This article by Gerry Anderson was published in the Wolverhampton Express and Star on 4 February 1985.
IT IS rare, if not previously unheard of, for a novelist to be delighted with the way in which some other writer has adapted his story to television.
Humourist Tom Sharpe, however, is ecstatic over the way Malcolm Bradbury has dramatised Blott on the Landscape, which starts its six-part run on BBC-2 on Wednesday evening.
“It’s beautifully scripted, brilliantly directed and the acting is superb,” says Sharpe. “You don’t often hear writers say things like that, because it doesn’t often work out that way.
“Bradbury is a brilliant writer, and David Suchet is exactly the sort of Blott I had in mind when I wrote the book.”
Bureaucracy is favourite territory for Sharpe. What better target for acid wit than a species of people he does not find in the least bit funny?
“I think they are detestable creatures. I’ve no doubt that in the civil service there are competent and dedicated people, but what annoys me are certain types who are power-mad bastards.
“The likes of you and me can get the sack, but there’s no possible way to get rid of these people.
“The thing about bureaucrats is that the more incompetent and inefficient they are, the higher they get promoted.”
Mr Sharpe speaks from experience, having been one of the very people he detests so healthily.
“That was a long time ago in South Africa . . . in 1951. I don’t quite know how it happened, but I went out there and found myself in the middle of the Non-European Affairs Department. Just a fancy name for the Ministry of Apartheid.
“I knew I wasn’t going to last there very long. I thought ‘I’ll have to get the hell out of here,’ and I did. Then I spent four years as a photographer, also in South Africa, but they didn’t like me.
“Eventually, they didn’t like me so much they deported me, for my anti-racist views.
“I came back to Britain and taught at Cambridge Tech, and in 1969 I wrote my first book. Then I took a year off, unpaid, and wrote my second book. Then I went back to teaching.
“When my publishers, Secker and Warburg, approached me again I said ‘You’re not getting another bloody book out of me,’ but we came to an agreement on payment for three books, and the thing just took off from there.”
Tom Sharpe’s whole life is now writing, which he does in splendid isolation.
“I’m busy on my 12th book at the moment, but . . . aha!. . . I don’t know what it’s about. The characters keep changing and I’m just waiting for them to take over.”
Caption: “The more incompetent and inefficient bureaucrats are, the higher they get promoted,” says Tom Sharpe.
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