Ben Elton admits he has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way. In 1975, three weeks after his arrival at the Stratford technical college where he did his A-levels, he put up a notice in the drama department looking for recruits for an acting group he was founding called The Studio Players. The notice explained how their first performance would be a three-act play, written by him, which he would also be directing. But the students didn’t take kindly to Elton’s “grandiose overreach”, refusing to join his acting group and freezing him out. “I had no idea then and still have very little idea of how to play it cool,” he notes.
He’s not wrong. What Have I Done? is an exhaustive account of the 66-year-old’s career as a writer and comic, detailing every play, standup show, comedy series, movie and book he’s ever worked on, including multiple projects that never saw the light of day. A 470-page doorstopper, it takes us from his early days at Manchester University where he met Rik Mayall, with whom he would collaborate on the smash hit The Young Ones, to the writing partnership with Richard Curtis that yielded Blackadder and on to Comic Relief and Saturday Live, delivering standup that included the fevered skit “double seat”, which people still quote back at him 40 years later. After that, he digs into the novels, all 15 of them, and the jukebox musicals including the Queen-themed We Will Rock You, which got a critical drubbing but nonetheless ran in the West End for 12 years. Though the focus is mainly on his work, there are diversions into his personal life too, including his marriage to Australian musician Sophie Gare, with whom he has three children.
From a man who has written in every format imaginable and must know something about pacing, the writing here is remarkably baggy. Elton’s insistence on not leaving anything out means the pace is slow and the jollier showbiz anecdotes get smothered. And there are jolly anecdotes, such as his account of the Tuscan shoot for Kenneth Branagh’s film Much Ado About Nothing where the British actors (Elton, Brian Blessed, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton) would rowdily repair to a taverna in the evenings while the Hollywood contingent (Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves) coolly kept to themselves. In his short scenes as Verges, the police deputy, Elton received just one note from Branagh: “Don’t act.”
He is sharp, too, on the workings of the comedy industry. While those familiar with the oeuvres of Dave Allen, Billy Connolly and Victoria Wood might take issue with his assertion that he pioneered observational comedy, he nonetheless paints a vivid picture of the alternative scene in the 1980s and how it kicked against the openly sexist and racist orthodoxy of the preceding decade. He has no time for the older generation of comics who claim you can’t say anything any more: “In my experience you can say anything, it just doesn’t hurt to think a bit harder about how you say it and why you’re saying it.”
All of which makes What Have I Done? a curious mixture of insight and rampaging ego. Though Elton is capable of self-mockery, he is also master of the humblebrag and doesn’t miss an opportunity to list the superstars who tell him how thrilled they are at meeting him. At a Hard Rock Café anniversary party, he’s sees “a kerfuffle in the crowd” and realises George Harrison is making a beeline towards him to thank him for “keeping us amused in the 1980s”. Midway through an account of the premature birth of his twins, he pauses to let us know George Michael has sent flowers. If there is a recurring theme beyond the fact that everyone from Bono to the Beatles think he’s wonderful, it is Elton’s belief that he has been cruelly maligned. There is much agonising about the critics who, in the post-Blackadder years, have mostly looked dimly on his output. He also recalls unprovoked vitriol from fellow comic Alexei Sayle and presenter Jonathan Ross. He is clearly wounded by the brickbats, but as he recounts the umpteenth critical mauling, you want to gently take him aside and say: “You’ve worked consistently and made a handsome living for over 40 years. Why not just take the wins?”
What Have I Done? concludes with its author receiving a Legend award at a comedy festival – for which, naturally, Paul McCartney and Michael Palin send their congratulations – and expressing a desire to keep working for another 10 years. That, he posits, would be sufficient time “to warrant a new extended edition of this memoir”. Given the surfeit of self-aggrandising bluster in the current version, it’s an idea that comes over less like a promise than a threat.
• What Have I Done? My Autobiography is published by Macmillan (£25). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges apply.
