Harry Hill, comedian

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:51My castaway this week is the comedian, writer and broadcaster Harry Hill. He's carved out a career as one of the most popular comics on primetime TV with shows like You've Been Framed, Harry Hill's Alien Fun Capsule, Junior Bake Off and a hit series TV Burp. Over the course of 11 years, it won three BAFTAs, three Royal Television Society Awards, a Rose Door and seven British Comedy Awards. His surreal send-ups of British pop culture are as unpredictable as they are delightful. One of his shows played out each week on a musical number by the Delia Smiths, a female singing group dressed as the TV cook covering songs by Morrissey.

1:28Another featured the K Factor, an X Factor spoof about knitting, which was eventually won by a character called Peter the Duck. Then there was the time he staged a fight between EastEnders Phil Mitchell and Mr Blobby to establish which of them was better at making a dramatic entrance. It's all a world away from his first career as a doctor. He hung up his stethoscope in 1990 and won the Perrier Award for his Edinburgh Fringe show just two years later. He says, writing good original gags is really hard, but when it works it's a fabulous feeling. You want to punch the air or run out into the street and tell the joke to the first person you see.

2:02Harry Hill, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much, Lauren. Actually, that K factor is the only thing I ever got in trouble with ITV over. Oh, really? Why? Because we cut the head off and knitted Simon Cowell. And they sent someone down to have a word with us. Well, it does sound a bit strong, to be fair. At least you could stitch it back on. So talk me through that feeling of coming up with a really good idea. When a joke works, how do you know? Well, I love jokes. My favourite type of joke is set up punchline, which is quite old-fashioned, really. The truth is you never know. I mean, sometimes you really know straight away, but nine times out of ten you don't know.

2:39And if you look back over history, there are only, you know, a few jokes, really. The types of joke, and it's just a way of reinventing them. I'm really interested in the form of jokes. I mean, you know, I'm sure this isn't of interest to most people, but just the form of it and how you can subvert that. So, you know, I do a lot of stuff with my ventriloquist dummy Gary, my son Gary from my first marriage. Hello, Daddy. Hello, Gary. Yes, I'll be with you in a sec. And it would be fair to say, as this is radio, that, you know, usually when Gary is performing, your lips move as well. I have to be with Gary.

3:15Obviously, I can't speak for Gary, but I have to be there with Gary to support him, largely. So there's all these kind of old-fashioned tropes which I grew up on, you know, I grew up in the 70s, so all this stuff was still on TV, you know, kind of remnants from the, I suppose, the musicals or the kind of variety days. And that's my interest, I suppose. And the great thing about, you know, if there is a good thing about being Harry Hill is that I can get away with pretty much any silly behaviour. Well, and also that you get to invite other people to do that, right? And to be playful. You know, they come to see you live on tour or they watch one of your programmes because they're up for that.

3:54And that must actually be really a particular joy. It must be a nice dynamic between you and your audience. Well, it's thrilling, you know, when it works. But, I mean, there's still, you know, no comic, however long you've been doing it for, necessarily finds every moment fun. You know, you've got to be really on top of it. I mean, you relax at times. You know, I've just come off a sort of 75 dates on a tour. Blimey. And you'd think by date 74 you would have got the hang of it. But there's still moments where you're kind of thinking, oh, no, I'm losing them. Or, you know, what do I do now? So, Harry, how did you go about selecting your music today?

4:35I tried not to overthink it. But then I woke up this morning and I thought, look at this list. I mean, this is like, this is never my intention. Is it too late to change it? But I tried to go with, you know, stuff that's, you know, reminds me of places and people, I guess. Let's get stuck in. Disc number one, what have you got for us, Harry Hill? Well, you know, this is the first single I ever bought and I wish I could say it was something edgy, but in fact it's Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West by Benny Hill. Where does it take you back to when you hear it? Well, I was seven. I mean, it was played on the radio all the time.

