Susan Elizabeth Perkins

I don’t know what it is about Sue Perkins. Maybe she has a self destructive streak, maybe she just has unrealistic principles. Whatever it is, it’s holding her back. I read a post on a Mel and Sue message board from someone who had been teching in studio when she and Mel had been in to do some voice over or other. Sue had been feeling down – unhappy because she felt her career was in a rut. Certainly if anyone who was part of the Light Lunch generation had been told back in 1997 that the bright new comedy act would be no nearer to fame and fortune seven years on I don’t think they would believe you. Well, she’s got the fortune part. Adverts for bread pay well as do the voice overs that her deep and sexy voice bags for her.

It’s too unimportant a chapter in TV history for anyone to ever get to the truth about what happened with Light Lunch and its Late Lunch successor. Did Mel and Sue quit or were they axed? Light Lunch was a magical show for those of us of the right age. Mel and Sue were student icons – Sue especially as she has never lost that studenty quality. You can still imagine her waking up on someone’s floor, lighting a cigarette, having a bit of cold pizza for breakfast and going off to join some protest march or other. Now whether that shows that she’s happy with herself or that she’s got a bad case of emotional underdevelopment I couldn’t say. I’m only an amateur psychologist.

I was as surprised as anyone when she did Celebrity Big Brother. Part of my surprise came when I discovered that she was gay. Really – for someone that had idolised her for as many years as I had without ever knowing – it was absurd. Of course I thought she was gay. But the voice in my head said that if she were gay then she’d be very out of the closet. Never one to hide her political principles, she’d be loud and proud. That she chose to hide it for so long confused me. It’s none of my business of course but I’d like to know whether she has always been gay or whether it was something she only discovered later in life. It matters to me because it’s the difference between her lying for years and not. On Light Lunch she was straight. She flirted with the blokes, she made occasional references to boyfriends and so on. Even if it emerges that she did lie I know she did it for the right reasons. She knew that if she was out then she and Mel would be "the lesbian double act" even though Mel was straight. We live in an age where that would still count as a stigma.

The Big Brother thing shows what I mean about her being self destructive. She freely admits she went into the house to raise her profile. She joked that she did it so people would know which was Mel and which was Sue. Why then did she do nothing while in the house? She must’ve known what the game was. Despite this she chose to act as she would if she was alone at home. She was withdrawn and unfunny. She lived inside her parka and failed to live up to her "comedian" billing. It would be impossible to be "on" (as comedians say) 24 hours a day but she came across as grumpy and sullen. And without the talent element that won Fame Academy for Alex Parks it did Sue no favours. Then, when the show was all over, she refused to do any media interviews beyond the Channel 4 Big Brother show. She joked the next week on her radio show that she was the only one to lose money doing Big Brother. Considering her motives for going into the house, it’s not really very funny.

I remember the sheer delight I felt when Mel told us "Sue’s on Have I Got News For You tonight" at the end of another blissful Light Lunch. I thought she did ok on the show (I have a feeling she was a last minute booking, possibly someone dropped out, and I know for a fact that Angus Deayton was on Light Lunch earlier that week) but a later interview showed that she was terrified and barely spoke all night. Thanks to the wonders of editing she came across ok but I think the experience was hard on her. Which is a shame as the spontaneous as-live environment is where I think she does her best work. I’d love her to have a go at hosting HIGNFY.

They did a live radio show for BBC London. It was good stuff. One of the reasons I got broadband was so I could listen to it every Saturday morning. She was fantastic. It was like the old days of Light Lunch as the two of them rambled and nattered without a script and interviewed everyone from big stars to people who collected strange things. There was a definite difference when Mel was off having her first baby though. Sue on her own became more serious and more intellectual. Then they decided to quit the show. There never is an explanation in these cases. It was a good showcase for them, it wasn’t too early and they aren’t the sort of performers who feel restricted by day time rules on content and language. They just seemed to get bored and left it behind. It was a good couple of years.

By contrast their Radio 4 sketch show was entirely scripted and far less entertaining. Stripped of ad libs and mistakes, the show was sterile. It had some good material but was no where near as good as I’d hoped it would be. Live on stage the show would’ve worked better but in the confines of a studio it sounded like just another sketch show. A reviewer at one of their more recent gigs commented that he didn’t understand why they always hid behind characters when they’re much funnier as themselves. I agree with that assessment. Morecambe and Wise did sketch comedy but under the roles they were playing they never stopped being Morecambe and Wise. Having seen Mel and Sue live on stage, they have a similar quality. But not when they play straight sketch comedy.

So maybe I’m obsessed with Sue Perkins because she’s gorgeous, maybe it’s because she’s funny, maybe it’s because I recognise a certain neurotic underachieving depressive dysfunctional intelligence in her that I also see in myself, maybe it’s because I want to be there for her and help her realise how fantastic she is. She’s exactly where she was in 1997 – one break away from stardom. The HIGNFY job, a late night daily chatshow, a novel or a sitcom. I think I read somewhere that she’s writing a novel. But then it was Peter Cook who once told this tale of an exchange at a show biz party.

Post script

A couple of Sue related things caught my eyes today. The first is that she gets top billing on the cover of the new Diva magazine. A glance inside shows that "Sue Perkins talks about equality" is actually a photo-less press release about a Stonewall march that Perks happened to be quoted in. I wonder if this means she's become the new dyke-celebre whose name sells magazines?

Secondly, this from Emma Kennedy's fab weblog

But just as I had resigned myself to a solitary run, I heard my name being called out from the meadow. It was Perks.

"What the f*** are you doing?" she said, dragging on her fag.

"I'm going for a run," said I, stopping.

"What the f*** for?" said she, staring at me as if I was a lunatic.

I explained the lactic acid thing.

She wasn't interested.

"Perks," said I, putting a hand on her forearm, "I've signed up for the British 10K London and the Flora Light Women's 5K Challenge. Do you want to do them with me?"

"F*** off," said Perks. "Shall we go to the cafe and eat cakes now?"

I did manage to get Perks to exercise once. It was about six years ago and I took her as a guest to my gym. I put her on the exercise bike and left her to it. Thirty minutes later and she wasn't there. I looked everywhere for her. I found her on a crash mat. She was asleep.