“It’s an entirely original script,” he bridles. “I think there are three lines that come from the TV series.” He sips some coffee and peace breaks out as the fast-talking comic once known as motormouth explains the stage version’s genesis. “There’s nothing wrong with reworking episodes. But because the sitcom is about a playwright, and I’m now taking it into the theatre, I felt a deep creative desire to make a new, original play.”
After this, things settle down. He has something to say on whatever crops up and it’s usually interesting and witty. But it’s clear Elton can be sensitive to criticism. Even after four decades at the top it still stings.
Happily for Upstart Crow fans, the play employs the same comic turns of phrase as the small screen incarnation, with smutty quips about “puffling pants” and “utter Bolingbrokes”, but the set-up is different. Once again starring David Mitchell as the perennially put-upon playwright, it takes place 10 years on. King James is now monarch and Shakespeare needs to reinvigorate his career. The script tackles the hot potatoes of cultural appropriation and gender fluidity, and one can enjoy playing spot-the-reference. Twelfth Night, King Lear, oodles of Othello.
It is impossible not to draw comparisons between Shakespeare’s creative struggles in the play and those of Elton himself. After a sensational Eighties, during which his hits included co-writing The Young Ones and Blackadder — alongside high-velocity appearances on Channel 4’s Saturday Live, often taking pot shots at Margaret Thatcher — he did not fare so well in this millennium even though he kept working.
“I’m the Cliff Richard of sitcoms. I’ve had a sitcom on the BBC every decade since the Eighties,” he says.
His novels continued to sell but the one-time flag-bearer of comedy’s new wave began to feel old wave. He was criticised for working with Queen on We Will Rock You and with Andrew Lloyd Webber on The Beautiful Game. In 2013, The Wright Way was described by The Mirror as “the worst sitcom ever”.
Yet Crow, commissioned as part of a season celebrating the Bard 400 years on, ran for three series, enjoyed two Christmas specials and re-established him. He also penned the Shakespeare biopic All Is True, starring Kenneth Branagh. And in 2019 his stand-up tour received enthusiastic notices.
So how did the trim 60-year-old turn things round? “I think I’ve just got a bit lucky in the last three years. I’ve had better reviews than I’ve ever had before. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m a bit older. People have got, I don’t know, sick of hating me.”
Maybe, I suggest, if you stick around long enough, you come back into fashion?
“But I’ve never felt I was in fashion, actually. I didn’t have a honeymoon period in terms of criticism. Although no one could have had a luckier start than I did, being commissioned to co-write The Young Ones at the age of 21.”
These days Elton splits his time between Sussex and Australia where his wife Sophie, with whom he has three children, is from. “It’s a constant effort to manage what is a deeply troubling carbon footprint,” he says. “When I fell in love with my wife, neither of us thought travel was anything other than glamorous. I have a very happy marriage, and a wonderful family. But in practical terms, it would’ve been better if she’d been born in Brighton.”
As for Labour, he voted for the party but was no Jeremy Corbyn cheerleader. “I had great questions with his leadership qualities. But no problem with their manifesto. And I vote for a party, and a manifesto.”
Yet now he seems to have greater concerns than party leaders. “I’ve never known in my life a time where I was less certain about what’s coming next. I think a combination of environmental threat, and the unknowable effect of the internet on the nature of public debate, on the nature of truth itself.
“I think perhaps it’s possible that the internet is going to have a greater effect on the nature of being human than any other development in the brief history of human dominance on this planet.”
For a moment old motormouth is back. Only this time he catches himself and rewinds. “Which is why we need comedy. And that’s why I’ve written a full-tilt comedy, which I hope people will come and see. If they’re looking for a laugh, they don’t need to know about Shakespeare.”
