Quiz was a huge hit at Chichester Festival Theatre six years ago – the story behind the scandal of Charles Ingram, aka the Coughing Major, and his accomplices who were accused of duping the world’s most popular TV quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire out of £1,000,000.
James Graham’s play went on to the West End. But now it is back in Chichester as part of a national tour, this time starring Rory Bremner in the Chris Tarrant role (September 22-30).
James Graham’s play went on to the West End. But now it is back in Chichester as part of a national tour, this time starring Rory Bremner in the Chris Tarrant role (September 22-30).
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00 Good morning, it's a fantastic pleasure to be speaking to Rory Bremner, who is coming
00:05 to Chichester Festival Theatre to play Chris Tarrant as the play Quiz returns to Chichester.
00:11 Now, goodness, you're saying this is the first time that you've done a sustained impression
00:16 across a whole play. What's the implication of that? How tough is it to keep in character
00:22 as Chris?
00:23 Well, hee hee, haha! Actually, first of all, Chris hates the impression, which is great,
00:28 so that's a very added motivation.
00:29 That's the name, is it?
00:31 Tee hee, tee hee, Bremner. So he sort of teases me about it, but it's a very good reason to
00:36 do it if the subject hates the impression.
00:39 But that's interesting that you are mates.
00:41 Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, so we've known him for eight years, we love cricket and all the rest
00:45 of it. But yeah, so we've got that in common. So yeah, you only see Chris in the studio,
00:50 actually, although I think Michael Sheen in the TV drama, you saw him out of the studio.
00:56 You only see him in the studio in character in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But the
01:00 fascinating thing is, I mean, he is absolutely, his mind is made up, Chris. He's as guilty
01:03 as Guy Fawkes, you know, he's absolutely sure that the idea that this guy's innocent is
01:09 Chris will not have any of it. But the play, I think, is what is brilliant about James
01:13 Graham is that he presents enough contradictions and enough sort of little inconsistencies
01:23 in the case. So I mean, I always say it could be called reasonable doubt, because it's how
01:30 you tell the story.
01:31 The lovely thing is you ask the audience, don't you?
01:32 Absolutely. So the audience gets asked at half time and at the end, and very often change
01:36 their minds, because the fascinating thing is, it's how you put a story together and
01:39 what evidence you use. And I think James, he gives a line to Charles Ingram in the play
01:45 about the study of remembering things. When you remember something, you're actually remembering
01:50 the last time you remembered it. So memories can be as the Queen memorably said, memorably,
01:56 there you go, use the word again, as she memorably said, "Recollections may vary." Which is a
02:03 lovely way of saying, I think Harry's making this up. But anyway, so you're playing with
02:08 all of that. I've got to say, it's a fantastic cast. It's wonderful. I mean, the first day
02:13 of rehearsals, I walked in and I just saw the rest of the cast. I thought, oh my God,
02:16 I'm gonna have to raise my game here. Because these guys are good. And Mark Benton, of course,
02:20 is familiar to TV audiences. But Charlie from Emmerdale and Lewis Reeves and some wonderful,
02:27 some Shakespearean actors and stuff. And it's a great fun cast because James mixes them
02:31 around. So, you know, somebody turns up as a judge one minute and they're a television
02:35 news to the next or a quiz, a quizzer as they call people who love these quizzes. So it's
02:41 fantastic and Chichester, great theatre. We did, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue there, a
02:46 year or two ago, you know, just made for this. So I can't wait.
02:50 You say great cast, but obviously one of the big attractions is going to be to see you
02:54 doing the impression. I must admit, I have absolutely ball-filled admiration for anyone
03:00 who can do an impression. It just seems to be so, so cool. How do you find your way into
03:05 someone?
03:06 It's the voice, absolutely. First of the voice, you know, you sort of find out where it comes
03:09 from, you know. If it's a particularly deep voice like Roger Moore, it's one of those
03:15 ones that sit and ask, you know, is it a kind of, is it a breathy sort of Scottish accent?
03:21 Where's the quality coming? Is it there? Because your age, voices like that.
03:26 What are you changing? Where you speak in your mouth?
03:28 It's instinct. This is the problem, you see, I work entirely instinctively. And, you know,
03:34 once you start to take it apart, you can tell I ever took something apart. It was a fan,
03:39 electric fan when I was about eight and I put it back together again. And when I put
03:43 it back together, all these bits left on the floor. And I thought, well, obviously I didn't
03:46 need that. And I wondered why the fan never worked again. So it's something about if I
03:49 take it apart too much. So I do work instinctively.
03:52 But how can you judge how accurate you're being, given that you're your own age?