5:10It was number one for weeks. The song is a little story about a milkman who falls in love with a girl but has a love rival that's a two-ton Ted from Teddington who drove the baker's van. and he dies in a hail of, well, the actual killer blow is a stale pork pie that catches him in the eye and only a bit of the dust. But I think that, and I was thinking this morning, would that kill you? There's only one way to find out. Yeah, yeah. What would that be? Just keep throwing the pies, find the stale as pies you can. Yeah, so yeah, it was fun, you know, and there was a thing in the 70s which was this thing for the novelty song.

5:52So in the charts at any one time, there was some silly song that was very catchy and it was often by a comedian of the day, you know, like Tommy Cooper, Edmund, and I kind of wish that still happened a bit, you know.

6:08You could hear the offbeat's pound as they raced across the ground and the clatter of the wheels as they spun round and round and he galloped into Market Street, his badge upon his chest, His name was Ernie and he drove the fastest milk cart in the West. Now Ernie loved a widow, a lady known as Sue. She lived all alone in Lily Lane at number 22. They said she was too good for him. She was awry, proud and chic. But Ernie got his cocoa there three times every week. Harry Hill singing along with every word to Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West by Benny Hill. So Harry, let's go back to the beginning for you.

6:47around about the time that you first discovered comedy. You were born in Surrey, 1964, the second of four kids, becoming five when your half-sister came along. What did you enjoy about growing up in a big family like that? Well, I mean, I'm not sure I did like being in a big family. I probably would have preferred to have had a bit more, you know. The thing about being in a big family is you can never get any privacy. It was a relatively small house, you know, on this big sort of 60s housing estate out in rural... I mean, I grew up in Kent, and the thing with a big family, you just can't get away from the sort of noise.

7:20I just remember, you know, there wasn't a lot of spare money. You know, the other part of being in a big family is this sense of humour, this kind of gang where you can all basically gang up on someone. If my sisters had a boyfriend, we'd all just pick on him. There's a lot of in-jokes. I mean, I guess that's true of all families. We did feel like a unit. You know, my brother was a lot younger than me, maybe four or five years younger than me, and he was very annoying. is... I mean, I remember we used to have physical fights. You know, we used to sort of roll around on the floor. Tickling was very big in the 70s.

7:55I don't know if people still tickle each other. It was massive. I remember from the 80s, I remember it being huge as well. Bring back tickling. How about a show, Celebrity Tickling? Oh, that would be so good. Feather on the end of a stick or something. And I know that, you know, given that there wasn't a lot of money around, as you just mentioned, TV was a big thing. That was like your family's leisure activity, wasn't it? Well, it was, I think, that window on the world. You know, it was, that's how you found out about things. What were you watching? Doctor Who. We'd watch Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game, which I just loved.

8:26A lot of people might look at Bruce and think he's quite old-fashioned, but actually I think what he was doing is very modern. He didn't come on and tell gags. He worked with the crowd. He worked the cameras. You know, he would do that thing where he'd turn to the camera and look directly at you at home. My dad always wanted to watch, my stepfather always wanted to watch the news at nine o 'clock and that was really annoying because on BBC 2 at nine o 'clock were all the interesting programs you know Monty Python and Spike Milligan's Q series I remember watching it and thinking yeah he's talking to me, he's saying to me this is what you need, you know it was like that it was sort of like some people get with music an awakening, exactly and he had that anarchic spirit that you have I mean so he was someone actually I don't really have that, I don't have that but it's in your act, it's part of your act I fake it, but I think he had it.

9:13Harry, as well as TV, I know that your mum, Jan, had a big influence on you. Tell me a bit about her. She's great fun. I mean, she's still alive. You know, she's 88 and she's still bright as a button. Yeah, so her and my stepfather, Tony, they were in a local amateur dramatics group, Staplehurst Amateur Dramatics Group. He used to write the panto and he would often be the dame in the panto. And this guy, actually, he was not outwardly outwardly a lot of hugely funny. To me, he's always seemed a bit careworn. You know, he'd be on the first train out, you know, if it's a commuter, and he'd come back about 7 o 'clock, he'd have his whiskey, he'd have his dinner, and he'd sit down in his armchair.

