0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising outside

0:05

the UK. BBC

0:33

Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. On last

0:35

word this week, the stand-up comic

0:37

Tony Allen, one of the pioneers

0:39

of the early 80s alternative comedy

0:41

scene, campaigner Nancy

0:43

Pierce, who launched an eating disorders charity

0:46

from her Norfolk farmhouse, and

0:49

American factory worker Eleanor Otto, one of

0:51

the original Rosie the Riveters, who

0:53

started building aircraft during the Second World

0:56

War. But

0:58

we start with one of the most important figures

1:00

in recent European history, the father of

1:02

the EU single currency Jacques Delors has died

1:04

aged 98. The

1:06

former president of the EU Commission from the mid 80s to

1:09

the mid 90s, Delors was

1:11

both admired and reviled in equal measure,

1:13

depending on where you stand on EU

1:15

integration. But even his

1:17

detractors agree on his vital contribution

1:20

to building today's European Union. Charles

1:23

Grant covered Brussels politics for the Economist

1:25

magazine when Delors was running the Commission

1:28

and later wrote a book called Inside the

1:30

House that Jacques built. I

1:32

put it to him that all the big decisions in the EU

1:35

are taken by member states and the

1:37

Commission itself does not have much real

1:39

power. So how was

1:41

Delors able to push through these huge

1:44

changes? He was quite a good tactician and he

1:46

worked with the leaders available in Europe at that

1:48

time who did have the power, notably

1:51

Francois Mitterrand, the president of France, Helmut

1:54

Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany, and Margaret Thatcher,

1:56

the Prime Minister of Great Britain. But

1:58

it helped him that they were all leaders who were willing to,

2:01

they all thought the EU was quite a good idea. Even Margaret

2:03

Thatcher in her early, in the early years of Jack's Law was

2:05

not against what he was trying to do because he was trying

2:07

to make the market more efficient. Later

2:09

she could fill out with Mccourt's vision with another

2:11

master but he's quite clever. For example, he

2:14

persuaded Mrs Thatcher that the EU would really benefit

2:16

from a single market. He understood

2:18

that once you get a single market that'll

2:20

create a dynamic and momentum to go into

2:23

other more ambitious objectives but she bought the

2:25

single market idea. To change the society, to

2:27

change the community, we must

2:30

need a political engineering and

2:32

the first element of

2:35

this engineering is the

2:37

decision to achieve the single market. Then

2:39

a few years later he persuaded Helmut

2:41

Kohl, the German Chancellor, to give up

2:43

the D-Mark, an amazing thing for a

2:45

German Chancellor to say let's give

2:47

up the D-Mark and accept the Euro. And

2:49

he partly did that by making Cole feel

2:51

that since he'd got a German unification which he

2:54

wanted, both the

2:56

Commission and the EU in general were quite

2:58

favorable to German unification and tried to help

3:00

Cole. He said to Cole,

3:02

well you know you have to repay the

3:04

favor to Europe and we've helped you with unity. You

3:06

help us and give up your currency. I mean

3:09

as you say he would later clash

3:11

on many occasions with Margaret Thatcher and as

3:13

a result became a bit of a hate

3:15

figure for the right-wing tabloid press in this

3:18

country. The Sun famously ran a headline saying

3:21

up yours, de l'hors. How

3:23

did he feel about that? Did he ever speak about

3:25

it to you? He did. I think

3:27

he became Commission President for the first three

3:29

years really, 85, 86, 87. He got on fire with Mrs Thatcher

3:33

but then Jack Delors went

3:35

to the trade union congress in 1988. Union

3:37

leaders increasingly see

3:39

Europe as the way of

3:41

getting the say which Mrs

3:44

Thatcher denies them. They applauded

3:46

Mr Delors as he talked

3:48

of improving working conditions, encouraging

3:50

collective bargaining and asked them

3:52

to participate. 1992 is

3:54

much more than the creation of

3:57

an internal market, abolishing barriers to

3:59

the free movement of goods,

4:01

services and investment. To

4:03

capture the potential gains, it is necessary

4:06

to work together. He came up with

4:08

something called the social charter, which was

4:10

a collection of kind of wishes

4:12

for Europe to do more for workers' rights

4:14

and work with consultation information

4:16

and so on, which was actually not about legislation,

4:18

it was just a kind of wish list of

4:21

desirable things to pursue. But it really upset Mrs.

