Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject: Harry Hill
Deconstructing Harry Hill 22/09/2007
Harry Hill takes Helen Brown for an ice cream - and an insight into his strange world
# Five Celebrity Children's Authors
Bald head, big collar, black specs: Harry Hill is one of Britain’s most immediately recognisable comedians. Yet on the day I have arranged to meet him at the café in London’s Battersea Park, life is playing a prank on me. I’ve picked up my old glasses and through the ensuing blur I observe a statistically improbable collective of shiny-pated myopics.
So I retreat to my own table where I flick though Hill’s new picture book: The Further Adventures of the Queen Mum, in which the last Queen of Ireland and Empress of India is depicted leaning menacingly across her two walking canes and captioned “I’m comin’ atcha!”
Soon Hill himself is comin’ at me, wheeling an old-fashioned woman’s bicycle, with a rubber elephant’s-head horn clamped to the handlebars. His greeting is a controlled combination of confidence and reserve. Behind the zany frames, the former doctor’s pale blue eyes are diagnostic. The man who quit medicine for comedy when his local authority charged him poll tax for the room he slept in while on call requests a vanilla ice-cream cone. It’s an endearingly childlike order, but perhaps misleading: he never quite lets me relax into our conversation.
But that’s how Hill works. His surreal brand of humour walks a superbly successful tightrope between the silly and the sinister, the mainstream and the elite. He could be sending either (or neither) up at any moment. The comedy historian Oliver Double has described him as “Ronnie Corbett possessed by the ghost of Salvador Dalí”.
His account of the Queen Mum fighting crime and global warming isn’t Hill’s first venture into the crowded celeb-authored picture-book market. Tim the Tiny Horse, about a little blue horse who lives in a matchbox (with a Tic Tac box conservatory) was published last year to huge delight from young and old readers alike.
One customer reviewer on Amazon says she bought the book for her seven-year-old niece “but fell in love with Tim after the first few pages and so devoured the whole thing myself. I passed it on to my hubby, who laughed so much he snorted tea through his nose. I still find myself with a warm smile.”
Hill says he has just finished a sequel “in which Tim’s best friend, fly, has a family, a baby maggot, and is therefore seeing less of Tim. So he gets a pet greenfly called George. It’s sweet.” The publishers asked for more from the man who consistently refers to his comedy as “sweet” and “silly”, “in the Tommy Cooper tradition” over the more alienating “surreal”.
“And The Further Adventures of the Queen Mum was a good title. Although I’d thought it might cause…” Controversy? “Mmm. Bricks through the window, all that. But they liked it, so off I went. We were on holiday in Spain when she died. We were going round the supermarkets and all the televisions in them were all tuned in to the funeral. She’s just an iconic figure that we don’t know very much about.”
Is the book aimed at children, I ask. I’m worried they won’t know who its heroine is, even if they do recognise the rest of the tabloid cast: Kate Moss, the Beckhams, Karl Lagerfeld, Elton John, George Bush and Mother Theresa. Hill says his publishers think it’s a “gift book” for adults as well as children.
I think it’s dreamlike. But Hill seems faintly appalled at the idea that people’s nocturnal narratives should feature the famous. His own don’t. “That sounds like a weird phenomenon,” he says sternly. “Can you dream about somebody you haven’t met?” I shyly admit that I have. “What a colourful dreamlife you must have,” he says with heavy disapproval. “How shallow.”
I counter that much of Hill’s comedy is based on sending up the famous. His TV Burp series for ITV relied on its viewers having seen a good percentage of the prime-time hours he so cleverly satirised. “A lot of my stuff by nature includes celebrity references,” he nods. “It’s a shorthand, isn’t it?” He warms up. “When you go to one of those award ceremonies and you have them [celebrities] in high density, it’s an odd thing, a bit like a dream. Like Madame Tussauds, they don’t look like they do on TV. They look smaller and you don’t know them at all. Then you meet some soap actors and they’re exactly like their characters.”
