So I found myself going into comedy as the first job, which is not at all my background or my bent. Mind you, I was young and this was great! You know, who cares what it is! You are working in television and you go out filming with Kenny Everett, you travel and they get you hire cars to go places, and I just thought it was terrific. Absolutely terrific! And it was probably one of the best six months ever. I mean Nice Time ran for two series and I was in the second series. You remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In? It was the UK equivalent of that. Late sixties zany pow-pow stuff. Everyone was acting an idiot. And of course that suited Kenny Everett really well, I mean he was kind of the star. It was never a big hit show. It was kind of Sundays at 5 o’ clock, something like that, as a TX. Rather like So it Goes later, which I produced, it was a cult hit. But as a first job on telly it was amazing! As a kind of junior researcher, I was a fixer. Kenny wants to lark about on the Liverpool buses, the scriptwriter’s got some gags about him (Kenny on the bus) so I had to go and fix up the Liverpool bus from the Corporation, sort the police, get the documents signed, arrange the lunch for the crew (an hour and a half, three courses).
There was a thing called the Macclesfield to Buxton Backward Walking Race, which is apparently a tradition (I wonder if it is now?), so we filmed it, we actually filmed the whole thing, you know, masses of people walking backwards from Macclesfield to Buxton! So I had to go and set that up with, again, the local council and others, and you learnt as you went along. You got hired, here’s when you start, you don’t get any training but you learn it as you go. You know, dealing with councils, getting music, liaising with the police if necessary, all these things you pick up as you go along and it was great. It was all on location, what I did was all on location. You’re a fixer really but you travelled a lot and you got to work with celebrities and entertainers and directors and it was just great.