4:23

Thatcher, and so they fell out really on social

4:25

Europe. And then of course, later on,

4:27

towards 1989, they fell out on the euro because Delors decided

4:32

to push very hard for the euro. And

4:34

Mrs. Thatcher, of course, did not like economic and

4:36

monetary unions, so she pushed

4:39

back against him and they became quite bitter

4:41

enemies for the last year of prime ministership.

4:43

Of course, he played an indirect role in

4:45

the fall of Mrs. Thatcher because he was

4:47

at the Rome Summit, I was there as

4:49

a journalist in the autumn 1990

4:52

that Delors tried to set a

4:54

date for starting negotiation

4:56

of a treaty to create the single

4:58

currency. And Mrs. Thatcher felt

5:00

that she'd been ambushed by Delors and the Italians.

5:02

So she was very angry. She went back to

5:05

parliament and said, the president of the commission, Mr.

5:07

Delors said at press conference the other

5:09

day that he wanted the European parliament

5:11

to be the democratic body of the

5:14

community. He wanted the commission to be

5:16

the executive and he wanted the council

5:18

of ministers to be the Senate. No,

5:21

no, no. That

5:24

no, no, no, all about Jack Delors

5:26

that provoked Geoffrey hard to resign and

5:28

therefore which actually led to the resignation

5:30

of Mrs. Thatcher because it definitely had effectively brought her

5:32

down. So Delors had a role in the demise of

5:35

Margaret Thatcher. Tell us a bit about

5:37

Jack Delors background and in particular his

5:39

father because that had a big impact

5:41

on his politics, didn't it? When his father

5:43

was a soldier in the first world war and

5:46

was badly wounded at Verdun, the great Franco-German

5:48

battle of the first world war, when

5:50

he felt following his father's history

5:54

that they had to do something to bring France and

5:56

Germany together. And his father always hated the Germans, but

5:58

Delors didn't hate the Germans. His grandparents

6:00

are farmers in the Carreres district of southwest

6:02

France. His father was a, what was

6:05

called a Ricier, a kind of Asher in the bank

6:08

Bonte de France. He himself never

6:10

went to university. He started work at 18 in

6:12

the Bonte de France himself. He later got some

6:14

qualifications in night school, but he worked very hard

6:16

to get on in life. I mean, I met

6:19

him a couple of times when I was a correspondent working

6:21

for the BBC and later the Sunday

6:23

Times. And he struck me as very

6:25

smart, very focused, but quite reserved. He was

6:27

much more of a technocrat or a civil

6:30

servant than a politician. I know you interviewed

6:32

him many times for your book, The House

6:34

that Jacques built. What was he like

6:36

as a person? Well, I think you've said

6:39

something about very important Kirsty. He wasn't a

6:41

national politician, but as a person, he was

6:43

very, very soft spoken. He was very polite.

6:46

He was modest, but he

6:48

wasn't very ambitious in the way that most politicians are.

6:51

And the most extraordinary thing is that in 1994,

6:53

after he was finishing in

6:55

Brussels, I think he had finished, would soon have finished

6:57

in Brussels. He was offered the crime to the French

6:59

Socialist Party to be their candidate in

7:01

the presidential election. He basically, if there

7:03

was no competition, if he wanted, he would have got it. And

7:05

he turned it down. He didn't want to run for the presidency

7:07

against Jacques Chirac. What he did

7:10

so is a measure of much speculation, but he

7:12

really was reluctant to be a front

7:15

rank politician seeking elected office. He never

7:17

stood for office almost ever. He was

7:19

three years in the European Parliament in

7:21

the early 1980s. That

7:24

was on a party list. He wasn't really elected

7:26

in the campaigning sense. And he was

7:29

briefly mayor of Clichy, a suburb of Paris at

7:31

one point. But he was very reluctant to

7:33

be an elected politician. I think he

7:35

was really a French technocrat in the tradition

7:37

of Jean Monnet, who built Europe in an

7:39

earlier phase in the 1950s. What

7:43

would you say his legacy is within

7:45

the European Union amongst those who believe

7:48

in that project? He is regarded

7:50

as the great example of a successful

7:52

founding father of the European Union who

7:54

had ambition and achieved quite a lot.

