Ben Elton was one of the most ubiquitous faces in British pop culture in the Eighties and Nineties, but he has expressed sadness about having dropped off the radar in recent years.
Elton shot to fame in the Eighties, co-writing seminal TV comedies including The Young Ones and Blackadder and hob-nobbing with a raft of famous names at the beginning of their careers, among them Rik Mayall, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Jennifer Saunders.
His career blossomed from there, with Elton writing a number of novels, including 1996’s Popcorn and 2001’s Dead Famous, as well as writing the books for numerous hit musicals, among them the Queen musical We Will Rock You and the Phantom of the Opera sequel Love Never Dies.
But in a new interview, Elton has admitted that he struggles to be commissioned by major television broadcasters today.
“No one’s very interested in me,” he told The i.
“We filmed my last stand-up tour, but we could no more get that on Netflix than fly to the moon. I’m not remotely hip anymore and nobody feels cool commissioning me.”
He continued: “I used to be a radical, and now I’m feeling something of a curmudgeon.”
Elton did add, however, that he isn’t prone to self-pity, and acknowledged how successful he was for the bulk of his career.
“We were a lucky generation,” he said. “I have had my share of privilege. Somebody who’s had as good a fortune as me can’t be bitter about it.”
Elton’s last major TV vehicle was the BBC sitcom Upstart Crow, which starred David Mitchell as William Shakespeare. The show, which was acclaimed by critics, launched in 2016 and came to an end with a Christmas special in 2020.
Last year, during a conversation with his early Blackadder collaborator Richard Curtis at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Elton admitted that his early TV persona – of a political, abrasive socialist – wasn’t entirely true.
“This image of a very, very self-confident, very left-wing, very angry person, was never the person I knew,” Curtis told Elton.
Elton said that he thought the politics in his act had always been “balanced” but because of the “fury” in which he delivered it, it appeared to be more “aggressively left”.
“I’m Labour, I’m welfare state, but when I was at university, I was considered worryingly right-wing, because I supported the Labour Party,” Elton said.
In 2023, Elton sparked debate when he dubbed then prime minister Rishi Sunak a “narcissistic sociopath” during a BBC daytime appearance.
