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It was Tony’s funeral today: obviously emotional and tragic, but also a chance to celebrate this modest, but life-changing man and to have a drink (of orange juice) in his memory and catch up with people I haven’t seen, in some cases for 30 years.
Tony had been ill for a while and had meticulously planned this event as he planned everything and he did a fantastic job. I had been chosen by him to talk about the comedy part of his life, but there were also speeches about his work in the foreign office and his love of cricket. His brother also gave a funny, tender and heart-breaking valediction, including letters that Tony had written to his family including his 6 year old son. I was battered and red-eyed from the start.
I knew my job was to be funny, as well as giving Tony the credit he deserved from shaping the careers of many people in the church, but I also knew it was going to be tough to get through what I had to say. As a performer one is usually in control of all aspects of public speaking and so it’s bizarre and terrifying when emotions that you can not control impose themselves upon you and my voice cracked early on and I had to struggle through a few bits, but I gave a good account of Tony, sang a bit of My Penis Can Sing and got the biggest laugh I’ve ever had in a church for a joke about blowing up the Oxford Union. It was cathartic for everyone, I think and good to misbehave in the beautiful 16th Century chapel in ridiculously posh Ham, where this service was taking place. I started by adlibbing about the fact that as the last speaker I was the headliner of this gig and that I was disappointed that the support acts had all been so funny, but that it was an important gig for me as if I did well I might get to play the Cathedral.
Here is what I said
He was a Morris Dancer, he was a quarter-blue at Tiddlywinks, he introduced cricket to the Czech Republic. Tony’s life was funny even when he wasn’t trying to be. We will all remember him for his decency, his charm and his quiet and self-effacing wit. But he could also stand up in front of a crowd and give stand-up comedy a decent crack as well.
My first memory of meeting Tony was when I auditioned for the Oxford Revue in 1986. He was on the audition panel and I was asked to sing something to see if I could carry a tune and I impulsively decided to perform a self-composed ditty entitled my Penis can sing. – (sings) My Penis Can Sing, yes I can, yes I can - Not strictly relevant to the eulogy but I think Tony would appreciate me having sung that at his memorial and in a church.
It was a bold move and it got me a second audition, but more importantly Tony came bounding round the table like a comedy bloodhound to insist I perform it at the fortnightly club that he’d just established, the Oxford Revue Workshop.
I’m not sure if he wanted me because he thought it’d go well or badly. But this place and that man would have a profound effect on my life and career. The club was the petri dish that nurtured the comedy bacteria that would infect the UK comedy scene over the next 3 decades. The bacteria included Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee, Al Murray, Emma Kennedy, Dave Schneider, Ben Moor, Riley and Cecil, Sally Phillips and many more. Maybe some of us would have become comedians without Tony, but I don’t think we all would have.
Tony provided us the safe space to try out our terrible ideas about singing genitalia, forge partnerships and create reams of new material – it was a new show every fortnight. Three years of practice before we had to go into the real world. He kept a steady hand on the tiller, compering the nights, being the first to try his hand at stand up comedy, whilst the rest of us were mainly still doing sketches.
The shows were in the Oxford Union Jazz Cellar, a tiny space for an audience of 40 beneath the debating chamber where Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and David Cameron were strutting their stuff. In hindsight perhaps we’d have been better off packing the cellar with barrels of gunpowder – or at least the UK may have been better if they’d put the people downstairs in charge… none of our biting satirical comedy seems to have stopped any of them….
Though Tony did venture upstairs to take part in a debate with Michael Gove about whether Englishmen were funnier than Scotsmen. Tony would surely have beaten the slug lipped back-stabbing fart-engulfed Gove had he not foolishly also invited Armando Iannucci to argue for the Scots…. I believe I am right in saying that it was during that debate that Armando met the producer who could give him his first job at the BBC. Tony’s influence on UK comedy, direct and indirect is truly huge.
