FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

The Irish Writer, Graham Linehan interviewed:

By Amy Raphael
Published: February 25 2006 BBC World News

Graham Linehan is a fidget. Sitting in a pub in north London on yet another grey afternoon, he fiddles with a small piece of paper, his mobile, a glass of water, his tufty hair. He is clearly smart, articulate and has a big comedy brain but sometimes he struggles to find the right words. He worries what his comments will look like in print - he knows the power the press wields, having spent years as a music and film journalist.

Yet Linehan should be used to interviews - not only has he been a journalist but he has also been a successful comedy writer for well over a decade. In 1995, when he was just 25, he created Father Ted with fellow Irishman Arthur Mathews, who was then 34. The show followed a group of priests who found themselves in unlikely situations - exiled to Craggy Island, they try to enter the Eurovision Song Contest or get lost in the lingerie department of a big store. It was a simple idea beautifully enacted that ran to three series and collected an embarrassment of awards.

In 2000, Linehan co-created Black Books with comedy actor Dylan Moran. Set in a second-hand bookshop, it was another sitcom displaying a love of detail, of understatement and of language. Although potentially the sort of series that might have remained a cult favourite, it drifted into the mainstream and in 2001 picked up a Bafta for best sitcom.

Since leaving behind the world of journalism around 1993 (he wrote for music magazine Hot Press while living in Dublin and then for Select, a UK music magazine that has since closed), Linehan has created material for just about every successful comedian in Britain and Ireland. In the early 1990s, while still involved in journalism, he started submitting sketches he'd written with Arthur Mathews to various shows and the comedy couple quickly found work on television show Alas Smith and Jones.

Linehan went on to write for Chris Morris, Harry Enfield, Steve Coogan, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. He remembers sitting on a train with Mathews, discussing the notion of a good comedy sketch. Passing a country house prompted a discussion about the relationship between master and groundsman. Linehan recalls they decided the master would ask the groundsman if he liked Tina Turner and they both laughed. From this Ralph and Ted were born, two of The Fast Show's strongest and most enduring characters.

In 2002, a few years after creating the surrealist sketch show Big Train with Arthur Mathews, Linehan directed the pilot for Little Britain. I talked to him about pitching it to the BBC at the time - it had enjoyed a successful run on Radio 4 but now had to translate into television. "I knew they had to be careful not to have the sketches too based on dialogue when they moved to TV. I wanted them to think more in terms of visual jokes. I wasn't thinking of Little Britain as cult TV, I'd rather it became a popular programme. We told the BBC we wanted it to be The Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise - a traditional, old-fashioned sketch show because there aren't any of those on TV."

By the second series, Little Britain had become a phenomenon. It may have had its roots in the old-fashioned sketch show but it ended up relying more on shock factor than on original, sharp dialogue. It is popular, massively so, but it certainly wouldn't fall easily into the category of family viewing.

Which is where Linehan's heart lies. He wants to make comedy that is gentle and old-fashioned but still absurd and silly and very funny.

When his new sitcom, The IT Crowd, first went on air at the start of February, he wanted Channel Four to warn that there would be "no strong language or violence from the start". Like Father Ted a decade ago, The IT Crowd works so well because the central characters - two hopelessly unsocialised technology geeks and their glamorous, female technophobe manager - are so strong and, though caricatures, very real, likeable and, finally, vulnerable.

Although Linehan has positive things to say about modern comedy, he is also depressed by much of it. "The Office did a brilliant thing: those glances to camera made it seem so authentic. I think one of the best things on TV just now is Harry Hill's TV Burp. It's great - it's on at 5.15pm and it's funnier than any show on Friday past 9pm. Because he can't use bad language, you get a wider range of comedy: satire, surrealism. He doesn't have to go forthe guaranteed, quickfire response of swearing and getting a laugh."

Linehan folds and unfolds the bit of paper and smiles. "Anyone who can make my wife laugh . . . she had to watch Harry Hill kneeling of the floor once, doubled up. But we sit in silence for so much telly." It's pretty quiet in the Linehan household when the likes of Tittybangbang or Bo' Selecta are on. The former is almost desperate in its desire to shock and titillate but sketches featuring characters having sex with cadavers and those with a craftwork circle who are naked from the belly button down . . . well, it's as tedious as Avid Merrion's bear getting a broom-stick erection on the latter.

