Comedy news: Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris by Lucian Randall

Tweet

With his new film Four Lions set to head to the cinema, Chris Morris will thankfully be making a return to the British comedy scene. To find out more about the man who inspired some of the UK’s best comedy of the last decade, SSP writer Ellie Broughton delves into a recent biography penned by Lucian Randall.

Chris Morris's biographer, Lucian Randall, enjoys a rare privilege: he has interviewed the Brass Eye comic, face to face. Only once, mind.

“We had a long chat about the book,” says Randall, “but after that meeting, it was just emails.” After the chat, Randall explains, he compiled the biography through interviews with Morris's friends, family and colleagues and corresponded with Morris by emails to confirm the shakier facts of the case. Randall excuses his subject, saying he understands fully that this is just part of the act. Because of and in spite of this 'act', the reader can take a comprehensive entertaining dip into the world of Britain's best living satirist.

The story starts with On the Hour in 1991. Armando Iannucci gathered together Britain's young favourites - Steve Coogan, Doon Mackichan, Patrick Marber and Rebecca Front – and gave Morris his first stand-out show.  He had always worked in radio and has his own show on Greater London Radio when On the Hour started. But once the team started to roll out the mock news, it was only a matter of time before the format was hijacked for TV screens.

Morris fronted one series of The Day Today before Brass Eye kicked off on Channel Four. It broke the broadcasting code on several counts, enraged the tabloids and wowed a generation. And it's just as brilliant in retrospect. The footage of Morris harassing London drug dealers for 'clarky cat' is still as funny for the miaow-miaow generation as it was at the time.

You'd have to be a serious Morris anorak not to find some new fact in the book. For instance, the fact that the paedophile they interviewed for the 2001 special was, in fact, a paedophile, or that Morris is scared of the dark.

As for the authenticity and originality of the work – Randall never fails to impress. My only criticism is the objectivity with which he deals with his subject. The book never rambles and he keeps his opinions to himself. This is Randall's second biography, as he has already written about Vivian Stanshaw, and it's clear that he is not interested in competing with his subjects in the comedy stakes. Rather, it's Randall's eye for detail that shines, as well as the quality of the interviews he has collected.

Friends and colleagues have long collaborated with Morris's act – like the time Steve Yabsley told the papers he had an addiction to garlic, and once cooked a chicken with twenty cloves. Or the time Roy Roberts claimed that he filled a Bristol radio studio with helium. The absence of Morris's authoritative voice leaves rooms for the legend to sprawl.

Disgusting Bliss has got every Morris moment you could want to read about, including all the green room stories. And the writer says that it even has the official Morris nod: “When I sent him the finished book, he didn't say a thing about it.”

'Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris' by Lucian Randall (£12.99, Simon & Schuster)