9:52And I think there was a lot going on. He inherited four kids, you know, when he married my mum. And I always think, I mean, I didn't think it at the time, but now I think, wow, you know, that's quite a guy to take that on. Yeah. But then we would go and see him at the Panto, and he'd be dragged up and being Widow Twanky. Transformed. Yeah. What kind of roles did your mum get, bearing in mind that he's getting dragged into anything? Oh, fairy, you know, she'd be the fairy. Fairy bungle, she was... I don't know what that was. She still does a bit of that. Does she? Yeah, she's having a drink. Will she still do her fairy bungles, if you ask her?

10:23Yeah. Get her on the phone. Mum. So my mum would say, do you want to come down the shops? Or, you're coming down the shops. We go down to Lipton's. and on the way we'd bump into Mrs Harmer, a couple of doors down, and she'd start telling her a story. It was, you know, I don't know, some story about something that happened at the school or some local bit of gossip. And then we'd walk on a bit further and she'd see someone else and then she'd start the story. And by the time we got to Lipton's, the supermarket, she would have this story completely ironed out, you know, with sort of... She would have like a tight two minutes.

11:03Yeah, exactly. You know, and it would end with a punchline and a da-da. So, I mean, yeah, I guess you pick all this stuff up subliminally. I mean, I don't know whether that's why I am the way I am, but... And what about your dad, Keith? Tell me about him. Well, he was in the amateur dramatics as well, but not the same one. So my parents got divorced when I was about six, I think. So, I mean, I grew up with my mum and stepfather, and then I'd see my dad every two weeks. He'd come and pick us up. It was that thing, that custody thing. Yeah. And was it difficult to kind of form a close relationship because of that?

11:43It didn't help. It's a tricky one. You know, divorce, I think, particularly at that time because people didn't do it. I mean, everyone's parents are divorced now. I mean, if your parents aren't divorced, you're unusual. But back then, people just stuck it out. And did you feel that? Did you feel like it was a bit of an odd situation? Yeah, I didn't like it. I was quite happy for them to be divorced, you know, in that they were obviously both much happier. But it was a bit, you know, there weren't those sort of conversations. No one ever sat me down and said, how are you feeling? How are you feeling?

12:16It wasn't any of that. And, you know, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but, you know, you just kind of muddle through, don't you? I don't know. All right, Harry, let's take a break for some more music. It's your second choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you? Have I the Right by the Honeycombs. It's another bit of froth. I bought a whole load of singles from a jumble sale. You know, jumble sales were the thing in rural Kent in the 70s and 80s. And I bought this, a job lot of singles, one of which was Have I the Right by the Honeycombs.

12:49And when I was at medical school, me and my mate Matt, probably my best friend at medical school, was this guy Matt Brassock, who's sadly no longer with us. and he was a brilliant pianist and in those days we would go to the pub and most pubs, or a lot of pubs, had a piano still and we'd have a few drinks and at some point he would get on the piano and I would sing Have I the Right by The Honeycomb. Have I the right to hold you You know I've always told you That we must never, ever part Oh, have I the right to kiss you? You know I'll always miss you I've loved you from the very start Come right back to me It's quite a coy way of asking someone out, isn't it?

13:41Have I the right to kiss you? The honeycombs and have I the right. So, Harry Hill, as a kid, would you describe yourself as happy? Yeah, it was great fun. I mean, we were on this sort of housing estate, but it backed onto fields. And so we would go home from school, run over the fields and muck about, you know, and then my mum would call us in for our tea. You know, summer holidays, six weeks, you're thinking, great, here we go. And we'd always have some little plan, you know, like my friend Adam, who, he had a shed where we would do sort of science experiments, you know, and we started this. What kind of thing?

14:17Well, we were always trying to make something explode. Yeah. You know, so this is... Innocent, more innocent times, yeah. Yeah, we weren't trying to further some cause. It was just for our own interest, you understand. So we used to make stink bombs and smoke bombs and stuff and used to sell them to the other kids at school. How did that go? A little business that you... Yeah, Stapleless Chemical Industries. Well, it was very popular. So there were three of us in Stapleless Chemical Industries, me, Adam and Patrick. And me and Adam were kind of the brains behind it as far as making the produce.

