'The real world stinks'

Mel Brooks is not a bundle of laughs. He has spent the morning selling his forthcoming West End musical of The Producers to a roomful of coach operators, and he's hurting for the BBC.

"You know what's disturbing me?" he frets. "Your Government wanting its pound of flesh. The BBC made a mistake, and they apologised. So how many people should they lose? How many valuable people who are good at their jobs and serve the public? They want to fire everybody? The BBC is an amazing institution."

His pain is partly personal. His son Max worked as a production assistant on Michael Palin's African rail pilgrimage and Alan Yentob, the BBC's creative director, has been a friend for 25 years, after making "the best programme ever about me". But politics weigh heavily on his mind and it doesn't take much to set him off on a patter which, like all else with Brooks, comes straight from his heart and hits the funny bone.

"Let's look at the big picture," he proposes. "Was America right to go to war? Did we ever find weapons of mass destruction? Did you find them? Did you find something that we don't know about? No. So it's a matter of methodology, of how it's reported. You get crucified for style. They didn't crucify Clinton for bopping that girl (or whatever); they crucified him for lying. They can't get you for the real thing, but for lying about it you can go to jail for ever. Somebody lied, the Government looked bad and got nasty and we can lose the entire BBC."

At 77, he has been doing a routine since the day he first shaved, playing drums in Buddy Rich's band at 14 and writing gags in Catskills hotels. "I had this beautiful girlfriend," he tells the bus owners from Bournemouth and Blackburn. "Beautiful - but thin. I took her to a restaurant. The maitre d' says, 'Check your umbrella, sir?'"

The Producers, which has been Broadway's hottest ticket for five years, opens in London in October, recast with Richard Dreyfuss and Lee Evans in the lead roles. Brooks says he thinks he knows someone who can get me a seat.

"Wasn't there someone at the press conference from the Evening Standard?" he ponders. "Yes there was: Lyche? Litch? Luke Leitch, that's it." How does he register one name in a room of 150 people? " Waiting tables in the Catskills," he grins. "You'd say, 'Mr Shmulevits, another heel of pumpernickel?' He thinks, 'Hey, he remembers my name.' You get a nice tip."

It's always personal with Mel Brooks. The comedy comes from close acquaintance with human frailty. The youngest of four boys, his father died when he was two and his mother raised the family by sewing sequins on to frocks.

"One night I woke up, I was four years old and on the table was a mountain of diamonds. I said, 'Ma, we're rich!' She said, 'No, they're rhinestones.' She worked tirelessly. She wanted to take me to the Harren High School of Aviation Trades when I was 12. My eldest brother, Irving, said, 'No, the boy's too smart. This one we send to college.'"

The army made him an electrical engineer and sent him to clear landmines after the Battle of the Bulge. "I had two-three months of war, shooting, ducking, very dangerous, then it was over. We were an army of occupation. I hung around Germany, it was great. Tall blondes. The beginning of my quest for Ulla, in The Producers."