Ahead of the hilarious revival Drop the Dead Donkey coming to Norwich Theatre Royal on 7 – 11 May, co-creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin sat down with us to reminisce and reveal some little-known facts about the show.
1) DEAD BELGIANS DON’T COUNT was the original title that we chose for the show. But Channel 4 pointed out – not unreasonably – that such a title might adversely affect sales to Belgium. One option that was considered was ‘Dead Kuwaitis Don’t Count’, but that was rejected – which was lucky because, as the first episodes arrived on air, Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait.
2) THE SHOW FEATURED MANY ANIMALS, including alligators, cockroaches, Harris Hawks, a panther (that Damien tried to pass off as the Beast of Bodmin), wallabies, a Pekinese dog (Sally’s doomed pet), Siamese fighting fish, a rabbit, some lobsters, and a cat that casually wandered into shot. During the filming of a stunt. Involving a falling piano. Don’t worry, the cat lived.
3) WE WERE CONFUSED WITH REALITY on social media (where else?). A sequence where Damien was reporting on the burning of seized cannabis and got high as a kite found its way onto the Internet and was mistaken for a real reporter really getting stoned. The accompanying caption read ‘Look at this idiot!’ which is ironic, given that the caption was put there by an idiot.
4) LATE REWRITES WERE AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD for the cast. Often they were given new topical dialogue to learn just a few hours before the recording. We were always vulnerable to late-breaking stories. Robert Maxwell nearly ruined a whole episode by very selfishly falling off his yacht.
But not all last-minute changes were news-related. We once had to introduce a late storyline where Dave – played by Neil Pearson – had been beaten up by an angry husband. In reality, Neil’s facial wound had been caused by the flying nozzle of a hoover attachment during a game of imaginary baseball. (No, we have not made that up).
5) SOME ACTORS SUFFERED FOR THEIR ART although we would argue that we were never to blame. For instance, we did not know that when we buried Stephen Tompkinson up to his neck in the ground his forehead was hot because he had malaria. Similarly, when we lashed Robert Duncan (Gus), naked, to a lamppost we had no idea that a crowded night-bus was about to drive past.
6) POLITICIANS RARELY COMPLAINED about us, which always made us worry if we were doing our job properly. In 1990, we did receive an angry fax from an obscure Tory MP informing us that his would be one of ‘thousands of complaints’ that we would receive concerning a ‘vile joke’ made about the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in last night’s episode. So we checked Channel 4’s overnight log. The programme had triggered 3 telephone calls, one to commend the joke about Mrs Thatcher and the other two enquiring where you could buy the dress that Sally Smedley had worn in Part Two.
7) MANY GIANTS OF TV APPEARED AS THEMSELVES in the show. (Who knows, there may be more tonight). There were guest cameos from news veterans like Jon Snow, Kirsty Wark, and Michael Buerk, politicians like Teddy Taylor MP, Ken Livingstone, and Neil Kinnock.
And if you watch the final moments of the last ever episode you will see Gus having his desk carried off by two very tall removal men. One is the show’s co-creator, Guy Jenkin. The other is a very youthful-looking Richard Osman.
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