14:53So a smoke bomb might set you about 5p, a stink bomb maybe 7p because there was a bottle involved. And Patrick used to be like the sales guy, he'd handle that. And then he came to us after a while and said, we were sort of saying, well, where's the money? And it turned out that he had been letting the stuff go on tick. He wasn't taking the money. And so, in fact, we had made 60p. So we decided to wind up the business. We split the money because the pressure was getting to Patrick and that didn't seem fair. Well, it's difficult being a young industrialist, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. You were also, as we would imagine, with the 70s...

15:31It's not exactly diary of a CEO, but yeah. But in this rural childhood of the 70s, were you a Cub Scout? Yes, yes. That was pretty common back then. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really want to be a Cub Scout and then I was a Scout. But once I joined, my mum wouldn't let me leave. And I think probably in retrospect, it was like free babysitting for her. And my first kind of attempt to, you know, on a stage was the Cub Panto. So I was Widow Twanky. Oh, that's a plum roll. Yeah. Following in your stepdad's footsteps. Yeah, I guess I was. And I remember doing it and being on, you know, doing these jokes and everyone laughing.

16:14and I was thinking, quite clearly remember thinking, this is easy, you find this easy, you're good at this. How old were you? Nine, yeah. And actually I was singled out for special praise in the Kent Messenger. Do you remember what they said? Undoubted star of the show. Yeah. When you were 14, I think, your stepfather got a job in Hong Kong and you all moved there. How did you feel about it? Well, I mean, I burst into tears. I couldn't believe it. You know, we were literally sat around the TV. he gets home from work and he says, we're moving to Hong Kong. And I was thinking, we're not. I remember finding out it had the most densely populated square mile in the world, I think, at that time.

16:57And I'm in a sort of little village. I remember just getting off the plane. It was like a fog, it was like a really humid noise, just loads of noise, great big high-rise buildings. So I remember stepping off the plane and just saying to myself, you're not going to like this. And I didn't like it. You know, I really didn't like it for the first six months. Well, let's find out what happened next after some music. It's time for your third disc, Harry Hill. Oh, yeah. So this is Granddad's Flannelette Nightshirt by George Formby. I am a ukulele player, not a particularly good one, although I've let it lapse.

17:32I was once a member of the George Formby Society of Great Britain. Yeah, me and my friend Rob. So Rob was at school, was my kind of best friend at school, and he had a 78 of George Forby singing this song, and he would stand in the playground and sing this to us. And he'd do it at parties and things. I mean, we were kind of odd kids.

18:00Now in our family we've got an heirloom They handed it to me a year ago It's been in our possession since Grandad was a lad I'll tell you what it is and then you'll know It's me Grandad's flannelette night shirt In it I was christened one day Down at the church, they were in the world George Formby and Grandad's flannelette night shirt So Harry Hill, you moved to Hong Kong and started a new school, so an international school. Now, you'd had a happy childhood, but I think you were also quite shy when you were little. Is that fair to say? Well, when I hit my teens, basically, I think. Yeah, I was a very shy kid.

18:50And joining that school, so it was an international school, so people were coming and going all the time, and they weren't interested in being my friend, Lauren. Hard to believe. Yeah, but school was tough. And then gradually, after I think about six months, you know, I made a couple of friends and I did that really by being funny, I think. And what about teachers? Were there any that you connected with? There were a couple of teachers. I mean, we had a really, I mean, because Hong Kong was like a small kind of little area, the local TV, so the English speaking TV, there were two channels and my history teacher was the newsreader.

19:26So you'd see him in the history lesson in the evening. He'd be saying, you just in from the South China Sea. That must have seemed incredibly impressive, especially to a TV-loving kid who's just kind of come from the sticks, effectively. Yeah, and he was quite cool. He was very laid back. So who is, what was his name? Paul Gillingham. And I remember once he, we had to do this talk about, I don't know what it was. I remember my talk was about using child labour in the Victorian era, like chimney sweeps, you know, when they'd send kids up. I can't remember the details, but I'd done these diagrams and everyone got up and did their talk.

