The
Ins and Outs of Innes
The
Ins and Outs of Innes
Neil Innes, musician, comedian and the man behind the children's series "The Raggy Dolls", is a seriously funny man in many guises as TOM BEDFORD discovers.
He could be a quantity surveyor, or a timber importer, or the head of English at the local comprehensive. Balding, greying, he looks older than his 45 years. But take a look at his headgear and you'll realise that you are, in fact, dealing with one of life's eccentrics.
Meet him for a chat and he might be wearing a traditional bathtime duck on his head, or sometimes even a large crown with a globe of the world balancing on top. These happen to be just two of a number of interesting hats associated with Neil Innes - comedian, writer, musician and also children's entertainer.
When he appeared with the Monty Python team wearing the plastic duck on his head, he was quoted as saying it was ‘better than standing around looking like a grocer.' And, to date, he is still avoiding the grocer image.
Besides a long association on the fringes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Innes is known for his membership of the ‘seriously crazy' Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, which he joined while still an art student at Goldsmiths' College, London. His career since that time has varied between TV comedy with Rutland Weekend Television and The Innes Book of Records, more music, script, book and jingle writing. And, of course, there's his deepest love, children's TV and his major part in The Raggy Dolls. He started with the programme as script editor, then doubled as narrator, as well as composing and singing the theme song.
His work comes to life at an electronic keyboard in a barn across a duck pond from his home - an old farmhouse up a muddy lane near Debenham, Suffolk, to where Neil, his wife Yvonne, their three children and the duck collection moved 10 years ago, after bailing out of London. Plaster ducks on walls have been a passion of Neil's and the flock he has collected now numbers more than 60.
Conversation with him, as he sits at the keyboard in his composing room, is laced with jokes. He switches from a rather harassed businessman persona, going into some detail about a domestic disaster, to that of a serious quipster, trying to avoid the grocer image no doubt.
‘Okay, okay, so where would you find a three-legged dog?' he asks. ‘Dunno. Where would you find a three-legged dog?' ‘Where you left it,' he says.
It has been said that each of us is at least six different people; in Neil Innes' case it's more like 60, or maybe 600. And with Neil each quite startlingly different person succeeds the other with dizzy speed.
The Innes children have no problem coping with their multi-personality father. And he, in turn, has never hd a problem relating to them. ‘Children are wonderful,' he says. ‘Children are wise. Children are, indeed, in many ways more grown-up than grown-ups. Adults have forgotten how to look at life and work out the answers; children are doing it all the time.'
Neil's easiness with childhood is rooted in his own. ‘My parents were extraordinarily supportive,' he says. ‘It was quite strange, really, because both my brother and I got very interested in art, and my dad was a warrant officer in the Army. You might have though he'd hate all that. In fact, he loved to draw and paint - he even played the guitar - and my mother was mad about horses. So, guess what my big enthusiasms was as a boy. You got it: drawing horses!
‘It was my parents' whole philosophy of relationships that shaped mine. There's one particular incident I think sums it all up. It was when I was very small. I was learning the piano, and the deal was, I did an hour's piano practice. Well, one day I was in there, hammering away and I realised the rest of the family were doing something much more interesting in the garden.
‘So I took the clock we used to time my practice and moved the hands on. "I've done an hour," I announced as I joined them outside, and in my boyish way I reckoned this should really fool all of them.
‘Well, they said nothing at the time - but next morning when they woke me up and I went down to breakfast everything felt a bit strange - my brother, for instance, was nowhere to be seen. And then they sprung it on me; they had put their clock on and got me up an hour early!"
Certainly, the product of such imaginative parenting is, today, that most rare of show-business phenomena, a man who is both talented and happy. And determined to pass on not only the talent but also the happiness to a new generation. Not to mention a touch of craziness and a lot of ducks!
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