David Renwick

"I remember he once castigated me for picking up a wine bottle by its neck."

That's David Renwick talking about dining out with Spike Milligan, and in the early eighties Renwick, along with his regular writing partner Andrew Marshall, worked on Spike's 'Q10-by-another-name' There's A Lot Of It About.

David joins Tyler this week to talk about Spike the man, the comic, the creative juggernaut, and how to a certain extent the incorrigible Milligan acted as a sort of self-appointed patron to the two younger writers.

That said, by this point in their careers they were well on the way to becoming household-name comedy writers with hit shows such as The Burkiss Way on the radio and End Of Part One on television, and Whoops Apocalypse just around the corner. David also had regular writing responsibilities on other shows, notably The Two Ronnies, and within a few years Renwick and Marshall would be the driving forces behind shows such as Alexei Sayle's Stuff.

However, it is for two major series in the 1990s (and into the 2000s) that David Renwick is best known: One Foot In The Grave and Jonathan Creek.

As well as discussing Milligan, David talked at length about other aspects of his career, in particular One Foot In The Grave (including an explanation as to how the series is shot through with Neil Simon's creative DNA), as well as his early comedy influences, attending recordings of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and Monty Python's Flying Circus (and is it any wonder that Tim Brooke-Taylor from the former and Eric Idle from the latter were both involved with One Foot In The Grave?), his short-lived career as a journalist on a local newspaper, writing for Mike Yarwood, Bruce Forsyth's Big Night, working with David Jason again in the 2010s on the radio show Desolation Jests and... Bill Cosby.

Tyler's only regret? That he forgot to ask about *that* episode of Father Ted.