Jeff Pope

The Fattest Man in Britain looked as if it was going to be filed under Northern Grotesque. You had Bobby Ball in a cab promising his excited Japanese passengers "the eighth wonder of the world". And then you saw Georgie's pudgy hand reaching for the aftershave bottle and splashing it on underneath a bingo wing the size of a sofa cushion. When Timothy Spall, just visible inside his fat suit, began singing "Turning Japanese", complete with slitty-eye gestures, for his paying guests it looked as if we were in for an exercise of gleeful bad taste. In fact, Caroline Aherne's drama (co-written with producer Jeff Pope) turned out to be a lot sweeter and life-affirming than you might have expected, contriving a Beauty and the Beast relationship between Georgie and Amy, the community-service girl who came to clear his garden. For her, he was the dad she's never had; for him, she was the first person to care for him who didn't have an interest in him getting bigger. Although he was initially devastated by the realisation that he had a heavier rival ("If I'm not the fattest, what am I, eh? I'm just a fat man") he finally struggled out of his chair and slimmed down to win her back. I wasn't entirely convinced that it would have been as easy as it was made to look, but very happy to pretend while it lasted.

Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent, 21st December 2009

Last Night's TV - The Fattest Man in Britain

What a tour de force Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope are. The Fattest Man in Britain was a modern day fairytale. Its sentimentality and morality message were not in-your-face obvious, but it without doubt left me feeling the goodwill to all men thing.

Lynn Rowlands-Connolly, Unreality TV, 21st December 2009

Helped by a top-form Timothy Spall in a fat suit, writers Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope wittily poked and prodded at the fascination of the freak show, an industry fuelled by endless TV shock-horror reality exposes. 'I'm happy the way I am - look at the joy I bring to people,' claimed Spall's Georgie, a money machine for weaselly agent Morris who pitched up with taxiloads of foreign tourists for whom Georgie would karaoke Rio or Turning Japanese, as geography dictated. Georgie's journey from delusion to disillusion - 'If I'm not the fattest then what am I? Just a fat man, a fat man sat in his chair' - was pretty clearly signposted. And the tone bumpily lurched between broad farce and modern tragedy. But as Georgie's real self emerged from amid the self-protective folds of flab, only the hardest of hearts wouldn't have raised a cheer.

Keith Watson, Metro, 21st December 2009