The dark truth behind Caroline Aherne’s genius

Caroline Aherne was a genius. Not your superficial, doing hard sums, inspirational Instagram post style of “genius”, but a bona fide, dictionary-definition one. She had an IQ of 176, trumping Stephen Hawking, Nicolaus Copernicus and Bill Gates (all in the 160s).

Thankfully, for us, Aherne decided to sidestep the pedestrian pursuits of science, medicine and computer engineering and instead dedicated her big, beautiful brain to comedy. It is no surprise that she created some of the most distinctive comedic works of the late 90s and 2000s, paving the way for classics such as The Office, This Country and Alma’s Not Normal.

In partiular, The Royle Family – which she co-created, co-wrote and starred in – is a miracle. Her masterpiece. A sitcom that not only enjoyed universal appeal but also blanket identifiability, an almost impossible artistic feat. We all saw our own families reflected back at us via the Royles. I didn’t grow up in the Manchester suburbs, my dad was employed and not much of an open farter. But Jim Royle was my dad. He was everybody’s dad. It was an incredible achievement.

Aherne, such a keen observer of life, nearly didn’t see anything at all. She was blighted as a child with a rare, genetic form of cancer, retinoblastoma, that left her vision impaired. Her brother lost his right eye completely. This cancer must have been like a ticking clock inside her. Her mum, a vital cog in her life, assured her that the disease made her “special”. And she always knew she might not have that have much time to make any sort of impact.

As David Scott reveals in his new biography of Aherne, Rebel in Disguise, it was a combination of devout television watching and absorption of the dry, distinct, Mancunian sense of humour, employed by family and neighbours, that provided her comedy chops. She knew she wanted to make people laugh, but she also knew she wanted to achieve this in a completely new way.

While her forerunner Victoria Wood took years to make any sort of impact in the devoutly white, male, heterosexual comedy world of the 70s, Aherne emerged just as alternative comedy was allowing a few different voices to be heard. She dabbled with stand-up, quelling her stage fright by hiding behind characters such as Jewish country and western singer Mitzi Goldberg and foul-mouthed Irish nun Sister Mary Immaculate (an early version of whom she tried out at her convent school – the Sisters were not impressed). She eventually found her feet on radio, first the pirate station KFM and later Piccadilly Radio. There she met Craig Cash, her collaborator, co-writer and co-star who would help her mould her greatest comedy creations.

One of these was Mrs Merton, a character that perfectly mixes Aherne’s love of the dark and the domestic. Mrs Merton started out as a late-night agony aunt on local radio, then endured a number of failed TV pilots until The Mrs Merton Show was finally picked up by BBC television. The first episode of the mock chat show included an interview with Debbie McGee, featuring the immortal line: “What attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” and a legend was instantly born.

Mrs Merton was quietly subversive, painfully acerbic and bitingly clever. Script editor Henry Normal described it as “a warm and gentle kicking”. Most guests took her ribbing with good grace. Some, like boxer Chris Eubank, were baffled. Others, like Bernard Manning, faced a roasting. Starting out on BBC Two, it was soon promoted to BBC One and spawned spin-off books and later a sitcom, Mrs Merton and Malcolm, an overlooked little gem.

While working on Mrs Merton, Aherne also joined the cast of The Fast Show. The show’s co-creator Charlie Higson tells Stone: “Her scripts would come in latest… with some things written in pencil. And you’d look at it and say, well this isn’t a sketch.” But her pieces, though they seemed slight on the page, lacking the big characters and catchphrases synonymous with The Fast Show, were powerful when performed. Again, she combined the seemingly inconsequential with emotional poignancy. There’s the gormless teenager Janine who divulges, in a throwaway line, that she’s been impregnated by her headmaster. Or the supermarket checkout girl, delightfully picking apart her customer’s characters by their shopping choices, and then glumly revealing she’s on £2.50 an hour.

Mrs Merton and the Fast Show characters were big, with subtle rhythms beating away underneath. Her next venture, The Royle Family, boiled everything down to its base elements. No laugh track, no sheen, barely any plot. Though it didn’t start out that way. Stone reveals that the original pilot was far more traditional; multi-camera and with a laugh track. It turned out so badly, Aherne reportedly buried the master tapes in her mum’s back garden. Such was her star power at the time, she was given another chance. (It’s interesting that Victoria Wood went the other way with her sitcom Dinnerladies. She originally conceived it as a single camera ER-style show, but eventually turned it into a more cosy affair).

The Royle Family was a massive success. But with success came media intrigue, and the tabloids in the late 90s were merciless. Stone’s book looks purely at Aherne’s work. He has too much reverence for his subject to delve into her private life. But biographers are required, occasionally, to reveal a few unpleasant truths. And the media intrusion she faced had a profound impact on her life and career.

During her acceptance speech for a British Comedy Award, she revealed The Royle Family’s Ricky Tomlinson had warned her: “Don’t mention the suicide attempt”. Ex-husband Peter Hook claims Aherne attacked him with a knife and there were rehab stints, alcoholism, a bipolar disorder diagnosis and bouts of depression. A falling out with Craig Cash, plus the media pressure, led to Aherne fleeing to Australia. There she made the quiet and strange sitcom Dossa and Joe, before returning to the UK.

There were more misses than hits in her later career, which was punctuated by ill health. She returned to the Royles (and Cash, now a friend again) for the magnificent Queen of Sheeba special, but then further one-offs grew more silly and contrived. She wrote an ITV drama, The Fattest Man in Britain, which was warmly, if not ecstatically, received, plus a new sitcom, The Security Men, that was shelved for two years. She became the voice of Gogglebox, an obvious nod to The Royle Family’s influence on the show.

But careers such as Aherne’s are full of such misfires and there was always something magical there, always a reason to watch. She strove for reinvention, trying new things, aiming in new directions. The tragedy is the work we never got to see. According to Cash, she was feeling more confident and adventurous when the cancer that had been a constant in her life returned. She died of lung cancer in 2016, aged 52.

Up until the end, she was still wearing cheap, poundshop wigs and demanding the people around her perform silly walks. Anything for a laugh.

It’s a joy to spend some time with Aherne in Rebel in Disguise. She was obviously someone greatly loved and respected by the comedy community, determined to reveal the hilarity that thrives in the ordinary. Perhaps it’s unfair that I wanted a little more. I yearned to know what exactly was going on in that enormous brain of hers. What made her tick. What drove her to be funny and what made her so sad. I hope the book with those answers will be written someday. She deserves it.

‘Caroline Aherne: Rebel in Disguise’, by David Scott, is out now, published by Manchester University Press at £16.99