Ben Elton says about PLAYERS,
‘Brilliant. I hope things work out for you’

You can see from the steely awkwardness of this photo, Ben Elton and I don’t go back very far. In my mind, we actually do, even to the extent that I’d like to name my first born Bob in honour of the ‘I’ll tell you what Bob, you are a girl’ girl in ‘Blackadder Goes Fourth’. But for Elton, the relationship is more one of famous author-strange man standing around quoting his stuff back to him for five minutes in 2004, and so I’m not sure I’ll be giving the speech at his 50th.

(Although if you do read this Ben, I am a very reasonably priced MC and in terms of inspirational speaking, am rapidly emerging as the person to get if you can’t get that guy who cut off his arm with a pocketknife after it got stuck under a rock.)

The photo with Ben Elton was actually taken in the old Triple R offices in Fitzroy. Elton had appeared on Aural Text rather than Breakfasters, but I turned up to stalk him anyway. Conversation didn’t exactly flow, because I was overwhelmed by the fact that this one person wrote

‘Do we have a video?’ (Neil, THE YOUNG ONES)

‘Behold, a necklace of pure green’ (Lord Percy, BLACKADDER II)

‘It’s not about the cheese,’ Layla whispered. ‘It’s so not about the cheese. It’s just, you know, it was my cheese’ (DEAD FAMOUS)

Lieutenant George: ‘Permission to shout ‘Bravo’ at an annoyingly high volume.’ General Melchitt (proudly): ‘Permission granted.’
Lieutenant George: ‘BRAVO!’ (BLACKADDER GOES FOURTH)

All of WE WILL ROCK YOU (just to prove he’s human).

I admitted to Elton that I was writing a satirical novel in a style not dissimilar to his and even mentioned that I was employing the bold capitals heading technique that he used to break up scenes in ‘Stark’ and ‘This Other Eden’.

‘Oh yes, my old style,’ he said, signing away.

I told him that I’d send him a copy when it was published.

‘Yes you should do that, but I can’t promise a reply. Sorry. I get that many books every week.’

He then handed me back my signed books, smiled, and said these words - ‘Brilliant. I hope things work out for you.’

So here is my dilemma. Perhaps the most successful comedy author in the world has said the words ‘Brilliant. I hope things work out for you’ while talking about ‘Players’. Naturally this would look very good as a shout line on the cover of the next edition (perhaps even abbreviated to just ‘Brilliant.’ BEN ELTON) and yet, some people I’ve spoken to on the issue who don’t work in marketing and who don’t maintain a rampantly self promotional website say that to do so would be ‘unethical’.

There’s even the possibility of shafting Elton by taking his comment out of context, and then double shafting him by printing underneath it the Sydney Morning Herald review of ‘Players’ which says: ‘he's not Australia's answer to Ben Elton; he's better than that.’

Elton would rightly respond to this by pointing to his oevre and then getting me to point to my oevre and suggesting perhaps that his oevre is bigger than mine and that GRANNYSAURUS REX doesn’t stack up that well against BLACKADDER. He might go on to explain that really good comic writers don’t use the word ‘oevre’ or on the rare occasions that they do, they use it sparingly, taking care not to over-oevre. To be honest, I’d be rapt to have that discussion because it would mean a second conversation with one of my heroes.

And just as a side issue, if the baby were to be a boy, I’d still like to call it Bob.