Geoffrey Perkins

Geoffrey Howard Perkins (22 February 1953 – 29 August 2008) was a comedy producer, writer and performer, and an important figure in British comedy broadcasting. This was recognised in December 2008 when he was awarded with an Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award. Best known as the BBC head of comedy (1995–2001), he produced the first two radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is one of the people credited with creating the bizarre panel game Mornington Crescent for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.^[1]

Early life

Perkins attended the Harrow County Grammar School, alongside such future-names as Nigel Sheinwald (now, as Sir Nigel, British ambassador to Washington), Michael Portillo and Clive Anderson, with whom he ran the debating society.^[1][2] Taking an early interest in drama, he worked with Clive Anderson to write, in 1970, a charity revue called Happy Poison.^[1]

Perkins read English at Lincoln College, Oxford^[1] and while there wrote for and directed The Oxford Revues of 1974 and 1975, contributing to, among others, a comedy production called Radio Active. After his time at Oxford, Perkins joined the Ocean Transport and Trading Company "(in the same intake as his confrère Portillo), [where] Perkins was put to work studying waste timber in Liverpool."^[1] Perkins did not last long in the field of commercial shipping, however (nor did Portillo).^[1] In 1977, drawing on his work for the Oxford Revue, Perkins joined "BBC Radio's light entertainment department [alongside] Cambridge graduates such as John Lloyd and Griff Rhys Jones.^[1]

Radio career

Tasked by department head David Hatch, Perkins helped to revitalise the comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (launched five years earlier), introducing the incomprehensible Mornington Crescent game which would become an enduring success.^[1][3]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In mid-1977, Perkins produced the first series of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for BBC Radio 4, taking over from pilot-producer Simon Brett. Perkins assisted the notoriously slow writer in finishing the scripts, before John Lloyd "was drafted in to write large sections of the later episodes."^[1] Perkins also drew "on the resources of the Radiophonic Workshop" to help create the groundbreaking audio effects for the series.

In 1986, Perkins married Lisa Braun, "a BBC studio manager on Hitchhiker's Guide."^[1]

Radio Active

In 1980, Perkins co-wrote and featured in the radio sketch show Radio Active, revised and adapted from the early Oxford Revue shows, and initially based around the comedy parody group The Hee Bee Gee Bees, consisting of Philip Pope, Angus Deayton and Michael Fenton Stevens.^[4] Prior to its leap from the revue to the radio, the production toured and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,^[5] after which it was picked up by BBC Radio 4 for a pilot called The Oxford Revue Presents Radio Active. Radio Active, "which poked fun at the amateurishness of some local radio broadcasting,"^[1] went on to run for seven series,^[4] and won a Sony Award.^[1] Perkins featured as a character called Mike Flex, a young cocky disc jockey.^[6]

Perkins, with Deayton, wrote much of the series and later saw it transferred to BBC2 television as the Grand Prix and Silver Rose of Montreux-winner KYTV.^[1]

Later radio work

Perkins, with Radio Active colleague and co-writer Deayton, later produced The Uncyclopaedia of Rock for Capital Radio, winning the Monaco Radio Award for the show, and penning a 1987 tie-in book with Deayton and Jeremy Pascall.

In 2005 he cameoed in the fourth radio series of Hitchhiker's (The Quandary Phase), as the producer of the radio show Arthur Dent worked on. Essentially playing a fictional version of himself from the first series with a fictional version of writer Douglas Adams.

Television career

Hat Trick

Perkins left the BBC in 1988, to become a director of Hat Trick Productions, an independent television and radio production company.^[1] Hat Trick's produced comedy programmes for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The first main production of Perkins was Spitting Image where he met Ben Elton, and Harry Enfield whom he got to develop the character of Douglas Hurd by suggesting he adapt it along the lines of Frank Oz's character Fozzie Bear. As a result, Perkins developed shows for both performers, in the form of Elton's hosted Saturday Live and sketch show The Man From Auntie; and Enfield's Harry Enfield's Television Programme. Perkins also developed Have I Got News For You, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Drop The Dead Donkey and Father Ted for Hat Trick, many of which won awards including Baftas.^[1] The last show Perkins script edited for Tiger Aspect was the ITV rejected The Fast Show.

