Ben's tussle with baby blues

Marianne Gray10 April 2012

I find Ben Elton in a panic over his photo shoot.

The stylist has brought in, much to Elton's horror, some cool designer gear. 'Do they know my size?' he wails. 'Do they know I'm rather small? I might have heard of Boss and Calvin Klein and be over my shiny-suit phase but I think they're going to have a bit of a hard job with me. I only do three faces [he pulls them] and I'm getting on a bit now.'

Ben Elton might be 41, but he hasn't really grown up yet. He's a household name in stand-up and sitcoms and spent the Eighties savaging the Thatcher regime on television. He's written six novels, some of which have been made into films or adapted for the West End stage, he's just directed his first feature film and he's writing a musical with Andrew Lloyd Webber. All pretty grown-up stuff. But to meet he's hearteningly juvenile. Beneath the sensitivity that jostles constantly for space with the self-confidence, there's still quite a tremulous and uncool little Jewish boy from North London who could easily have ended up behind the counter of some Camden video store.

He could talk the hindlegs off a donkey ('God, I'm such a chatterbox'), something he initially developed as a defence mechanism and something he can use now to explain the intricacies of why he has come out about infertility, shooting blanks, missing the target. His £3.5 million film, Maybe Baby, based on his novel Inconceivable, is about a couple who go on a course of IVF in an attempt to have a baby. In the film Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson play Sam, a TV commissioning editor who suffers from the stress-related condition psoriasis, and Lucy, a theatrical casting agent. In real life, Ben Elton, who also suffers from psoriasis, and his wife, Australian musician Sophie Gare, went on three IVF courses after five years trying for a baby. The result was twins, Albert and Charlotte, known as Bert and Lottie, names that some people think refer to Bertolt Brecht and Lottie Lenya.

'Above all, I wanted Maybe Baby to be a romantic comedy,' says Elton. 'I wanted a pretty kind of film because I was very anxious to say you can have problems trying to conceive and still be sexy and gorgeous and sexual. Being infertile doesn't make you sexless. I first thought the subject would make a story while we were doing our first IVF cycle in the autumn of 1997. I mentioned it to Soph straight away and we had a laugh about it. Incidentally, she didn't input the wife's words, in the way they appear in the film, with the husband using his wife's diary for his script, because Sophie doesn't write a diary. But she did suggest doing it in Dorset on the Giant's Knob! The top of Primrose Hill was also recommended as a fertility aid by Barbara Mayall, Rik Mayall's wife.'

He laughs, confessing that he and Sophie never got quite as far with their fertility aids as Sam and Lucy do in the film. 'We had some fun on our "journey" and we also had some f***ing awful times. The hopes, the failures, the ovulation charts, the books, the temperatures, the giving of sperm samples in cubicles in NHS hositals, the daily injections. And now we're in a very curious circumstance about having to think about contraception. After an IVF pregnancy or an infertile pregnancy they say it might "unblock" something, but it might not. You might conceive naturally. So now we have to think about bagging it up after five years of absolutely not having to bother about it, being able to shag without a thought of anything. Different journey altogether. Now think back to those days at university with the bloody Dutch Cap shooting across the bathroom because you're pissed!'

Ben Elton's journey to fame and family seems to have been a direct one through various forms of drama. After doing a drama A-level at a further education college while living in a caravan on a farm, he spent time in laddered tights (Shakespeare) and torn trousers (Dickens). At the same time he was writing and putting on plays. At Manchester University he met Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson and they unknowingly began an association that was to lead to The Young Ones and change the shape of British comedy. 'I think British comedy at the moment is fantastic. Let's face it, if you get two really good shows every ten years you're doing pretty well. The last time I looked I thought bloody hell, we're doing all right. The Royle Family I think is colossally inventive. The bravery of its concept is unimaginable and to do such a quiet and private piece of comedy is extraordinary. It came only five years after Ab Fab, which was another complete watershed in style. Two classics within a half decade. Then Coogan did his Partridge sitcom series which was even better than the Partridge chatshow. Very close observational sitcom. Not like Blackadder or Thin Blue Line. Another fascinating development, these quiet, incisive, observational pieces, where the comedy is hidden by the kind of astonishing naturalness of it. Almost like watching a fly-on-the-wall, but there's so many laughs.

'I'm not a comedy junkie, but as a country we've all done so well from comedy. Had fun and I suppose, through British humour, became "famous" although I think celebrity is largely a myth. As long as you don't walk around the place shouting, "I'm on the BBC," the public are much more polite and discreet than any of the media are. I go to the pub, I use public transport, the Tube, sometimes. I love to walk. I tend to walk everywhere possible. I've never had any trouble ever. Van-drivers tend to notice because when you walk you have to stop at lights and that's where people get studied, and they sometimes say, "Nice one, Ben." I don't know anybody whose life's changed by it and I don't know anybody who enjoys fame for itself.

'Stephen Hawking and Pamela Anderson are both celebrities. They are grist to the same mill. They could appear on the same gossip page if they both happened to have affairs. One's a nuclear physicist, one's an actress. You can read the weather on Grampian and if you're going out with a footballer you're a celebrity. Being a celebrity is a non-existent job. Some jobs make you a celebrity but it's extra to the business of it. Not a great extra, though.

'I found a fan's internet site on me in which he got almost everything wrong, including I'd changed my name. I was born Benjamin Elton. My father's family were German Jews who adopted British nationality after the War and my uncle, who served in the British Army, changed his name, under Army instructions, from the Jewish Eronberg to Elton because he wanted the same initials. My father said, "Bugger it, I want to be an Elton too," and changed from Ludwig Eronberg to Lewis Elton. That's the story, not something you pick up on a fan site that comes with so-called "fame".'

Fame in the Elton house takes a back seat to family. 'I'm not writing anything at the moment and not thinking of a sequel for Maybe Baby, definitely not from a research point of view. Right now I'm sitting up changing nappies trying to turn back into the lyricist I'm now supposed to be. I've had a lovely time writing a musical called The Beautiful Game - it's a love story, with a lot of comedy and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It should come out in the autumn.'

Maybe Baby opens Fri 2 Jun.

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