Coming up today, what made rising star Andy Millman
punch a defenceless Down's syndrome child
and his elderly, wheelchair-bound mother in the face?
Denise Robertson will be here to speculate.
If you've got your anonymity and you make a fool of yourself in a restaurant,
people say, "There was a guy in here, oh, you should have seen it."
Now they'd go, "God, Andy Millman off When The Whistle Blows was in here,
"he made a complete prat of himself." And that gets into folklore.
Excuse me, I understand you have a problem with me bringing my son into a restaurant?
- If he's like that, yes. - Andy...
- What do you mean, like that? - Well, why should we be burdened?
I mean, episode 3 is really all about that.
I hope you have a wonderful evening,
and that you realise you're a horrible little man.
Ooh. No, I didn't realise it.
The scene that starts it all with the guy with Down's syndrome,
and it's sort of an honest mistake, but because he's famous,
anything he does now gets in the paper and exaggerated.
"Millman had been glugging red wine
"and let off a tirade of abuse at the innocent child and his stunned mother,
"who he claimed was as mad as her son."
I didn't say that.
I don't think it was intended to sort of suggest,
"Oh, woe is the celebrity who must struggle through press intrusion."
It was more the idea again that it's funnier for Andy now that he's famous
because, as you say, people are monitoring him and watching him,
and things can escalate and spiral into the most comically absurd ways.
Annoyingly, they didn't sort of go with the giving the kid an X-Box angle.
What did they go with?
"TV Bully Kicks Dwarf In Face."
Accurate. But as you say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
-"Pick On Someone Your Own Size, Fatty." - Oh, maybe there is.
People often say, "Oh, your comedy is politically incorrect,"
and I think we've always felt that it's not, actually, it's politically correct.
This is my agent.
- Darren Lamb. Nice to meet you. - Hi.
This is Warwick.
- Where? - There.
Oh! Midget. Hello.
The reason that those uncomfortable issues, like disability or race or whatever,
why they're interesting in comic terms is because
people feel uncomfortable dealing with those areas sometimes,
if they don't feel relaxed about those subjects.
And so, as soon as there's an anxiety about something,
there's always comedy in the wings waiting to burst through.
- What? - Jesus, look. Pissed up, over there.
She's had a few.
GERVAIS: In series one,
where I mistakenly think that the girl with cerebral palsy is drunk.
- That's my sister. - Uh?
She's got cerebral palsy.
What makes it worse, her sister's sitting there.
She goes, "That's my sister. She's got cerebral palsy."
And then the backtracking's funny as well. "No, no. Not her. Not..."
Whereas he should have gone, "Sorry, didn't know. Sorry about that."
But it's... The fun is people digging a hole.
She was saying the only thing that keeps her going
is the thought that one day she'll be in heaven and everything will be all right.
And I didn't wanna go, "No, you're barking up the wrong tree, love.
"There's no God, there's no heaven,
"you're not gonna be up there talking normally and running around on legs
"and playing volleyball and everything."
We're not laughing at cerebral palsy or Down's syndrome.
We're laughing at the anxiety of someone confronted with those things
and dealing with them inappropriately.
This chair free?
Yeah.
An idea that we had from the first series was Daniel Radcliffe acting like a teenager
who's trying to impress with his smoking and then getting caught by his mum.
I don't know why, that just seemed amusing to us straightaway.
- Yeah. - Because he's so identified
with this do-gooding wizard schoolboy.
I think people generally tend to think that,
from interviews or whatever, they sort of know you,
and it would be nice to just completely...
Not that I am particularly playing myself in the episode,
but it would be nice to sort of temporarily destroy the image they think they have of me.
We'd have liked him, obviously, to have been dressed as Harry Potter.
But I think there was concerns from various people
-that it's a very protected brand and... - We had to be very careful with what we said.
And various things we couldn't say or do, but, therefore, we wanted to give him
a costume that perhaps implied a magical fantasy film
without it being clearly Harry Potter. And a Boy Scout is the obvious example.
- With a wood-elf. - With a little magical wood-elf.
- That says magical film to me straightaway. - A magical wood-elf?
- A wood-elf playing a flute. -It's a magical film. Yeah.
That to me says magical film.
I had Ricky's number to call him up. I was told to call, so I called him up,
and then we chatted for probably 20 minutes about the episode,
and the fact that I was gonna get to flick a condom onto the head of,
at that time, an unconfirmed dame.
And that sold it, really. That was all I needed to know.
I think, of the various requests we've made of various celebrities,
some of the biggest asks were in this series.
I mean, Dame Diana Rigg with a condom on her head.
Let's just hope it's big enough.
We were on the bus and it was a really hot day.
It was about 98 degrees, we were all sweating.
And I remember we had to get through this, and we only had her for the afternoon,
and I remember at one point going,
"Oh, can you dangle the condom a little bit more over her eye?"
And someone was doing this and she's there, just there,
and I thought, "That's a weird day's work."
- It's a strange image. - That's a strange thing to do.
"What did you do today?"
"Just asked Dame Diana to pop the condom a little bit more over her eye."
Excuse me. Haven't you forgotten something?
Oh, thank you, Dame Diana.
People sometimes ask us why do we think that the stars are willing to take part
for no money and everything.
And I don't know. I think, hopefully, it's a fun day for them.
We had three scenes to do, we got them all done,
it's a really fast way of working.
And you don't feel quite as nervous about laughing.
Thank you, Dame Diana.
- Still gonna use that, yeah? - It'll be fine.
(LAUGHING)
There's no pressure on them
because they straightaway see that we don't really know what we're doing,
and I fuck up my lines and corpse at the slightest things.
So they think, "Well, if it's okay for him, there's nothing to beat here."
- Still gonna use it, then? - Yeah, it'll be fine.
- MERCHANT: Okay, one more, one more. - So close!
On most things people work on, if they're doing an eight-hour day,
probably one hour is acting and seven is waiting round in a Winnebago.
And we work very fast, we go, "Let's do it again, let's do this."
Ricky doesn't come in till, like,
10:00, and he wants to make sure we leave by 3:00. So the hours are fantastic.
The performance remains fresh the faster you work.
Too much rehearsal, too much planning,
- too much time spent setting everything up... - I think so.
...can sort of bring the energy levels down.
Of course, that's better for the actors than the crew
because sometimes I feel that I'm rushing crew.
But who's more important, Rick?
- Well, the actors. - Well, exactly.
And also, the crew are annoyed for seven hours,
but then they're home at 4:00 and they thank me.