Keith Allen used to be the poster boy for Nineties hell-raising. He’d spent time in Borstal, was thrown out of drama school, sent to prison for smashing up the forerunner of the Groucho Club, and became a tabloid fixture, who once said cocaine introduced him to the hours between 4am and 10am. He’s older now, but this self-styled maverick remains incapable of doing things by halves. Midway through the interview, he snarls, “If what I say offends you, I don’t give a f***!”, then turns to his publicist and says, with a nervous laugh, “Not sure this is going very well!” Half an hour later, he’s weeping buckets. Welcome to the rollercoaster world of Keith Allen.
He doesn’t get stopped on the street any more, he says. “It used to be five or six times a minute. That’s an exaggeration, obviously, but people just don’t even look at me nowadays.” Allen gestures towards his body as if to say, “And who can blame them?” He’s resigned to being less visible. “I’m on the side of f***ing buses, driving around Nottingham, but it doesn’t matter... You can be a big name in theatre and people just don’t know who you are.”
He’s in the East Midlands playing Scrooge. When Mark Gatiss’s ghost-packed production of A Christmas Carol was first seen, in 2021, it received universal acclaim. This year, with Allen as the miserly misanthrope, opinion is more divided. While everyone agrees that 70-year-old Allen is funny, only a few reviewers feel his Ebenezer packs an emotional punch. Still, who needs critics? Zooming from Nottingham Playhouse, Allen says airily, “I’m the only one that matters here. If I’m happy with my work, I don’t care what other people think.”
The career of the Welsh-born actor is certainly wide-ranging. He’s known for his work on the ground-breaking TV series The Comic Strip Presents…, two boisterous football anthems (the Fat Les ditty “Vindaloo” and New Order’s “World in Motion”, both of which he co-wrote), a handful of small roles in cult movies (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 24 Hour Party People), his long-running association with Harold Pinter, a rollicking turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC’s Robin Hood and his offspring (he’s Lily and Alfie’s dad).
But before all that, he did blisteringly political stand-up routines at The Comedy Store and ran amok in west London. Back in the Eighties (according to a friend of a friend), Allen apparently asked a bunch of guys, waiting for a tube, if he could have a puff on their joint; when they said no, he jumped down onto the tracks and began limbo dancing round the live rails. Is that true? Allen’s face lights up. “I did! I lay down in the middle of the tracks. And the train was coming into the station. I was going, ‘You think you’re cool. This is f**king cool!’ God, I was mad. I was actually quite mad… I don’t feel very different from that guy, to be honest...I’ve still got the same spirit.”
Here’s another classic Allen story. He once went on an anti-National Front march dressed as a skinhead (he wore an SAS T-shirt with small print that read “Squatters Advisory Service”). Arrested on that march, he was mistaken by a police officer for Rik Mayall. Apparently, the cop said, “I saw you on tele. I liked your act, something about a spear. Give us a bit of it!” Luckily, Allen was familiar with Mayall’s routine because, as Allen deadpans: “Rik had done the same act for about two years”. When it was time to fill out the forms, at the police station, the guy said, “What’s your full name?” and Allen said “Rik Mayall”. He guffaws. “Mayall actually died with a police record he didn’t know anything about!”
Allen’s sporting chunky glasses, voluminous whiskers and chewing madly on a piece of gum. He’s doing so much theatre (he’ll appear in Rehab the Musical from January), he says, because he “can’t be arsed” with auditioning for film and TV work, which involves “self-taping... in your front room”. He thinks actors are essentially being conned by directors/producers: “I just find it rude that these f***wits, and you can print that, ask you to do their work for them.” Even worse is the lack of feedback. “It’s just basic good manners to say, you haven’t got the part.” Instead, “Nothing! You never hear from them again.”
In case you can’t tell, Allen enjoys venting. It says on his wiki page that he has “grudging admiration” for our new foreign secretary, David Cameron. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t say that. I have no respect for David Cameron!” (He was quoted in 2008 as saying, “I actually quite like him. It’s come to something when I think David Cameron is all right!”) He can barely bring himself to discuss Tony Blair (“I can’t look at the man without feeling ill”). As for Keir Starmer, “It’s like someone got Barney Rubble in to be a politician.”
It infuriates him when he’s linked to the Cool Britannia movement or, even worse, Britpop. “It was very easy to hang me on that hook, but it’s f***ing ridiculous. I was far too old for that caper.” Yet he seemed to be central to those capers and was constantly mentioned in the same breath as his pals, Damien Hirst and Alex James. “No,” he says firmly, “I’ve never been in a gang.”
When I used to buy co*ke, I could have a gram of it for six weeks…
He puts this down to his “rootless” childhood. His English father was a submariner and the family were always on the move. “Having a peer group is very important. But it’s something I never had.”
He felt uncomfortable with his dad’s relatives (“Cold is too harsh a word, but it wasn’t warm on my father’s side”). The Allens were the complete opposite of his Welsh mum’s large clan. “I loved being in the bosom of that family. To move from one environment to the other was very confusing.”
