The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography

He moved, tumbled and leapt like an athlete. He had authority, presence and dignity. I had ... hold on, what did i've got? Patter and fluency, i assume. Verbal dexterity. studying. Hugh continuously stated that I additionally further what he referred to as gravitas to the lawsuits. even supposing he had nice authority himself on level i assume I had the sting on taking part in older authority figures. I wrote too. I suggest i really bodily wrote traces down with pen and paper or typewriter. Hugh saved the words and shapes of the monologues and songs he used to be engaged on in his head and purely wrote them down or dictated them while a script was once wanted for stage-management or administrative reasons. Hugh was resolute that the Footlights should still glance grown-up yet by no means proud of itself or, God forbid, cool. We either shared a horror of cool. To put on sun shades while it wasn't sunny, to appear pained and stricken and emotionally uncooked, to drag that sneery snorty 'Er?!! What?! ' face at issues that you simply did not comprehend or from that you proposal it fashionable to distance your self. this sort of arid, self-regarding stylistic narcissism we detested. greater to seem a naive simpleton than jaded, drained or world-weary, we felt. 'We're scholars, for fuck's sake,' used to be our credo. 'We have humans making our beds and tidying our rooms for us. we are living in panelled medieval rooms. we've got theatres, printing presses, firstclass cricket pitches, a river, boats, libraries and for all time on the earth for contentment, excitement and enjoyable. What correct have we obtained to moan and moon and mooch concerning the position having a look tortured? ' We have been lucky that the age of teens doing stand-up comedy hadn't but arrived. the belief, and i'm afraid it has due to the fact turn into a truth, of pained emo scholars leaning listless and misunderstood on a mike-stand railing opposed to the load of lifestyles will be greater than both folks may were capable of endure. We have been exceedingly attuned to pretension, aesthetic discord and hypocrisy. The younger are so priggish. i'm hoping we're even more tolerant now. nearly not anyone we ever labored with both at Cambridge or afterwards rather looked as if it would proportion or perhaps comprehend our aesthetic, if i will be able to dignify it with this sort of observe. it really is possible that our worry of being unoriginal, of taking a look cocky, of being seen or of being obvious ever to have selected the road of least resistance triggered us trouble in our comedy careers. an analogous fears may additionally have driven us to a few of our greatest endeavours too, so there is not any actual cause to remorse the sensitivity and fastidiousness that basically we seemed to percentage. We quickly turned accustomed to the expressions of misunderstanding that would flicker over the faces of these who recommended anything that inadvertently trespassed opposed to our instinctive feel of what may well or couldn't be humorous, correct or healthy. i don't believe we have been ever competitive or unkind, by no means intentionally, but if individuals are totally in harness with reference to concerns of precept and outlook it needs to be very alienating to outsiders, and that i count on tall public-school figures like us should have appeared forbidding and aloof.