7:56

Of course, everything is imperfect. The

7:58

plans for the euro were... But

8:02

the kernel of the plans was good enough

8:04

so that the ECB, the European Central Bank,

8:07

has endured, the euro has endured. It needed

8:09

a lot of reform and some quite serious

8:11

surgery over the last 15 years to strengthen

8:13

the architecture of the euro zone. And

8:17

the single currency is now a

8:19

fairly stable, fairly secure currency

8:21

that I believe will endure. So

8:23

I think his real legacy for Europe is the euro.

8:26

And also I think the single market shouldn't

8:28

be forgotten because that euro zone

8:30

was a product of the single market being a

8:32

success. Without the single market being a success, nobody

8:34

would have thought they could trade the euro. Charles

8:37

Grant, on the former European Commission president

8:39

Jacques de Lour, who died aged 98.

8:43

It was the mid-1970s when Nancy Pierce

8:45

started a support group from her farmhouse

8:47

in Norfolk for families of people with

8:49

eating disorders. She knew there

8:51

was a real need having watched a friend's daughter

8:54

struggle with anorexia. And then

8:56

people started to come from all over Britain

8:58

seeking her advice and the support group grew

9:00

and grew until it morphed into a national

9:02

organisation called BEAT, now the

9:04

UK's leading charity for eating disorders.

9:07

I've been speaking to its chief executive

9:09

Andrew Radford. When she

9:11

started, I think the general thrust

9:13

of the approach to treatment was

9:15

blame the family and force the

9:18

patient. And Nancy's approach

9:20

was to start from a perspective

9:22

of trying to understand

9:24

the patient. It's a

9:26

case of helping the family to

9:28

change their attitude towards the girl

9:30

and towards the illness. And

9:33

it's helping her to

9:35

see what she's doing. Back in the

9:37

70s, very little was known about how

9:39

to treat eating disorders effectively. And

9:42

as explained in this BBC interview from

9:44

1974, the treatment was often very harsh.

9:47

You have a plan, you discuss for the

9:49

patient what weight they ought to be and

9:51

the patient has to agree with you. And

9:54

on the way out to the target, they're rewarded

9:56

when they reach certain weights. They're

9:59

not alone. to get up to wash

10:02

or go to the laboratory until they reach certain ways.

10:04

They're not allowed visitors, so the

10:07

progress is constantly being rewarded. And

10:09

as Nancy's son George MacPhears explains, this

10:11

form of early treatment was not very

10:13

successful. It was really a

10:16

behavioural approach, and the problem with

10:18

that really was that either people

10:20

would then become obese or they eat

10:23

to get out of hospital and then

10:25

as soon as they were back home

10:27

the problem would just reoccur. And so

10:29

that dynamic of kind of constant hope

10:31

and then destruction of that within the

10:33

family was really distressing. Well a

10:36

friend of mine had a daughter with anorexia,

10:38

and she had been to her doctor with the

10:41

girl because she just wouldn't eat anything at all

10:43

and they were desperately worried about it. And

10:45

it was making a tremendous problem within

10:47

their own family. And

10:50

I'm a marriage guidance counsellor and I had

10:52

been doing quite a lot of work with

10:54

family therapy. And so we

10:56

talked about actually starting a group to see

10:58

if there were other people who perhaps needed

11:01

some help as she did. Because

11:03

they were getting no help from the doctor really. Well

11:05

the doctor really didn't know, no it's

11:08

not that the doctors don't know enough about it, but

11:10

that what they don't know is how to help. It's

11:13

an extremely difficult thing, the girl doesn't want to

11:15

be helped. I think my mum picked

11:17

up on that, that's why the first charity

11:19

she started was called Anorexic Family Aid and

11:21

she really wanted to focus on trying to

11:23

help the anorexic, not by directly helping the

11:25

anorexic, but by helping the people who supported

11:27

her around her. So it was really about

11:29

shifting the power a bit. Often

11:32

they come because mum says that they must

11:34

come. And so they sit there

11:36

very quietly and they don't really want to take part.

11:38

But gradually as they hear other people talking

11:41

about it, they begin to say

11:43

that what's worrying them. But

11:46

it's probably the only time that they've ever actually

11:48

admitted that they have an illness. We

11:51

say that you cannot do it alone,

11:53

but you alone can do it. And

11:56

that really sums the whole thing up.

