Journalist and Comedy Writer, David Quantick undertakes an interview whilst having a game of Scrabble. Bob O’Mara challenges.
Last year Scrabble introduced a new version which brought in the proper noun rule to try and appeal to a wider audience. Snobby scrabble supporters across the country expected boards to be cluttered with pop culture references such as; ‘Jedward’, ‘vajazzle’, and ‘Twix’. If you’re a fan of British comedy you could be in for a blinding score if you placed ‘Quantick’ down on your board to earn a minimum of 23 points.
David Quantick has agreed to give me an interview whilst playing internet Scrabble. His credentials touches nearly every great comedy of the past twenty years, starting out with spoof news programme ‘On The Hour’ and then onto the television adaptation ‘The Day Today’ and ‘Brass Eye’ to ‘Smack The Pony’ and ‘TV Burp’. He wrote and produced internet’s first sit-com ‘Junkies’, which he wrote with Jane Bussmann over his frustration with television commissioning process.
Quantick makes the first word on the board ‘toker’; a mild drug reference whilst I go vertically through the ‘K’ to make ‘taker’, a milder drug reference. I ask him if he mainly works at home and submits scripts to shows; “my own stuff I write at home. I don’t submit stuff to sketch shows these days because I’ve got my own”. The premise of one of his sketch shows ‘One’ involves sketches that only have one character; guest such as Ronnie Corbet, Bill Oddie, and Jeremy Clarkson have all contributed their voices to his show.
He continues to talk about working in a team and with a writing partner “with other people’s shows I sit in a room and bash stuff out. With TV Burp I watch tapes at home and pitch clips to Harry with everyone else.” Most people would consider that as a dream job. “I’ve been superlucky, - I’ve worked with two geniuses”. Who could these ‘Geniuses’ be? I ask if Armamdo Iannucci is one of them, I was quickly shot down.
David considers former creative concubine, Jane Bussmann as one of the geniuses, “She’s brilliant and will soon change the world”. Jane moved to New York in 2004 and has written several episodes of South Park. Jane inspired Sally Phillips character in Bridget Jones Diary, a heavy smoker with a mouth dirtier than her habit.
The second person he considers to be a genius is Steve Wells, a man who he wrote with on ‘The Day Today’ radio predecessor ‘On The Hour’ and was his colleague at NME during the 80s. Steve Wells was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma and sadly died the same day as Michael Jackson.
Steve originally from Swinton but moved to Bradford at a young age, he was working as a bus conductor before going on tour with Leeds punk band ‘The Mekons’ as the punk-poet Seething Wells. After moving to London he started writing for the NME under Susan Williams. Steve moved to Philadelphia and started directing music videos, David did keep in touch by e-mail but never saw each other in his dying days due to the geographic disadvantage.
I ask further on what he thinks about working in a writing partnership “writing partnerships are very British, and very hard if you’re an egomaniac, but they work.” I inquire whether or not he would class himself as an egomaniac, “I am a bit of an egomaniac but not as much as them whose mouths I fill with words.” He then placed a seven letter word down ‘tickled’ and claims an extra 50 points for a Scrabble bingo. I was forced to exchange all 7 of my vowel-ridden tiles. A century behind, now I know how the Australian cricket team feels.
Whilst on the subject of egomaniacs I bring up Morrissey, “Morrissey is an awful man, well attested to by ex-friends and ex-employees”. In a 2008 article for ‘Word Magazine’ Quantick laid into Morrissey for being a hypocrite for his continuous ‘flirting with racism’. The publication ended up apologising to Morrissey in court.
I presumed being ‘quite an egomaniac’ David Quantick would have googled his name and read the mountains of abuse aimed at him on the Morrissey forums. The online taunts ranged from “hanging is to good for this bitter sad wanker (sic)” and more serious threats relating to his family, “some of his fans are mentally ill” claimed Quantick. I pondered if Quantick ever been attacked by a Mozzerite with a breeze block or received urine-soaked duvets through his letter box “No,”.
