What Have I Done? by Ben Elton – Audiobook Review
By Roger Crow
Many of us of a certain age remember when Bel Elton burst onto Channel 4 in the 1980s. His ‘double seat’ routine touched a chord with millions of train commuters, while his success as one of the brains behind BBC smash The Young Ones became the stuff of legend.
What’s been less well documented is the years since he dropped out of the TV limelight. His romance with a musician, which saw him move to Australia; the attempt to breathe life into Queen’s jukebox musical We Will Rock You, and all those other projects. And there were a lot of them. Some of the highlights in his autobiography include being brought in to help polish the script for Shrek 2; Dreamworks’ big cheese Jeffrey Katzenberg giving him the chance to write and direct his own movie, and all the other ‘broken crockery’, aka unrealised projects.
It begins with some of the highlights of his career; segues into a heartbreaking assessment of how his family survived one of the darkest times of the last 100 years, and his early years at college.
As a passionate, prolific writer, his early days of trying to get projects off the ground were doomed to failure, until he finally started to get a few breaks.
“Savage criticism”
And one of the biggest was his friendship with Rik Mayall, whose star was on the rise in the early eighties. When he got the green light for a series called The Young Ones, Ben was the obvious choice to come in and shape it into the masterpiece it became.
And then of course there were the hit and miss follow-ups; the majestic glory of Blackadder II, and all of those other offerings. The plays, the novels, the musicals, the savage criticism by many critics who were desperate to see We Will Rock You fail. In fact a third of the book seems like Ben’s reaction to all the critics whose knives were out, and constantly being sharpened with everything he created.
It’s testament to how good the audiobook is that I sit through all 16 hours in about four sittings. If you’ve not read or listened to it already, I’d recommend it as a companion piece to Adrian Edmondson’s Berserker; both fascinating takes on The Young Ones story, and the brilliant rise and fall of the much-missed Rik.
What Have I Done? A little bit of genius? Yes indeed ladies and gentlemen.
‘What Have I Done’ by Ben Elton is published by Macmillan
Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com; nostalgiahhh film podcast