I expect Linehan to be more reserved about such shows, especially given that Ash Atalla, producer of The Office and now The IT Crowd, also worked onBo' Selecta. "Oh god! Ash knows I hate it. The bear with the erection was a funny prank once or twice, when the guest didn't know it was going to happen, but like all these things it's just been driven into the ground. Catherine Tate was certainly guilty of using the same characters till there was no life left in them in her second series. But I've never seen a show whip so many dead horses as Bo' Selecta. It's extraordinarily bad. Apparently he's a nice guy though . . . "

Linehan is equallyunequivocal about BBC3's Tittybangbang. "Lucy Montgomery [who heads the show] is an incredibly talented actress but, because there are no rules, they just put in anything. A lot of the jokes are really horrible." He sighs. "Everyone just wants to get headlines. Everyone is nervous of looking old hat. It's all just noise at the moment. British TV has begun to look like a cross between Italian and Japanese TV - the TV we all used to mock. Endurance tests, naked girls dancing around. I've got to be careful here, I'm starting to sound like a Mary Whitehouse figure."

At the core of Linehan's frustration with comedy is censorship. He firmly believes that a lack of self-censorship is fatal. He talks about Seinfeld, one of his biggest influences, and the show created in its wake, Curb Your Enthusiasm. "Seinfeld had all these strictures enforced on it by NBC that meant they had to write very cleverly round things - so the masturbation scene never mentions the specific word. Curb Your Enthusiasm [starring Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld, playing himself pretty much] is on HBO and has few rules. It's a bit like something off the first Clash album - it's exciting but you don't go back to it over and over again."

I argue that Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is shot without a script, is so fresh that it's often as good as vintage Woody Allen. "Well, Larry David is very funny. But he's a billionaire now, he can do what he likes. Who's going to give him notes? I'm a big believer in discipline. It's like Irish writing during British rule was great because oppression made them find a way to express themselves. Larry David is answerable to no one these days. Yet if he was, he'd have to find clever ways to write round subjects rather than just tell that joke about masturbation."

Linehan says he loves a good dirty joke but swearing for the sake of it is lazy. In Father Ted there wasn't much swearing except for Father Jack and "feck" doesn't really count. In The IT Crowd, the F word appeared in the second episode but only because Chris Morris says it in a certain way and because Linehan decided "it was so funny I had to leave it in".

Morris, whose role as the deranged chief executive anchors The IT Crowd as you learn about the other characters and their foibles, is infamous for pushing the boundaries of comedy with shows such as Brass Eye(for which he was most notably shot down for a sketch about paedophilia). But Linehan insists that Morris is "officer class" and clever enough to get away with much of his satire. "He provides a bit of threat in the show, which is what I wanted - it couldn't be too gentle."

He smiles - Morris rarely talks to the press. "Chris hates me talking about him but he's an incredibly polite, sweet, intelligent guy who writes letters to everyone when he's finished working with them. He's a thoughtful gentleman. He's nothing like you'd expect."

If Morris is "officer class", then Linehan must surely be a comedy general when it comes to creating sitcoms. He is clearly a perfectionist in a class of his own. Ardal O'Hanlon, who played Father Dougal in Father Ted, laughs when he thinks back to working with Linehan. "He fainted once when somebody put the emphasis on the wrong word. He couldn't help it. When he laughed - a generous, instinctive, childish laugh - you knew you were on the right track. I never met a person quite like him."

O'Hanlon pauses. "He was absolutely sure about what was funny and what wasn't. You'd rarely want to change a line, so encyclopaedic was his knowledge of TV comedy and so obsessive was his attention to detail. He really, really loves it. I was surprised when he got married and had a child."

Linehan says now that he's writing on his own, without Arthur Mathews or Dylan Moran, he uses his wife as a kind of unofficial writing partner, testing material out on her first. He insists that having a baby has made him less pretentious, has made him think less of "growing as an artist" and more of getting a job done. Yet he is very much in demand. He has just reluctantly turned down the offer of directing Steve Coogan's new series and is hoping that Channel Four will commission a second series of The IT Crowd.

Above all, he is hoping that the gentle, retro feel of The IT Crowd will make people think about what they want from comedy. "My desire is to make a lot of the stuff that's around look like old hat. I'd love people to see a Tittybangbang-type show, say 'yuk' and turn it off." He smiles. "But to turn back on again for The IT Crowd and watch it with their family."