Playing Truant With Portillo
To finish off our week of archive articles in tribute to the late Geoffrey Perkins, we have what was probably considered a lightweight, throwaway fluff piece at the time, but in retrospect turned out to be a rare snapshot of Perkins’ personal life. Strangely, the catalyst for this appears to be Don’t Quote Me – clearly the series increased Perkins’ status as a minor celebrity. Whilst you’re here, bathe in nostalgia for a time when you could write about Michael Portillo (and his wife, Carolyn Eadie) without making a crass reference to the homosexual dalliances of the former (oops).
From The Sunday Telegraph, 7 Days Magazine - 8/7/1990, p9:
When talk show hosts Clive Anderson and Geoffrey Perkins appear together next month on Don’t Quote Me, the C4 show hosted by Perkins, it won’t be their first meeting. That too place 32 years ago on their first day at junior school, aged five. The two became firm friends at first sight and remain so, having spent their lives, as Perkins says, unable to shake each other off.
They honed their repartee at Harrow County Grammar School, where they wrote and starred in revues, and chaired the debating society alongside Michael Portillo, now Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities. Anderson was always “the establishment of the partnership”, Perkins remembers, coming within a whisker of being made head boy – while Perkins was stripped of his prefect’s badge after playing truant with Portillo (who got away with it). The two comedians shared many things. Perkins first met his wife, Lisa, while she was going out with Anderson; before that the pair went out with two sisters, one of whom is now married to Portillo.
Perkins went to Oxford, where he became president of the revue company Etcetera. Anderson mirrored him at Cambridge, as president of Footlights. They sparred annually at the Edinburgh Festival, then their paths diverged. Anderson trained as a barrister, and Perkins worked first for a shipping company, then as a writer for BBC radio comedy. They were thrown together again when Anderson, who had been writing comedy scripts and chairing radio shows between briefs, became the presenter of C4’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? The show is produced by Hat Trick Productions, which is part-owned by Perkins. Anderson secretly believes that Perkins only agreed to present Don’t Quote Me out of panellist’s envy, but promises to be on best behaviour when he appears; although he threatens to turn “very nasty” if “just one word of the story about how we once fell out over lunch duty” ever appears in print. Our lips are sealed. – Lisa O’Kelly
