Читать книгу Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office - Ben Thompson, Ben Thompson - Страница 14

As with the initial encounter between Lorenzo de’ Medici and Michelangelo – to which it has often been compared – the bare physical facts of the first meeting between Jonathan Ross and Vic Reeves are a matter of historical record. It was the start of the second series of The Last Resort in the autumn of 1987, and after the runaway success of his début season, Jonathan Ross was looking around for fresh inspiration in the midst of a ‘horrible second album moment’.

His brother Adam, who was running a club called The Swag at Gossips in Soho at the time, had mentioned a ‘slightly crazy DJ guy…the only person he knew who admitted to liking prog-rock when no one else would even acknowledge that stuff. He’d put on a record like “Alright Now” by Free and mime to it while wearing a horse-brass round his neck.’

When Ross senior discovered that this individual also did ‘strange paintings of Elvis’, his curiosity was definitely piqued. A meeting was set up at a Japanese restaurant in Brewer Street, where Reeves would bring his pictures and Ross would pick up the tab. Fifteen years later, the latter remembers the occasion in tones endearingly reminiscent of one of those scenes in a TV dating show where someone goes to the toilet between the starter and the main course to tell the cameras how it’s going.

‘I liked the way he looked,’ Ross remembers. ‘I liked what he’d done with his hair – he was the first person I’d seen with what was sort of the George Clooney cut. I’d always been interested in the evolution of male style but never really had the courage to do anything about it. Jim [it is a tribute to the power of the Vic Reeves persona that even people who know him really well seem slightly uneasy about using the name on his birth certificate] certainly led the way there.²⁰

‘I’d never seen anyone who was quite so comfortable about looking ridiculous for the sake of style,’ Ross continues, ‘which is something I deeply admire in people – that almost complete sublimation of the ego in pursuit of “the look”. He was wearing all black, and he had his hair done very short. He looked great and very unusual – kind of like a mod, but those early ones who were inspired by the American beats. Anyway, it was a very interesting look and I knew he’d done it consciously, so that really impressed me.’

What was the atmosphere like between the two of them? ‘It was reasonably friendly, but a little awkward. I was slightly embarrassed at the time about the way people might perceive me as being the epitome of Thatcher’s young man. I suppose it was because of the shoulder pads—shoulder pads equating in a post-Dynasty kind of way with flash and success. Anyway, I was very conscious of going out of my way not to seem like that person.’

And yet Ross felt comfortable buying two paintings (for a hundred pounds each, though Vic only asked for ten) on the spot – one of which featured Elvis ironing Tommy Trinder’s trousers?

‘I do remember thinking immediately afterwards, I hope I haven’t offended him in some way. I was always concerned about the north-south thing as well…especially back then. It was very important at that stage for any vaguely sensitive southerner not to act like a prick in any way to do with money or status or feeling proud of being brought up in the nation’s capital city when in the company of northern gentlemen.’

Vic and Bob seem to have had a talent for reflecting this feeling back at people. ‘Yes, but very nicely, never in an anti-southern kind of way…It was almost a casual acknowledgement of who they were. One of the things that always really attracted me to them was that they were clearly from the north-east, yet it wasn’t like “Hello, we’re northerners, look at us”. Their unapologetic use of phrases and terms that either were peculiar to their region, or seemed like they might be to people from the south, made the whole thing feel kind of true, even when it was anything but.’

Ross first encountered the two of them together a few months after the Brewer Street meeting, when he went down to see Vic DJ-ing at Gossips. ‘There were about three people in the audience and some bloke pretending to be a playboy singing “I’m the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo”. Bob turned up afterwards and I assumed he and Vic were a gay couple, because they seemed quite tender with each other. Bob was concerned that it hadn’t gone well and I didn’t understand that they worked together, I just thought, Oh, he’s gay and this is his little partner. So when Vic said “I’m doing a thing with Bob” I just thought “Oh fuck, it’s a Linda McCartney situation”. But of course, it wasn’t.’

Right from the start of his own TV career, Ross seemed keen to rehabilitate British comedy’s old guard – the Frankie Howerds and Sid Jameses – who had fallen by the ideological wayside in the 1980s.²¹ Was one of the things that impressed him about Vic Reeves the way he seemed to be referring to a pre-alternative tradition?

‘I think early on I was just struck by his originality and his fearlessness…the way he presented himself as an exotic figure, not so much in terms of being from the north-east, just in a kind of “Hello,I’m Spike Milligan’s illegitimate son” sort of way. It’s just that unique manner Vic has of observing things and presenting himself…It’s not so much courage, because courage is when you know that you might fail. It’s more like an insane confidence in his own world view.’