Hill tries to avoid that world. It seems he wants to be liked and is “scared that people will come up and confront me for being rude about them on TV Burp. I try to make fun of the character, not the actor. I’ll say, 'Pat from EastEnders is a bit of a slapper,’ not 'The actress Pam St Clement is a slapper.’ She’s very nice, actually.” EastEnders, he says, is his favourite soap “because it takes itself so seriously”.
People in the comedy business are big admirers of Hill. One comic, who writes for Radio 4 where Hill started out with his Fruit Corner show in 1993, before he transferred to television in 1994, says: “Hill’s both a popular success and a genuinely innovative and widely admired comedian. I can’t think of too many others in that category. His particular gift, I think, is that all his material somehow seems like it comes from within his own world, rather than from him observing a world.”
Yet Hill still frets about his popularity. He tells me that “Tom Walsh, the guy off Ground Force, once told the press that he hated me. It’s such a strong word, hate, isn’t it? I remember Jasper Carrot hit it on the head. He said that people hate comedians more than any other type of performer, because comedy is such a subjective thing. If you didn’t like Pavarotti, you wouldn’t say 'That’s crap.’ You might say opera’s not your thing, but you would still appreciate there’s something in it. It’s odd that people feel they can say about a successful comedian: 'He’s crap, he’s not funny.’ ”
Despite a recent Ofcom ruling against him (for featuring a clip of adventurer Bear Grylls eating a turtle on TV Burp), Hill says he rarely causes offence, although his wife recently tried to warn him off a joke which he tries out on me now: “I say: 'I went to a shop to buy a pair of Speedo swimming trunks. So the man gives me a pair and I go and try them on and they’re very, y’know, brief. Very embarrassing. And I say to the man, this pair of swimming trunks are a bit too revealing for me. They’re not what I expected. And he says, 'Well what did you want?’ and I said, 'a pair of Speedo swimming trunks’ and he said, 'Oooh, I thought you said a pair of paedo swimming trunks.’
My wife said, 'You cant do a joke about a paedophile.’ But you can. It’s just a pun.” I’m unconvinced.
Hill’s new projects include “a piss-take of soap operas, they’re crying out for it”. Set around a duck pond, the project is currently titled “Soapington Way”. “I’m not Harry Hill in it,” says the man tucking the dry end of his ice cream cone into the table crack. “My character’s Arthur Buttons. And you’ll only see the hair of the character who’s my nan because she’s too short to peer over the bar. And there’s a mad sex-change character who’s my sister, who I fall in love with.”
Hill’s other project in progress, one that follows neatly on from his role as presenter of You’ve Been Framed, is a pilot for new type of Beadle’s About. I’ve never been a fan of practical jokes, I tell my interviewee. I feel too much empathy with the victims. Hill warmly agrees.
“That’s always been my beef with prank shows: how are you supposed to react?” he says. “And although we all laughed, the host was always a hate figure. There are other ways of doing it, I think.” So we won’t hate you? “Exactly,” says Hill. “The idea is that it would be sweet.”
'The Further Adventures of the Queen Mum' (Faber) is published on Oct 4.
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Here's a few clips to give you an idea what he's like if you don't know him.
Harry’s king of the Hill 21st December 2007
By Daily Echo reporter
HARRY Hill says, not a little excitedly: "We're up against our arch-rival, EastEnders," as he announces the fact his festive edition of TV Burp will be sandwiched between Coronation Street and Emmerdale at 8pm on Christmas Day. It's like David versus Goliath - we're just the little guy with the sling."
However he fares in the ratings, it's a prestigious slot for the comedy show which is now in its seventh series and has been catapulted all over the schedule. And further proof that the 43-year-old funnyman is now one of Britain's most beloved comics, someone with the ability to unite all factions of the telly-watching public.
More importantly, for fans of Harry, it's a chance once again to dip into his bizarre mind as he guides us through the Christmas TV minefield. "EastEnders is running the same story as a few years ago when Arthur nicked the Christmas Club money," he laughs. "Normally what happens in EastEnders is someone says: It's going to be the best Christmas ever' and then gets slapped round the face and ends up in tears. In Emmerdale, something explodes, normally The Woolpack. And with Corrie, there's normally some sort of misunderstanding. This year it's a misunderstanding about knickers."
