It’s a little known fact about Angus Deayton that Angus isn’t his first name. He was actually christened Gordon Angus Deayton.
“I had a Scottish mum and an English dad,” Deayton explains over a coffee not far from his home in Islington, north London. “The deal was that Gordon, which was my dad’s choice of name, would appear first, but that I would always be called Angus, which was what my mum wanted.”
Over the years, that “Gordon” has proved very useful. Many’s the time it has enabled the presenter and actor to hide the identity that made him famous — and in some people’s eyes, infamous.
Deayton, now 66, is about to star in a fourth series of the Radio 4 sitcom Alone, in which he plays a widower caught up in the lives of the four other middle-aged flat-dwellers all living in the same house. It is one of the many outlets Deayton has found for his talents in a 40-plus-year career, but there is one role for which he will perhaps always be best known, and which to some extent has hung over everything he has done since — as the presenter of the first 12 years of the satirical topical TV quiz Have I Got News for You.
It was a job Deayton seemed to have been made for, creating a chemistry with team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton that has never been matched in the subsequent era of a rotating cast of guest presenters. But alongside the brilliance of his contribution to the show, he’s remembered for the manner in which his HIGFNY career crashed and burned — exactly 20 years ago.
In one sense, Deayton’s fall from grace was straightforward: he was sacked by the BBC after tabloid exposés involving drug-taking and a sex worker, and, later in 2002, revelations about an affair.
The edition of HIGFNY that immediately followed Deayton’s outing by the News of the World demonstrated what riveting TV he and Hislop and Merton could conjure. “Welcome to Have I Got News for You,” Deayton begins. “And this week’s loser is … presenting it.” Big laugh.
If Deayton thought that this supreme gesture of self-deprecation was going to save him, he was mistaken. Hislop and Merton were merciless. “So what are you saying, the story’s not true?” Merton puts it to Deayton. “Elements are true, elements are untrue,” Deayton squirms in reply. “There was an ELEPHANT in there?” exclaims Merton.
But the background to the scandal — how it ever broke, whose hands were at work — would appear to be anything but straightforward. In interviews since, Deayton hasn’t wanted to revisit the episode. Now, with so much water under the bridge, the topic isn’t entirely off-limits, but the sense that the truth will never out is strong.
“I don’t think anyone will ever find out what happened because it’s too long ago, so it’ll just go down in history as the way in which it’s always been regurgitated,” he says. “I’m not going to start digging it all up again in order to try and set the record straight. It’ll just be a record that’s never set straight.”
And how does he feel about the record never being set straight? “Sort of resigned to it, I guess. It’s not something I’m particularly happy about, but I’ve had 20 years to get used to it. That’s what history is. History is written by the victors, isn’t it?”
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The world has changed a lot since 2002. Deayton agrees that the power of the tabloid press is now much diminished — “as it should be” — and he sometimes wonders how things would have gone down in the age of Twitter. “I’m the only person who doesn’t do social media of any sort, but I do wonder how it would all be dealt with [now], because things aren’t really played out in the tabloids these days. They’re played out on Twitter, and there is a very censorious element to that.”
So how does he reflect on his post-HIGFNY career? “It’s one of those kind of Sliding Doors situations where you don’t really know how things would have been otherwise, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have ended up doing all the different things I’ve done and been involved in such a variety of documentaries and dramas, quiz shows, all the different stuff. Have I Got News for You was your day job, so you didn’t really have that many weeks in the year to do other stuff. So yes, it’s a nice part of your career when you cherry-pick what you want to do because it’s interesting and you want to do it.”
And does he still watch HIGFNY? “Not really. I don’t watch many studio-based shows. I’ve even given up a bit on chat shows. I think almost everything I watch is films, drama, comedy drama. I never find myself sitting down in front of the TV and just seeing what’s on. There’s always a stockpile of things I’ve recorded — a bit like the pile of books by your bedside.”
One of Deayton’s post-HIGFNY career highlights was the 2004 sitcom Nighty Night, created by the Baby Cow production company founded by Steve Coogan and Henry Normal. I asked Normal about Deayton. “I think we were one of the first people to employ Angus after he had his troubles,” he said. “People are complicated beings, and we liked him as a person and as a performer. Given that, I think Steve felt it would have been hypocritical not to cast him. Angus was always an absolute pleasure to work with — a total professional. And I think what he has been through has given him a flavour that is very useful comically.”
Alone, recorded in front of a live audience, is a tremendous vehicle for Deayton. Beautifully scripted by Moray Hunter, it has a set-up — and a warmth — that owes something to Friends, and Deayton’s performance is a masterpiece of deadpan comic timing with a touch of John Cleese about it.
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He plays Mitch, who shares a flat — exasperatedly — with his half-brother Will (Pearce Quigley). Their neighbours are Ellie (Abigail Cruttenden), Louisa (Kate Isitt), and Morris (Bennett Arron), and it’s the way they all rub up against each other — with hints of romantic possibility — that drives the comedy.
“It’s a lovely show,” Deayton says, his fondness for it owing much to a connection he has with Moray Hunter that goes back to the 1980s. “I think I gave Moray his first professional job. I was a script editor for a sketch show that Chris Tarrant was in. Moray’s scripts were always much funnier than anyone else’s.”
There’s no overlap between Alone and Deayton’s own life, other than that he is himself single, having split up with the mother of his son — the TV and film writer Lise Mayer — about 10 years ago. Not seeing anyone now? “No, no. Very happy.”
Deayton’s son Isaac, who is 21, lives close by and they meet up with others to play football every week, adding to the impression that Deayton’s existence is a very settled one, ambition no longer driving him.
“Things change with age. I can remember in my twenties being pretty frustrated that nothing was really happening career-wise. Then HIGNFY came along and One Foot in the Grave and then you get everything offered left, right and centre and you have a manic 10-year period where you’re working every hour that God sends. But I wouldn’t necessarily say I lived to work. I worked to live, really.”
So what’s next? A project he says he can’t really talk about other than that it’s TV and would involve quite a lot of travel. “And one day maybe a play or a film script. I just had a talk about something with a producer friend of mine, because I did have an idea for a film and she said, ‘Do it, do it.’ So maybe.”
And what about a memoir? Any reason why there’s never been one? “I always thought that the most interesting or amusing stories that I could tell would be the ones I couldn’t print anyway because they would involve dropping your friends in it, and some of the people I know would never speak to me again.”
Given the tumult Deayton has experienced in his life, it’s perhaps no surprise that he doesn’t want to stir up any more. There are times when he still wants to be free to be Angus — not Gordon — Deayton.
Alone series four begins on Radio 4 at 6.30pm on Tuesday 16 August