look. He had such a cute face.

He gave me this little pained look and said,

"Did you have to tear my favourite work apart?"

And I felt bad.

When a BBC script editor read the first draft

of a new situation comedy about a hotel in Torquay,

he described it as "a collection of stock characters and cliches".

Luckily, John saw the funny side.

He was banned from reading it in bed,

because he laughed so much, and so did the rest of us.

Fawlty Towers landed on my lap

because I found the script lurking in my editorial department's office

and read it and said, "I'm going to do this, or die."

And I did the first series. I loved it.

Ow!

He seemed to understand exactly what we were doing, which is fun.

He hit me on the head!

No, you hit him on the head! You naughty moose!

He simply understood what was funny.

-You're a waste of space.

-Ow!

John was incredibly important because he cast Prunella Scales.

And that was extraordinarily important.

-Basil, what's going on?

-Nothing, my dear, nothing at all.

-Mrs Fawlty...

-Yes, Polly?

-I don't know what...

-Basil!

He understood acting from the inside, because he'd been a very good actor.

So in everything to do with that fingertip feeling for programmes,

he was superb.

"You're a naughty boy, Basil."

Argh! She's going to back at lunchtime!

Fawlty Towers is in the pantheon now,

but at the time it was considered a bizarre aberration.

And in fact, I remember a story Douglas Adams told me,

he had been to see the pilot of Fawlty Towers

with Graham Chapman, who was Cleese's closest friend.

And they shared a taxi back home and they said,

"It's so embarrassing, he's done this awful thing,

"it's set in a provincial hotel with a Spanish waiter!

"Can you imagine?!"

They thought, "Cleese has really blown it this time."

And in many ways it's the thing that Cleese will be remembered for,

Fawlty Towers, but at the beginning it was considered

completely odd and a terrible mistake.

And John saw through that.

In 1977, John Howard Davies was promoted

and become Head Of Comedy at the BBC.

One of his first ideas was to commission Not The Nine O'Clock News,

a new topical, irreverent and satirical sketch show.

What an extraordinary thing Not The Nine O'Clock News was

because not only Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Pamela Stephenson

and Rowan came form absolutely nowhere,

but there's a huge number of people behind the scenes.

Richard Curtis started his career there and is probably now

the most famous screenwriter, certainly in comedy,

perhaps in the world.

It led to, as it were, Blackadder and the stuff that we've done,

but it also led to One Foot In The Grave and Drop The Dead Donkey.

Stephen Fry wrote his first joke ever

on television on Not The Nine O'Clock News.

A lot of the comedy came from the writers who worked on that.

The apex, the upside-down pyramid is John Howard Davies,

if he hadn't taken the risk, probably none of us would have a job.

There was less risk in commissioning Rowan and Richard's next idea.

Richard Curtis and I, I suppose, were relatively hot, as you might say,

at the time because Not The Nine O'Clock News had been a big success.

We were looking and the BBC were looking for us to do something else.

And the idea of a period sitcom struck us as quite a good idea

and I think it was a good idea, on reflection.

He made the pilot about Blackadder, which few people know,

he shot the pilot. He didn't want to do the series for some reason.

I got the gig and the first series we were awfully young and cocky,

we'd all won BAFTA awards already

and we thought we knew what we were doing, and that first series is,

though full of original ideas, just is a bit of a mess.

We got extremely indulgent and filmic and cinematographically ambitious.

Onward!

Come on, come on.

We were in Northumberland in snowstorms,

filming horses running across landscapes.

Which was possibly, I think, an overreach on our parts,

certainly in terms of comedy value that we got out of that indulgence.

The first series we strayed from John, disastrously.

And in the second series we came home and it worked better.

John gave us two perfect bits of advice.

One was to change the era, every series, that was John's suggestion.

He said, you've probably done enough in that era, do another one and then do another one.

That was one of the reasons it was delightful to work on and

why the public liked it, because it kept changing. That was John's idea.

And John's second brilliant observation

was not to write an opening episode.

It's very noticeable that Fawlty Towers has no opening episode

because there's no justification for Basil Fawlty hiring Manuel,

he just wouldn't do it. Nor indeed marrying Sybil.

But you stick them all in there

and you can be funny from the beginning.

So that was a very clever thing John said.

John Howard Davies had great taste and judgement.

He brought us some of our favourite comedy programmes.

But most of all, he was a lovely man.

And don't just take my word for it.

I don't know if there's anything nicer to say about anyone than

they've made a lot of people happy.

You know, his track record is extraordinary

and the range of programmes with which he was involved

and the success of them and over so many years,

at least two or three decades, that's pretty good going.

It's an extraordinary list of the very best comedy programmes

the BBC ever made.

He was the tops.

You used to go to rehearsals every day

and spend the morning roaring with laughter and then go home.

Absolutely wonderful way to make a living.