Whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais?

Clement, an Essex-born ex-BBC studio manager, and La Frenais, a former salesman and songwriter from Whitley Bay, were first introduced in 1962. They wrote a sketch for Clement to use as an exam piece on his director’s course – which eventually became The Likely Lads.

So how has their modus operandi evolved over five decades? “The only difference is going from a legal pad to a computer pad,” says La Frenais. “Nothing else has changed.”

And the writers act out their lines. “You have to,” he adds. Clement expands: “It was very easy when we went back to Auf Wiedersehen Pet [for series two]. I had those voices in my head. I could always tune in to Neville… [the hangdog Geordie played by Kevin Whately]: ‘How much is this going to cost?’ Because he was always worrying. And with the old Fletcher, somebody could burst into the cell and say, ‘Have you heard, World War Three’s broken out?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh yes?’ The oh yes would have meant, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ You have to hear the rhythm of it, you have to hear the flow of it and see where it’s going.”

And in 55 years of collaborating, they’ve never had a serious disagreement. “No, it’s almost unhealthy that we haven’t had more!” says La Frenais. One wonders whether that might change if Ian’s beloved Newcastle United get promoted to the Premier League and have to face Chelsea (Dick’s team) again.

Are there any series they’re sad were cancelled? Immediately and in unison they say, “Full Stretch!” The ITV limo-hire sitcom ran to just six episodes in 1993. “A big disappointment,” says Clement. "We loved it. We loved Kevin McNally. We thought he was as good as Ronnie Barker in terms of being an actor who didn’t miss a trick. Every line, every nuance was there in his performance and we found it endearing. Actually we wrote a happy marriage in that, too, which was quite rare. But we thought it was a great situation and that it could go on and on. We thought that was going to be our Minder.” La Frenais refines this observation: "We thought it was going to be another Lovejoy for us,” referring to the 1986–94 antique-dealer drama he adapted for TV, for which Clement wrote some of the 90s episodes.

The $64,000 question

But what makes them laugh? Veep, Silicon Valley, The Big Bang Theory, Twenty Twelve and W1A... “All of those great ensemble comedies where it’s a lot of people and they’re all good and they all make you laugh,” says Clement. “And of course Larry David [in Curb Your Enthusiasm]. His plotting is superb and it’s the way he’ll have a little thread going through that always pays off at the end. He was doing it in Seinfeld, too.”

Does living in the States make them come at comedy from a different angle? “I don’t think so, no,” adds Clement. “A good joke’s a good joke wherever you are.”

It was the American version of Porridge – On the Rocks – that first lured them away from our shores and out to California in the mid-70s.

“But the deeper reason was because we thought it was the head office of the business. We’d had a wonderful year with two shows on the air, we had Billy playing at Drury Lane [a musical starring Michael Crawford that they adapted from Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar]. It couldn’t have been better really.

"We thought the danger would be to stay here and keep repeating ourselves and we didn’t want to do that. It was a chance going out there, because most pilots that you make don’t get made, or don’t get picked up if they do get made. But ours did and it ran for a season.” (On the Rocks stretched to 24 episodes from 1975–6.)

“But then we wanted to get into movies as well. We’d already written movies here [The Jokers in 1967, and Otley and Hannibal Brooks in 1969]. But they’re not very interested in what you did back in the old country. The Commitments really made a difference to us, and also when we rewrote The Rock. That suddenly put us on a different radar. We didn’t get a credit on the film but the business knew [we had done it] and Jerry Bruckheimer brought a lot of work our way in the next few years. We were on his little list of fixers for a bit.”

One of a kind

They’re also big fans of Tracey Ullman, for whose US series (Tracey Takes On…) they wrote sketches in the 90s. “That was fantastic fun, those four years on that show,” says La Frenais. “Fantastic because it was so different for Dick and I. We were like people who’d been home-schooled and suddenly we were allowed out in the school yard.”

Clement remembers, “We’d come in, kick ideas around, and say, ‘We’ll do that one’, grabbed it quickly, and three days later we all came back in. Tracey read everything round the table, playing all the parts.”

Ian continues: “We had one intern, the youngest person in the room, and she was just learning. I think Tracey must have taken a chance on her. She always made us laugh – it was Jenji Kohan.” Kohan went on to create the massive TV hits Weeds and Orange Is the New Black.

Home is the hero

Growing up it was the grainier, grittier output of Galton and Simpson (Steptoe and Son) and Troy Kennedy Martin (Z Cars) that inspired them, and British films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and A Kind of Loving. “They illustrated the change in the social class system in Britain from the 50s to the 60s,” says La Frenais. “That was much more exciting than being at home and watching a Terry and June-style sitcom. I’m not knocking Terry and June. I’m just saying they were always in suburban houses.”

And what are they proudest of? “We love Still Crazy [their 1998 ageing-rockers comedy film],” says Clement. “That’s very much a favourite because it’s our most personal movie. We love Across the Universe [2007 film based on the songs of the Beatles] and we think it was a very neglected film. But just the body of work, the fact that people still know and like Porridge, of course, and Auf Wiedersehen and The Likely Lads. And you meet people who come up to you and say you’ve given them enormous pleasure. That’s very gratifying."

For La Frenais, it’s a shorter answer: “The partnership. Surviving.”

Why do they do what they do? Is it simply making people laugh? “Oh it’s great making people laugh, yeah,” replies Clement. “But it’s great making people cry. If you can find the way to do it. Or keep them on the edge of their seat. We do trips for Cunard occasionally and one of the things we do there is screen The Bank Job, which goes down in gangbusters when you’re at sea and it’s chilly out. People sit on the stairs and watch it and you can see that they’re really wrapped up in it. That’s great.”

As the friends prepare to be driven off to separate engagements, I ask Clement which of his partner’s many great lines he wishes he had written. With little hesitation, he says, “I know he came up with this one, which is from The Likely Lads movie, when Bob comes up looking very depressed while Terry’s fishing. And Terry says, ‘I’d offer you a beer but I’ve only got six cans.’”

Henry IX starts on Wednesday 5th April at 9pm on Gold