“No” for a short period of time became a popular answer from Quantick, who started to resemble Amy Winehouse refusing the offer of treatment at the priory from her father. He did apologies claiming he was tired, which I took full advantage of by placing ‘TARZAN’ on a triple word score for 59 points, followed by ‘YUPPIE’ whilst he frustratingly exchange five of his tiles.
An unreliable user-generated encyclopedia claimed he was born in Wortley near Barnsley but his voice did not obtain even a hint of the tyke twang. His juvenile orientation turned out to be Devon before moving to London in 1979 to become (in his own words) “media scum”. He started out at the NME alongside Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons, Stuart Macone, Andrew Collins, and Mary Ann-Hobbs. “We were all regional boys and girls” inform Quantick, “NME then was a fractious place, people very factional about music and writing and the direction Of the NME”. I wondered how he feels about the current state of the publication “NME’s doing a better job than it has for years”. Incidentally the former editor of NME, Conor McNicholas (2002-2008) was threatened with court action by Morrissey for implying the Italian-based singers views on immigration in the UK were racially inflammatory.
Quantick was more than happy to talk about music when it’s not concerning the former Smiths front man. His three favorite album are; The debut album by the Buzzcocks ‘Another music in a different kitchen’, David Bowie – Young Americans’ (both albums of his teenage years), and The Beatles’ White album. I then progress to ask him about his favorite instrument, the air guitar, ‘who told you I like air guitar?’
David Quantick used to be married to Karen Krizanovich, an American agony aunt for Sky magazine (nothing to do with Murdoch) in the 90s. Whilst researching I stumbled across a Daily Mail article with the headline ‘Did my ex have Asperger's? How Karen realised the terrible dress sense and penchant for air guitar weren't just eccentric’. Is David comfortable what looks like dirty laundry drying in public and what did he make of it? “Oh that, I can’t really remember it.” Oh.
Either David was trying to avoid answering the question or did not think much to it in the first place, if it’s the latter then Karen’s case could be right. On second thought he occasionally ‘flirted with autism’ during the interview, awkwardly answering the questions with singular words, something you would not expect from a journalist.
Karen Krizanovich article claims Aspergers traits include; ‘lack of empathy, blunt speech, a need for 'space' and a fear of confrontation.’ This could be characteristics in any man. David Quantick draws his own theory; “all men do have Aspergers especially with rock music. Air guitar is the ultimate manifestation of that, I expect.” David Quantick’s knowledge of music is highlighted in his Radio 2 show ‘The Blaggers Guide..’, a show which offers the listener a brief lesson of different musical genres.
Quantick places the word ‘hong’ (a dragon from kingdom 'kong') over a triple word score and collects 39 points, he seems pleasantly surprised that it counts for a word and admits he accidently pressed submit. I did one better by constructing an eight letter word off the ‘G’ of his ‘hong’ to create ‘windling’, a bingo across a triple letter word score for 89 points. This was an incredible comeback, unlike that of the Australian cricket team.
After a few more made-up internet Scrabble words I start asking him about future pursuits. ‘Lots and lots of comedy writing is the way forward’, he currently has three radio sketch shows lined up for the new year including a pilot with Roy Hudd who used to present ‘The News Huddlines’ on Radio 2. I tell him that I’m too young to remember the show and he admits back he is not familiar with his works, I ask about how the collaboration came about; ‘the then head of Radio 2 liked us both individually and suggested putting us together.’
The game of Scrabble was coming to an end and we were both trying to find space on the board for the dreaded excess of vowels on our racks. At this point I was pretty sure this game was mine, as the scores stood at 371 – 335. The board made interesting reading and was comparatively relative to the interview; ‘guitar’, ‘tunes’, ‘yuppie’, ‘jokes’, ‘tickled’, and ‘slog’.
The interview was quite a slog at times, I couldn’t just sit there and just nod at my computer for Quantick to elaborate on a reply nor could I read his body language (not that I’m a hypochondriac and fear that I might have symptoms of Aspergers). After the interview we can go back to playing Scrabble with only every now and then saying ‘Nice word’ to each other every so often. 3-2 overall to myself but I shall never tell him of my dyslexia, a thing I doubt he could find out by simply Googling.
