Novelist, actor, ex-MP, podcaster, best-selling biographer and conversation connoisseur Gyles Brandreth chats – at length – to Melissa Blease about his Guinness World Record, the secret to being a Very Happy Person, and an appearance at Bristol Old Vic in January
From bus stop blurters and over-chatty taxi drivers to that really annoying person sitting behind you at the cinema, people who insist on commentating on every stop on a train journey and the kind of verbose, self-obsessed know-it-alls we all dread being seated next to at a dinner party, talkaholics are all around us, all the time – and very few of them are saying anything that we want to hear.
But you know that old idiom about there always being an exception that proves the rule (the origins of which any half-decent mansplainer would be able to explain to you, in full?)… British broadcaster, writer, former politician and much, much more Gyles Brandreth is that exception: he can’t stop talking. But the Great British Public, it seems, can’t stop listening to everything he has to say.
“Talking too much has been a bit of a problem for me all my life!” Brandreth readily admits when chatting to me (at length, of course) in advance of his forthcoming visit to Bristol when his aptly-named one-man show Gyles Brandreth: Can’t Stop Talking lands at the Bristol Old Vic on January 12.
“When I was writing my autobiography a couple of years ago, I found a letter from my three older sisters in one of my parents’ keepsake boxes,” he recalls. “They’d written a petition to my parents in the very early 1950s when I was a very little boy, which read as follows: ‘Dear mother and father, if we agree to pool our pocket money and give it back to you, would you be able to afford to send Gyles to boarding school because he won’t stop talking and we can’t stand it!’ At the bottom of the letter, in my father’s neat handwriting, I saw the word ‘agreed’, and a tick. And yes, I was indeed sent to boarding school!”
From MP to VIP
But Gyles’ garrulous gallop was not to be stopped. In a career that spans over five decades, his opinions, comments and quips have dominated prime time TV (Countdown; The One Show; This Morning; Celebrity Gogglebox; Have I Got News For You), radio (Just a Minute; The Westminster Hour) and bookshelves (an authorised biography of actor John Gielgud; a couple of up-close-and-personal books on the royal family; political diaries; an autobiography; multiple works of historical fiction). Between 1992-1997, he was the Conservative MP for Chester, during which time he attempted to instigate a Plain Language Bill and was appointed a Lord of the Treasury, essentially in the role of a whip.
That’s a mere precis of the official Brandreth CV – we’ve yet to mention, for example, his penchant for novelty jumpers, or his status as one of Britain’s most popular after-dinner speakers, or his role as President of the Oscar Wilde Society; should you be lucky enough to have Gyles strike up a bus stop chat with you, you’d definitely want him sitting next to you for the whole journey.
“Oh yes indeed, I’ve got a lot to say,” he says. “But during the show that I’m bringing to Bristol my wife Michèle will be standing in the wings holding up a big sign that says, ‘you think you’re the thinking man’s Ken Dodd but you’re not – get off!’”
Isn’t that a bit rude of her? “No! She’s on the side of the audience – two hours is more than enough. I’m in The Guinness Book of Records for making the longest-ever after dinner speech: 12 ½ hours! And I’ve had somebody die during one of my shows. But as his widow said, at least he died laughing! She wouldn’t accept a refund for his ticket either, which was very sweet of her”.
Brandreth’s Bistro
While the Bristol show will (hopefully) avoid a death in the audience, what else – apart from Gyles, talking – can we expect?
“I don’t want the show to be all about me – even though it is, of course – so I’ve come up with this idea of having a menu: Brandreth’s Bistro! The audience gets to choose what I talk about: theatre stories, political stories, royal stories… or my worst stories, it’s up to them! They can literally ask anything they like, and there aren’t any questions that I won’t answer; I give it a go, whatever it is!”
Gyles is hoping, though, that there will be questions about his memories of the Bristol Old Vic itself.
“I’ve visited the theatre many times, but never performed in it,” he says. “My best friend since my school days was the actor Simon Cadell, who played camp manager Jeffrey Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi, amongst other things. Sadly, Simon died in 1996, but he was at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School when he was very young, and I saw him appear there many times. I’ve been going to Bristol off and on for many years ever since; I used to work at the BBC on Whiteladies Road, so I know the city very well. I wrote a novel 30 years ago called Venice Midnight that includes a big scene on the Suspension Bridge. I might well go back to the bridge for old times’ sake while I’m in the vicinity”
Ah, our conversation is getting “very Gyles Brandreth” now; a chat that begins with an explanation of Brandreth’s Bistro ends up, on the twinkle of a tongue, with a trip down memory lane. It’s time for me to make my choices from my own interview menu before the cab Gyles is in drops him off at the This Morning studios (“Oh, I adore working with Alison Hammond! She’s lovely! Great fun, and always so jolly!”). Gyles: stop right there!
Quick-fire question time
In all seriousness, do you ever stop talking? “Yes! When I’m at home I don’t talk much, and I certainly don’t bother talking to myself because I’d quickly get very bored with that. But I’m a great lover of reading, which requires one, by necessity, to keep quiet. I’m a trustee of the Queen’s Reading Room, which is Queen Camilla’s charity for encouraging a love of reading – reading is so good for you, for everybody! So yes, I keep quiet when I’m reading. Next question please!”
Do you ever wear yourself out by talking so much? “I’ve been exhausted ever since Michèle and I had our three children, so I’ve been exhausted for a very long time. From the moment you start having children you’re tired until you die; that’s reality and I’m a realist!”
Talk to me about your friends in high places… “As James Callaghan once told me, ‘senior royalty give you friendliness rather than friendship, never forget that’ – and it was a good piece of advice. But I first met Queen Camilla when we were both teenagers, so I’ve got quite a few stories there – though not necessarily for sharing here, ha ha!”
How do you remain so upbeat and optimistic when so much of the world right now – the news, social media, political debate – is apparently fuelled by anger? “Is it? How dreadful! This is why I only ever watch Bargain Hunt, you see – that’s all I watch, I’m serious! I don’t watch the news, haven’t done in years, so I think the world is a rather nice place! And anyway, I don’t ‘do’, as they say, anger; an anger management course would be wasted on me. I think I’m quite an equitable person, really.”
Final question, before This Morning reclaims Gyles to share him with another audience: what makes him such an apparently Very Happy Person? “When I was a little boy, my headmaster told me that busy people are happy people, and I believe he was right. Keeping busy certainly makes me happy!”
Thankfully, for all of us, Gyles Brandreth isn’t planning to stop talking any time soon.
Gyles Brandreth: Can’t Stop Talking comes to Bristol Old Vic on 12 January, 3pm.
For more information, tickets and to join the waiting list if tickets sell out, visit bristololdvic.org.uk