12:00

So this is an effective treatment then, is it? Yes,

12:02

I think it's very effective. People

12:04

were travelling from across the whole country to

12:07

Norwich, where Nancy had been given a room

12:09

in the local hospital. And just

12:11

that sort of uniqueness of what she was

12:13

offering at the time was testament to the

12:16

fact of how important it was. And then

12:18

people started phoning her at home so much

12:20

so that she got an extra phone

12:22

line fitted so that she could deal with the volume of

12:24

calls that were coming in so that the family could make

12:27

their own calls. And to what extent

12:29

was there a taboo at that time when it

12:31

came to speaking about eating disorders? Was that

12:33

also part of it? Oh, that was so

12:36

central to it. I mean, just in the

12:38

way that most people can remember mental ill

12:40

health being something that you didn't want to

12:42

talk about. Well, eating

12:44

disorders were almost the taboo area of

12:47

mental illness. And that's

12:49

only been reversed in the sort

12:51

of last sort of 10 or

12:53

15 years. It was

12:55

not a trendy or popular

12:57

area to try and do something about.

13:00

But of course, that almost certainly

13:02

would have been what attracted Nancy

13:04

to that. And her determination

13:08

and dedication to doing the right thing by

13:10

people who were suffering was central

13:13

to her character. According to

13:15

her son George, Nancy's caring nature and desire

13:17

to help others around her was formed in

13:19

her early years. She grew

13:21

up on a farm near Farringdon. It

13:24

was quite isolated, I think, but

13:26

there was quite a strong sense

13:29

of community there. And I think

13:32

that fitted well for her. She joined

13:34

in quite a few local clubs. She

13:36

was a member of a tennis club.

13:38

She played cricket actually. She played cricket up

13:40

to a county level and she

13:43

was part of the young farmer's club. So

13:45

I think from that she did get a

13:47

very strong sense early on of the power

13:49

of local communities and how

13:52

important they are to support people. Her

13:54

original support group, Anorexic Family Aid, continued

13:56

to grow throughout the 80s with a

13:58

helpline receiving over 2,000 calls

14:01

a year. In 1987, Nancy

14:03

got a Churchill travel grant to

14:05

visit the United States and study why

14:07

the Americans were getting better results treating

14:10

people with eating disorders. She

14:12

brought back that kind of ethos

14:14

to the UK and then started

14:17

connecting with the traditions who were

14:20

at that time at the cutting edge of eating

14:22

disorder treatment and understanding

14:24

the research to start to push

14:27

that kind of thinking into the

14:29

system. And of course, that is now

14:31

the default approach. And just

14:34

give us a little bit more detail on how

14:36

the treatment has changed. As you say, there was

14:38

this sort of force feeding and blame the family

14:40

in the 1970s. Now, what

14:42

sort of approach is taken? The

14:44

normal starting point now is to engage

14:46

with something called family-based treatment.

14:49

And that is about recognizing that

14:51

the eating disorder is something that

14:53

happens in the home, but it's

14:55

not the family's fault. And the

14:57

family are central to

14:59

changing the environments and changing

15:01

the behaviours that have become

15:03

reinforced for that individual. And

15:06

it's about engaging parents, partners and

15:08

other carers in supporting

15:10

and engaging that ill person to

15:12

start to work towards recovery. In

15:15

1989, anorexic family aid merged with another

15:18

charity to become the Eating

15:20

Disorders Association. In later

15:22

years, this became known as BEAT,

15:24

which continues to provide peer support

15:26

groups as well as a helpline.

15:28

Leslie, how important do you think anorexic family

15:31

aid has been to Sarah? It

15:33

always provided us with an expert that we could

15:35

get in touch with who understood the problem. And

15:38

it provided meetings where we could see people who

15:40

had come through similar problems to Sarah's and

15:42

were now well. And I don't think it's too

15:44

strong to say that without the group, I

15:47

don't think Sarah would be alive today. Nancy

15:49

Pierce, who's died at the age of

15:51

93. Now, you

15:54

might be familiar with that iconic Second

15:56

World War poster featuring a strong female

15:58

factory worker in a red- of Polkadot

16:00

Bandana flexing her biceps under the

16:02

slogan, we can do it. Well,

16:05

Eleanor Otto, who's died at the age of 104, was

16:08

one of the original Rosie the Riveters.

