Celebrating Neil Innes: From the freewheeling Bonzos and Monty Python to "Prefab Four" the Rutles

Yvonne Innes tells Radio Times of the time her husband was hired for the gig…

“One day Eric phoned up and said, ‘Neil, could you come [to TV Centre], our warm-up man’s not turned up?’ Neil said, ‘I don’t do warm-ups.’ Eric said, ‘There’s 25 quid in it’ and Neil said, ‘Done!’”

Of course, Neil’s role would be more substantial, playing all the Marx Brothers one week, looking and sounding like Johnny Cash or Elton John the next. “Neil liked nothing more than being stretched,” says Yvonne. “Physically, mentally, any way you could stretch him, he loved it. Also he and Eric were finding out what each others’ strengths and weaknesses were. They were a fantastic team for a while.”

Neil had a way with a couplet – "If all the trees were candles, and who's to say they're not/The world would be a birthday cake and we could eat the lot" – and could evoke an artist without doing slavish impersonations. Here he is on RWT in Elton mode...

She adds, "Neil was very happy doing Rutland and it seemed a logical thing to do after working with the Pythons. Neil had a lovely time, he loved the challenge of writing a different song each week and the relationship was really close."

Such memories are conjured by Yvonne in Dip My Brain in Joy, her recent biography of Neil, who died in 2019 aged 75 – they’d been married 53 years. She admits writing it was a challenge, but the process proved to be cathartic. "When it came out I had lovely comments… I’ve heard from people I’ve not heard from for years."

The Innes/Idle connection goes back to pre-Python days. As a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (later the Bonzo Dog Band then just the Bonzos), Neil had worked with Idle, as well as Terry Jones and Michael Palin, on ITV’s Do Not Adjust Your Set from 1967 onwards.

Later on in 1974, he was invited to join the Python troupe for the last series of Flying Circus, for which he wrote “The Most Awful Family in Britain”, with Graham Chapman, and an “An Appeal on the Behalf of the Very Rich”. He also performed his own composition, When Does a Dream Begin, which sowed a TV seed for later on.

Meanwhile, Neil was taking part in the Python stage shows, whose audiences responded warmly to his song How Sweet to Be an Idiot, and co-starred in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975, also providing memorable songs for the film.

But back to Rutland Weekend Television, and one song that would give Innes a whole new devoted audience. Yvonne takes up the story...

“Somebody had the idea, ‘Let’s do a Beatles thing,’” says Yvonne, “and Neil made a pastiche of their early music. He did it very easily.” That song was I Must Be in Love by the Rutles, accompanied by speeded-up film of the group and introduced by Idle’s reporter, who struggled to keep up with the mobile camera crew.

Idle showed that clip in America on Saturday Night Live. "It produced such a huge postbag the next day that they decided to go ahead with a film," says Yvonne. And so All You Need Is Cash was born in 1978. “When we saw the film back, I realised that it was going to be quite big because they looked fantastic!” In fact the movie, written by Idle, and its soundtrack by Innes, were adored by the public.

"It was a very professional thing and of course there were so many fans by that time that I think they almost thought they were the Beatles!"

Yvonne first met Neil in 1962, the year surreal legends the Bonzos were formed. “Neil invited me to see his band. I assumed a band was four guys in nice clothes with guitars and drums. When I got there, there was absolute chaos and pandemonium.

"There were so many instruments everywhere – on the floor, on the ceiling, just hanging anywhere, over the backs of chairs. They had to get the pubs’ attention – they did all their first gigs in about six particular pubs in London and they were always incredibly noisy. So the Bonzos put this dustbin in the middle of the floor – we didn’t know what it was for – and they started off with Rule, Britannia! At the end of it the bin exploded and there was silence!”

Despite or perhaps because of such unorthodoxy, the group endeared themselves to the public and scored a top-five hit in 1968 with I’m the Urban Spaceman – written by Innes and produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth.

Neil shared a love of wordplay with the Bonzos' leader, Vivian Stanshall, yet they were very different characters. How did they get along? "They enjoyed their time together. They were both wordsmiths and Neil used to get inspired by some of Vivian’s amazing sentences and I think also Viv had an admiration for the way Neil actually managed to keep his life together as well as write these songs and get the words right. There was a mutual admiration. Obviously, like all really talented people, they had spats."

The Bonzos still have legions of fans, and there was simply nothing like them. "That's why people like Ade Edmondson, Phill Jupitus and Stephen Fry held them dear," says Yvonne.

The same applies to the Rutles, whose fans included George Harrison and his wife Olivia, with whom Neil and Yvonne became friends: “George loved the Rutles," remembers Yvonne, who reads me a Harrison quote about being spoofed... “The Beatles for the Beatles is just tiresome. It needs to be deflated a bit, and I loved the idea of the Rutles taking that burden off us in a way. Everything can be seen as comedy, and the Fab Four are no exception.”

Yvonne continues: "He was so encouraging to Neil. At one point Neil said, ‘Shall I do this, do you think it’s too similar?’ and George said, ‘These are your songs, they’re not our songs.’ He was brilliant.’

"I got to know George and Olivia quite well through my main job as a garden designer – they needed some help with their garden." This was at the Harrison home in Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire: “Olivia is very good on perennials, George was an amazing tree man.”

From Beatles to Rutles, back to Rutland Weekend Television. Now celebrating its 50th birthday, RWT proved influential in more ways than one, with Neil then being able to fly solo in the ingeniously titled song-and-comedy series The Innes Book of Records (1979–81) for BBC Two. Whimsical and creative, the programme also had guest turns from the likes of Stanley Unwin, Jake Thackray and Sir John Betjeman.

"It was fantastic, he absolutely loved it," says Yvonne. "He worked so well with Ian Keill and Andrew Gosling, the two directors. They created a little team because they were working so much. Three series, six shows in each series and six songs in each show."

As with previous endeavours, Neil's love of words was clear. "He was just a very bright guy and he absolutely loved language. He didn’t just write songs, every single word had to be right.

"I’ve got these lovely memories of him... when we lived in France for five years we had this huge bit of land, and he would loosely tie a sarong on his hips, with an open shirt, a ciggie in one hand, a large glass of red wine in the other, walking around the land, looking for one word, one lyric to the song and it had to be the right one. Supper would be of no consequence, it was this word he was after."

There was more TV work, as well as a move into children's entertainment, in the 1980s when Neil succeeded Tom Baker as presenter of The Book Tower, played the Magician in Puddle Lane, then wrote and voiced cartoon series The Raggy Dolls, all for ITV.

And through it all there was live music – Neil was gigging well into his late 60s. “He didn’t strut his stuff at all. He loved it when fans came up and he made such a fuss of them. There’d be a line of 100 and Neil would talk to every single one… he was just really humble; it was one of his huge attributes.”

Dip My Brain in Joy: a Life with Neil Innes by Yvonne Innes (Nine Eight Books £22) is available from RT Books for £20 incl p&p — visit radiotimes.com/shop20.

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