Johnny Vegas on Murder on the Blackpool Express, working with his comic idols and doing his own stunts
The actor and comedian plays Terry, a serial loser who is disenchanted with life, in the new Agatha Christie spoof
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Your support makes all the difference.In Murder on the Blackpool Express, a fun new comedy drama on Gold, Johnny Vegas is leading an all-star cast, alongside Nigel Havers, Una Stubbs and Griff Rhys Jones.
It is a starry place to be – and, the actor and comedian would be the first to admit, a long way from the moment he received deeply uninspiring career advice at school in St Helens.
Vegas, who has also starred in such popular comedies as Shooting Stars, Benidorm, Still Open All Hours and Ideal, laughs that “I’d be tempted to do a drive-by past that careers teacher now and shout out of the car window, ‘All you wanted to do was put me on a Youth Opportunities scheme, but I’m with Nigel Bloody Havers now!’”
In this one-off Agatha Christie spoof scripted by Jason Cook (Hebburn), Vegas plays Terry, a serial loser who is deeply disenchanted with life.
He drives a coach for a faltering travel company that runs low-rent literary tours. The only thing that keeps him going is his unrequited love for the company’s chirpy owner, Gemma (Sian Gibson, Car Share).
Terry and Gemma set out on a tour of the sites of famous murders from the novels of the flamboyantly self-centred author, David Van Der Clane (Rhys Jones).
With a motley crew of Van Der Clane super-fans on board (played by, among others, Havers, Stubbs, Kimberley Nixon, Nina Wadia, Mark Heap, Sheila Reid, Kevin Eldon and Susie Blake), Terry and Gemma are uncomfortably aware that the company will fold if this tour culminating in Blackpool is not a success. They are piloting the last-chance express.
Unfortunately, their passengers keep meeting grisly ends that replicate the murders in David’s books, which have such magnificently silly titles as I Just Died in Your Psalms Tonight, When Push Comes to Shove Comes to Bloodshed, Axe Me No Questions, and I’ll Tell You Who Dies, and A Murdering Hand Is Worth Two in the Grave. Murder on the Blackpool Express, which airs on Gold, is an enjoyable melange of Christie and comedy.
In person, 47-year-old Vegas is a toned-down version of his vibrant, widely loved showbiz persona. Born Michael Pennington, the performer shares his alter ego’s best characteristic: a winning, irresistibly self-deprecating sense of humour.
In addition, Vegas is full of entertaining flights of fantasy. At one point, for example, the comedian, who is the father of two boys, launches into an entertaining diatribe about the class system. “Whoever said we now live in a class society is talking rubbish. We will always have those social divides.
“I said to my older son the other day, ‘You’re kicking off because there is no samphire in your salmon packed lunch. I’m sorry, but it’s out of season. It’s predominantly harvested in September. If you want to go to a coastal town and pick your own, that’s fine.’ It’s true that it was always an argument at our house in St Helens. My dad would be going, ‘Dammit, we’re out of samphire again!’”
The comedian, who is married to the producer Maia Dunphy, goes on to outline his character in Murder on the Blackpool Express. “Terry is a guy who is happy to just do enough. He has had enough disappointment in his career and his life. So now he’s very happy to coast.
“But he’s secretly carrying a torch for Gemma. He does not have much get up and go, so he admires her drive. He’s had feelings for her from the first day that he got on the bus. But he’s always accepted that she is out of his league. His real motivation is looking out for her. She’s desperately trying to keep a business going, and it is her and not the job that gets Terry up and out in the morning.”
Vegas admits that he initially spent much of his time on the set of Murder on the Blackpool Express overcome by the fact that he was working with Havers. “Every day we’d whisper to each other, ‘It’s Nigel Havers! Who’s going to break the ice with him at breakfast?’ We were awe-struck.
“But he’s fabulous. He’s a great raconteur. What stories did he tell me? None that I can repeat – let’s just leave it at that. He’s lived a life that’s full. He’s travelled each and every highway. He did it his way.”
Murder on the Blackpool Express plays to our passion for whodunnits. Vegas reflects that, “We love them because everyone who watches a murder mystery thinks that deep down they will be the first to finger the criminal. It unleashes the smart alec within us all. We always give a confident, ‘Yeah, I knew that,’ just as the end credits roll.”
Vegas particularly enjoyed performing some low-level stunts on Murder on the Blackpool Express. The comedian recalls that, “We had to do a chase sequence along the Blackpool seafront. We had to fill out a risk assessment form beforehand. One of those forms once said that I might find stairs a potential hazard!
“So if stairs are high risk, I hardly think I’ll be threatening Tom Cruise any time soon. If I did do the same sort of stunts as him, they would need to thicken the wires or audiences might see them. I think most of the budget would go on painting the wires out!”
Vegas smiles about the fact that he is now in a position where he is asked to do stunts on the Blackpool seafront. “It’s utterly bizarre. I once worked at Argos, but I got a terrible staff appraisal – I got told off for breathing on the stock. I didn’t like wearing the uniform, so they put me to work in the car park without a uniform.
“When I approached one woman and asked, ‘Can I take that to your car for you?’, she thought I was a sex pest. She said very quickly, ‘My husband will be here any minute now’.”
After getting a degree in art and ceramics at Middlesex University and trying to make it as a potter, Vegas started doing open spots on the comedy circuit. With an incendiary live act, in which he would invite someone on stage to fashion a pot on the wheel with him, a la Ghost, he was soon snapped up by television.
Vegas says modestly that, “I was very lucky. Very early in my career, I got to work with my comic idols, Paul Whitehouse [on the sitcom Happiness] and Reeves and Mortimer [on the comedy game show Shooting Stars]. I thought, ‘If it all ends now, isn’t this the best thing ever?’”
He has gone on to fulfil many of his showbiz ambitions, although one remains unfulfilled. Vegas has a deep and abiding love of zombie dramas.
Poker-faced, he explains to me that, “I’ve made many plans about what I would do in a zombie apocalypse. I recently went on holiday with my older son and nephew. The only conversation that made them take their earphones out was when we discussed how we’d survive a zombie apocalypse.
“We’d need to loot a supermarket and then steal a boat to escape down the river. Of course, I’d need to learn how to hotwire a boat first.”
Having achieved so much over the past two decades, Vegas is in a good place. He certainly feels that he no longer has anything to prove. He confesses that, “In the past, I did say no to a lot of things. But children changed that.”
Breaking into a characteristically imaginative routine, Vegas continues that, “Now I carry my own scissors in the car boot in case I get a last-minute offer of a supermarket opening. ‘Yes, I could be there in an hour. Don’t let Bob Carolgees anywhere near that ribbon. I’m coming. Hold him off. He can cut the ribbon around the ‘Danger – Wet Floor’ cone if he insists.”
‘Murder on the Blackpool Express’ is at 9.30pm on Gold on 11 November
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