Though he is not averse to sending them up, it's clear Harry mostly enjoys the process of watching the shows (and he insists he does watch everything he talks about), though he admits it does have its struggles. "At the moment, I've come to it fresh - I've had the summer off," he says." But if you ask me again in April when the series finishes, I might have a different answer. I tend to watch TV for three months, all day, every day and then when the series finishes I don't watch anything for the same period of time as I'm coming down off it. I have to wean myself back on to TV."
While the winner has already been announced, The X Factor will be getting its dues on the show, particularly since it is one of Harry's favourite programmes and the contestants a great source of interest. "As long as there's panto, there'll be Same Difference," he grins. "And I'm going to start flogging Rhydian wigs, that's the thing to get into."
But luckily, in the wake of this year's phone-in scandal, he won't have to conjure up some sort of big money competition starring Stouffer The Cat. "That's the thing with ITV, it's get them voting on the phones," he explains. "It's crucial, because Christmas is a very expensive time, not just for people, but for TV companies so they need to get money coming in. We will point out that the phones are now closed for I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here," he adds. "If anyone does phone in, they will be charged and it could result in Ant and Dec getting a bigger house."
Surely Harry's been asked to go on I'm A Celebrity? "I live in Battersea. London, where we have a big park," he laughs. "It's handier! I think my general rule is that I don't want to a show where the public might vote you off. I'm too sensitive and you can't hide the fact that you're not that nice a bloke. You can get away with it for half an hour a week on a scripted show, but every night, people are going to work it out. With those shows, you can't hide your true personality."
Who the real Harry Hill is remains a mystery of sorts. Dr Matthew Hall (his real name) is far removed from his on-stage character and mentions "the act, the Harry Hill thing" in the third person. Yet he still occasionally slips into Harry's mindset, half-answering questions in that flight of fancy way he does so brilliantly on-stage. Perhaps it's best to imagine "telly Harry" as a kind of Worzel Gummidge head that he takes out of the cupboard and screws on when necessary.
Either way, he says he's not going to change. "I can only do this stuff," he says. "I always thought it was really mainstream, if it just got a chance to be seen by more people, it could be popular." He was right. So popular in fact, that he's even met the Queen several times, although this year was a bit different as he released a quirky novel called The Further Adventures Of The Queen Mum, which sees the late royal sent back to Earth by God to do good deeds. "I haven't been summoned to the Palace for a read-through," he reveals. "My main worry is that maybe she hasn't got a copy. I must admit, I didn't do the Royal Variety this year because I was worried she might throw a pie at me."
With his tome on the shelves and the research for the new series of TV Burp waiting until the New Year, Harry is looking forward, kind of, to Christmas. "I look forward to it and dread it at the same time," he says of the holidays. "It's all the things that are great about life, food, drink and the family, but it's also full of the bad things in life like food, drink and the family! People say spare a thought for people who are alone at Christmas, I think you should be sparing a thought for people who aren't alone."
But does he have something specific on his gift wish-list? "Really what I want is money!" he jokes, before adding: "I don't really want for anything. Our house is full of rubbish. I've got three stuffed dogs in my house and I've got a stuffed squirrel and about ten ukuleles..."
He takes a pause and finally the bulb goes off as to that dream pressie. "I want one of those head and shoulders doll things where you can comb the hair. It's like a lady's head that you can brush. Because I don't get that sensation anymore, so it would be nice to just do that."
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I'm really looking forward to this Christmas show - it's bound to be brilliant.
Comic Harry Hill has written new spoof pub soap for ITV Mark Jefferies
www.mirror.co.uk
22/04/2008
Double Bafta winner Harry Hill has written a spoof soap for ITV. The 43-year-old will play a pub landlord called Arthur Buttons in Soapington Way. Hill, who scooped best entertainment programme and best performance prizes for his TV Burp, has already made a pilot. Liza Tarbuck stars as his mum alongside actors Mark Benton and Kate Robbins.
