Friends reunited
The cast of The League of Gentlemen team up again in a new radio comedy drama written by Jeremy Dyson
- Caroline Frost
High Cockalorum is on Thursday at 2.15pm on Radio 4. Add it to your collection
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There is a picture on the wall of Jeremy Dyson’s office, and he is gazing at it as we speak: “It’s the four of us riding the log flume at Blackpool Pleasure Beach after the end of our first big tour. We’re all screaming with joy, and it sums up the miracle of the journey – an absolute thrill-ride that we went on together.”
Now, 24 years on, the quartet – Dyson and fellow The League of Gentlemen stars Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss – is reuniting for High Cockalorum, a gentle Radio 4 comedy drama penned by Dyson and inspired by his uncle’s brush with stardom.
Commissioned as part of the BBC’s Contains Strong Language festival (there’s a live playout and Q&A at St George’s Hall, Bradford, on 20 September), Dyson describes the 1978-set story as “a mini road movie about an encounter between a humble lad from West Yorkshire and a Hollywood film star”.
Dyson, far right, with his The League of Gentlemen co-stars in 2001. Shutterstock
In real life, Dyson’s uncle worked for a record label, where he was occasionally called on to look after actors working on soundtrack albums – which is how he once came to spend time with James Mason, star of such films as A Star Is Born and Lolita. Dyson says: “When I told Mark this story, he joked, ‘You write it, I’ll play it.’ Eighteen months later, here we are.”
As well as the charm of two very different people brought together by circumstance, High Cockalorum explores how fame can change people. It’s a subject Dyson has long had opportunity to witness first hand, as he and his League friends reached dizzying heights after winning the prestigious Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1997. Unlike the other three, Dyson has opted to stay mostly behind the camera, giving him what he says is “the best of both worlds”.
On the pros and cons of the instantly recognisable celebrity experienced by his colleagues, Dyson muses: “The inconveniences strike me more. You get hassled everywhere and there’s not much upside to that. I don’t feel deprived.” He continues: “I have a love-hate relationship with what Alan Bennett calls ‘the tinsel’.
I have a love-hate relationship with 'the tinsel'
“There’s a lot I struggle with – the insincerity, the manipulation. A party full of famous people is not conventional. All the social cues that operate normally disappear, it’s highly status-driven and who’s where in the pecking order governs how much attention they get. You need a thick skin to navigate all that, which I don’t have. But I’m fascinated by it all, and the tinsel remains. It’s a simultaneous fascination and repulsion.”
If the public side of The League of Gentlemen’s success tested Dyson, the friendships at its heart have brought him nothing but delight. “Up to when I met Mark, I had a particular set of interests that I’d had since I was seven years old, from Doctor Who to horror movies, plus TV comedy. I had friends who covered bits of that, but then a mutual friend, Gordon, met Mark, and within five minutes, he was on the phone: ‘There’s someone you have to meet…’”
James Mason in the 1978 film Heaven Can Wait. Shutterstock
Through Gatiss, Dyson met Shearsmith and Pemberton – and the troupe was born. What did each of them bring? Dyson can’t pin it down, saying instead they were united in temperament and commitment. “Nobody was looking to go off to Hollywood; we just wanted to do good work. It was all pleasure. It’s strange looking back on it, but I guess it’s the story of any successful group endeavour, the gravity that pulls people together.”
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It’s a pull that has remained strong, most recently when an episode of Good Omens two years ago was conceived as a League reunion, and now High Cockalorum. Dyson is freshly appreciative: “It’s pure joy. In the first two minutes, we all collapse crying with laughter and it continues in that vein, in pure hysteria from start to finish. That’s what it’s like and why whenever we get the opportunity, we grab it. The older you get the more you become aware of the preciousness of it all.”
Authors
Caroline Frost
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