"I've gotten a lot of abuse over the years for being enthusiastic," says Ben Elton. "The British don’t like enthusiasm. I’ve always been an enemy of the idea that it’s cool to be sneery and dismissive.
"When I was at university, the cool people were the ones who thought everything was s*** and nothing was worth it and I was the guy saying, `hey! let’s do the show right here, everybody!’"
It’s a philosophy that has certainly served Ben Elton well. Now at a well-preserved 65 and having lived in Australia for many years, the London-born comedian and writer has lived a charmed and hugely productive life.
From his earliest days in the vanguard of a new breed of alternative comedy stand-ups to writing hit shows like anarchic flat share sitcom The Young Ones, Pythonesque historical romp Blackadder and Shakespeare parody Upstart Crow, he’s been "doing the show right here" for over forty years.
He is currently in the middle of his new stand-up show, his first since 2019, and it visits Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre Dublin on 1 November and Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 31 October.
Entitled, Ben Elton: Authentic Stupidity. As it says on the press release, "Since my last live tour, a whole new existential threat has emerged to threaten humanity! Apparently, Artificial Intelligence is going to destroy us all!
"Well, I reckon our real problem isn’t Artificial Intelligence it’s good old fashioned Authentic Stupidity! Forget AI! It’s AS we need to be worrying about!'
It sounds high concept but it’s really a launch pad for Elton to sound off on whatever pops into his already overcrowded head.
He speaks in free associative streams of philosophy peppered with manic asides and self-effacing anecdotes. This is the man who sold out eight nights in a row at London’s Hammersmith Apollo with a show called Motormouth in 1987 so trying to get a question in edgeways is a challenge.
I casually ask him How much of Authentic Stupidity did he write using AI, and he’s off . . .
"Hahaha. I’m not a technophobe but I’m not very good at it and I don’t use a lot of it," he says. "I’m not on any social media whatsoever, I don’t like the internet, but of course I use it. You can’t not use it.
"However, I am concerned with the way we run our world and I think I’ve been quite predicant at times. I think I saw the internet would not liberate democracy. I remember having rows with my dear friend Stephen Fry, who is very interested in new technology, he’s an evangelist for it.
"However, I was very suspicious and I have to say my suspicions have been sadly borne out tenfold because we are living now in what we call the post-truth age, as if that’s not the most terrifying phrase imaginable.
"What we’re talking about is a new dark ages, a return to an age of superstition, conspiracy theory, crazy religious cults, all of which the Enlightenment dealt with.
"I think Trump is evil. I think Musk's influence is becoming deeply wicked."
"Basically, it’s almost as if humanity came up with the Enlightenment to save ourselves from ourselves and then we came up with the internet to pitch ourselves straight back into the darkness."
However, we can always rely on human vanity and stupidity or as he calls it in his new show "homo halfwit," to give us a laugh and Authentic Stupidity is a largely sympathetic view of humankind.
"Of course it is! I’m a member, fully paid up and happy to be so," Elton says. "My comedy has always been positive and supportive. Of course I’ve been critical. I’m critical; of myself and I’m critical of things that are wrong and often despicable and I’ll riff on it.
"With my art, for what it’s worth, I’ve never been particularly reflective in an internal way. I’m unlikely to write a personal journey of depression because I’m very lucky to have never experienced such a thing.
"I’m outward looking. I’m an enthusiast but I get angry at some things because I think some people are wicked and some of the things we do are wrong and some of the things I do are probably wrong. We unpack, us comedians. I unpack all the time!"
As long as he’s not unburdening.
As well as his work in TV, there have been West End musicals We Will Rock You, The Beautiful Game, Close up: The Twiggy Musical, his very good screenplay for Shakespeare drama All Is True, and he’s even found time to write 18 novels, ranging from the surreal dystopia of his 1989 debut, Stark! to murder mysteries and thrillers.
But his new show is designed to bring him bang up to date in a new world order of political demagogues and power-hungry tech bros.