Hill said: "It's a mickey take of a soap. But it won't be out for a while because I'm so tied up with TV Burp. I think it will be ready next summer. Liza played my mum, she was fantastic."
Hill often mocks soaps on his ITV1 show, which has just finished its seventh run.
Hot under the collar With his trademark bald head, big specs and outsize shirt, Harry Hill has gone from junior doctor to quirky comic to national treasure of British TV. What next? Mark Lawson asks him The Guardian,
Saturday November 15 2008
The man parking his bicycle beside a cafe in Battersea Park reminds you of a famous comedian. The long raincoat and cloth cap resemble the outfit Eric Morecambe used to wear when he shuffled across the back of the stage during the routines in which the shtick was that Ernie Wise had sacked him from the act. Having secured the bike - more district nurse than showbiz celebrity, with a basket on the front - he removes the cap and there is Harry Hill's bald pate, but the glasses are small and thin-rimmed rather than the bulky batwing pair worn by the presenter of TV Burp and You've Been Framed!
The figure entering the Gondola cafe - a bandstand-shaped Italian eaterie with a sign warning that meals eaten by pigeons will not be refunded - is not Harry Hill; it is Dr Matthew Hall, a 44-year-old who left the NHS when he realised he could inflict a different kind of stitches on the public as a floppy-collared, goggle-eyed, manic-voiced comedian. So is this Hill or Hall sitting opposite me sipping water?
Comic alter egos are a funny business. Barry Humphries, when in character as Dame Edna Everage, is reputed to answer only to his pseudonym, blanking anyone who says, "Hi, Bazza." Contrastingly, Al Murray, known to be one of the best showbiz friends of Harry Hill, becomes The Pub Landlord only when he's paid to be and prints his own name on the covers of the DVDs as well. Either way, for anyone who knows the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, there's a fascination in a person who is two people.
The Hill/Hall division, though, is different. Murray and Humphries have characters, Landlord and Edna; producers can choose which one to book, journalists which to interview. But this performer has a single persona whether he's doing stand-up or presenting.
"What are you called at home?" I start. "Matthew or Matt or...?" He flashes the big, silly grin that is one of Harry's trademarks: "Darling, mainly, at home. Or Daddy."
Mr Hill/Dr Hall lives in Battersea with his wife, Magda, an illustrator, and three young children, Kitty, Winnie and Freddie. "What does your mother call you?" "Matthew. Most old friends call me that, or Matt. Al Murray calls me 'Harry', which I think he feels a bit awkward about now. But when we met, we met professionally and I never used to say to people, 'Oh, my real name is Matthew.' They don't know me as anything else. My agent calls me Harry."
"But Harry's separate from you, an exaggeration?" "No, not really. I think of him as me. Sometimes I have, well, almost an identity crisis because of it. And I'll say to myself, 'Come on, Harry', in that way. But, on the other hand, when I'm trying out stuff for a tour, my agent will sometimes come to see it and say, 'It's fine, you've just got to Harry it up.' "
Harry Hill's appearance on stage and screen suggests successive visits to a short-sighted tailor and a sadistic optometrist. The shirt collars are ludicrously large but, as if to even out cloth quotas, the trousers comically short. The huge horn-rimmed spectacles hint at a bargain purchase of frames made for someone with a much larger face.
The jokes, too, veer between big and small, adult and junior sizes - check out the live DVD of the triumphant Hooves stand-up tour. Unusually for a modern comic, Hill's TV success has been in pre-watershed slots: children enjoy such stunts as "inter-species tennis", in which members of the audience play swing ball against a cuddly toy controlled by Hill.
But the rapid wordplay - "Gamblers Anonymous: how do they know where to send your winnings? Why is it only Tudor buildings we mock?" - is more grown-up, although almost never smuttily so. The single adjective most used by those both producing and reviewing Harry Hill shows is "daft". This tone is immediately set by the fact that the character looks as if he dressed hurriedly in the dark in a room he shares with a much larger person.
