Article - Hugh Dennis Stand-First

 

Boxing Day comes a day late to Hugh Dennis as harassed dad Pete in BBC1’s brilliantly funny sitcom Outnumbered, but he will probably spend it looking slightly anxious, as he does in every episode, thanks to Pete’s three wildly unpredictable kids. GRAHAM KEAL reports

 

HUGH DENNIS

As harassed dad Pete in BBC1’s brilliantly funny sitcom Outnumbered, Hugh Dennis will probably spend Boxing Day looking slightly anxious, as he does in every episode, thanks to Pete’s three wildly unpredictable kids.

 

Hugh and co-star Claire Skinner as mum Sue genuinely don’t know what their two screen sons and one daughter will come up with next, so looking apprehensive is the easy bit. Coming up with a suitable riposte is trickier.

 

Some of the improvised dialogue the kids produce is positively surreal. So has Hugh ever been completely flummoxed for an answer?

 

“The closest I’ve been was the episode when we were stuck at the airport in series two when Karen (eight-year-old Ramona Marquez) was going on about killing bad people.”

 

During tortuous exchanges on the nature of terrorism, Karen is told that killing all the bad people (her idea) would make us bad too. So she suggests putting all the bad people in a room with knives stuck on their bodies, so they would all bump into each other and therefore kill each other.

 

“It was amazing. She was absolutely fantastic doing it, and I just wanted to stop and listen. I sort of forgot I had to react and carry on,” laughs Hugh.

 

In fact, he came up with a wonderfully lugubrious one-liner (“Have you been reading the Daily Mail again?”) and all was well.

 

Scriptwriters Hugh Jenkin and Andy Hamilton can still take some credit, because although Karen and her two brothers Ben (Daniel Roche) and Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) do evolve their own lines, Hugh or Andy (who also produce and direct) will loiter in corners whispering suggestions in their ear of the kind of questions to ask mum and dad.

 

“If there’s a scene between two children, it will be entirely improvised,” explains Hugh. “If it’s between two adults, it’s not really improvised, and if there’s a scene between adults and children, the adults’ part is slightly improvised – because you have absolutely no idea what they’re going to say.

 

“That’s Andy and Guy’s skill really – but I think it really helps to have kids of your own.”

Hugh, 47, and real-life wife Kate, 39, are not outnumbered in their own home – they have a son, Freddie, 12, and a daughter, Meg, 10, and they will all watch this year’s Christmas special together.

 

“They found it a bit confusing when we did the first series but they’re fully on board now.”

So what does the Christmas special have in store for the fictional kids and their parents?

 

“Well it’s 45-minutes instead of the usual half-hour and it’s set in the aftermath of Christmas, on Boxing Day. People are exhausted and it’s when the second tier of the family come round, isn’t it?

 

“So Sue’s father is coming round, and the kids are worried that burglars will take away their presents, because we’ve been burgled.”

 

And Karen is obsessing about a missing hamster, nine-year-old Ben causes havoc with a mechanical hand, while teenage brother Jake and mum are trying to find granddad, and dad is preparing for dinner guests – some more welcome than others.

 

The special was actually filmed back in September as a prelude to the third series starting in January. So was it

hard to get into the Christmas spirit so early?

 

“It is a bit tricky, though it’s not difficult to get yourself into the mindset of being slightly hung over and surrounded by wrapping paper on Boxing Day, which I always think is nicer than Christmas Day.

 

“I had more of a problem with Mock The Week actually,” (Hugh is a resident panelist). “We had to pretend it was Christmas in July for their special, which was very difficult.”

 

It’s reassuring to know that Outnumbered stays resolutely at home for the Christmas episode. So often, hit sitcoms go to great trouble and expense to film Christmas specials in some far-flung location only to deliver far fewer laughs than usual. And Hugh had enough of being overseas for Christmas last year:

 

“We went to Australia, where my wife has family, and it just felt weird. It completely threw my rhythm. I had no idea what was going on, really. We did that Australian thing of spending Christmas Day on the beach, which was very nice, but when you get back, you feel like you haven’t had Christmas yet. I feel like I’ve done two years since last Christmas. It does feel a bit peculiar…”

 

You could say it’s a bit peculiar that one of Hugh’s biggest comedy hits should revolve around troublesome kids. I t seems the young Hugh never did anything to make his parents nervous.

 

Contrast Outnumbered, where i n one past episode Pete carts boisterous Ben out of a toy shop with Ben shouting “Stranger! Stranger!”

 

And when dad says "Now Ben, stop that," the boy shouts back: "I'm not called Ben!"

Very funny, but Hugh himself had a much more idyllic childhood. The son of a vicar who rose to be Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Hugh thrived at school, excelling at sport and in the classroom, becoming head boy before moving on to Cambridge, where he gained a First in geography. He admits he barely gave his parents a moment’s anxiety: “I was boringly good as a child. I really loved school, that was my thing. And I was a bit nervous of being told off.”

 

At Cambridge, despite joining the fabled Footlights comedy revue and striking up a writing-performing double act with lifelong comedy partner Steve Punt, Hugh then avoided the bright lights for another six years, doing the ‘sensible’ thing instead of showbiz and taking a job in marketing with giant multinational Unilever.

 

The nearest he ever got to embarrassing mum and dad was when he was doing voices for Spitting Image at the start of his career. Hugh provided the voice behind the puppet of George Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, which could have made life very awkward for his father:

 

“It wasn’t a particularly flattering portrait,” admits Hugh. “I certainly was quite well-behaved as a child, I think, and that’s why in adult life I’ve decided not to be. I had to rebel at some point – and it happened when I was about 30.”

 

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