Deayton pays tribute to Perkins

Comedian and TV presenter Angus Deayton looks back on his working partnership and friendship with Geoffrey Perkins.

The late comedy producer is the subject of an hour-long BBC Radio 4 tribute programme on Saturday, after his untimely death in a road accident this August.

A lot of people might wonder why the sudden death of a comedy producer aged 55, tragic though it may be, warrants an hour-long programme dedicated to his memory.

The comedy duo wrote three series of KYTV

But when you look at the raft of programmes that person was responsible for, such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Fast Show, you realise this was no ordinary man.

This was Geoffrey Perkins.

Days after his death, about 300 luminaries of the comedy world, including Rowan Atkinson, Paul Whitehouse and Ben Elton, turned up to pay their respects at a drinks party.

If there was one thing more extraordinary than the huge turn-out for this event - given the multitude of rifts, feuds and spats within that room - it was the fact that, as far as I'm aware, none of those present had ever fallen out with Geoffrey.

He was almost universally loved - which, believe me, is rare in this industry.

Baffled

Equally rare, considering his talent, was his modesty.

So much so, that when I spoke to his mother shortly after his death, she was completely baffled as to why it should have been reported on the BBC's Six O'Clock News.

And it wasn't until reading his obituary in the newspapers, she realised the breadth and scale of his work and his importance to the comedy community.

Perkins (l) and Deayton worked and toured together for many years

I first met Geoffrey in 1979, when he was a BBC radio producer and I was with the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival.

Through the 80's we wrote and performed seven series of Radio Active for Radio 4 and three series of KYTV on BBC Two.

We became close friends.

I was his best man and godfather to his son - and we toured Australia and the UK with the stage version of Radio Active.

Writing with Geoffrey was generally a lot of fun, largely because it very often revolved around a long lunch.

We would brainstorm ideas before going off to write them up separately, coming together to give each other notes, ignoring those notes, and handing the scripts to the producer as they were.

Methodical and verbal

He was also a past master at writing scripts during a recording.

Geoffrey would often scribble lines down and hand them to the relevant actor, seconds before they were due to be delivered.

As with many writing partnerships, our styles merged over the years.

And the cast of Radio Active or KYTV, when trying to second-guess who had written what (Geoffrey's scripts were more spontaneous, full of gags; mine more methodical and verbal) would increasingly get it wrong.

Perkins also wrote for The Catherine Tate Show

What we shared was a delight in the absurd.

I think we both had a penchant for quite silly humour and you can trace that slightly puerile streak through to his later shows - Harry Enfield, The Fast Show, Father Ted and The Catherine Tate Show.

Most folk when they die are sadly missed, others are deemed a great loss.

But very few leave a hole that will simply never be filled.

Geoffrey will be one of those - such a huge loss is he, on so many levels, for so many people.

He was warm, kind, jovial, shrewd, intelligent, conscientious, and not, to his eternal credit, remotely ambitious.

Yet his career was probably more successful than almost any other comedy producer of his generation.

And that is because, above all else, he was quite simply very, very funny.

Archive Hour - King Of Comedy will be broadcast on Saturday, 4 October from 2000 BST on BBC Radio 4.

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