"The costume helps me a lot," he says. "Obviously, if I'm writing a show, I just wear normal shirts, but it is a strange thing - I did Steve Wright on the radio the other day and, although I wore an ordinary suit and a normal-size collar, I did take the other glasses. It's odd. In the dressing room, before a live gig, there is a sort of ritual of getting into the character as you get into the costume. But on the opening night of one tour, in Guildford, I opened my bags and realised I'd just brought an ordinary shirt. And it really was a panic attack. I phoned my wife and worked out how long it would take to get a stage-shirt to me on a bike. But there wasn't time. So I wore the shirt I had and put some cardboard in the neck and just kept pulling it up as far as it would go but it felt very odd. I imagined them all thinking, 'Where's the shirt? We've come to see the collar comedian.' "
"How did the look develop?"
"It wasn't really a big bang, it was gradual. When I started stand-up, in 1990, I had 60s suits from Oxfam, a normal shirt and, at one point, a spangly waistcoat. And then I was on a bill with [Irish comedian] Ian Macpherson and he said, 'Good act, but I can see you losing the waistcoat.' Never wore it again. And then I found a big shirt, and the glasses were ones I had bought and worn when I was a doctor: I thought they were a bit Buddy Holly. And I became known as the 'comedian in the big collar'. And so I had some made. One tour, I had a really big one made for the encores. The idea was that I would come back on with just the top of my head showing. But they couldn't support themselves and so they fell down the back and I ended up looking like a sailor and people expected a sea shanty. It was just a piece of luck, but I am grateful for it because, with so many comedians around, it's good to have something that stands out."
"Would you ever retire the shirt, as they say in sport?"
"I have thought about it. I drew up some designs once to relaunch myself in a kind of Elvis white jumpsuit, with different words written on - the idea was I'd strike a pose and the words would spell a message. But I realised I would have to be a contortionist to make it work. Sometimes I get a bit tired of it. When I was having the pictures taken the other day for this piece, I said to my wife, 'Oh God, got to go and put on the monkey suit again.' But once it's on, I always think, 'Right, here we go. We're off.' "
Matthew Hall grew up in Surrey and Kent in the 60s and 70s. His parents separated when he was five, meaning alternate weekends in two houses with new spouses: "It was a bad thing. It was less common then and it was embarrassing at school - 'Why does your mum have a different name from you?' "
Rather as the young Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch bonds with his estranged dad over football, Matthew forged a relationship through bomb-making. Encouraged by his father's stories of making fireworks and blowing things up in childhood, he asked for a chemistry set. Aged 12, he set up a company with two friends making fireworks, smoke bombs and invisible ink. Their bestseller was a pink pyrotechnic called Vulcan Spray, concocted with a bottle of potassium nitrate, sent by his mate Patrick's aunt, a chemistry teacher.
The TV programmes he most remembers watching are Morecambe And Wise and The Generation Game, with its original host, Bruce Forsyth. This is revealing because, though Hall's chosen pseudonym puts him next to Benny Hill in encyclopedias of comedy, Harry's silliness is less sexual. Like Forsyth, Eric and Ernie, he aims at family entertainment.
Matthew was a bit of a joker at school but, although English was his favourite subject, he was encouraged towards a profession - his stepfather was a commuter on the Surrey-London run. Dr Matthew Hall qualified at St George's hospital in Tooting at the end of the 80s, a period when junior doctors were expected to work almost completely sleepless weeks.
"Do people ever write to you or come round after a gig and say, 'You fixed my fistula' or whatever?"
"No, never. I wasn't in it for that long and I had hair then and different glasses."
"Do you think you were a good doctor?"
"I don't think I'd have wanted me as a doctor for anything complicated. But I was quite empathetic, pastorally quite good. I ran a cardiology and diabetes clinic and I was told it was supposed to be over by 1pm. And I'd take my time and finish at about 3pm."
