{"id":954940,"date":"2026-11-06T16:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/954940\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T16:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:58:12","slug":"im-never-going-to-be-bloody-robert-de-niro-rob-brydon-the-most-chipper-man-on-tv-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/954940\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m never going to be bloody Robert De Niro!\u2019: Rob Brydon, the most chipper man on TV | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018I\u2019m a nice person, you know,\u201d says Rob Brydon<\/a>, as I met him in a basement green room of the BBC, where probably nobody with such a mellow ego has ever sat. \u201cI am a people-pleaser. That\u2019s who I am.\u201d It\u2019s an unnecessary clarification \u2013 at 61, he\u2019s been nice on TV, as himself and in character, for most of our adult lives.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here to talk about his new six-parter, Bill\u2019s Included, but his character in it, the eponymous Bill, is such a distillation of pure Rob Brydon that it\u2019s (accidentally, he says) a celebration of his entire career. As the show opens, Bill has just been left by his wife, who\u2019s run off with the gardener. At no point does he ever fire the guy \u2013 \u201cI\u00a0like him!\u201d \u2013 but otherwise, his life is completely upended. The utterly plausible cocktail of his civic mindedness and howling loneliness drives him to take in four lodgers, local university students.<\/p>\n

The opening moments, before he gets his young super-woke crew, are so powerfully reminiscent of Marion and Geoff that it\u2019s like being whacked around the head and given a hot chocolate at the same time by the year 2000. The hugely funny and poignant series was Brydon\u2019s breakthrough sitcom, the first he wrote himself (with Hugo Blick), based on a character he\u2019d created at college \u2013 Geoff, a taxi driver, speaking straight to a dashboard camera about a marriage that, the viewer realises, has been toast for ages. \u201cI\u2019m so thick,\u201d Brydon says now. \u201cIt\u2019s only when watching Bill\u2019s Included that I went: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s got a bit of a Marion and Geoff vibe.\u2019 Honestly, I swear to you, that hadn\u2019t occurred to me. You don\u2019t think about your own stuff. That\u2019s 26 years ago!\u201d<\/p>\n

The kids are alright \u2026 Brydon with (from left) Harry Baxendale, Yasmin Al-Khudhairi, Ada Player and Dylan Brady in Bill\u2019s Included. Photograph: Rob Baker Ashton\/BBC\/Baby Cow<\/p>\n

Steve Coogan<\/a> was one of the executives on Marion and Geoff, and has been badgering Brydon to do more character comedy ever since. \u201cI fobbed him off for years, then we made a taster of this landlord-and-students idea a few years ago, but it wasn\u2019t right. I was too creepy.\u201d Surely not \u2026 \u201cI was, I\u00a0was creepy, and I didn\u2019t realise it! It was just me as a middle-aged guy, going: \u2018Come in, have a sit down,\u2019\u201d \u2013 he does an impression of his most mellifluous and ingratiating Welsh timbre, and he\u2019s right, it\u2019s incredibly creepy \u2013 before snapping back to his\u00a0regular voice.<\/p>\n

Brydon and Coogan\u2019s creative entanglement has been fruitful: 24\u00a0Hour Party People<\/a>, about Factory Records in Manchester in the late 80s\/early 90s \u2013 Brydon had a small part as a caustic naysayer who doesn\u2019t like the music, Coogan played the legend Tony Wilson, head of the label. Then, Cock and Bull Story<\/a>, in which they both brought the atmosphere, playing themselves, sort-of, as two egotistical actors scrapping with each other, failing to make a film about a book, Tristram Shandy, failing to become a novel. The genius of that film is all in the control: they caper about but pull it back from slapstick; it\u2019s knowing but not arch. Seeing Brydon and Coogan mess about on set gave director Michael Winterbottom<\/a> the idea for The Trip, whose Northern Lights series \u2013 its fifth \u2013 is\u00a0coming\u00a0soon.<\/p>\n

When the pair first met in 1997ish, it was at a Holiday Inn in Reading. Brydon was in an improv group with the solidly magnificent Julia Davis, along with Ruth Jones, who he was also at school with, and they\u2019d all been to the Hexagon to see Coogan, who \u201cwas already at his first peak. He was in the West End with The Man Who Thinks He\u2019s It, he\u2019d won a million Baftas already, he was doing what I wanted to do at the time, which is character comedy,\u201d Brydon remembers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d started out in voiceovers, he was the same age as me, so I could see all these parallels between us.\u201d I can\u2019t help but remark that people, if they meet a peer they really admire, sometimes don\u2019t like that person very much. \u201cWhat, envy and stuff like that?\u201d says Brydon, taken aback. \u201cI can imagine that sort of person, but I can\u2019t imagine me being like that. Envy, brute rage, competitiveness? I\u2019m none of those things. I just look at him and think: \u2018Great. Isn\u2019t he good?\u2019 One of the hardest things in The Trip<\/a> is when Michael wants me to ridicule his career. He\u2019s got a\u00a0brilliant career!\u201d<\/p>\n

House rules \u2026 Brydon and Al-Khudhairi in Bill\u2019s Included. Photograph: Rob Baker Ashton\/BBC\/Baby Cow<\/p>\n

