Circuit Training 85: Andy Hamilton is Away from his Desk

It's hard to believe that Andy Hamilton really has time to go out on tour.

He's certainly earned a break from writing, if he wanted it, having scribed numerous noteworthy series over the last 30 years, from radio classics The Million Pound Radio Show and Old Harry's Game to envelope-pushing TV creations Drop The Dead Donkey, Outnumbered and April's pre-election effort, Ballot Monkeys; most of them with long-term writing partner Guy Jenkin.

Last year they also penned a well-received film, What We Did On Our Holiday, starring big-hitters Rosamund Pike and David Tennant, and the writing is clearly rolling along regardless: another screenplay, a book, a certain sitcom special. Plus all those panel shows, this tour... and, indeed, the promotional interviews to plug it.

What would you be doing if not this interview, Andy? Writing something?

I like to think I would. In reality, I'd probably be finding some other displacement activity.

You haven't done stand-up for a few years - what's the new show about?

This one's called Change Management. It's a solo show, whether you want to call it stand-up or not - I suppose it is. I'm standing up. I'll be looking at change. I got to an age where I thought, well, I probably am old enough now to look back and chart what's changed and what hasn't, so it's a show that looks back at the social changes of the last 60 years, the process of change, how we as a species cope with it.

Do you get quite scientific, or political?

In places, I get political, and historical, a little bit of science. Each show will be different I think, in that there are quite a lot of topics and I can't cover them all, and it'll keep changing. I'll add things.

You've done that with sitcoms of course, with Drop The Dead Donkey and Ballot Monkeys, finishing them just before broadcast. Most people wouldn't fancy that.

Yeah, Ballot Monkeys couldn't have got any later really, we'd write in the afternoon and then transmit it that evening. I enjoy that, it's exciting and interesting. I mean, you wouldn't want to do it every week of every year, but as a shot of adrenaline it's quite nice.

How did the Drop The Dead Donkey concept ever get commissioned?

Well, we wrote a sample script for the BBC - this is 1989 - which they just sat on and didn't do anything with. So then we went to Channel 4 and they commissioned it pretty much straight away. It just landed on the right person's desk at the right time.

How long did it run?

Nine years.

That must have been knackering. Then to do something similar...

Well, Ballot Monkeys, we knew it would be short. Anything that tiring, if you know it's going to stop, it makes it more bearable. But no, Ballot Monkeys was a great show to do, and we had the advantage for the first time ever of knowing when the election would be - normally, the Prime Minister used to call the election when it suited them, so you'd only get four weeks maximum of planning time, but this time we knew when it would be, so we could plan ahead.

Did you get into any bother with it?

No, in a way the speed of it helped. By the time we'd thought it up and filmed it, it was gone, it was out there. And the politicians all had a lot on their minds, they were busy trying to win the election, so they couldn't be bothered trying to pick a fight with us.

Politicians generally enjoy political shows...

Yeah, up to a point, and we're always very mindful of that gap. I don't think any of them would have wanted to be in Ballot Monkeys, particularly Boris Johnson, with the treatment he got meted out. You don't want to be in a position where you get a message saying that a politician really likes your show - that would probably be a bad sign.

Your IMDb profile goes back a long way further than I realised, writing for acts like Mike Yarwood and Bernie Winters. What was the first thing you wrote for?

I know that the first words for which I got paid were spoken by David Jason on Week Ending, a Radio 4 programme in the 1970s. I can't remember what the sketch was, but I know that David was the first to say words that I'd written. He was on Week Ending for a long time.

Were you pitching everywhere?

No, I was mostly approached to write for people, so I ended up on loads of weird and wonderful - and not so wonderful - shows. But gradually as time goes by you end up writing more and more for your own projects.

Outnumbered is enormously popular: will it ever come back?

Probably not as a series, but we are hoping to do some one-offs, where we catch up with the family and see what stage they're at now. We're hoping to do one of those next year, so that would be the next time that people will see the Brockman family on their TV screens - sometime next year.

Your film did well last year too - how did that come about?

Well we were approached by a film company, 'would you like to do a film?' and we had this idea. Like all films it took a few years to turn it into a reality.

