Bib: You give the impression of being a sane, incisive and thoughtful individual. So, do you feel any empathy at all with Melchett (in the Blackadder series) or Trefusis (absurd old academic from Fry's days on the radio) who are both irresistibly bumbling and loudly opinionated?
Fry: It is one of the great privileges of acting and writing that the voice inside oneself that is far from sane, incisive and thoughtful is given utterance and a stage. Most of us have a Melchett or a Basily Fawlty raging or ranting inside us. Few of us have the opportunity to let the demon roar out loud.
Bib: What is better, a good memory or a well-stocked larder?
Fry: I think the former is more likely to enable one to achieve the latter than the other way around.
Bib: In the Big Brother house, the contestants were not allowed pen and paper. What would be worse, not being able to write, or not being able to have a decent conversation?
Fry: Tricky one. With in that environment I think a pen and paper would have been more value to me than the opportunity to converse with that particular group of people (no offence meant to them). But generally speaking with a good memory, one can "write inside one's head" until the pen and paper turn up.
Bib: If you were to enter just one of your own quotes and one by someone else into a book of quotations, which would you choose?
Fry: Heavens. Someone once said: "how can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?" I think I would include that. As for any obiter dicta of my own ... I'm afraid I really can't think of anything that would answer ...
Bib: What will be the first sentence of your introduction to your collected novels?
Fry: You really do come up with them, don't you? That isn't the answer, by the way. I suppose I would be inclined for it be, "I'm so terribly sorry", but there's nothing very charming in that kind of folksy modesty, is there? Perhaps it would be "If you have bought these, why thank you. If you have stolen them, why damn you."
Bib: Why do you think critics are so keen to shoot you down, especially now you have proved yourself a talented columnist, actor, comic and novelist? Does it distract you?
Fry: Less than it did. As for why, I can't speak for them. It would be easy to argue that most of them would like to be as lucky as I have been and it is no doubt galling to watch a person who seems to have been given opportunities that they feel they have been denied. It is also true that the nature of a "cultural commentator" whether columnist or bona fide critic is that they confuse perceiving a thing with seeing through it, exposing it. "I see what he is about, therefore he is a sham," more or less sums it up.
Bib: You will be studied in degree courses soon enough. Would you rather be in literature, anthropology, philosophy, history or biology courses, though, given the choice?
Fry: Upon what meat does this our Bibliomania feed, that it is grown so strange? Lawks - let me see now. I think literature over anthropology, I really don't fancy being studied as some tribal specimen or fetish object. Biology seems unlikely... no it will have to be good old Eng. Lit. if it exists in the future. I suspect I will be the subj. of Media Studies or some such whangdoodle.
Bib: Will you ever publish your books electronically?
Fry: I don't think I will, but I dare say they will be distributed that way, by the virtual libraries and bookstores of tomorrow.
Bib: What new projects do you have planned?
Fry: Hoping to direct an adaptation I wrote of Waugh's Vile Bodies. That should keep me busy till 2002 at least.
Bib: And finally... is it better to be witty or right?
Fry: Wit is always right. If a remark is witty it is because it is right. Hope that's been helpful. All the best.
Stephen Fry was interviewed by Bibliomania's very own David Pinching
Fry is the author of four bafflingly wonderful novels: The Liar, The Hippopotamus, Making History and most recently The Stars' Tennis Balls (see our book reviews section). He has compiled a book of his journalism (Paperweight) and has written an autobiography (Moab is My Washpot). Buy any or all of these in Bibliomania's "Shop" section. Fry starred as Oscar Wilde in the film "Wilde" and he continues to work for the page, the stage and the screen. Fry, along with Wilde and Morrissey is the subject of a new Bibliomania article.
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