Boys will be boys

James Rampton
Monday 17 June 1996 18:02 EDT
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Neil Morrissey is Tony in `Men Behaving Badly'. Does this mean that he is inadequate, pathetic and redeemed only by vulnerability?

At the Royal Television Society Awards Ceremony recently a posse of dinner-jacketed executives were sitting round a table after their meal. Unbeknown to them, their immaculate demeanour was being undermined by a red blob of light dancing comically around their noses. At the next table, the actors Neil Morrissey and Martin Clunes, victors in the Best Situation Comedy category for Men Behaving Badly, laughed uproariously as they directed a pen-sized laser at the faces of their smart neighbours. Award-winners behaving badly.

Morrissey and Clunes, who play the flat-sharing mates Tony and Gary in Simon Nye's sitcom, have become icons of New Laddery. Whether they like it or not, they have come to represent a whole movement of footy, farting and foaming ale-obsessed blokes: Loaded man made flesh. As a nation of nylon replica-kit wearers swelters and swigs its way through Euro 96, you can hardly open a newspaper without seeing some headline along the lines of "Footballers behaving badly". A woman was recently heard to describe rowdy behaviour in a restaurant as "very MBB". The programme has been so successful - it netted an average of 13 million viewers for the last series - and the lead characters have become such popular symbols, that they are teetering on the verge of a backlash. Channel 4's J'Accuse programme and, indeed, this newspaper have been lining up to put the boot in to the New Lads.

But as others get hot under the collar, Morrissey remains sublimely cool about the phenomenon he embodies. He is casually dressed: sandals without socks, grey plaid trousers and a white linen collarless shirt, open at the neck to reveal a silver necklace. He has shoulder-length hair - think David Cassidy circa 1974 vintage - and sparkly brown eyes.

Over a lunch of salmon fishcakes and Australian Chardonnay, he seems unruffled by the New Lad lather the press is fomenting. "What's all that about?" he says. "It's just journalists' copy, isn't it? A bloke who likes football and lager? That's a really new thing, ain't it? I suppose lager is relatively new compared to beer, but that's as new as you get. Just because we happen to be a popular programme, they use us as part of the formula for what laddism is. If you watch Men Behaving Badly, they say you're a lager-drinking lad - which is absolute cack. The programme is very popular across the board. How can it have 13 million viewers if it's just men that watch it? It's got to be 50/ 50." Beryl Vertue, the programme's producer, assures me that, in fact, 51 per cent of its audience is female.

In the first episode of the new series, which begins on Thursday, Tony tries to warn Gary about the dangers of allowing his girlfriend Dorothy (played with panache by Caroline Quentin) to move into their bachelor flat. He conjures up an apocalyptic vision: "She'll fill the place with cushions. She'll make you drink your beer out of a tumbler and say things like, `If you're going to fart, would you please go and do it in the garden?' " In these politically correct times, this may seem like sexist heresy, but, its makers contend, the programme is only reflecting what blokes are really like.

"We're surprised that we keep being credited with the birth of laddish behaviour," Vertue observes. "Outrageous though we are, one of the things that accounts for our success is that it's a very truthful show. People don't like to admit how truthful it is, but so many times you hear people say, `They're just like my boyfriend or my husband.' That's why people aren't offended by it. You'd imagine that this is a show which women wouldn't like because it's so chauvinistic. But women love Gary and Tony because they're very innocent. They're like little boys; not vindictive in any way."

Morrissey backs up this view of Tony and Gary's laddish innocence. "They are just a couple of sad gits," he says. "One of them doesn't work, and one of them is a security consultant. People seem to think that in the series we're burping, farting, womanising, shagging, football hooligans, which is absolutely, completely and utterly wrong. The characters are feeble, inadequate, pathetic, never-go-to-bed-with-anyone, halitosis-infested gits. But their redeeming qualities are a natural charm and vulnerability."

That has not stopped them becoming a Moral Majority punchbag. Just last week, Clunes was attacked for suggesting in an interview that in 10 years' time "they'll have the f-word on children's television".

Vertue reckons, however, that the more near-the-knuckle elements of Men Behaving Badly have been misjudged. "If you're going to be outrageous, you have to be funny as well," she maintains. "Some other shows seem to think that if you say `shag' often enough, you'll automatically raise a laugh. But that's just like getting a thrill out of saying `knickers' or `bottom' when you're five. People don't realise how much cleverness goes into what Simon [Nye] writes."

The acting, too, is often underrated. "Neil is very keen on stage business," Vertue continues. "If there's any action, you can see his eyes positively light up. Do you remember the episode where he tried to pull out a sore tooth? He really was most precise about all that - how to tie the string to the door-handle, how many steps to take back - and that's what made it so funny."

After seven years as Rocky, Michael Elphick's motorbike-riding companion on Boon, a year as a character in Noel's House Party and now five on Men Behaving Badly, the high-profile Morrissey has become a "legitimate target" for the tabloids. They went so far as to doorstep his ex-wife's parents in an attempt to dig the dirt on his time in a children's home (there was none.)

The 33-year-old actor has also had to endure the pleasure/ pain of being dubbed a sex symbol. "If you go around thinking you're a sex symbol, you're a twat," he laughs. "People are called sexy because they're on telly. Whoever turned round to Louis Pasteur and said, `What a sex symbol'?"

Morrissey is obviously laddish. He admits to a 24-hour bender to drown his sorrows after his beloved Crystal Palace failed to gain promotion to the Premiership in May. On the day of our interview he apologises for his bleariness; it is the morning after a "seeing-the-sun-come-up" night before. But he still sighs deeply at the inevitable question of his similarity to Tony. (Eager-to-please bookshop managers made the same mistake last year, thrusting a can of lager into Morrissey's hand at 10am when he turned up at their shop to promote the best-selling Men Behaving Badly book.)

"We look remarkably similar," Morrissey patiently explains, "but I'd hate to think I'm anything like Tony. He's sadly lacking in social graces, and my thought-processes are rather more complicated than his. He's very much a two-plus-two-equals-five character, whereas I always make seven."

He pauses before summing up Tony - and, by extension, all New Lads. "There are endearing qualities about him, though - slapworthy, but endearing. He's the sort of person you really want to poke in the eye, but you love him anyway."

n The fifth series of `Men Behaving Badly' starts on Thursday at 9.30pm, BBC1

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