Ben Elton
The decades following Britain's post-war settlement produced a generation of performers and writers who used comedy as a vehicle for political and social commentary. Ben Elton, born on 3 May 1959 in Catford, London, emerged from that climate as one of its more restless and varied practitioners, eventually holding citizenship in both the United Kingdom and Australia.
Elton was educated at Godalming Grammar School, Godalming College, and Stratford-upon-Avon College before going on to the University of Manchester. That formation fed into a career of unusual breadth. He has worked as a stand-up comedian, actor, and television actor, while also producing work for the stage and screen as a playwright, screenwriter, director, film director, and film producer. His practice as a writer extends further still: he has contributed to the page as a novelist, and to performance as a lyricist, librettist, and songwriter, making him a figure who moves freely between literary and theatrical modes in a way few single careers accommodate.
The range is worth dwelling on because it resists easy categorisation. Where many performers consolidate around one form, Elton has sustained parallel tracks — the comedian who takes the stage alone, the novelist who works in prose, the librettist who structures a musical's interior logic — each drawing on a shared facility with language. English is the language in which all of this work is conducted, and the body of output it represents is catalogued under the authorised label Elton, Ben, with records held across major bibliographic databases including VIAF and Open Library.
Critical and institutional recognition of that output has taken formal shape. Elton has received the Member of the Order of Australia, an honour that acknowledges contribution at a significant level within the Australian honours system. The award marks a public record of the work rather than a summary of it, and it stands as the most concrete institutional measure attached to his name.
Quotes by Ben Elton
We’ve just lost our way, that’s all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance? One single move in the great game of history? What’s your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it?
If I did things for the money, I’d have done adverts in the 1980s, when I was hot enough to be offered them, and ‘Police Academy 6,’ which I was asked to write.
The worst thing about being a great power is when you’re not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.
When the phone rings at 2.15am in the morning it’s unlikely to be heralding something pleasant. What chance is there of its being good news? None. Only someone bad would ring at such an hour. Or someone with bad news.
And through all that dreadful darkness she had remembered him. He who loved her. He who still loved her. Who would always love her.
I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition – and I have never suffered from it.
A time when the miracles of technology were still virile and exciting: steam engines and flying machines, not smart phones and cosmetic surgery. When there were still wildernesses left to explore and mountains left unclimbed.
My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they’ve read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!
She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of personal communitainers that were thudding and banging all around them. Some people used earphones, some didn’t, clearly believing that as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and even discreet private conversations had to be conducted at a yell.