"I think Trump is evil," says Elton. "I think Musk’s influence is becoming deeply wicked. For a while, we were all fans of Musk. He seemed to be genuinely interested in alternative energy and pushing the boundaries but I think he’s a bit weird.
"Trump is a despicable human being who I have nothing but contempt for and, I would say, hatred. I don’t like hating people; I don’t think it’s a good thing but sometimes you have to maintain your rage."
He is equally disdainful of Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister and lord of misrule who is currently hawking his new memoir, Unleashed.
"I don’t think Boris Johnson has ever thought about anything but himself for a second of his entire life," Elton says. "I can assure you that all he’s ever thought about was `how can I get the most of everything? How can I be the boss of everything? . . . and I don’t care how I do it’. Same with Trump.
"Frankly, if being a communist would have made Boris Johnson prime minister then he would have been a communist. Power was all he was interested in. Johnson is just a mendacious charlatan fixated with his own self-worth and aggrandisement and I despise him for it."
As a man who has had huge success with sitcoms and in an era where fewer and fewer traditional sitcoms are being made, Elton may seem well positioned to comment on the health of a long-running TV tradition.
"Occasionally, I'll be on a train and I’ll see all these rows of screens on the back of people’s seats with all these little Baldricks."
"I don’t really know. I don’t think a huge interest in comedy," he says. "It’s a bit of busman’s holiday for me. If I’m watching the telly, I’ll probably choose drama. But I often go back to comedy I love. I could never watch Spinal Tap enough. British comedy is now more about attitude than laughs."
So, how then does he explain the wild success of Mrs Brown’s Boys, a sitcom that harks back to the seventies both in material and studio set-up?
"Well, mate, I think it’s wonderful that it’s so popular and I’ve watched some of it and I’ve loved much of it. I don’t love all of it but it’s good fun. I did a lecture about the state of sitcom for the BBC about five years ago and I spoke about Mrs Brown’s Boys and I talked about the criticism heaped upon it by tv critics.
"It think Mrs Brown’s Boy is a splendid thing. I’s not my favourite show but I definitely laughed at it and it’s a wonderful celebration of extraordinary human silliness and that’s what I did in Blackadder and Upstart Crow."
And Blackadder remains much loved to this day and Elton is justifiably proud of it. "Occasionally, I’ll be on a train and I’ll see all these rows of screens on the back of people’s seats with all these little Baldricks," he says.
"But I don’t look back on my own work. I’m very glad that Blackadder was so popular and that it’s found its place in the culture. People are always quoting it to me."
Back in the eighties, Elton arrived on the stand-up circuit as a sharp rebuke to the beery and leery seventies stand-up of Bernard Manning et al and it often saw him ridiculed for what we would call wokeness these days.
"I don't look back on my work but back then there was a culture that was unchallenged that was massively racist and sexist," he says. "In stand-up back then racist and sexism were the most common tropes.
"There was a contempt for women and non-white people and we actively tried to kick against that. I wasn’t lecturing anybody. The idea that I was this pious comedian on stage was rubbish. I wouldn’t have sold out seven nights at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1987 if that was the case. I was funny but I was finding the funny in something new."
Finally, Ben, will you ever tire of people telling you that the closing scene of Blackadder Goes Forth is one of the greatest moments in UK TV history?
"No because it’s lovely," he says. "I’m lucky, I have done quite a lot of stuff that people remember but that was probably the most memorable thing of all and to have created something that lives in the imaginations of so many people is an incalculable privilege.
"I never tire of people remembering that scene. Richard (Curtis) and I wrote it and produced it but we didn’t act it. it was a community effort. A hundred people made that scene, we kicked it off but they finished it.
"It’s important to remember that that special moment that a huge group of people enjoy was created by a huge group of people and that really is my politics and the way I view life. I mean, I like public transport!"
Ben Elton’s Authentic Stupidity is at the 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin on Friday 1 November. Tickets from €44.50 including booking fees are on sale now from Ticketmaster.ie and the Ulster Hall, Belfast on 31 October.
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