Red Nose's straight man

Peter Bennett-Jones well remembers being able to field an impressive line-up of talent from the ‘Other Place’, led by the young Griff Rhys Jones.

The Cambridge University funny men went down well with the Edinburgh Festival audience, but what was to follow has passed into comedy legend.

It was to be the first time that Mr Bennett-Jones came across the Oxford University students Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis and their hilarious stage act.

“I was then managing the Cambridge Footlights show, that was on at 9pm,“ recalled Mr Bennett-Jones, the man who has filled our television screens with Mr Bean, The Vicar of Dibley and The Catherine Tate Show.

“They did their show at 10.30, but I always used to stay to watch Rowan and Richard. Although our show was good, their show was better.”

This meeting of the Oxbridge thespians 33 years ago was to change his life and, as things have turned out, the lives of the many people at home and abroad who have benefited from Red Nose Day.

Atkinson and Richard Curtis, who went on to write, among other things, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, were to become lifelong friends.

Together they have been responsible for some of the greatest comedy success stories in television history, both nationally and globally.

“They were very good coat tails to grab hold of,” chuckled Mr Bennett-Jones, remembering that night in Edinburgh’s St Mary’s Hall in 1976.

They most certainly were.

Today he is the head of a business empire that includes one of Britain’s biggest independent production companies, Tiger Aspect, which has won Emmys and Golden Roses galore.

At the same time he operates a talent agency, with Rowan Atkinson merely the jewel in a stable of stars that has included Harry Enfield, Eddie Izzard, Lenny Henry and Barry Humphries.

And that’s just from the world of comedy.

The presenters Kirsty Young, Dermot Murnaghan, Kirsty Wark, Gaby Roslin and Claudia Winkelman have all been his clients at one time or another.

Tiger Aspect occupies a large, sprawling building in Soho Square, just a stone’s throw from London’s theatreland.

His family home is in Rawlinson Road, North Oxford, and he has three children, all at boarding school.

But, if friendship has been at the heart of this remarkable career in entertainment, it has also led to him becoming one of the most important figures behind the remarkable charity and television phenomenon that is Red Nose Day. Only Christmas Day now rivals Comic Relief night when it comes to television ratings.

But whether you are among the tens of millions who will be settling down to watch the best of British comedy talent on Friday, March 13, or one of those who will find themselves covered in feathers or foam to raise money, it is unlikely you will catch as much as a glimpse of this great purveyor of comedy.

“I’ve ended up working with Richard Curtis on many projects down the years — we even once shared a house together,” said Mr Bennett-Jones. “Comic Relief is really his baby and I got involved because he asked me to.”

Since 1997 he has been serving as chairman of the Comic Relief Trustees. “I guess they asked me to do it because I run a television production business and a talent agency. I have access to talent and it is a familiar hunting ground for me. I see myself as the goalkeeper, with Richard as the creative force.”

Goalkeeper and diplomat. For he is also the key figure in maintaining the charity’s crucial, but never simple, relationship with the BBC.

He concedes that the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand row and the Blue Peter phone-in scandals have had a real impact on the corporation.

“They are extremely cautious at the moment, although it does seem there are one set of rules for a certain level of people and another set for the others. There have been some compliance issues, concerning telephony after the Blue Peter — the truth and honesty commission — as it were. We are drawn into all that in a big way. But we have to fight off the forces of bureaucracy sometimes.

“We are aware of what our duties are. The most crucial thing is that we retain the trust of the public. The BBC has self-inflicted wounds in its relationship with the public and the way it handles these issues. So we have to fight our corner. We have our differences but far more in common. The aim is to give people the best night of entertainment on the telly of the year. And I think we do that. We have produced seven million noses this year. That’s a lot of noses.”

So what does he do on the big night.

“I go to the studio control boxes and always to BT Tower which is the nerve centre of the telephony operation. It has become increasingly sophisticated. We don’t want to drop a call. Comic Relief is a multi-tentacled beast and it’s a big night of live television. A lot can go wrong and a lot can go right.”

At least twice a year he visits Africa to view some of the projects funded by Comic Relief.

“I try to take people who have supported us. I’ve been with people from the chairman of the BBC to the boys from Little Britain and the editor of the Sun. I recently went to Zambia with Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh. That first time always has a huge impact on people. No exposure to film can match meeting people and talking about their needs. You end up feeling it comes down to throwing the dice in life. It comes down to where you were born.”

The dice certainly fell well for Mr Bennett-Jones, who was brought up in Liverpool in the sixties and early seventies, a city he says brimming with infectious cultural life.

He was able to witness the likes of Simon Rattle and Willy Russell at close quarters but his intention was to become a lawyer.

Educated at Winchester, at Cambridge University he became president of the university's two principal dramatic societies and toured with the Footlights.

After completing his law degree he came to live in Oxford and with his Oxford friend Andre Ptaszynski, who is now chief executive of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Company. They created the combined Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company. With 30 Oxbridge graduates, he toured America, driving more than 20,000 miles in a truck.

“In the end we were too successful. America’s Equity opposed our visa application and we were effectively closed down,” he recalled. “But the experience certainly taught me how to run a small business, deal with people and get a show on the road.”

After working in the theatre, he hit the jackpot when he was reunited with Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, for the headquarters of Tiger Aspect is, in many ways, the house that Mr Bean built.

When he first took Mr Bean to the broadcasters, the BBC thought it would suit late-night BBC2, in ten-minute segments.

But Thames Television took the plunge and ordered a prime-time show.

Mr Bean was an instant hit and has sold to 254 territories, with Mr Bennett-Jones the first UK agent to grasp the value of video sales to his shows. Thirteen television episodes were filmed, but the big money initially flowed from video sales, totalling 13 million.

Since then the programmes, documentaries and feature films, (he can count Billy Elliot among his movie successes) have continued to set the independents’ benchmark in entertainment.

He waited years to put on a musical.

When he did Our House, using the music of Madness, he lost money but won an Olivier Award.

“At least it meant I got to know and work with Suggs,” he shrugs.

Somehow, he has also found time to mark himself out as a talent spotter, uncovering the comics Reeves and Mortimer in a club in Deptford and discovering Eddie Izzard at a charity benefit.

“By getting the best people you reduce the risk of your business,” he says, although these days he admits to being more tempted by a drink at his Oxford local, the Rose and Crown, than trawling the comedy clubs of London.

But, when we met, he was fresh back from a trip to Yorkshire, where he’d been up to see his good friend Lenny Henry perform in Othello — a massive role that he had encouraged the comedian to take on.

“I well remember that when I took your colleague at The Oxford Times, Chris Gray, to see Lenny perform in Oxford, he said to me, ‘you know Lenny Henry could be a great actor’.

“In a sense, I’ve never had a proper job. My job has always been my hobby,” he admitted.

“Without creative people, people like me would not have a job.

The secret is sticking with the talent.”

But it is not hard to see why the talent has stuck so well to Mr Bennett-Jones.