09 March 2004
It's the start of a new
series of Black Books, and its central character, the terminally
curmudgeonly bookshop-owner Bernard Black (played by the show's creator and
co-writer, Dylan Moran), is having a very bad-hair day indeed. After an
unfortunate incident with a sandwich-toaster, he has fallen out catastrophically
with Manny (Bill Bailey), the loyal assistant whose full-time job is to keep
Bernard on the rails. Manny has stormed out to work for Evan (Simon Pegg), the
control-freak manager of Goliath Books next door, leaving Bernard to fend for
himself.
The result is not pretty.
Bernard has let things go spectacularly in the shop, and visitors must negotiate
a dead badger by the front door. He has taken to cleaning his teeth with the
brush from the dustpan and refuses to heed the warning: "You can't survive on
the mushrooms growing in your hair." Slipping into a slough of despond, he
rejects the peace-making attempts of the third corner of Black Books'
eternal triangle, his neighbour Fran (Tamsin Greig), and persists in blaming
Manny for "robbing me of my best years and leaving me a burnt-out
husk".
Clearly, Bernard is not the
sort of man you would want to accompany on a long Andean walking-holiday. Even
Moran, who dreamt up the fellow, says, with a clear look of distaste on his
face: "I really don't like Bernard at all - he's a dreadful character. As him,
my face hardens and I wear a permanent vinegar-puss look. I'm like a bulldog
licking piss off a nettle." And yet - perversely - Bernard remains one of the
funniest sitcom creations of the past decade. Like David Brent or Basil Fawlty,
the more troubled he is, the happier we are.
The principal cast-members
of Black Books are gathered in the suitably sleazy surroundings of a
run-down pub in central London. It's a serious boozers' boozer. We are sitting
round a stained and scuffed table, inside yellowing walls that have seen very
much better days. Moran has rejected the proffered white wine on the perfectly
reasonable grounds that "it tastes like they use it to clean the pipes". He
seems much more content in the presence of a pint of Guinness and a packet of
fags. All in all, this is the ideal milieu in which to discuss the delightfully
dissolute sitcom.
So, just why does one man's
misery make the rest of us laugh so heartily? Moran reckons we have to give a
pat on the back to our German friend Schadenfreude. "If someone said:
'We've just come back from our holiday and we had the time of our lives - the
food was incomparable; we made love every 45 minutes and got completely
bronzed', you'd be bored rigid," speculates the Irish comedian, a former Perrier
award- winner, who embarks on a live tour later this spring. "But if they told
you that they got robbed the moment they stepped off the plane, their hotel
wasn't built, and they got diarrhoea for a fortnight, you'd be happy to buy them
a drink and hear the rest of their story." We derive equivalent pleasure from
witnessing the convulsions of pain experienced by the three central characters
in Black Books. Bernard's impotent, self-defeating fury is especially
amusing.
"People get a buzz out of
watching Bernard go postal," says Moran, who also starred in Simon Nye's
blissful rural sitcom How Do You Want Me?. "There is a vicarious thrill
in watching someone else say the things you'd like to but would never dare. It's
like Bernard has Tourette syndrome - he just can't keep his conduct in check.
Like Victor Meldrew, he gives vent to his spleen; he doesn't bottle it up.
People admire that - especially in England."
Bernard strikes such a chord
because we have all been in that situation of futilely raging against the
machine. "Every day, most of us encounter a miasma of small tasks and
difficulties that enrage us," Moran continues. "A bus that's late is no less
annoying because it's late for the 10th time. The sheer repetitive strain of
life warps people. Bernard has just been pushed too far by these strains. He
wants to stop the world and hand in his complaint."
The other two characters are
equally hopeless. Like the trio condemned to live together in eternal damnation
in Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos - the play that gave the world the
deathless phrase: "Hell is other people" - there is no possibility of escape for
this desperate triumvirate. "You could put those three anywhere," Moran
comments, "and they'd slowly destroy each other. This sort of cruelty is very
common. Couples enjoy upping the bickering. Idle badinage soon turns into an
Edward Albee play that was left in the drawer. They start trying out new
material over the breakfast table - 'Let me count the ways you disgust me...'
That's one of the best marital lines!"
