Believe It!

Richard Wilson interview

Richard Wilson wants to find the doctor who saved his life last year after he suffered a heart attack.

I never feel comfortable when fact is mixed with fiction. I spend the whole time trying to figure out what's real and what's made up and usually end up vaguely irritated if it's not clear which is which. And then, I usually say to myself, the truth is usually more interesting anyway, so why bother?

I had high hopes that Believe It!, the purported autobiography of the actor Richard Wilson, written by Jon Canter, might up-end my preconceptions. The programme felt a bit like an episode of The Unbelievable Truth, picking out factual nuggets from the welter of fiction: was he mates with George Best? Was his first acting role in Oh! What a Lovely War!, during the shooting of which he drove an apparently legless Lord Olivier back home to Brighton? And what about Mad Great-Uncle Hamish?

There were some good lines (I liked Hamish's advice - "never trust a man who doesn't drink, for he's walking around with truths inside him that he never lets oot"), and I laughed more than is usual with Radio 4 comedy. But I was troubled: the bit about him studying electrical engineering, for example, sounded true, though it seems his pre-thespian career was spent as a lab technician. But unless there's a killer joke in there somewhere, which there wasn't, why make it up?

As for Hamish (wonderfully played in the dramatised bits by John Sessions), I'm guessing he's not real, but I found myself wishing he'd existed. As he told the young Richard (played by David Tennant): "Do you want to have an exciting life and forget most of it or a blameless life and remember every second?"

Fact meets fiction as Richard Wilson narrates this personal "radiography", taking listeners on a semi-fictional odyssey through milestone moments in his life. Featuring childhood secrets, a decades-long quest for a lone glove and a cameo from an acting legend of yesteryear, it's whimsical and gently charming.

The wry script is more likely to inspire smirks than all-out laughter, but in Wilson it has a bona fide trump card. Delivered matter-of-factly in his lugubrious drawl, even the most outrageous flights of fancy can seem plausible. He might struggle to convince the listener that he truly coached George Best to football triumph, but for a moment we do wonder - and therein lies the true joy of this play. Like all the best tall tales, it's difficult to tell where the truth really ends.

Excess was the hallmark of Jon Canter's BelieveIt!, a 'radiography' of Richard Wilson who starred in a parody of his own life. In one scene, he directed George Best in the final days of his footballing career through an earpiece. That this didn't seem so very odd tells us all we need to know about celebrity biographies.

Richard Wilson: my life story - but don't believe it!

The One Foot in the Grave actor Richard Wilson tells Roya Nikkhah why he's narrating a "tongue in cheek" story of his life for a new BBC Radio Four programme, Believe It!

Richard Wilson, actor, director and possibly the nation's favourite fictional grouse, got so fed up with being greeted with his One Foot in the Grave TV catchline "I don't believe it!" that he's now been persuaded to launch his "radiography". It's a heady mix of the actual with the fictional, written by Jon Canter, starring Wilson and a starry roster of support which includes John Sessions, David Tennant and Arabella Weir. Unpick the facts (Wilson is unmarried, private, passionate about theatre, politics and Manchester United) from the mischievous fantasies.

Believe It! review

This is a brilliantly produced comedy, highlighted by the fact David Tennant plays only a bit part.

But does he mean it? He turns his Victor Meldrew catchphrase "I don't believe it!" on its head in his four-part "celebrity radiography" Believe It!, in which he laces alleged reminiscences with unlikely tales and a certain surreal logic.

Playing himself - with some assistance from his "ghost writer" Jon Canter and actors including David Tennant and John Sessions - Wilson claims that he never drank because a traumatic childhood experience suggested that alcohol was indelibly associated with truth and death. "What could be more scary?"

These picaresque memoirs also reveal how Wilson caused George Best to miss a penalty, and why a car journey with Sir Laurence Olivier ensured that his confirmed tipple would be elderflower cordial ... Or so he says.