Over the years, he’s identified his “demons”. He says, with a shrug, “As you go along, you find the reasons why you are like you are and you deal with it.” He claims he doesn’t have an addictive personality, “When I used to buy co*ke, I could have a gram of it for six weeks…” The same goes for booze: “I don’t have a relationship with alcohol!” He had a quiet drink in the foyer after the press night performance. “And that’ll be my last night out till February.”
He never has alcohol at home, a trait, apparently, that “p***** off” his wife, the actor and chocolatier, Tamzin Malleson, whom Allen lives with in Stroud. They have a 17-year-old daughter, Teddie. “Tamzin likes a glass of wine. She’ll say, ‘Glass of wine, darling?’” He also insists that, even when he was partying hard at the Groucho Club, he was “just a bit naughty... I was never out of control... I’m actually quite shy”.
Which is when the interview goes awry. I ask Allen if he sometimes keeps his vulnerable side hidden because he worries “nice” equals “boring”. He says icily, “I don’t have a problem with being not nice.”
He’s got the wrong end of the stick, so I rephrase the question, but to no avail: “I meant what I said. I DON’T MIND IF YOU THINK I’M NOT NICE. I DON’T CARE.”
When he eventually turns to the publicist (“the lovely Catherine”, who’s out of shot), I’m guessing she responds with a look that says, “Keep it together, Keith.” We press on.
Allen has been described as a roué and a national newspaper once said of him, “You wouldn’t want to introduce him to your daughter.” What is Allen’s take on Russell Brand, who used to be seen as an amusing “bad boy” but has since been accused of sexual abuse by a range of women?
Allen crosses his arms. “I think my opinion about Russell Brand is my opinion and I don’t want to share that with anybody.”
Does that mean he has sympathy for Brand? “My daughter [Teddie] did a film with him and he seemed very pleasant.”
When did Allen last cry? “I can’t remember. Anyway, that’s my crying, nothing to do with your readers.”
Allen is sitting in a see-through office. As we’re talking, two actors dressed in Victorian garb saunter by, looking full of Christmas cheer. Has he always loved A Christmas Carol? Turns out Allen has never read the Dickens novella or seen a single production of it onstage. Will he be going to see Christopher Eccleston in the Old Vic’s version? “No!”
Him: I don’t really go to the theatre very much.
Me: That’s interesting.
Him: No, it’s not.
All of a sudden, Allen cheers up. He says, brightly, “I do like it when I go, though! I went to see my boy [Alfie], in Hangmen, which was great. And I saw Lily in The Pillowman.”
Hangmen and The Pillowman have a lot in common (both were written by Martin McDonagh; both were directed by Matthew Dunster). Yet where Alfie, making his Broadway debut, earned rave reviews, Lily, performing at London’s Duke of York, came in for some flak.
Did her dad rate her performance? “Yeah. I thought she did a really good job.”
Alfie and Lily will not be coming to see him in A Christmas Carol, but only because “they’re both working abroad”.
Asked if it’s true that he’s threatened by his children’s success, he looks aghast. “It was never an issue. When Lily first cracked it, I’d introduce myself on new jobs by saying, ‘Hi, I’m Lily Allen’s dad.’ That always got a huge laugh. Never did it with Alfie, funnily enough. And then Lily kind of stopped being a singer, so she wasn’t in the public consciousness as much.”
But she’s still very famous. “It’s never been a problem. The idea that I resented her fame is absolutely f***ing nonsense. I mean, I was there at her first-ever gig. I went out to Paris to see her on tour, when she was feeling down. I’ve only ever supported her. It’s just rubbish to say anything else.”
He must be pleased he’s on good terms with his loved ones, given that his own childhood was so fragmented? “Yes, I feel very comfortable and that’s a lovely thing to be able to say.”
He puts on a cor-blimey voice, “You’ll get me crying now!”
Then he shrieks, “Oh god, I remember when I last cried. It was when my dog died!”
He leans back in his chair. “It was about three or four years ago. I was looking for him on the common, he’d run off... I was about 50 yards from the road and I heard a brake and a yelp. He’d been cut in half. I had to pick him up. This is kind of interesting: there was just this sinew holding the two halves of his body together. And I… God! Urgh!”
Allen pushes his glasses onto his forehead, so he can deal with the tears now pouring down his face. His voice is unrecognisable as he continues: “And I had to throw him over the wall. That’s what I did. I threw him over the wall. No burial or anything... F***!”
Allen’s still swiping away the tears and his voice hasn’t recovered. “His name was Tommy. Tommy Rotten.”
It’s dark outside. Allen stands up and says, “Can I go now?”
He’s such a contrarian. When you expect him to be nice, he’s nasty. When you expect him to be nasty, he’s… lovely. Three cheers for Keith Allen: the screw-you Scrooge who (whatever he says) cares a lot.
‘A Christmas Carol’ plays at Nottingham Playhouse until 18 November www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk and then at Alexandra Palace 24 November – 7 January www.christmascarolonstage.co.uk. ‘Rehab the Musical’ plays at Neon 194 from 12 January – 17 February