Greig, whose voice is
familiar to millions as Debbie Aldridge in the world's longest-running radio
soap, The Archers, remarks that Bernard, Manny and Fran are "stuck in a
painful loop - but they can't get out of it because that would be even more
painful. They're like Eric and Ernie, for ever stuck in bed together. They can't
live with each other and they can't live without each other. The comedy lies in
the fact that things will always be the same. The only thing that changes is
that we're constantly thinking up new ways to hurt Manny!"
Bailey, a Never Mind the
Buzzcocks team captain, who is also doing a live tour this spring, eagerly
takes up the theme. Comparing the trio in Black Books to Laurel and
Hardy, Tom and Jerry or Steptoe and Son, he asserts: "They're terrified of being
alone. They put up with a lot because the alternative is too horrific. That's
true of a lot of relationships, isn't it?"
Off screen, the trio exhibit
the same relish of language and off-the-wall imagery as their on-screen
characters. An interview with these three is a two-hour verbal fireworks
display. Launching into a typical flight of fantasy, Moran likens the
characters' mutually parasitic relationship to "this fish I read about. The
male, who is 10 times smaller than the female, bites the underside of his mate
and remains there for the rest of his life, feeding off her nutrients. I think
that's a useful analogy for the people in Black Books. We're the same as
those useless male fish."
Swift to extend the joke,
Bailey chimes in: "I always like the female praying mantis, which will bite the
head off its male partner in mid-copulation. Apparently, after that has
happened, he just keeps going. I must admit that when I read that, I felt a
twinge of male pride. Blokes are great!"
"Yes," Moran agrees. "It's
like he's saying: 'I took all night to pull - I'm not going to let a little
thing like losing my head get in the way now.' "
Black
Books abides by
Seinfeld's famous mantra: no hugging; no learning. "You certainly can't
do hugging or learning on Black Books," Greig says, clearly horrified by
the very thought of it. "If you hugged Bernard or Manny, you'd get a
disease!"
Moran chips in: "God forbid
that anyone should learn anything in Black Books. The series makes no
social point whatsoever. It's an exercise in accelerated time-wasting. I
couldn't cobble together a message even if I were given an eternity and any
amount of paint and banners."
Furthermore, Moran
continues, Black Books is a corrective to the forced jollity of American
shiny-happy-people comedies such as Friends. "It's an antidote to the
cleanliness and brightness of those American sitcoms that are constantly shown
on a loop. You don't have to wear sunglasses when you're watching Black
Books. You know that Bernard is the sort of person whose fridge contains
just one cup of lard. We're not going to be bringing out any Black Books
kitchenware."
Many fans will be mortified
to find out that this will probably be the last series. According to Moran, "We
wouldn't want to feel we were tickling up a horse that just wants to die. You
don't want to get the feeling that you're pumped up on steroids while supported
by very thin legs that are going to collapse at any minute." There's that
trademark linguistic relish again.
"We don't want to stretch it
beyond its natural life," interjects Bailey, a man who boasts what can only be
described as a Catweazle hairstyle, "like they did when they took Only Fools
and Horses to Miami."
Barely pausing for breath,
Moran carries on: "I don't subscribe to the idea of providing more of the same.
You have to keep constantly trying to push things and keep the material alive.
It's death to an artist to think: 'That went well - now I'll try and do the same
thing again.' "
But the hordes of Black
Books aficionados out there may well be relieved to hear that Moran is not
writing off the show completely. "We have talked about a stage version of
Black Books," he reveals. "We might do it if one of us needs an organ
transplant. I don't know whether it'll be the lungs or the liver
first."
"We could call it the Save
Dylan's Kidneys Tour," Bailey adds, helpfully.
"Or we might be like Steptoe
and Son when they did a live show," says Moran, unable to resist one last gag.
"Hilariously, when they toured Australia, they weren't even speaking and had no
show at all. Harry H Corbett would cover by going on stage and juggling while
Wilfred Brambell was standing at the bar, getting drunk out of his
mind.
"Bill and I could be like
that. He could be getting pissed at the bar while I'd be out there doing the
dance of the seven veils with a pineapple balanced on my
head."
I, for one, would certainly
buy a ticket to see that.
'Black
Books' starts on Channel 4 on Thursday at 10pm