Brydon\u2019s career isn\u2019t exactly a Harrison Ford-level wilderness-to-stardom tale; he had work in improv, doing voiceovers and radio panel shows before Human Remains<\/a> in 2000, when he was 35. But that blistering two-hander with Julia Davis, in which they play a variety of miserable couples, landed the same year as Marion and Geoff<\/a>, and Brydon\u2019s forte was unarguable: character comedy in which he is defiantly uncool, self-deluding and in a variety of luckless scenarios. He can effortlessly carry a show, but is just as memorable in an ensemble. His tightly wound Uncle Bryn is the performance people can\u2019t let drop, \u201cmore or less every day, someone will come up to me and tell me how much they love Gavin & Stacey<\/a>. There\u2019s a real affection for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill\u2019s Included is his first show since Gavin & Stacey\u2019s epic finale, and the camera\u2019s on him almost constantly. His relationship with the four students, Christian (Dylan Brady), Hettie (Ada Player), James (Harry Baxendale) and Zahra (Yasmin Al-Khudhairi) starts off as a broad clash of the generations. They\u2019re noisy, he\u2019s fussy, and whenever they use their buzzwords \u2013 checking their privilege, trauma bonding, finding a safe space \u2013 Bill says naive, delighted things, such as: \u201cThese are the kinds of nuggets I\u2019m going to\u00a0get from you, like truffles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s quite an authentic thing, someone of his age, his personality, would feel,\u201d says Brydon. Quite fast, it becomes affectionate. \u201cHe starts off calling them the students, and by episode three, he\u2019s saying: \u2018I\u2019ve got to go and do a thing for the kids.\u2019 They\u2019re not my kids! But I like to be needed.\u201d It may sound low-stakes, but his heart is so painfully close to the surface, and the peril of some Dr Marten-ed youngster stamping on it by accident sets up intense emotional jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Often the laughs feel ripped out of you, sheer exuberant relief that no one got hurt \u2013 like the feeling of being at a circus, except instead of tigers, you\u2019re being entertained by suburban manners and wounded middle-aged pride. \u201cI am what I am,\u201d he says at that \u201csuburban\u201d word. \u201cMy world is not the world of the agent provocateur, activist, disruptor. That\u2019s not me. I\u2019m riding the horse in the direction that it\u2019s travelling. That\u2019s a phrase, isn\u2019t it?\u201d I\u2019ve never heard it \u2013 maybe it\u2019s Welsh, I suggest? \u201cIt\u2019s probably from a self-help book, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Northern sights \u2026 Steve Coogan with Brydon in the upcoming series of The Trip. Photograph: Phil Fisk<\/p>\n

To stick with the phrase, few could have predicted that the horse he\u2019s riding \u2013 whether on The Trip<\/a>, Gavin & Stacey or Would I Lie to You? \u2013 would travel for so long. These are, or were, all decades-long shows, yet when Brydon describes The Trip taking shape, it sounds like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and George go to see some TV bigwigs to pitch a show about nothing. \u201cMichael [Winterbottom] said: \u2018Six half-hours, no script really, and different restaurants.\u2019 I said to him: \u2018You\u2019d be lucky if you get one good half-hour.\u2019 I was very wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the first episode, The Inn at Whitewell, in 2010, it is plain that the idea is dynamite, but very weird dynamite. Between the squabbling, the self-aggrandisement and the impressions, you can understand why it\u2019s funny, but the depth of feeling catches you unawares. Even by series four, you still can\u2019t figure out why it\u2019s as moving as it is. \u201cHow [Winterbottom] makes those shows, he doesn\u2019t cut to comic rhythms, he has storytelling rhythms, so when we saw the cuts of the first series, it was quite jarring. He\u2019s quite pure, Michael. He isn\u2019t manipulative of his audience, whereas a comedian, all\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0doing is manipulating your audience.\u201d Even after 16 years, Brydon still hasn\u2019t turned into a food snob. \u201cWe had whale and stuff, in Scandinavia. It\u2019s a bit like chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you think The Trip\u2019s been going a long time, Would I Lie to You? is now in its 19th series. \u201cA lot of people say they watch it before going to bed. It puts them in a nice frame of mind. If you watch that show, you think the world is an agreeable place, where people get on with each other.\u201d His nice-guy shtick is surely parodic, I\u00a0decide, though he says, no, he can do villainy if he wants to, it just doesn\u2019t do it for him. \u201cThere was a while when I thought: \u2018If I host a show like Would I Lie to You?, I\u2019ll never be taken seriously as an actor.\u2019 But then I thought: \u2018Look, I\u2019m never going to be bloody Robert De Niro anyway, so let\u2019s just do it.\u2019 I think the fragmented media landscape is a gift to someone like me. There were people in Barbie \u2013 I had a tiny part in that \u2013 who didn\u2019t even know I was an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

If he sounds philosophical, almost Buddhist-ly \u2013 without front, or certainly without professional puffed-up-ness \u2013 that\u2019s because \u201cpeople always look at careers in a vacuum, and they\u2019re not, because my life is not my career. My life is my home, my family, my friends. I\u2019ve got five children! Katie\u2019s 31 and George is 15. So I\u2019ve never been in that place where I could go to Atlanta and make the X\u00a0Men versus the B Men.\u201d He\u2019d take a second season of Bill\u2019s Included, for sure; he\u2019d love that. But, he says, \u201cI don\u2019t think your career is your greatest source of happiness. Maybe it\u2019s from being divorced \u2013 this is my second marriage \u2013 and I\u2019ve worked out where I\u2019m happiest. And it\u2019s being in the garden, with friends and in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill\u2019s Included starts on 20 November on BBC One at 9.30pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m a nice person, you know,\u201d says Rob Brydon, as I met him in a basement green room…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-954940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}