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Published May 2008 in the Plymouth Diary
No country for (grumpy) old men
When you’ve been asked to interview someone famed for being a ‘grumpy old man’ you wonder whether he’s going to send you away with a flea in your ear. But with Rick Wakeman, the Godfather of Prog Rock and regular moaning minnie on the hilarious late night BBC2 series, you feel his tongue is placed firmly in his cheek.
His sardonic comments about kettles that won’t boil and DVDs that freeze at crucial moments have elevated Grumpy Old Men to cult status, and now Rick has decided to vent his frustrations to a live audience. His Grumpy Old Picture Show, an uproarious and technically stunning one-man show documenting Rick’s rich and varied career from rock icon in 70s band Yes to TV host, panellist and professional grumbler, will be showcased at the Daphne Du Maurier Festival at Fowey on May 8.
“The best way to describe it is that it’s an interactive show,” Rick told the Plymouth Diary. “It came to fruition about a year-and-a-half ago. I was talking to Stuart Prebble who devised and produced Grumpy Old Men. I’d done lots of one-man shows before but I thought I’d exhausted the format and I don’t like just treading water, I like coming up with something that’s a bit different. He asked me if I had ever thought about incorporating the grumpy side of things into my shows. After all, I’m the only person who has been in every single programme. I said to him, ‘I can’t very well just go on stage and moan’. He replied, ‘well, you do most of the time!’ So on the train going home I gave it some more thought. If I had a big screen and had the keyboards and a piano set up, if I also had other musicians on the film I could play along with and maybe some of my old teachers from school on the screen so I could tell some silly stories about that, then perhaps it could work.
“I then organised a meeting with my technical crew about the idea but was told I was barking mad! This was going to be incredibly technically difficult to pull off as well as expensive! And as for interviewing old teachers – I’m nearly 60 and they’d be all dead now! I was told I needed computer software to run this that didn’t actually exist! I felt like a naughty schoolboy but it was still a bloody good idea though. My technical staff spent six months putting it all together. It’s a bit like Little Britain meets Dick Emery!”
Rick originally performed 14 shows but such was the response that he was persuaded to do a ‘second leg’. Grumpy Old Men has been a surprise hit for the BBC – but it’s only as good as its contributors: as well as Rick, Arthur Smith, Rory McGrath, Jeremy Clarkson and Don Warrington have all owned up to ‘irritable male syndrome’.
“Grumpy Old Men is a combination of truth, comedy and exasperation, which pretty much sums up the English personality really,” explains Rick. “It’s a quintessentially English programme rather than British. The English are the only people who put up with things that people from other nations wouldn’t. If bread went up in price, the French, for instance, would simply not buy it for two weeks until the price went down. Whereas the English would have a little moan about it but then buy two extra loaves! That’s what we are like.”
In full grump mode now, Rick adds: “That’s why successive politicians and bureaucrats get away with murder! They know we will have a little moan and then just carry on as normal!”
The Daphne du Maurier Festival of Arts and Literature has an outstanding line up this year. The festival which runs from May 8-17 will also feature comedian Dave Gorman talking about his incident-packed drive across America. A touch of glamour is provided by actress and singer Claire Sweeney, who will be performing a special one-off concert.
There’s an impressive range of speakers too including Eden chief executive Tim Smit, architectural historian Dan Cruickshank, Orange Prize winner Linda Grant, authors David Lodge and Justine Picardie, former News Quiz host Simon Hoggart, Cornish born-comedian Rory McGrath and broadcaster and presenter, Gloria Hunniford.
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