Twenty years after the demise of the TV character he initially did not want to play, Richard Wilson admits he is still frequently hailed by his most famous catchphrase: “I don’t belieeve it!”
The actor, 84, who first turned down One Foot in the Grave, thinking Victor Meldrew was “too angry”, now says: “It doesn’t worry me that people remember me for Victor – it was a fantastic role.
“It’s mainly taxi drivers recognising me. But whenever anyone shouts out the phrase, I normally smile and wave.
“The only time I would worry is when a group of drunks started shouting. I’d move on quickly because you didn’t know where it would end up. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often.”
The moment, after just 42 episodes, that Britain’s most popular grump was killed off by a hit and run driver, his cap left lying in the road, was moving, heartfelt and final. There would be no sequels.
Almost 13 million viewers watched that night, slumped in their armchairs, mourning the loss of both Victor and the deliciously black comedy.
Annette Crosbie, 86, who played Victor’s long-suffering wife Margaret, understands their reaction. She says: “It was wonderful family entertainment, very funny and true to nature.
“The battle between the male and female sex is still going on, with women trying to understand men and men still too full of themselves – it’s all still valid.”
So, 30 years after its first episode, why did One Foot in the Grave become such a hit, Victor Meldrew etched firmly in the national psyche? Writer David Renwick was behind this new style of sitcom, anchoring his scripts in realism.
Victor, a curmudgeon in a world he no longer suited, was an unlikely candidate to win hearts. But he was a malcontent staunchly supported by his wife, driven to the end of her tether at times, but with her devotion never faltering.
In 1990, anti-hero Victor, riled by the perceived decline in moral standards and plagued by pure bad luck, struck a chord. The things irritating Victor annoyed a large part of the population.
Annette says: “Everybody knew a Victor or was one. Every man I knew owned up to being a Victor – in some way or another.”
The scripts were written with Richard in mind after David had worked with him on the big-screen version of Whoops Apocalypse and Hot Metal.
David, whose other successes include Jonathan Creek, says: “Richard is wonderful to write for. Fundamentally, he’s funny. That’s something you can’t define or quantify – he’s just funny saying the lines. In addition, he has the ability to be very edgy, with great resonance to his delivery.
“And, of course, he has the technical acuity in terms of timing, with all those wonderful slow burns and double takes.”
However right he was for the part, Richard took some convincing before accepting it. Then 53, he initially recoiled against playing a 60-year-old dumped on the unemployment scrapheap.
He says: “I didn’t feel ready to play older men. I also didn’t take to the idea particularly – the character seemed too angry all the time.”
Les Dawson, Timothy West, John Thaw, Eric Idle and Andrew Sachs, were then considered for the role until, finally, Richard, after reading further scripts, accepted the part.
Attention switched to casting his wife, Margaret. Again, David had his sights set on one person – Annette Crosbie. David, whose novel, One Foot in the Grave and Counting, is published later this year, says: “I just sensed a truthfulness and intensity that would lift all this above the level of the conventional sitcom.
“I just knew she could bring incredible weight to the show.”
Ratings quickly rose, peaking at 20 million for a 90-minute special, One Foot in the Algarve, on Boxing Day 1993.
In every episode there was always a surprise in store for Victor. One of the most extreme came in The Pit and the Pendulum episode.
After a disagreement with an aggressive gardener, Victor is planted up to his neck in a hole the gardener had dug in his garden. In reality, Richard was crouched inside a wooden box buried in the earth with a supply of hot water bottles keeping him warm. But it took three attempts to shoot the sequence.
He recalls: “It wasn’t very comfortable, mainly because I couldn’t do anything, even scratch my nose.
“It was miserable because I was in the hole for long spells – two or three hours – and to top it all, there was a wind blowing.”
After writing a fifth season, David believed it was time to quit after one more series.
Annette was saddened by the
news. She says: “I would have liked it to run forever because I enjoyed it so much. But it was becoming a burden for David, with people constantly writing, ‘He’ll never top the last one’.”
Having decided there was no alternative but to kill off
Victor, David still had a lump in his throat watching the death scene being filmed.
The image of Victor’s arm falling into shot as his cap drifts away in a rivulet of rain was, says the writer, “suddenly very chilling and for a moment I felt the dramatic loss of a close friend”.
Letting go after so many years was a wrench for everyone. Richard says: “One Foot opened everything up for me. Doing something that cultish means there is a price to pay, of course, in as much as sometimes people find it difficult to cast you. Yes, it closed a few doors as well as opening them, but I feel extremely lucky to have played a character as popular as Victor.”
Would a show like One Foot be commissioned today? David says: “The route to acceptance in those days was a whole lot simpler.
“What’s certain is that were the same scripts submitted now they wouldn’t be allowed to coast through unaltered as they did then.
“Sadly, with comedy, there’s rarely any right or wrong. All too often you’re just bending to someone else’s taste.”
While David regards himself as semi-retired now, Annette and Richard still work when the right projects come their way.
Annette says: “I loved the tiny bit I did in After Life with Ricky Gervais, that was great, the nicest and happiest job I’ve been near for a long time. But the TV business is so different, too commercial and impersonal.”
As for Richard, he is considering revisiting his one-man show, The Trial, based on an episode of One Foot.
He had planned to stage the show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017 before suffering a heart attack.
He says: “I was sitting, waiting to meet a writer and then it happened.
“I fell and was taken to hospital, but don’t remember anything after that.
“I’m lucky to have survived, being 80 at the time. I appreciate how lucky I am to still be here.”
- David Renwick’s novel, One Foot in the Grave and Counting, will be published in hardback by Fantom Publishing (fantompublishing.co.uk) later this year. A stage adaptation of the sitcom is also planned.
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