New BBC3 comedy set on the Brandon Estate

February 07, 2004

The Times

One to watch

Sean Lock's future is built on solid foundations, says Michael Odell

Take a good look at Sean Lock and decide if you are happy with your home. Having rendered, pointed, lagged and extended houses from London to Peterborough, the 40-year-old former builder who is now a stand-up comedian and the writer and star of the BBC comedy 15 Storeys High, may have laid your floor or put up your walls.

Born in Woking, Surrey, Lock left college in the grim early 1980s and spent his time drinking, travelling and labouring on building sites. It was the latter which inspired Fifteen Minutes of Misery, a Radio 4 prototype of 15 Storeys High. Lock was an established face on the stand-up circuit, but the cult success of that show, co-written with Mark Lamarr and now beginning its second series, seems set to launch him into the mainstream.

Lock plays Vince, whose tower-block existence is the launchpad for some extraordinarily well-written comedy with plot strands and incidental characters worthy of vintage Seinfeld.

“Any comparison with basically the greatest sitcom ever written is, of course, very flattering,” says Lock, who coolly combs our chat for gag openings. “I’d probably be less disciplined about tying up all the plot strands if I didn’t have Mark Lamarr using his microwave writing technique. I write five days a week but he’ll process a script in four hours and start yelling:

‘You’re not sending out the script until we’ve thought of a better ending for that!’ ” Lock is currently thinking of a better beginning, middle and end for a script for Slings & Arrows, a feature film project about a fading darts player, to star Johnny Vegas and Lee Evans.

It’s a far cry from his first stand-up gig in 1989. Lock had tried drama school but dropped out and began laying floors in East London. When he saw an ad for new comedy talent at a pub he took the plunge. His first joke was a skit on the Specials’ anti-apartheid anthem Free Nelson Mandela, in which Lock sang for the liberation of Myra Hindley. Unsurprisingly, his debut performance played to glowering silence. “But you got 15 quid for staying on stage, and I stood my ground,” he remembers.

15 Storeys High draws on the lows in Lock’s life, the nadir coming when he was working at a mental hospital. On Fridays the steel bins carrying waste food from the kitchens would be full. It was Lock’s job to stop patients from climbing up to eat the rancid leftovers. But, though 15 Storeys High may share the grim urban settings of a Ken Loach film, it is both warm and funny. It was filmed on an estate in Kennington also used as a location for The Bill. Locals had got used to seeing fictional crack dealers running down the walkways. They expected a similar portrayal of estate life from 15 Storeys High, but since the first series he has been delighted by the local response.

“A couple of people on the estate told me they thought it showed the sense of community that exists there. A tower block is basically a honeycomb where all types of life thrive, good and bad.” But it’s also a strikingly male world, something which he feels lucky to have got away with as a writer.

“I do feel more and more that TV is being written for women. Writers are asked: ‘Who is this show for?’ And unless you say: ‘22-year-old women working in the media who eat a lot of salads,’ commissioning editors aren’t interested. I didn’t create the show to answer a brief. I’m the last guy to answer that commissioning editor question by saying: ‘Me. It’s aimed at me. ’Cos I like it.’ ”

15 Storeys High, Thursday, BBC Three, 11pm

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