you are my sweetest downfall

Jun. '12

Most comedy performers prefer to have some involvement in the writing process. Not Humph. In 15 years, we never had a script meeting, nor even a quick discussion about a single word he was going to read. His attitude was that the writing of the script wasn’t his job. His job was to read it. And yet it seems never to have occurred to many of his listeners that Humph actually had a script, even though he’d often point out during the broadcast that he was reading it for the first time.

During his silent, solitary pre-show read-through in a dingy corner of the theatre, I would occasionally spot him scribbling notes when he discovered a typo or a grammatical error. He was making notes to remind himself to point them out. He would delight in stopping, mid-performance, to announce that when he was supposed to say “genteel”, for example, the script said “gentile”. Sometimes he would even read the stage directions. After a set-piece game, he might say: “‘If that dies on its arse, make them do another one.’ I don’t think I was meant to read that bit.” Or: “… the title will be provided by the technical wizardry of the multi-pixelated laser display screen. ‘Wait while someone comes on with piece of cardboard.’”

It was as if Humph occasionally felt the show was going too well, was too professionally slick, and he felt the need to remind us not only what a rank amateur he was, but that all those around him were even worse. As he didn’t get involved in the writing, he could make great play of being dismissive of his script and bolster his “couldn’t care less” attitude. This wasn’t an act - he really couldn’t have cared less. That’s not to say he wasn’t the complete professional, but he didn’t need to prove anything. He had no future comedy career to worry about. It didn’t even occur to him that he was funny. He often said that the others on the show were professional comedians, so why would he, a trumpeter, try to compete? He just found certain things funny, and he shared them with people around him whom he hoped would also find them funny.

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Iain Pattinson, on Humphrey Lyttelton. (via bottleonthebookcase)

(Source: Guardian)