Although there aren't enough examples to qualify as an epidemic, a significant number of NHS staff have dropped out to enter comedy: Jonathan Miller, Graeme Garden, Phil Hammond, John MacUre (who writes TV comedies, including Bodies, as Jed Mercurio). This is probably because of the tradition of late-night comedy revues in teaching hospitals - which Hall took part in, though he "was always trying to get in non-medical jokes" - and the way in which the medical profession inevitably uses comedy as a counterpoint to tragedy. Doctoring and stand-up comedy are the only two professions in which failure is described as "dying".
"Did you have any of those comedy emergencies we read about - people who've slipped and sat on a bottle, or claim to have?"
"Never had one of those. I think what happens is, if it happens once somewhere, the story gets passed around. There was a book in the library that had a picture of someone who had got the gear stick of a Mini Clubman up their bottom and you could go and get that out. It does encourage a black sense of humour. The point is you see people in extremis."
At the end of his first year as a qualified doctor, the consultant called him in for the mandatory careers chat and asked whether he was planning to specialise in cardiology or respirology. He replied that he was going to be a comedian. He told his mother he was going to take a year off. Alarmed, she asked one of Matthew's friends to persuade him to join an amateur dramatics society and go on being a doctor.
Between rent-raising shifts as a locum, he wrote gags for the Radio 4 show Week Ending, surreptitiously faxing them from a hospital machine that was supposed to be kept free at all times in case news of a transplanted heart came through. He began to play gigs and Harry Hill began to get him by the big, floppy neck. Dr Matthew Hall was disappearing.
"Is the doctor side totally switched off?"
"It's an odd one because I have this area of knowledge but it's 20 years old, so it's unreliable. Recently, I was driving along and there was a kid in the road, having come off a bike, and a girl in a cocktail dress, crying. So I stopped the car and said, 'I used to be a doctor', and they said, 'Great.' And I was thinking: what should I do? And then this first-aider came along and said, 'Have you cleared the airwaves?' and I thought, 'Oh, yeah, clear the airwaves.' So since then I've thought this is silly and I shouldn't do it."
"So if you were on a plane or in a theatre now and they said, 'Is there a doctor present?' you would have to think hard?"
"Well, I was on Eurostar recently and there was an announcement for a doctor if one was on board and I didn't do anything."
"Do you wake up in the night fearing that the person might have died?"
"Well, I saw someone running past, answering the call, so it was all right."
"But if they asked again, you'd have to go?"
"Oh, yes. That's the thing about it."
"Have you ever felt guilty about the sheer cost to the taxpayer?"
"I have been harangued. On Radio 5 Live, a bloke rang in and said, 'I think it's disgusting.' And someone sent me the lyrics to a Fall song, by Mark E Smith, and it's about 'that Harry Hill, all that taxpayers' money, when we're crying out for doctors'. And, just for the record, I did have a full grant, all the way through, five years. But I'd say, who do you want to be seen by: a doctor who wants to be a doctor, or one who's thinking up jokes?"
Recently, a TV producer thought it would be a neat joke for Hill to do a voiceover for a documentary about trainee doctors: "But I couldn't get the intonation right. I'd say a line like, 'If this procedure goes wrong, the patient may die', and it would sound like a joke. I think they really needed Michael Buerk."
Hall's transformation into Hill began seriously in 1993, when Radio 4 transmitted Harry Hill's Fruit Corner. The collars and trousers were inevitably less significant in this format, but the show established an alternative biography for the character, including an unreliable wife, May Sung, and a son, Little Alan. In 1997, a version of the radio format became The Harry Hill Show on Channel 4, which also featured elements of his stand-up act such as Stouffer the cat, a bright blue puppet with a deep foreign voice who blurts blunt catchphrases ("He got a big face!"), ventriloquised, deliberately badly, by Hill.
