This article was published in the Cambridge Evening News on 9 September 1985.
FACE TO FACE — Alan Kersey meets Tom Sharpe
ONE of the driving forces that sent Tom Sharpe in hot pursuit of the simple pleasures of Cambridge was simplicity itself — good conversation.
“All they talk about in Dorset is chasing things, breeding things, fattening them up, milking them, shooting them, eating them and fixing a good price.
“Either that or you get Thomas Hardy rammed down your throat everywhere you go.”
It was a typically irreverent statement from the country’s funniest writer, now back home again where he belongs and making his first public appearance in the city at the weekend.
He was signing copies of his latest Pan paperback, “Wilt on High,” in Smiths paperback shop on Market Hill but we sneaked off for a crafty drink in the Eagle before he was whisked off by Pan executives.
Although the national media tried hard to make something of the fact that there was a particular blot on his landscape down in Bridport the fact is that he missed Cambridge and is delighted to be back again.
“I have lived in this town for longer than I have stayed anywhere else, so most of my friends are here. Sure, I’ve got plenty of friends in South Africa, too, but you won’t catch me going back there again in a hurry.”
He was referring to my question about the current situation in that country, which booted him out 25 years ago and gave him cannon fodder for his first runaway success, “Riotous Assembly.”
No, he did not feel prompted to pick up the pen once more to show up the apartheid regime. “They’ve done it all themselves. Now everybody knows how they shoot people for fun and administer electric shock torture as a daily routine.”
Seeing the results of brutality in South Africa gave him a healthy cynicism that shines through the outrageous vulgarity of his books.
He is well aware that they are not to everyone’s taste. “A lot of people don’t like my books and I often advise people not to read them. If you like things to be nice and comfortable you should not be reading them; you should be reading something cosier, like Henry James.”
He has been back in Cambridge with his wife and children for a fortnight now, first in the city centre and now, after a holiday on Paxos, in a house with a big garden on the outskirts.
A larger garden was one of the motives for going away in the first place. He had a reasonable plot at his former home in Highfield Avenue, but wanted to grow more roses.
He did. At least a thousand old fashioned English roses. But the scent of Cambridge was even stronger in his nostrils.
His priority at the moment is getting the new house into shape, so he does not have any definite plans for a new novel. He does, however, have his fingers firmly crossed for a new television series.
Malcolm Bradbury, who made such a success of “Blott on the Landscape” with David Suchet and George Cole, is working on a script for “Porterhouse Blue” . . . that’s right, the one about the fictitious college. If it works out Cambridge audiences, in particular, are in for a treat.
Photo caption: A chat over a crafty drink . . . Tom Sharpe and Alan Kersey. Picture: Tony Jedrej