16:11

When the United States entered World War II in December

16:14

1941, President Franklin

16:16

Roosevelt set a goal to build 60,000 warplanes

16:19

in the space of a year. However,

16:21

with the men away at war, there was a shortage of labor.

16:24

So the US government launched a publicity

16:26

campaign, which thousands of women responded to,

16:28

including Eleanor, who was 22 at the

16:31

time. There

16:33

are 100 million of us, men

16:35

and women, of working and fighting age.

16:38

To fight this war, 10 million more people

16:40

must go to work by the end of 1943. Today,

16:44

employment offices are deserted. For

16:47

every riveter available, four are needed.

16:50

With every man utilized, we are still

16:52

short millions of hands. We must call

16:54

upon women. I applied,

16:57

it's raw aircraft, and

16:59

they hired all the women that came there.

17:01

Other women came from other states to work

17:03

when they heard about it, because first time

17:05

women had that type of job. And

17:08

my sister and I were riveters. Brenda

17:10

Wynn, Eleanor's great niece, who lived with

17:12

her aunt in her final years, told

17:14

me why she'd joined the war effort.

17:16

She felt it was her duty to

17:18

bow. The war broke out

17:20

in December, and by January, she was working.

17:23

We had to have some men there to show us work that

17:25

we had never done. And it didn't take

17:27

us long to catch on. We can see

17:29

the men's job wasn't as hard as they may have think it

17:31

was, and we all did it.

17:34

A riveter itself is someone who actually

17:36

uses a rivet band or a rivet

17:38

device and connects airplanes together.

17:41

And people were always surprised that she'd

17:43

handled a big rivet band. The

17:45

small one wasn't as heavy, and

17:48

it was all true hands-on job

17:50

training. They didn't even

17:52

get a few days to work

17:54

with a trainer, basically. They were

17:57

just given instructions, told to

17:59

do it. and figure it

18:01

out and somebody who came and checked on them

18:03

a little bit later. First they were kind of

18:05

dubious about having women come in and do their

18:08

jobs, but after they learned that we

18:10

were ready to be experienced

18:12

and cooperate and everything they wanted us to

18:14

do, it worked out great. They

18:16

just did what they thought they had to do

18:18

for the war effort. They never thought

18:20

of it as opening the door

18:23

for women in the future. And

18:25

what happened at the end of the war? Did

18:27

she leave the factory? She was good because all

18:29

the women did. When the men came home, the

18:31

women went home. But

18:34

she was a single mom and was

18:36

also helping care for her mother. So

18:39

she had to work and so she tried

18:41

other odd jobs. She tried office work, which

18:44

was horrible for her because she hated sitting

18:46

down. So about a year

18:48

I didn't work and somebody

18:51

I knew came up here to Long Beach and

18:53

she said, You better get up here because Douglas

18:55

has hired women for the first time since the

18:57

war. Got hired just like that when they

18:59

found out we had Richard Ryan. She worked

19:01

for Aurora Aeronautics and

19:04

then they changed to Douglas and

19:07

then they changed to Bun. I

19:09

have to tell some guys sometimes, there's a river gun

19:12

about this big and when I grab it and go

19:14

to use it, one of the guys went and told

19:16

the boss, she's using that big river gun. I

19:18

said, I've been using this river gun before you were born. I

19:21

said, I'm not as frail as I look, I'm

19:23

strong. And she was there just

19:25

a few months shy after the boozers. That's

19:28

extraordinary that she was actually working

19:30

in a factory until she was 95 years old. Was

19:33

that because she couldn't afford to retire or

19:35

just because she loved the job? The plant

19:37

shut down and they laid everyone off. I

19:40

don't want to ever tell them I retired. I

19:42

did not. They sat in my vocabulary, retire.

19:46

They laid a floss. So

19:48

at my age, at 95, I went to

19:50

the unemployment office. I said, I know

19:52

you're going to hire me for a job because I'm 95. Do

19:55

you miss it? Yes, I do. I

19:57

miss being on people every day. She loved

19:59

the area. airplanes for one and

20:02

that was a job that she thrived at

20:04

and was good at. I've talked to some

20:06

of her supervisors that she had over

20:08

the years and wondering whether she kind

20:10

of slacked off a little bit at

20:12

the end and they were like, two

20:15

grand circles around almost everybody with

20:18

the planet. How would you sum

20:20

her up? Strong, independent,

20:22

obstinate. She

20:24

really embodied feminism in

20:27

the feminine sense. She really wanted

20:29

to be a lady and was.

