Nigel Planer

by Traffic.

Yeah, that one was performed by Neil from The Young Ones.

Neil Pye, otherwise really Nigel Planer as the actor.

And that comes from his album called...

Neil's heavy concept album.

I don't know what other tracks were on that album.

Therefore, anyone who's familiar with The Young Ones would be familiar with the character of Neil.

And I think that's a really emblematic track of Neil's personality in the show.

yes.

But I specifically remember her from Roll Over Beethoven, which was the sitcom which, post The Young Ones, it was sort of Nigel Planer's next vehicle.

Or it may even have been between Series 1 and Series 2 of The Young Ones.

But The Young Ones had been a big success and Nigel Planer was going on to do other things.

So he did Roll Over Beethoven with her.

And obviously she was Marion Alvin Stardust at the time, who'd had a bit of a renaissance in the...

He has been a comedic god, a West End star, a poet, an author, and now we have the pleasure of reading all about his life in his fantastic new book, Young Once: A Life Less Heavy.

Will you please welcome, for a good old-fashioned spooning, Nigel Planer.

[upbeat music]

Hello.

I think my, besides Harena, I think my other favorite character in this book is the shopkeeper.

And Nigel Planer, I don't know what accent he's going for, but it's like some form of northeast coast US, I think.

Yeah.

And he's like, I don't know.

And I think it was, I think Peter would have, or somebody else like Keith would have overloaded it, really, that you've just got a straight actor.

Nigel made an interesting point, though.

I thought about the, when we were doing, we were doing a Young Ones thing in Morecambe, I think, and he said the one thing that doesn't work about Chris is his clothes, really, because we didn't, we just let the costume department have their way with them.

And so he wears these kind of ridiculous outfits, which are not, which he couldn't have got really.

interesting.

I'll look it up.

Ian Drew Dice Clay observes that they recently caught your Celebrity Antiques Road Trip with Nigel Planer on BBC.

I guess they replayed it on TV the other day.

Now, if your arse has fallen out, and I'm thinking of that moment in Bad News, for you and you and you, where Vim complains that he's having a prolapse while recording vocals, and I think Den...

Nigel Planer asks if they have a nappy roadie.

Yeah, it's a pretty deep cut.

And if you don't know bad news, it's like the Young Ones made a UK pub rock version of Spinal Tap.

Who is our weekly guest here on The Dig?

It's Nigel Planer.

Wow.

That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah.

It's not bad, is it, really? Nigel Planer.

And this is quite a long interview.

He likes to chat, Nig.

He's a lovely man, so I hope you enjoy my conversation with Nigel Planer where he talks about the things that he put in his time capsule and where he'd like to bury it.

Yeah, yeah

... that, I think it was Nigel Planer gets interviewed about The Young Ones, about something he did, what, 40-odd years for three months in his life, and, uh, he has to process when he's doing interviews about it, you can see where this is going, um, the fact that it means so much to the person on the other end of the interview, and yet, th- just mechanically, it was a job for two, three months of his life that has, that's continued to resonate.

When you're coming on and talking, the pair of you, when you're talking about films like Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which clearly means so much to people, how do you process that? How do you feel about it?

William? [laughs]

I mean, that's the way the movies are all crafted.

Right.

I mean, go- going back a little bit to Nigel Planer, um, one of the things that I, I, I read when i- I read interviews with Pe- uh, Pete Hewitt about it all, was just how insane the schedule was.

And I j- I...

May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman, Neil.

Yes, which now Boomshanker, Nigel Planer says he pitched that as an authentic hippie phrase picked up during his late teens, early 20s backpacking around India, but that it was Ben Elton who provided the highly inaccurate translation of what Boomshanker means.

During his oft told pilgrimage where he decided that he kind of hated the very thing he'd set out to be, which was kind of a middle to upper class person finding themselves in India.

And what's so brilliant about that set piece is that the whole thing comes to nothing because the letter ends up going on the fire anyway.

Oh, Liverpudlian.

So he does revert back to that.

Yeah, and I should say that on the Blu-ray commentary, Nigel Planer, Lisa Meyer, Alexei Sale, they all laugh so hard at the punchline, that's for the invasion of Crete.

We already talked about it, but it kind of concludes with, and I'm just going to read this because it's like how I had to spell.