Читать книгу Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office - Ben Thompson, Ben Thompson - Страница 43

Encountering each other in the corridor of their management company’s Soho Square office, Vic Reeves and Armando Iannucci exchange wary acknowledgements. They do this in the manner of two jungle creatures who don’t explicitly eat each other, but who feel they have to be wary just in case the other one decides to give it a try.

‘You never quite know what to say to them,’ Vic observes afterwards of these chance meetings with his comedy peers and fellow PBJ clients. ‘It’s like the office above the shopfloor where people from various departments bump into each other.’ The idea that they might have a workplace culture of their own is one which takes a bit of getting used to for nineties comedians, most of whom probably grew up in times when the phrase ‘a proper job’ still meant something.

The secret of PBJ’s success – and with a client list including Rowan Atkinson, Lenny Henry and Harry Enfield from the alternative ancien régime, and Vic and Bob, Chris Morris and Eddie Izzard from the next generation, they must be doing something right seems to lie in offering a respite from the relentless push and pull of the comedy marketplace. In contrast to the sharp-suited hustle and bustle of the other two main agencies, PBJ founder Peter Bennett-Jones cultivates the aura of a mildly eccentric English gentleman. And in so far as the enterprise which shares his initials has a mythology, it’s for not having one.

‘Peter had been looking after Rowan [Atkinson] for a couple of years,’ remembers Caroline Chignell of the late-eighties expansion which brought her into the company. ‘There was a real sense of a next generation coming through, but unless we had some kind of definite structure, no one would want to join us.’ She had been out on the road promoting a tour with Harry Enfield when Bennett-Jones asked her to join him. When she expressed doubts about whether she had what it took to make it in comedy management, he described the key attribute necessary as ‘a sense of fair play’, which would probably be some distance away from most people’s best guess, sine qua wow-wise.

‘I’m probably not like most agents,’ she admits apologetically, ‘in that I don’t tend to shout and scream, and I’m not particularly rude. My idea of a good deal is one that gets the best for your client but also makes the person who’s paying you want to come back for more – as that’s the only way you can take other people forward with you in the relationship.’

While this softly-softly approach might sound a bit dull compared with the more frontiersmanlike approach of PBJ’s rival agencies, it’s worth remembering that it’s helped nurture some of the most extreme TV comedy ever produced in this country – from The Day Today and Brass Eye to The League of Gentlemen (who join PBJ after the Edinburgh Festival in 1996). ‘We actively encourage people to take as much time as possible to get things right,’ insists Chiggy, ‘but we are at the behest of the clients. If they turn around and say we need to make some money because we’ve got an enormous tax bill or an expensive divorce to pay for – which does happen sometimes – then there’s not really very much we can do about it.’