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Get your own Free Home PageWell, you've come to the right place. I know virtually nothing myself, but I know a man who does. Unfortunately, this is not his website. You might find him on "I_know_everything.com" but I doubt it. I also know a woman who knows everything, too, and indeed all women know everything but if you're male there's little chance you'll ever get them to tell you.
If you're female— you don't need all this anyway.
But this is beside the point.
The point, in turn, is sitting on a desk beside my computer. The computer is sitting beside another very much like it except that I am not typing junk into it at apparent random.
But I am missing the point.
The point has just left the room to go and get some chips, you see, and I do love it so, but it isn't here, and I wish it were.
Oh— it's back. Well, now we can get on with the story…
Our story begins (and I assure you it does) back when I first met Stephen Hancock (no relation, so don't ask him) about a year ago (that's summer, 1997 for when I have forgotten to update this page sometime in the distant future). Within about fifteen seconds of meeting each other, we had automatically formed a double- act. People started comparing us to Fry and Laurie, but we didn't mind, although Fry and Laurie probably would have if they'd ever found out, so don't tell them. In any case, we had a lot of fun, some very alcoholic late nights in discussion, some very hungover early mornings in discussion, and some fantastic ideas. Well, we thought they were fantastic. Ish.
At the time, my brother and I had been talking of writing a play called "Through the mind of a Cartoonist", mostly because there was a play competition, and we suspected some deep, meaningful and above all depressing entry was probably going to win (you know, stuff which gets reviews like "Bleak, uncompromising— a modern masterpiece"; "Stinter's stark view of humanity in a post- industrial landscape where there is nothing left to live for is shockingly revelatory"; "Angst and Weltschmertz ooze from this minimalist yet rich play— a Godot for our generation") so we thought it would be a challenge to write a modern masterpiece which didn't, to be quite blunt about it, make you want to jump off a bridge. (All the bridges over the river Cam are at most twelve feet high, which makes it a little less strong a criticism of a play, but even so…) However, neither my brother nor I are great playwrights or writers, although we are both cartoonists.
Not so Stephen Hancock.
With plays reguarly shown at the National Theatre and a quite wonderful repertoire of short pieces written specifically for the BBC as well as a resoundingly successful adaptation to what would be celluloid if celluloid hadn't been scrapped as the material of choice for film at least a quarter of a century ago, Alan Bennett is just one of Stephen Hancock's rôle models. And a fine one he is too.
Stephen Hancock went to the same public school as Stephen Fry; he absconded therefrom at about the same age; he is thinking of doing doctoral work at Queens' College, Cambridge (Stephen Fry's old college); he has a fine bass voice which can only be described as Dark Brown, as does Stephen Fry, and he is 6 feet and eight inches in height, a fine tall man, not unlike… now who was it…
Andrew Wyld (that's me!) has nothing in common with Hugh Laurie except the ability to look like one is swallowing a golfball without the actual golfball when surprised, and the fact that his sister (poor deluded individual) admires them both, although she admires Hugh Laurie for different reasons. (Actually she admires me for my courage in, say, going out in public with this haircut. (That's an old one, by the way.))
Anyway, you may be wondering where I am driving this crazy, crazy bus of a document, careening from hedgerow to hedgerow like a demented bat on speed, now rushing onwards into the night, now tumbling through near— hang on, the point has left the room again— near- vertical descents only to discover that the earth has curved again and we'll all be home in time for tea.
Well, Stephen and I resurrected the idea of The Cartoonist and may at some distant point in the future write the play. If you want to find out a little more about it, go here or here or maybe here…
