Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a writer and comedian. To television audiences he's familiar as the man from Auntie, a stand-up comic who is loud, fast and icon a classic.

But behind the quickfire delivery and naughty gags lurks a more thoughtful personality.

A successful novelist, playwright and television script writer with shows like The Young Ones Black Adder

and The Thin Blue line to his credit.

All his books have sold well,

but his latest popcorn has been highly acclaimed by the critics.

Still not yet 40, he feels he may be mellowing a little,

able to respond at last to the advice of a lecturer at university

who told him he could be a good writer if he could dispense with his quote ruthless pursuit of the one-line gag. He is Ben Elton. Do you now reluctantly

admit Ben that that lecturer had a point? Not reluctantly at all, so I remember the

advice well because at the time I rather bristled I thought it was the

the voice of somebody who didn't like comedy and wanted everything to be terribly serious

I was at university at Manchester and and I thought he was denying the potency of light entertainment.

My heroes were always more Eric and Ernie than Vladimir and Estragon and I felt rather kind

of pugilistic about standing up for LE as it was known then.

But I now know that actually the best LE is as carefully honed and edited as any major play. But the ruthless pursuit of the one-line gag is exactly what your

stand-up act, your writing apart, your stand-up act is all about, isn't it? I mean if you can

pick up laughs along the way as you go on churning it out that's

that's what you do well yes but um I think my stand-up act actually is it is a good

example of where I've actually taken that advice subconsciously because I tend to try and weave ideas together and

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