Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

How we killed comedy theatre: Nigel Planer interviewed

‘We used to have a theatre of comedy in London but it got hijacked': the playwright and Young Ones star discusses the death of farce – and how he's trying to revive it

Nigel Planer: ‘We did some damage with alternative comedy in the 1980s, and our sarcasm, which meant that the older generation of farces were no longer applicable’. Credit: Harvey Planer 
issue 28 August 2021

Nigel Planer is on a mission to bring farce back to the West End. ‘There’s a lot of snobbery in comedy,’ he tells me when we meet at a hotel bar near the Old Vic. ‘People say, “Oh that’s comedy. It can’t have any meaning”.’

The actor and writer is still best known for playing Neil the hippie in the 1980s sitcom The Young Ones and he can recall a time when farce was a staple of London theatre.

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