His profile built steadily for a decade until, this year, Harry Hill's TV Burp took the Bafta awards for both entertainment programme and performance. Apart from Ant & Dec, Hill has become ITV1's only reliable asset during a period of retreat by viewers and advertisers. But, initially, his contract with the third channel had been a matter of third choice. After series three of The Harry Hill Show, Channel 4 offered no further work. There were reports of tension between the network and Hill's management company, Avalon, which has a reputation for sometimes being over-demanding on behalf of its clients. And C4, specialising in adult comedy, also seems to have had trouble appreciating the innocent silliness of Hill's routines: "We had a note from an executive saying, 'Does he realise we can see his mouth moving when he does the routine with the cat?' "
Hill admits that he and Avalon tried to get the BBC interested before succumbing to flirtation from the service most struggling to adjust to the digital era. The tabloids insist Hill has a "million-a-year handcuffs deal" with ITV: "Rubbish," he says. "They just make up these amounts." Whatever the deal is, though, both sides have greatly benefited. ITV has been the making of him, creating a mainstream identification that increased the fanbase for the stand-up act.
He's irritated that many viewers and reviewers seem to think that there have been only two series of TV Burp, when the current run is the eighth since 2001. The likely reason for this lag in recognition is that two developments were happening in parallel: Hill was getting better and better, while British television was becoming worse and worse. Thus, by around the sixth series, the links and the clips from other programmes had reached optimum levels of perfection and imperfection respectively. Indeed, perversely, ITV's general decline assisted Hill's rise: excerpts from duds and clunkers desperately hidden away on ITV 2, 3 and 4 were gleefully promoted to the main network for jokey demolition on TV Burp.
Dumping on your own corporate doorstep is a delicate manoeuvre, but Hill says ITV has never tried to protect any of its performers or programmes from attack, although there have been angry looks from soap stars at awards ceremonies and Tommy Walsh of Ground Force slagged him off to an interviewer. The only serious drawback he can see is that watching TV ceases to be entertaining: "It does ruin it for you. I just sit there looking for gags and the worse it is, the better it might be for our purposes. My wife spends more and more time reading books in the kitchen."
Recently, ITV1 added You've Been Framed! to his portfolio. Pre-Hill, this was a croaking show in which a host wryly introduced home videos of Dad catching fire at the barbecue or a pageboy having a hissy at Aunt Kath's wedding. Originally, the captured mishaps had at least been genuine, but it now seemed clear events were being staged to get the screen time and a fee. Hill's innovation was to treat the send-ins as pegs for comic commentary, much as Clive James once dealt with foreign gameshows and ads.
"I didn't want to do it at first," he admits. "It was my wife who persuaded me. She said, when all the rest has dried up, that one will still be going."
His agreement to this domestic pension plan means that, in effect, both his vehicles turn bad TV into must-see viewing through the trick of a presenter subversively undermining the material. Traditionally, in clip shows, the footage carries the kick but, under Hill, the introductions are at least as funny.
The impact of the formats was increased when ITV1 scheduled You've Been Framed! and TV Burp back-to-back on Saturday nights, a very rare accolade for a performer. Hill believes this was accidental - because he provides only a voiceover on Framed, "they didn't see it as a Harry Hill show" - but the double slot maximised his TV presence and popularity. And, in the way of a television success, those twinned hits are now themselves doubled: the latest run of Burp will last for half a year. The Hill franchise has also diversified into charmingly silly children's books: Tim The Tiny Horse and The Further Adventures Of The Queen Mum, in which the late royal operates as a kind of celestial detective. He admits that he did not mention this publication when meeting the central character's daughter at the Royal Variety Performance.
He expects the next couple of years to continue this pattern: Burp, Framed, books, stand-up. Just before we met, newspapers had reported a "£4m offer" from the BBC to revive The Generation Game. "No," insists Hill, "it's made up, that story. Absolutely no truth in it." This year, for the first time, he was invited to the annual party held by BBC director general Mark Thompson at the first night of the Proms: "I was curious and had never been before. I walked down the row and saw this old guy, who turned out to be David Attenborough, and then there was Terry Wogan. And Mark Thompson said, 'Oh, hi', and that was that. We listened to some music and went home. And, from that, come reports of a £4m offer to do The Generation Game."
A woman at a nearby table begins to choke and I briefly wonder if the Harry Hill/Dr Hall division will be challenged again. But her throat clears and he is able to remain just Harry - which, whatever Mark E Smith may think, seems the best arrangement.
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