In recent years the humble landlord has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the spiralling property market, third only in the blame league to Russian oligarchs and Kirstie Allsopp. But as someone who spent over a decade living in houseshares I have a strange fondness for landlords. Nothing unites a group more than a common enemy, be it the Soviet Union or Nasty Nick from Big Brother. Having an awful landlord can be a good thing, it can bring you together as a household.
The worse the proprietor, the more you will bond. Never have I got on better with my flatmates than when our landlord installed a dodgy deadlock and locked us out of our flat for a full Friday evening. As a solution, he drilled a hole in the door to get us in and then dealt with that security issue (in London’s most crime-ridden neighbourhood) by stuffing a plastic bag in the hole for two months and hoping for the best.
That landlord was by no means my worst. In my final flatshare, I had to deal with a man who thought it normal to begin our stay in the property with a two-hour tour of each electrical item and how to use it (I didn’t know there such a thing as “best technique” when using a Breville). On the same day he made us do a fire-alarm drill in which we were admonished for not leaving calmly enough. To this day it is the only time I have been told off for overreacting to a fake fire. Most worryingly, throughout our stay, he insisted that we didn’t take down his favourite piece of art, a 5ft-square framed photograph of himself sniffing his fingers and looking meaningful that hung above our stairs. To this day, I have no idea what he was smelling on his fingers.
Turns out he was a former model but I will be honest when I say I struggled to fancy him, partly because I am heterosexual and partly because I wasn’t turned on by a deeply officious approach to household etiquette. I spent a year essentially counselling him weekly about his greatest worry, the build-up of fluff inside the tumble drier. Form an orderly queue, ladies! To top it off, in our final months of living there, my worst ever landlord asked if he could store something in the house. When it arrived the item turned out to be a piano and we would have to evacuate the living room every week when his children visited for lessons.
There are lots of comic bosses and fathers in sitcoms, but the comic landlord remains rare. Obviously there’s Rigsby in Rising Damp and Marsha in Spaced, both great comic creations (maybe there is one in Friends but I don’t think so; they wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to how the characters could afford that flat). But in actual fact landlords are perfect for sitcom. It is a genre that in essence is all about being trapped and there is no one you are trapped by more than your landlord. If you want to live in their house you have to let them in, you have to show them respect and you have to listen to them politely. It might not seem like it when you’re actually talking to them but they hold all the cards.
Also, for a writer, it is easy to get the character into the house: there is always a spurious reason they can be coming round. With the landlord in my sitcom Josh, Geoff (played by Jack Dee), the more spurious the better. There is an underlying idea that none of the reasons he gives are really why he is coming round; he is just a bit lonely and wants to see people. We like the idea that he’s got 10 similar flatshares in London and he’s just popping from one to another all day, talking to young people who find him a bit annoying. So that’s the next nine sitcoms sorted.
Josh continues Wednesday 2 November, 10.30pm, BBC3; Josh is at Princess Royal Theatre, Port Talbot, Saturday 28 November and touring to 20 December; joshwiddicombe.com
