Angus Deayton's gift is not reacting. For forty years he has stood next to louder people, Victor Meldrew, Jill Tyrrell, a panel of comedians, and let them do the work. It is a small trade and he is good at it.
Fi1m perspective
Watch what Angus Deayton does when something terrible happens near him. Nothing. In Nighty Night (2004) Julia Davis's Jill Tyrrell sets her sights on the household next door, and Don Cole, the GP who lives there, goes on being mild. He does not frown. He does not notice. Deayton plays the blankness straight, and the comedy lives in the gap between what we can see and what Don cannot. It is the same thing he did for ten years as Patrick Trench in One Foot in the Grave (1990–2000): the neighbour on the receiving end of Victor Meldrew, whose reaction is a pause, a glance and a line delivered as if reading the gas bill.
The persona was built on radio. He co-created Radio Active (1981–1987) with Geoffrey Perkins, a parody of local radio in which he played the presenters, and it moved to television as KYTV (1989–1993). He has said that a decade of sending up presenters is how he fell into presenting, and that when Have I Got News for You began in 1990 he simply carried the persona on. He hosted it for twelve years, alongside One Foot in the Grave, and the two jobs asked for the same thing: a man in a good suit, unhurried, waiting for someone else to be ridiculous. He also did straight-man duty for Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder (1983) and Mr. Bean (1990), and had a small part as a chancellor in Elizabeth (1998).
The limits are real. The presenter style was read by some as autocue rather than wit, and we think that is fair: the one-liners were written, and the pleasure was in how little he seemed to care whether they landed. On film he has looked uncomfortable, Fat Slags (2004) being the example nobody brings up twice. And after his hosting ended in 2002, the presenter overshadowed the actor for some years, so that Don Cole arrived as a reminder rather than a revelation.
It is still his best acting. What we felt watching Nighty Night was pity for Don, then irritation that he would not look up, then the realisation that Deayton had meant us to feel both, because Jill can only do what she does to people who do not look. Rebecca Front, as his wife Cathy, does the kindness; Davis does the monstrousness; Deayton does the not seeing, and the programme needs all three. Waterloo Road (2013–2015), where he played the teacher George Windsor, has been called one of his first straight parts, which seems about right. It is the same man with the jokes taken out.
He has described One Foot in the Grave as playtime: "I got given scripts, I stood where they told me to stand, said the lines and if they were funny, great." That is not modesty. It is a job description, and he is one of the few people who has done it for forty years without once appearing to try.
Biography
Angus Deayton is an English actor, comedian, writer and presenter. Born Gordon Angus Deayton on 6 January 1956 in Banstead, Surrey, he studied French and German at New College, Oxford. He began performing with the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which led to work on the BBC radio series Radio Active and its television spin-off KYTV.
Deayton is known for playing Patrick Trench in the sitcom One Foot in the Grave (1990–2000) and for presenting the panel show Have I Got News for You (1990–2002). He appeared as Don Cole in the comedy series Nighty Night (2004–2005) and hosted Would I Lie to You? (2007–2008). Other credits include roles in Blackadder (1983), Elizabeth (1998) and Waterloo Road (2013–2015).
