The Furiously Intrigued Mind of Tony Slattery
Robin reflects on the loss of a British comedy giant
The first time I met Tony Slattery, we ended up talking effusively about Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death.
We quoted Marius Goring.
“One is starved for technicolor up there”.
And the beautiful conversation between David Niven and Kim Hunter. Descending in a bomber that is ablaze, Niven faces what he believes to be imminent death and so falls in love with a stranger who he has never met, but who will be his final conversation.
“I’ve known dozen of girls, I’ve been in love with some of them, but an American girl whom I’ve never seen and who I never shall see will hear my last words”
Tony had been brought to see my Satanic Rites of Robin Ince show, a chaos of febrile excitement from the grotesque stew of my love of horror movies.
He was so generous in his reaction and immediately we could see that we had shared inspirations and passions. I like exciting and excited brains.
Tony’s mind was the mind of an autodidactic and someone who was furiously intrigued and curious.
His ability to get to Cambridge University to read Modern Languages coming from a background without privilege gives you some idea of how smart he was. Whenever I spoke to people who had witnessed the Footlights he was in, sharing the stage with Fry and Laurie, Emma Thompson, Penny Dwyer and Paul Shearer, they would always say how Mercurial Tony was. His performance in the Kenneth Branagh film Peter’s Friends is beautifully judged and a high point of the movie.
Whose Line is it Anyway? Was a vital part of the week. Every Friday, I would go to my pals Carolyn and Heather’s flat in Kilburn and, often with the accompaniment of home-made mushroom pate, which seemed very counter cultural in those days, we would rejoice in the still arcane art of improvisation. While John Sessions might come across as the slightly pompous one, all references to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Rilke (or so it seemed), Slattery was Puck. He was mischief. (I should add I was a great fan of John Sessions too and would go to watch him late night at the Donmar Warehouse doing solo impro). The impishness of Tony reminds me of the similarly impishness of Kenny Everett, they both possessed irresistibility in their naughtiness.
I was also a fan of Slattery and Richard Vranch’s odd interludes on a late night music show, Cue the Music, which as far as I can recall seemed to be a show that always welcomed a late night audience to a recording of the band Magnum playing at The Town and Country Club. These were the early days of late night TV, shocking to some of you reading this, but all four TV channels that broadcast in the UK generally switched themselves off before midnight for fear if they kept the workers up, they might accidentally fall into a vat of tar the next morning. To stop it being just a straight music show in which producer Mike Mansfield would introduce that night’s band (Magnum), Vranch and Slattery would sit either side of him in exuberant wigs just being silly. It was delightfully pointless.
It feels very mean-sprinted now that there was a backlash against Tony , an attitude of “oh no, it’s Tony Slattery again”. There are many far less entertaining performers give endless TV vehicles, and, as so often, we didn’t realise how lucky we were. There is also the fear that it will dry up at any minute, so take anything you can while it is there. Unfortunately, that terror of workless days can be the very thing that leads to workless days (though for some reason, relentlessness has done nothing to stem the omnipresence of Jimmy Carr).
In covering his life, many have commented on Tony’s addictions. The word “troubled” has often been used. This seems to place the responsibility on Tony, rather than on the sexual abuser who brutalised him as a child. He would allude to this, but usually move on. That there are still so many people living with a shame that should not be theirs or a belief that “it was all a long time ago” best to bury it, as it still gnaws their bones makes me deeply sad. What Tony had had robbed from him, the pain and the struggle that entailed for him, and those that loved him is another sign of a deeply unjust world.
The last time I worked with Tony was in November at the Berkhamsted book festival i. It was the final event of the day, so we moved from the Town Hall to a room above a pub. It was packed and we sat on bar stools and rambled to some purpose. What was most obvious was the weight of affection and of love for Tony. I received messages from many people after our event who expressed how fortunate they felt in getting the opportunity to listen to Tony, to see that he had new paths ahead of him. Many found the experience deeply moving. Sadly, our next event is not to be.
I wanted to talk so much more to him.
Darryl Bullock, who also died unexpectedly, just a few weeks before Tony, had a similar affect on me. Even though we saw each other rarely, it was always wonderful to see him and I when I saw the news of Darryl’s death I immediately saw the conversations I would be robbed of.
I should mention Erica and Allan, who worked so hard to get Tony back on the stage and gave him so much love and appreciation over the last few years.
And to Mark, his partner of 39 years, he showed what true love is.
I was meant to be doing a gig with Tony on 28th February at Fort Perch Rock, New Brighton. The gig will go ahead as a celebration of the life of Tony.
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