30 Years of Fry & Laurie - a Tribute?

I was up in town last week and for some strange reason - the same one that attracts the strange, odd and disaffected to me like dust - I was accosted by a small camera crew from Tiger Aspect Productions (no small-fry here - and no pun intended). “We’re putting together a programme to be broadcast later in the year", they said, " Thirty Years of Fry and Laurie, would you mind being interviewed?”

Normally I turn down things like this or fend them off with lines like “you’d have to speak to my Agent first”. But what they did not know was that about 25 years ago (in the late 1980s) I fleetingly worked on a couple of programmes that Fry & Laurie were involved with [Friday Night Live … or was it Saturday Night Live? and The Tube].

“Just don’t expect me to say anything complimentary about them”, I stung back, but the crew replied “No, that would be great”. So here are a few remembered questions and my replies:

Q: What’s your opinion about thirty years of Fry & Laurie?:
A: Well in their early days (A Bit Of Fry And Laurie) and most especially in Jeeves And Wooster they were superb and for many were the definitive couple - as Simon Cowell might say, they really nailed it. But then one got fat and neurotic and the other got thin, emaciated and psychotic and neither have produced anything of any worth since.......

Oops! [OK, maybe I forgot Blackadder]

Q: What's the first thought / word that comes into your mind when I say the name… Stephen Fry?
A: Over-exposed
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: superb pianist.

Q: If you met them on the street, what would you like to say to them?: Stephen Fry?
A: Could you perhaps throw me a spare million pounds, please?
Q: …and Hugh Laurie?
A: why don’t you play the piano more often?

And that was it really. Well, all I can remember. I signed the Release Form and disappeared into the night. Most of it will probably end up on the cutting-room floor.
But seeing as they weren’t paying me for it, I felt justified in saying my bit.