20:01I did my talk and then he pulled me aside at the end. He said, did you notice that everyone listened when you did your talk? You're good at communicating with people and that's kind of a useful thing to be aware of. And had you noticed what he said? Yeah, I had. I mean, I absolutely had them in the palm of my hand. Harry, after a couple of years, the family returned to Kent. Were you relieved, pleased to come back? I didn't want to come back because by then I'd got used to it And, you know, the city was an exciting place to live in. You'd just walk out the door, get on a bus, and you'd be in Wan Chai or, you know, Central, and there'd be, you know, cinemas and all sorts of stuff.

20:42So, Harry, you were back in Kent at a local grammar school. You took science A-levels. And obviously this put you on the path to becoming a doctor, as you did, we know that you did. But, you know, from everything else that you've said, you were this very creative, communicative kid who sort of should have been going in a completely different direction. How committed were you? I couldn't agree with you more. Well, how committed were you to... I took a wrong turn, Lauren. That's all I can say. I took a wrong turn. Where? How did it happen? Towards science. Well, I think it was this science company that we set up.

21:15It involved us buying... The explosions? Yeah. The steam pumps? Stapolose chemical industries. It involved us buying a lot of chemicals. You know, in those days you could buy mostly ingredients for, well, explosives and stuff in the chemist. And I had to have a kind of cover for that, and that was that I was interested in science. I mean, I was genuinely interested in biology. I think biology is really interesting. And then what happened was my parents went to a parents' evening and the physics teacher said, my mum said, oh, he wants to do medicine. I mean, she was keen for me to do medicine. You know, who wouldn't be?

21:48Of course, yeah. And the physics teacher said, oh, no, no, there's no way he's going to get to medical school. and they reported that back to me and I thought, right, I'll show you. So I sort of went into medicine out of spite. It was mad. But part of it, sorry to interrupt, but part of it was also that I couldn't articulate what I wanted to do. If someone had said, if you had three wishes, what would they be? One would be, I'd like to be a comedian. But I couldn't say that out loud. I couldn't say it to my parents who were very middle class. And why was that? Was that because you couldn't sort of see a path?

22:23I couldn't see the root. Oh, right. It wasn't a kind of shyness and embarrassment. Yeah, it was a bit of that. A bit of that, not being able to say it. And so you studied medicine at St George's Medical School in South London, where you threw yourself in with the Drama Society. What kind of productions did you take part in? Well, there's a big tradition, and I don't know why there's a big tradition, of reviews, medical school reviews. And that's what I did. I mean, the medical school review, how it would work is you'd write a sketch and you'd come to the meeting and if you'd written a sketch, you'd be in.

22:55You know, there was no sort of editing process. Can you give me an example of the kind of piece that you would be putting? I remember once there was a thing, it was like a waiting room and I was dressed as a pancreas. Someone else was dressed as a kidney. So it was kind of not a million miles away from my sense, you know, the stuff. From everything that would follow. Yeah, but I wrote a hell of a lot of stuff. And did you enjoy it? I loved it, yeah. It just felt easy. It's all I think about. That feeling of, yeah. It's all I think about. I can do this. This is easy. All year. Yeah, so you started as a trainee doctor in 1988.

23:30Yeah, I qualified in 88. My first job was in orthopaedics, and I didn't know any orthopaedics. So I go to the, I arrive on the ward, and I have to go around with my trolley, and I didn't know anything. I couldn't answer anyone's questions. How did that feel? From that moment, I just felt out of control. I mean, that's how I felt, you know. And I remember this, he was quite a young man. He'd had his leg in plaster. And he said to me, oh, doctor, how long is this going to be in plaster for? I didn't know. And I said, well, how long did the other doctor say? And he said, six weeks, about six weeks.

24:05And I said, well, how long have you had it in for? He said, two weeks. I said, well, I'm expecting you to have it in for another four weeks. You know, it was like that. I was just busking it the whole time. and I learnt most of it in the first few weeks from the Ward sister, is the truth. Harry, we'll find out what happened next in a moment. What happens next? We've got to make some room for the music. It's number four. What are we going to hear? This is Gay Bar by Electric Six. I don't know anything about Electric Six, but I know this song and I found it really funny. It really makes me smile.