Are there big differences between radio, TV and film: the actual process?

The money side of it is weird in film. Until you actually start filming you can never quite be sure it's going to happen, because the money can seem quite insecure, the backing drops in and out rather easily. Whereas in TV, before you set off you know you've got the budget to do it. So it's different, but film's great: it's immersive, you have the big pictures, that massive sound, so you can envelope the audience in it.

Presumably you've got plans to do more?

Yeah, me and Guy, we're working together on a new screenplay. But they're hard to get made, films. You've got to keep a lot of fingers crossed.

It was an impressively starry start. Give it a few years and I can see you scriptwriting blockbusters - fancy the next Iron Man sequel?

I'd love to! Maybe I could be Iron Man, that'd be even better.

Speaking of popular characters, I didn't realise you were in Peppa Pig!

Ah, yes. I'm the elephant dentist. Well, the voice.

That's such a global smash, I'd imagine it must be the most successful thing you've been involved with... although presumably it's not your voice in other countries?

Well no, they must dub him mustn't they? They probably get an actor to do it in their own language, but maybe try to sound like me. Hold their nose.

Do you get recognised by kids in shops?

Not by kids, but I do by mums - they'll stop me and say to their child, 'this is Dr Elephant!' Then the child looks at them as if they're mad, because they think 'well that's not Dr Elephant. Dr Elephant is an elephant.' Kids don't understand about voiceovers.

I was interested to see the Absolutely alumni on there too - Morwenna Banks; John Sparkes is on it...

Is he? When you do these things you rarely meet your co-stars, you're usually doing it on your own. I didn't realise John did it.

Have you done other voiceovers?

I was another dentist! In a cartoon called Bob And Margaret, which won an Oscar actually. But I was a menopausal doctor in that, a middle-aged human dentist, not an elephant. So obviously I've cornered the market in cartoon dentists. I must just sound like a dentist.

Do you get fans of your behind-the-scenes work turning up to your tour shows?

Yeah, I used to do a lot of audience interaction, and I'd find out what they knew: I'd often get questions about Outnumbered. As the show develops, I'll probably loosen it up a bit and take questions from the audience. But to be honest I don't really know how a show will develop over time. Certainly with [previous show] Hat Of Doom, the second half became virtually all Q&A.

We get a lot of comedy writers logging on to BCG: do you have a bit of expert advice for how to write and pitch scripts?

Well, life's changed a bit because of digital media and everything, but the best thing: Maurice Gran on Desert Island Discs the other week said that he's often asked to give talks to young writers and his advice was: 'most of you won't make it, but if you want to make sure you won't make it, then stop trying.'

And I think in a way that's exactly right, you've got to be fascinated by writing and want to tell stories, because you will get rejected. Even when you become established, your ideas will be rejected, so you've really got to want to do it, and be prepared to live with the rejection.

That's the negative side of it. The positive side of it is that you do get to express yourself. I think 'write what you want to write' would be the one bit of advice I would give, don't try to second guess what people want. Write what interests you, and then hope that it chimes with an audience somewhere.

Do you and Guy have pet projects that never took off, stuff you really pushed?

Yeah we've had loads like that, things that in our water we thought would definitely work, and then for whatever reason they died at some stage in the process, either at script stage or pilot stage. That's just what happens.

How does your Lennon and McCartney process work then? Do you write together or separately?

Ha! We do a lot of talking, do the characters and the storylines, then we usually divvy it up. If we do a sitcom we'll take it in turns to do the draft of an episode, and very often you're just writing up what was in the notes, it's very much like being a secretary. Then once you've got a draft you'll work on it together, scene by scene, line by line, so by the time it hits the screens it'll have been through many, many rewrites.

Any other new projects on the go?

I think there's going to be a novel coming out shortly with Unbound, who are a sort of online crowdfunding company, which is quite exciting.

What sort of genre is it?

It's a proper novel! I mean, it's serious, but funny in places.

That's another base covered then - anything left to do? Action films!

Iron Man. I still want to be Iron Man.

Andy Hamilton's Change Management tour runs from 17 October to 28 November. For dates and tickets see ents24.com