03:58 Trust my gutting. I mean, Chris says, because he spent his life with headphones on. So he
04:02 says, I've got a very good idea of what I sound like. He says, well, Michael Sheen.
04:08 But he does say about money, he says, who are you being? It doesn't sound anything like
04:13 me. Which is just a joke we have. So I just trust my instinct. And so, but funnily enough,
04:20 if, you know, for example, somebody like Tony Blair, Phil, and I just think, you know, it's
04:24 interesting. I mean, his voice has really changed. It's got very sort of quirky. But
04:28 when he was younger, it was this. But if you put that voice together with Chris Tarrant,
04:33 you get Ed Miliband. And it's really weird. It's like, you know, you put those ingredients
04:37 together and you get a Labour leader saying, look, I just think it's important that we
04:41 do this. So you have to be careful. It's Alastair McGowan calls them voice bunkers. Voice bunkers,
04:47 you just go a little bit too far off a voice and you end up with another one.
04:51 Thank you to Alastair McGowan many years ago and asked him, anyone you can't do? And he
04:55 said, Wayne Rooney, this was a long time ago, so he's doubtless mastered him since. Is there
05:00 anyone you feel that you couldn't get?
05:01 Oh, yeah. I mean, it's but it's one of those questions that when you do, it's like,
05:05 can you get there and you can't do you go? Yes. They go, we'll go and do it. No, I can't.
05:09 I struggle with no limits for all time until I until I realized it was all now. Now,
05:20 there's a little quaver in the voice, a little bit of excitement and you get a little hook.
05:26 And with Chris, I don't know, I just kind of fell in. I just fell into Chris. I think
05:30 it was just something where it comes from in the throat. So if you get something like Melvin Bragg,
05:35 you know the way that Melvin Bragg, so today we'll be talking about the Battle of Thermopylae
05:39 for ATBC. So that you know, you sort of block your nose. James, you know, another one where
05:46 you block your nose off. So it's where the voice comes from. It's the accent. And you just build
05:51 it up, build it up, build it up. And as I say, actually, I'm playing Chris, Chris, the entertainer.
05:58 It's not Chris, the sort of the individual. So you won't see another side to Chris, but I hope
06:04 you will see, you'll see Chris, I hope. - And if you looked up during the performance
06:09 and there was Chris sitting in the audience with that, were you a little bit astride?
06:12 - Well, I think he did turn up. He said, I turned up, he said, I put a hat on my head and I said,
06:17 but I think he wore a bright orange coat and said, oh, look, there's Chris Tan. So I don't know,
06:23 he might come to see it, but yeah, he'd enjoy it as will everybody. Because the great thing is,
06:30 when you put the music into it and you put the lights into it and we have sort of cameras around
06:35 and you know, you get that sort of goose bumpy thing of recreating the drama and the tension of
06:42 the original production, which is what it was all about. Because it was jeopardy and it was putting
06:46 people in this situation where they were under stress. And that was the kind of USP, the selling
06:54 point of it. It was the first time when you saw people under real pressure. And one of the points
06:59 against Major Charles Ingram, as Chris makes in his book, he says, when they got to half a million,
07:04 most people, when they say, you sure you want some of this? If you get this wrong, you will lose
07:10 400 and whatever it is, 484,000 pounds. And the prospect of losing, I think it's 485,000,
07:17 the prospect of losing 485,000 pounds really concentrates the minds of people, you know what,
07:23 I'm just going to stick here. But with Charles Ingram, it's like, yeah, well, why not? Go for it.
07:28 And they'd never had that before. So it, but, you know, like so many things in life now about where
07:36 is truth and where is our belief? It just depends on what size of scale you are. They had a big
07:43 argument, Charles and Diana Ingram after Charles and Diana, after the show, they had a big argument.
07:50 And that could be either, why did you go for the million? It's going to be so obvious that we
07:56 cheated. Or it could be, you know, why did you risk it at the end? You know, you should never
08:01 have taken that risk, you could have lost a lot. So you, it comes down, you could come down on
08:06 either side of that. So it's a very human story. And there are humans at the end of it who have
08:11 been very damaged by it. There's an audience that can sit in judgment, it can enjoy and remember,
08:17 sorry, that sounds like a dentist in the building next door. But an audience will sit in judgment,
08:22 you'll make all the recollection of that show. And you have all of that with it, but together
08:26 with the human drama, and just the brilliance of James Graham's writing.
08:30 Fantastic. I remember it being absolutely brilliant, first time around, the best kind of play
08:34 that you just talk about all the way home. But I will let you go. Lovely to speak to you. Thank
08:39 you so much for your time. Thank you. And we'll see you in Chichester in a few days.
08:45 Well, a couple of weeks time, I think. Okay.
08:48 - Okay.
08:49 I love it.