Boris Johnson Comic Strip film scuppered by creative differences
- A planned Comic Strip Presents satire on Boris Johnson was scrapped last year after production wranglings
- Lie Another Day was "fucked" by production company Lookout Point's demands for creative control, writer Peter Richardson has said
- "It was a very funny script ... It was a shame not to make it" said Richardson, who is also writing a book about The Comic Strip troupe
Boris Johnson was to be the subject of a new Channel 4 film from The Comic Strip, but the project was shelved because of internal production wrangles, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
In Lie Another Day: The Boris Story, Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne were to be depicted as Russian agents trained to appear as English toffs, dispatched to bring down Britain from within the heart of government through Brexit and the handling of the country's response to Covid-19.
With nods to James Bond, The Ipcress File and the Cambridge Five spies, the film would have seen civil servant Sue Gray on the trail of Johnson and his collaborators as the former Prime Minister negotiated affairs with Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries, the Downing Street parties scandal, Government hounding of the BBC and Channel 4, and being controlled by a vampiric Dominic Cummings.
As The Comic Strip creator Peter Richardson reveals in an exclusive interview with British Comedy Guide published today, the film, developed with former BBC and Channel 4 head of comedy Shane Allen, to be made through Am I Being Unreasonable? production company Lookout Point, was commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of Channel 4 and The Comic Strip Presents... which debuted Five Go Mad In Dorset on the channel's opening night 40 years ago, 2nd November 1982.
"I was about to do one [last] summer called Lie Another Day: The Boris Story, for The Comic Strip's anniversary," Richardson told BCG. "I had a really good relationship with Shane Allen. But he had another company contracting with us, Lookout Point. And they completely fucked it, said they needed control of casting and crew. And I said no, sorry, when we did Five Go Mad In Dorset, nobody knew who we were and we were allowed to pick anybody we wanted. Now you're telling me you want control? You can't do that.
"They also said you can forget about getting any production fee. And I said, well, hang on, whose name is above the title? It's The Comic Strip isn't it? It's not Lookout Point. Anyway, it all got cancelled by Channel 4."
Richardson, the only person to have been involved in all 47 episodes of The Comic Strip Presents..., variously as writer, director and star, added that the film - which would also have sent up the Government's treatment of asylum seekers; Theresa May's gaffe-prone premiership; the expensive redecorations of Johnson's Downing Street flat; Matt Hancock's affair with intern Gina Coladangelo; Lord Evgeny Lebedev's controversial ennoblement; Dominic Cummings's notorious journey to Barnard Castle and the P&O Ferries mass-sackings scandal - is unlikely now to ever see the light of day.
"Well, of course, Boris left us and Liz Truss took over," he said. "I know he'll be in the memory for a while but it would have dated so quickly. It was a very funny script that I worked on with Shane, I loved collaborating with him. It was a shame not to make it."
On Channel 4, the BBC and most recently Gold, The Comic Strip Presents... produced films such as Bad News Tour, A Fistful Of Travellers' Cheques, The Strike, Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, GLC and Oxford, making stars of Jennifer Saunders, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Ade Edmonson and Nigel Planer, as well as regularly featuring Robbie Coltrane, Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen and others.
The Hunt For Tony Blair, a noir spoof on the Labour leader's time as Prime Minister, was broadcast in 2011 on Gold, starring Stephen Mangan as Blair, Planer as Peter Mandelson, Harry Enfield as Alistair Campbell, Ford Kiernan as Gordon Brown, Jennifer Saunders as Margaret Thatcher and Richardson himself as President George W. Bush.
Red Top, about the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, followed in 2016, with Maxine Peake playing newspaper editor Rebekah Brooks, Mangan reprising his role as Blair and Planer playing Rupert Murdoch.
Sex Actually, a spoof of Richard Curtis's Love Actually, was the last Comic Strip film to broadcast on Channel 4, starring Sheridan Smith and airing in 2005.
Elsewhere in today's interview, conducted to promote Richardson's appearance discussing The Comic Strip at the Slapstick Festival in Bristol this weekend, he also revealed that he has written a film about Brexit, The French Job, but hasn't been able to attract finance because "the whole thing was too toxic I suppose".
"It was basically a European gang, led by a sort of Michael Caine type. So it's The Italian Job but with the Tour De France being used as a cover to rob a train. Middle-aged men in Lycra using the race to get through a town and get the gold out. It's a good script and I think it would make a great film. Movies cost a lot of money, that's the trouble," he explained.
Richardson also hopes to make a long-gestating film called It Ends Badly, to which he and Mayall were originally attached to play "scumbag producers, just trying to keep their heads above water". More recently though, Harry Enfield and Stephen Mangan have been mooted as the leads. "Although they're getting too old for it now probably," he said. "I'm going to have to cast younger again."
Richardson also disclosed he is writing a book about The Comic Strip, featuring stories about late friends like Mayall and guitarist Jeff Beck who contributed to the films' soundtracks and who died last month.
"Writing prose is so different to writing a script," he said. "Because in the end, it doesn't matter if you're writing shit in a script, as long as the story and the characters work. There aren't thoughts, you're writing action and dialogue. The script is a map. But with prose, you've got to make the writing interesting and make the reader want to read on. I'm not trying to do things in a linear way in the book, I'm trying to make it more interesting than that."