The Gonzo Daily: Prog Comedy Comes To BBC4 – Featuring Rick Wakeman and Peter Gabriel!

Monday 10 February 2014

Prog Comedy Comes To BBC4 – Featuring Rick Wakeman and Peter Gabriel!

Simon Day as Brian Pern (centre), with prog band Thotch, featuring Paul Whitehouse (far left) and Nigel Havers (far right).

“He pioneered progressive rock. He invented world music. He was the first person to use plasticine in videos. Now he presents the definitive rock documentary.”

Welcome to The Life Of Rock With Brian Pern, a new three-part rockumentary sitcom brought to you by Genesis-loving actor-director-comedian Rhys Thomas and The Fast Show’s Simon Day, who stars as its titular hero. One look at the poster will give you an indication of where their heads were at during its creation, and it’s a star-studded affair with Nigel Havers, Paul Whitehouse, Vic and Bob and Al Murray amid the heaving progressive throng. But we’ll leave it to Rhys to explain how Pern came about.

So tell us, what is The Life Of Rock With Brian Pern?
It’s a BBC 4 documentary on the life of rock music from birth and middle age to death! It’s told from the point of view of Brian Pern who’s a Peter Gabriel-type figure played by Simon Day from The Fast Show. But because he’s an egotist he talks about his own songs and it’s mainly about promoting himself, rather than other artists he’s supposed to be celebrating. That’s the idea, and because I’m obsessed with Genesis and Queen and all those bands it’s very much an homage to those people. It’s not anti, it’s not taking the mickey, but he’s a silly version of all those groups.

Day rehearses an 80s Pern, with co-creator Rhys Thomas (second right).

Brian first came to life online at the BBC in 2009. How did you come up with the concept? And why did it take so long to make it to TV?

I was writing another sitcom, Bellamy’s People, and one time I was bored and I was looking up the Peter Gabriel website called Full Moon Club where every month he used to do a video update. Fans would be tuning in cos all they wanted to know was are Genesis going to re-form, and when is a new album coming out. But he’ll be putting up stuff like ‘well, I’ve just been on holiday to wherever…’. I thought it would be quite funny if someone took this idea and developed it. Apart from Spinal Tap or Still Crazy, based on rock stars who go off the rails, no-one has ever done something about a character like this, who is a very successful older rock star but quite sensible. I know Brian May very well and he’s one of those super intelligent rock stars now in their 60s. What do they do with their time now? They’re still creating, and playing live and often better than younger groups performing out there. These guys are now pensioners, even though they don’t feel like it, and they’re the first generation of rock stars who are now OAPs. I was inspired by Peter Gabriel as he’s one of the ones who’s never ever sold out. He never did a bad disco album or anything misguided like that, even his popular stuff was still not that mainstream. So we created Brian, did it online and people found it funny. Then we got other people in like Michael Kitchen who was in Foyle’s War, he’s Brian’s manager and he’s based on Jim Beach, who’s Queen’s manager. I spent a lot of time with Queen making documentaries [Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender and Days Of Our Lives], about 10 years in all, so I know how that bit of the music industry works. Then years later we pitched the idea to BBC4. The controller at the time found it funny but thought we may be taking the mickey out of the programmes they show. Now there’s a new head of comedy, Shane Allen, and he loved Brian Pern so he suggested we finally do something.

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