Luckily for us all, most of the material we did at the Revue Workshop is forgotten – though I still regularly sing Tony’s version of the Neighbours theme tune “Neighbours, turn the telly off it’s Neighbours†and fondly remember his sign off where he butchered the song “Thank you for the musicâ€- belting it out with atonal gusto.
By January 1989 he had accrued enough material to put together a 45 minute set, which he recorded, I think, to send out to comedy clubs. He needed a support for that night and chose a now forgotten act called Stewart Lee. But the poster rightly had Tony as the headliner, making him the envy of practically every stand-up comedian in the country.
I listened back to Tony’s set this week in a disconcerting mind warping aural journey back 30 years to that dank cellar of our youth. Tony is impressively confident belying his 23 years. Many of the references date things somewhat–Both Apartheid and Yazz were a thing back then, but which was worse. There is also a great routine about how we came very close to losing him in his early twenties, when he essentially attempted to walk off a burst appendix. Though he occasionally hides his natural affability behind outraged bluster and invective, he’s an impressive stand-up, even covering environmental issues – ahead of his time.
Tony briefly attempted comedy post university, but quickly decided it wasn’t for him. He would later tell the Guardian “I think the reason I stopped doing it was because it was tough and in my heart of hearts I didn’t have a thick enough skin,â€
It took a kind of ruthless arrogance and self-obsession to become a comedian and luckily for Tony he was kinder and more modest and more diplomatic than those of us who chose to weather the storm of heckles and early rejection. Which was good for the world too. We could do with more people with a sense of humour in the world of politics.
And he kept his hand in and even as Deputy High Commissioner of Australia he would step out on stage under the pseudonym Tony Bradford doing affable routines about coming to fatherhood late in life and trying not to swear too much. He’d found his voice and just this year back in the UK reached the semi-finals of the rudely named Old Comedian of the Year, joking his way through this cruel illness. Though I would have loved to see him become a truly old comedian.
On a personal level at my wedding he made all my wife’s dreams come true… by using his real life ambassadorial connection to bring her a pyramid of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. She had weird dreams.
As He often said he wasn’t the world’s greatest cricketer, comedian or diplomat. But he was without doubt the world’s greatest cricketing comedian diplomat.
I’d feel bad because as is the way with human males I don’t think I ever directly thanked him for the part he played in shaping my future, or the encouragement and support throughout my career. Even when I saw him in July and he asked me to do this speech if it came to it… I’m an idiot. I know he knew. But I wish I’d thanked him personally. So as some kind of recompense I’d like to end with a tribute act to the routine of Tony’s I remember best, though I am much too good a singer to do it proper Brennan justice. But this is my Elton John Candle in the Wind moment,…
I’m nothing special, in fact I’m a bit of a bore
If I tell a joke, you’ve probably heard it before
But I’ve got a talent, a wonderful thing, cos everyone listens when I start to sing
I’m so grateful and proud
All I want is to sing it out loud
All together now
So I say, thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing.
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who could live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be
Without a song and a dance, what are we?
So I say, thank you for the music. For giving it to me.
Thank you Tony.
I only made it through the song by bellowing it tunelessly, but the congregation joined in the chorus and raucously applauded Tony afterwards. I had fretted over this a bit this week, and nearly fought a mother in a road rage incident, but it was worth it. It seemed that I had done him proud, but the whole service, down to the Test Match Special theme ending the occasion did that job too.
It was gratifying to see how much he was loved by the people there and also to find out more about his work in diplomacy where he had positively affected the lives of millions and saved lives and been generous with books and cricket equipment to villagers in Africa. He did so much stuff without any fanfare, always thinking of others and making things work, right down to this service.
It really struck me how remarkable it was that a young man in his early twenties would set up this comedy club that would change so many lives and run it so efficiently. We just took it for granted at the time, but what a stroke of genius it was.
Anyway as horrible as it all was, it was also absolutely lovely to catch up with old friends and remember one who had fallen too soon. He wanted us to have fun and though weighed down by the grief, there was laughter and drunkenness and fun. And the realisation that you have to make the most of people because time flies by and this could be the last time you see them.