BBC Head of Comedy

In 1995, he resigned from Hat Trick^[2] and returned to the BBC as BBC Television's Head of Comedy, requesting his contract stipulated "his continued role as a programme producer," as well as overseeing the department.^[1] He stayed in this role until 2001, growing increasingly dissatisfied at "official BBC snootiness about comedy (one annual report dismissed it with the phrase "all the way from high-value costume drama right the way down to sitcom")."^[1]

Perkins meticulously read 30 new scripts every week, but "found himself culturally marginalised at the BBC," saying:

"Unfortunately, the term sitcom implies a great disdain. People say it with a curl of their lips."^[1]

Under Director General John Birt, Perkins also felt "hamstrung by the inevitable bureaucracy," which not only hindered programme-making, but saw Perkins spending "more time on budgets" than more creative pursuits.^[1]

Perkins felt that the changes in how the BBC was run

During Perkins' time as Head of Comedy, the BBC produced such hits including Coupling, The Thin Blue Line, Jonathan Creek, The Fast Show, The Royle Family and My Family..^[1] Perkins also personally "persuaded David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst to star in a fresh series of the 1981-1991 classic Only Fools and Horses, the first of which was screened at Christmas 2001."^[1]

Tiger Aspect

Having left the BBC, Perkins became a creative director and executive producer for independent production company Tiger Aspect, (whose previous programmes include The Vicar of Dibley and The Thin Blue Line), in late 2001.^[7] In this role, he was able to pursue a more hands-on role in the "creative side of programme-making."^[1]

For Tiger Aspect, Perkins produced programmes including The Catherine Tate Show for the BBC, and Benidorm for ITV.^[1]

Television writing and acting credits

Perkins' writing credits for television include The World According To Smith & Jones, KYTV, Harry Enfield's Television Programme, Harry Enfield and Chums and Coogan's Run.

In addition to starring in KYTV, Perkins appeared in small cameo roles in several of the comedy programmes he produced, including Father Ted, Operation Good Guys, One Foot in the Grave and The Catherine Tate Show.^[8] He also hosted the panel game "Don't Quote Me", made by Open Media for Channel 4 in 1990.^[9]

Final years

In 2006, Harry Enfield was told by BBC Head of Programmes Peter Fincham that he was too old to make another comedy sketch series. Enfield approached Perkins with his ideas, which Perkins helped Enfield develop into the first series of Harry and Paul, starring Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, shown in April 2007.

Perkins was initially thought to have died from injuries after an accident involving a lorry in Marylebone High Street, London, on 29 August 2008.^[10][11] However, a coroner's inquest in April 2009 determined that Perkins had suffered from an undiagnosed case of channelopathies, which caused his heart to stop suddenly. The jury decided that Perkins had likely already died when he fell under the wheels of the lorry, and the coroner recorded that he died from "natural causes".^[12]

On 5 September 2008 Perkins' last production for the BBC and Tiger Aspect - the second series of the re-titled Harry and Paul - was aired, a week after his death. The first episode was dedicated to his memory, and instead of the usual closing credits, featured a short tribute to him and concluded with an out-take of Perkins forgetting his lines in a sketch absent from the transmitted series.^[1]

On 8 November 2008, BBC Two aired an evening of programmes in tribute to Perkins, comprising episodes of The Catherine Tate Show, Father Ted (a Channel 4 programme which the BBC was given special permission to broadcast as part of the tribute) and The Fast Show, together with a special edition of Comedy Connections about Perkins' career in comedy.

He was posthumously awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Comedy award at the British Comedy Awards on 6 December 2008.^[13]

The recipients of both the BAFTAs awarded on 27 April 2009 to Harry and Paul for Best Comedy Programme and to The IT Crowd for Best Situation Comedy dedicated their awards to Perkins.

References

External links

• Geoffrey Perkins at the Internet Movie Database
• Geoffrey Perkins - Obituary and public tribute
• Obituary in The Times
• Obituary in The Telegraph