This article by Derek Robins appeared in the Derby Daily Telegraph on 25 May 1987.
AUTHOR Tom Sharpe looks set for a huge TV success with the Channel Four adaptation of his best-selling comedy novel Porterhouse Blue.
But the man himself is modest about the TV fame his work has enjoyed since the BBC made Blott on the Landscape into a hit TV series starring George Cole, John Suchet and Geraldine James.
Sharpe said: “The producer David Eastman has done a marvellous job of casting and I’m hoping Porterhouse Blue is as successful as Blott.”
The four-parter which starts on Wednesday, June 3, stars David Jason as the cantankerous Skullion, head porter of a fictional Cambridge college for the past 45 years, whose traditionally comfortable existence is threatened by the arrival of a new Master (Ian Richardson).
Sharpe, who wrote the book in 1974, is full of praise for producer Brian Eastman, who also worked on Blott on the Landscape, and actor David Jason.
He said: “People have said that you couldn’t make one of my novels into a series or a movie but Brian has proved them very wrong.
“As for David — he couldn’t have done Skullion better, he couldn’t have achieved a more exact image than I had of Skullion when I first wrote the book.”
True to life
He replaces the previous Master who expires due to Porterhouse Blue — a stroke brought on by over-indulgence caused by a family lifestyle going back 600 years.
Denying that any of it is based on his experiences as a history student at Cambridge in the late ’40s, 58-year-old Sharpe said it was based on his observations.
“There were, and there still are, people like Skullion about and I had a lot of sympathy for the porters I used to know.”
The series has been adapted for TV by Malcolm Bradbury, 54, who adapted Blott.
But producer Brian Eastman assures: “This series has a different feel to Blott. However, the distinctive Tom Sharpe humour is still the key factor.”
Photograph caption: Porterhouse Blue star David Jason (centre) with author Tom Sharpe (left) and Malcolm Bradbury who adapted the comedy novel for TV.