20:32

But an independent lady who could

20:34

support herself. Very much independent and

20:37

strong. Eleanor Otto, who died

20:39

aged 104. And

20:41

finally I want you to cast your

20:43

mind back to the 1980s and the

20:45

revolution in the comedy scene to a

20:47

time when stand-ups were not just performing

20:49

mother-in-law gags in working men's clubs but

20:51

trying out a new alternative form of

20:53

comedy. Tony Allen may not

20:56

have been a household name but he was

20:58

a key figure in that movement making him

21:00

one of the architects of modern British stand-up.

21:03

I've been speaking to his friend Dr Oliver

21:05

Double who is also a lecturer in comic

21:08

and popular performance at the University

21:10

of Kent. So there were three

21:12

main traditions of stand-up in the UK. It started

21:14

off in music hall and continued through the

21:16

variety theatre of the 20th century and

21:19

that would be people like Frankie Howard or

21:21

Suzette Terry. Then you had

21:23

working men's club comedy which was all

21:25

about kind of old gags told by

21:27

people in sort of smart or stylish

21:30

suits. And then there was

21:32

alternative comedy. An alternative comedy flew

21:34

in the face of all of that. It was

21:36

the beginning of the modern style of stand-up in

21:38

the UK. And Tony Allen

21:40

was right slap bang in the centre.

21:42

He was part of the

21:45

big bang that that whole scene grew out

21:47

of. Tony Allen grew up in

21:49

suburban haze before moving to London's Labrook Grove in

21:51

the 1970s where he

21:53

became politically active in the squatting scene.

21:56

He started acting with the West London

21:58

Theatre Workshop before moving into stand-up.

22:01

His first performance was in 1979 and then a few

22:03

months later the Comedy

22:06

Store opened in Soho. When

22:08

the Comedy Store first opened it wasn't really

22:10

an alternative venue what it wanted to be

22:12

was a showcase for new talent and the

22:15

person who sort of brought the alternative if you

22:17

like to the Comedy Store was Alexei Sayle as

22:19

the first compaire but he felt a little bit

22:22

on his own because a lot of the other acts were

22:24

just people telling old gags but when

22:26

Tony turned up instantly he recognized him as

22:28

somebody who although they had lots of differences

22:31

between them was sort of similar enough to

22:33

feel like he was a kindred spirit. I

22:36

came from a sort of counterculture

22:38

background I was squatting at the time

22:40

and I was an anarchist and

22:42

I still am folks and

22:45

you know and I came from that culture

22:47

and everything was alternative. One of the things

22:49

Tony brought to the table along with Alexei

22:52

was the idea that comedy that stand-up should

22:54

be non-sexist and non-racist and

22:56

they really pursued that line quite hard

22:58

because it was what they believed. And

23:01

what else defines if you like the style

23:03

of Tony Allen's comedy indeed alternative comedy? I

23:05

mean okay it was it was

23:07

non-sexist non-racist but it was also observational wasn't

23:09

it? It wasn't just a list of gags. Absolutely

23:12

I've listened to an early recording of his

23:14

in which he says to the

23:16

audience I review the world that's my job.

23:23

So in other words

23:25

it's about

23:29

explaining

23:33

what the world looks

23:35

like from his perspective

23:45

and in a way that's true today

23:47

if you think about anybody from Stuart

23:50

Lee to Bridget Christie

23:52

to Michael McIntyre to pick three very different

23:55

examples. I mean they're all talking about what

23:57

the world looks like from their point of

23:59

view. in their act. The

24:01

interesting thing about Tony was

24:04

that he had such a non-conventional worldview.

24:06

So many of these comedians

24:09

that Tony Allen started out with on the

24:11

alternative comedy scene, you know, I'm thinking Alexei

24:14

Seyell, Ben Elton, Don French, Jennifer Saunders, Rick

24:16

Mel, and so on and so on, they

24:19

all went on to become household

24:21

names. Why didn't Tony Allen become

24:23

household names? That's a brilliant question.

