Gilligan sent up on the stage

Andrew Gilligan (right) and comedian, show creator and childhood friend Chris Neill

10 April 2012

One of the burdens of being an involuntary Z-list celebrity is that you are, to some extent, public property. Japanese TV producers want you to appear in their documentaries.

Media-studies students want to write assignments about you. Writers of letters sealed in heavily-Sellotaped envelopes want you to investigate the Defence Secretary, whom they suspect of beaming nuclear death-rays into their electric toasters. And now, weirdest of all, a man called Chris Neill is making an Edinburgh Fringe stage show about me.

Unlike most of my correspondents - who only think they know me - Chris Neill really does know me, or did. He was my best friend until the age of 11, when we went to separate secondary schools. We kept in touch for a while after that, but we haven't spoken for about 20 years.

Until, that is, he called to tell me that he was a stand-up comedian, he'd also worked for the BBC, in the entertainment department, he was making a show called "The BBC, Andrew Gilligan and Me", and was there any chance I could help with the publicity?

Help with the publicity? At that stage, I'd rather have given out flyers for Alastair Campbell's roadshow (fresh from the Broxbourne Civic Hall, Hoddesdon - tickets always available).

"Chris," I felt like whimpering down the phone, "our lives were really very boring. We lived in Teddington, for God's sake. We went plane-spotting at Heathrow (this was the sort of thing 11-year-olds did in the Seventies). What on earth are you going to put in your show?"

I didn't say any of this. Instead, I met Neill at my local pub to excavate some of the details of our childhoods, a voyage of rediscovery for us both. Did he remember our competition as to who had the most Enid Blyton books? He did.

Did I remember when we set up the pretend travel agency, he asked. We only had a Varig Brazilian Airlines timetable, so all our customers had to go via Rio, I recalled.

Did I remember that I always wanted to be a journalist, and he wanted to work in the book department at Bentalls department store in Kingston? Actually, I'm pretty sure we both wanted to work at Bentalls at that point - acme of all suburban ambition. Then I changed to wanting to be a pianist on the QE2 - or was that him?

Gradually a sort of masochistic curiosity crept over me. I found myself saying that I might come to one of the previews incognito. And so, recently, a friend and I found ourselves in the auditorium of the Chelsea Theatre, in the King's Road, timing our entrance just as the lights went down.

It soon became clear that planespotting at Heathrow airport, and similarly bathetic episodes, did play a vital part in the show's enjoyable conceit. Neill would stand solemnly behind a lectern and promise devastating revelations about the despicable conduct of the Government, the secret love life of Geoff Hoon, and various suits at the BBC.

But just before he did that, he would have to tell us about the time he held open a door for June Whitfield. "This show will last 55 minutes," he said. "In that time I will blow away the foundations of the Government and the BBC. Fifty-five minutes is not a very long time - but it it is longer than 45 minutes."

The show stands somewhere between the honoured British tradition of humour about the BBC Light Entertainment Department (always a toss-up whether this part of the Beeb is the joker or the joke) and the rather newer tradition of Edinburgh comics telling us about the thing they know best - themselves. Somewhat to my relief, the operative word in the show's title is not the "Gilligan", but the "me" as in Chris Neill.

"The thing is, most people have this idea of the BBC as all drama and excitement," says Neill. "For most people it's about sitting in dull offices and mistaking Elaine Paige for a secretary."

If you wanted to be pretentious, you might say that the show was a biting indictment of BBC and Today programme-style solemnity, when perhaps a more appropriate response to the events surrounding the Government's Iraq dossier and the outcome of the Hutton Inquiry ought to be hysterical laughter.

If you wanted to be less pretentious, you might say it is, by Neill's own admission, a "crass and shameless attempt to get some publicity" on a Fringe with 1,700 acts all desperate for a TV deal.

This is a world where any connection with anyone a critic might possibly have heard of - even me - must be grasped like the cord of a skydiver's reserve parachute. By Edinburgh standards, Neill's link is pretty close. One award-winner, David Benson, has spun an entire career as a Kenneth Williams tribute act out of the fact that the great man once read a story Benson had written on Jackanory.

The panting hack from The Times who rang up Neill hoping for dirt went away disappointed. We were very close friends. The worst it gets is an account of a rather embarrassingly bad restaurant we went to as a birthday treat. In another of those Seventies things, it turned out to serve only omelettes - and several of the little guests hated eggs.

But it is still distinctly bizarre watching a show at least nominally about yourself. At one stage Neill called for volunteers from the audience, came charging up in my direction and I was sure I'd been rumbled. But, thankfully, the Aussie from the row in front was chosen to play Mr Hoon in a delightfully tasteless little playlet quite unsuitable for reproduction in print.

It said in the pre-publicity that Neill was "wry". Oh God, I thought, not wry. Almost as bad as "cult". Actually, it's much better than that. Neill is as camp as a branch of Millets, but funnier. I won't spoil the jokes, but they did make me laugh - not a bad achievement, considering the subject matter.

Now all we need is a show about John Scarlett becoming chief of MI6. There, in my completely unbiased opinion, lies the sleeper comedy classic of our generation.

The BBC, Andrew Gilligan and Me is at the Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, until 29 August. Information: 0131 556 6550.

MORE ABOUT

BBC

Gilligan sent up on the stage

Read More