24:25

I mean, I think that he had the

24:27

talent to become a household name, but I'm

24:29

not sure he had the temperament. I

24:32

first met him at a comedy club in

24:34

Rotherham in 1988. And

24:36

literally one of the first things he told

24:38

me about himself was that when he did

24:40

the first showcase for alternative comedy

24:43

on TV, which believe it or not, happened as early

24:45

as 1980, when he

24:47

was on there, he was censored. And he

24:49

said, well, I decided I wasn't interested

24:51

in telly after that. Now, to be fair, Tony

24:53

did do bits of telly after that. But I think that speaks

24:56

to his mindset of probably a deep

24:58

ambivalence and say I'd wanted to be

25:00

recognized for what he was doing, and

25:03

yet not wanting to be part of the establishment,

25:05

if that makes sense. In the summer

25:07

of 2015, the graffiti artist Banksy

25:09

opened Dismal Land, a satirical dystopian

25:11

theme park on the beachfront in

25:14

Western Supermare. And he hired Tony

25:16

Allen to train the stewards. We

25:19

contacted Banksy and asked if he'd like to tell

25:21

us why he felt that Tony was the best

25:23

person to do that job. He sent

25:25

us through this tribute, which has been voiced

25:27

by the actor Kevin Eldon. Dismal

25:29

Land was organized in strict secrecy. So

25:31

in order to find the hundred or

25:33

so stewards we needed, we advertised in

25:35

the local paper for runners and extras

25:37

for a film shoot. I

25:40

was concerned that when the young people we

25:42

hired discovered that they weren't on a film

25:44

set and in fact had to interact with

25:46

the public all day, they might get a

25:48

bit freaked out. So I asked Tony to

25:50

come and host a few basic confidence building

25:52

workshops and hone their stewarding skills. It

25:54

was essentially a pretty dry corporate gig for

25:57

him. However, Tony

25:59

Allen was a born troublemaker. He

26:02

took one look at the name of the

26:04

event and for three days in the conference

26:06

hall of a nearby hotel, he trained the

26:09

teenagers in his own image. He'd

26:11

been left alone to get on with it, so

26:14

come opening day we had no idea what

26:16

was about to hit us. Welcome

26:19

to Disneyland. Enjoy. Yeah,

26:22

I'll take it from here. Thanks very much. I've

26:24

got to be honest, that's about as jolly as

26:26

it gets here. Tony delivered

26:28

the most surly and incompetent

26:31

employees in the history of

26:33

hospitality. They were truly dismal,

26:36

incapable or unwilling to even point

26:38

out the fire exits. They

26:41

ignored any requests for information. They popped

26:43

the balloons they were meant to be

26:45

selling. They threw people's change on the

26:47

floor. They even went up to random

26:49

members of the public and licked their

26:51

ice creams. Tony

26:54

had instilled in them that they should

26:56

never break character even when speaking to

26:58

management. Our head of

27:00

production lost their mind. Threatened to quit. The

27:03

council and police were not impressed and called

27:05

a meeting. But by

27:08

the end of the first day, it

27:10

was clear the stewards were a massive hit.

27:13

They became by far the most talked about part

27:15

of the event, overshadowing six months

27:17

of my hard work and the efforts of

27:19

50 invited international

27:22

artists. I had

27:24

to hand it to him. Tony Allen

27:26

really knew how to take the Mickey.

27:29

I believe you and his other friends, knowing that

27:31

Tony was terminally ill, held a living wake for

27:33

him at which he was present. I mean, it's

27:35

a fabulous idea that I love it. How did

27:37

it go? Oh, it was

27:39

absolutely brilliant. I was there

27:42

and I sort of spoke about Tony

27:44

on the night. Although he didn't hear

27:46

my bit because he'd gone home already.

27:48

He heckled. That is a waste. Which

27:52

is so on brand for Tony. The

27:54

comedian Tony Allen, who's died aged 78. This

27:58

week, you also heard last words on the politician

28:00

and architect of the modern EU,

28:02

Jacques Delors, one of

28:04

the original Rosie the Riveters, the American

28:06

factory worker Eleanor Otto, and

28:09

Nancy Pierce, the founder of a charity to

28:11

help people with eating disorders. And

28:13

don't forget there are hundreds of other

28:15

fascinating life stories in the Last Word

28:17

archive on BBC Sounds. BBC

28:21

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