Romanticisation or Ridicule?: Tony Slattery’s ‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous’

This blog post discusses the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue song ‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous,’ sung by Tony Slattery. It considers whether the song romanticises or ridicules the narrator and the incel culture he represents, suggesting the latter.

The song can be found here at 34:53.

Once upon a time — or is that too grandiose? Okay. Some years ago… Is that better? Some years ago, I was introduced to Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s famous comedy sketch series A Bit of Fry & Laurie (its pilot aired in 1987, and then ran for four series between 1989–95), and I suppose imagine I’m mimicking Fry’s associated air quotes here. In large part my adoration for this series, and other Cambridge Footlights comics like David Mitchell and Robert Webb — when I was younger and unaware of their politics — was because of my academic hopes at the time, but I won’t go into that. I could never care for Monty Python, though; to me, they’re like the Sex Pistols if such comedy was punk rock. But I can’t deny that just like I latched onto this white, male, Cambridge-educated comedy at the time, I’m still a big fan of some of it now; here I am writing this post…

When I began watching the Fry & Laurie DVD box set I’d received for Christmas, I noticed there was something called the ‘Cambridge Footlights Review’ on the menu screen. I didn’t really know what it would be but selected it anyway. More sketches! And featured more people! I was having a great old time. Then at some point after the halfway point, a song began to play — but it wasn’t funny. It was… deeply disturbing, it was both evocative and troubling. I was fixated. I remember it was all I could talk about at a friend’s house party shortly after and all that I could think about over the following months as I continued to revise for exams before university. It seemed to have awoken this adolescent fascination, a deep, primal stirring, something I’d never felt before. I’m being honest…

The song was ‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous,’ sung by Tony Slattery. It can be found here at 34:53. (Years ago, I used to rely on finding it on YouTube but those days seem to be gone, so now I’m increasingly grateful I still have the DVD box set.) CW: the revue finishes with a satirical song sung by the cast performing as members of the neo-Nazi British Movement, which falls deeply short of comedy in a way we’re all too familiar with for the 1980s by relying on the use of racist slurs in the song’s lyrics.

Recently, I’ve wondered more about the song — when I allow myself to listen to it, that is, for another part of this fixation is that I must ration it, because apparently it’ll lose its charm otherwise, and how wrong that is, like there’s a finite amount or something! — and whether it’s romanticising the narrator and the wider culture represented, being that of alienated, disillusioned, misogynistic incels determined to murder… Ultimately, I think, the song isn’t romanticising this, but is in fact ridiculing it, which I hope I can explain below.

But first I want to quickly write a couple of words about the man so central to the song and its delivery.

Tony Slattery

Tony Slattery is a British actor and comedian, coming from the Footlights of the University of Cambridge alongside other well-known television personalities such as Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Sandi Toksvig. His role, as Brian, in the 1992 comedy Peter’s Friends attests to this. He was all across the television during this time, between the mid-80s and mid-90s (years later, he starred in Coronation Street as Eric Talford, around the time in my childhood I’d often sit and watch the soaps, so I must’ve surely caught him when he appeared). His appearances ranged from comedy panel shows to dramatic films and was so frequent that this became a focal point for many British satirical outlets in the early 90s… Ultimately, perhaps he is most well-known for his extensive involvement on the Channel 4 staple Whose Line is it Anyway? (1988–99) — and from this appeared in his own gem of an improv show S&M (1991) alongside Whose Line? extraordinaire Mike McShane — where his improvisational style was characterised by a high-energy intensity bordering on mania, it’s been said.

Though perhaps this can be understood when knowing that around the time he was made to leave Whose Line? in the mid-90s, he suffered a crisis: his battles with substance abuse were threatening to tear his life apart. The excessive drinking, he says, appears to have had a lasting impact on his memory, and coupled with a £4,000-a-week cocaine habit, the danger he was spiralling towards can only be imagined. And was indeed realised in many ways. He crashed his car while in a cocaine-induced haze, he isolated himself from the world for months and months, and, as he discusses briefly with Stephen Fry in the latter’s 2006 documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, acted in self-destruction during this period of despair and mania in his rented warehouse on the River Thames by throwing his furniture into these waters.

It was only when one of his friends broke into his flat and forced him to seek medical attention did Slattery then somewhat emerge back into the world. He was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. To him, this explained his substance abuse: as an attempt to self-medicate the depressive episodes of the mood cycles he had started to be subjected to, at the height of his career no less — around his involvement in Peter’s Friends and Whose Line? and so much else. It was finally in 2020 with the BBC Two Horizon documentary What’s the Matter with Tony Slattery? was his story shared more widely, sensitively exploring the complex and traumatic experiences of mental illness and substance abuse. But this, and much more, is for him to talk about, at his own time, in his own words. (We await his upcoming memoir.)

Recently, he’s been out touring the UK. His show, Unrehearsable, is ostensibly to serve as a distraction from writing his memoirs… I don’t know how to say this without sounding patronising, but it’s so great to see him out and well. I really need to go and see a show…

Now to the song.

‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous’

The Cambridge Footlights Revue is an annual show by the Footlights, a theatrical club run by students at the University of Cambridge. There are a few that are particularly famous, one of which is the 1981 show, called ‘The Cellar Tapes.’ It won the first ever Perrier Award at that year’s Edinburgh Fringe. It was broadcast on television the following year. Part of its fame, like with the revue from 1963, for example, stems from its cast, for it featured and was written by many now famous names, some of whom are mentioned above. I’m focusing on one of the song’s featured in the revue, called ‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous,’ sung by Tony Slattery.

The song is centred around the narrator’s intent to murder, either a celebrity in general or a ‘magazine woman’ more specifically. The narrator is alone in their — his, his — room for the entirety of the song, yet the footage does feature Slattery walking about in a public space and sitting in a café, but always alone. (To quickly digress, because I was in disbelief when I first heard this song, the only part of the entire show that didn’t seem comedic, I convinced myself that it had to be somehow. The furthest I ever got with this was thinking that the opening line of ‘Sitting all alone on my bed in my bedsit’ was funny because it’s kind of mirrored with the words ‘bed’ and ‘sit,’ but I see how much of a stretch that was…)

A scene is painted by the narrator of him alone in his room in the dark, with a gun and ready to head out to a planned location, with ‘Photographs of famous people strewn all around me.’ However, just before the narrator plans to leave, ready and determined to murder, he seemingly changes his mind, crying softly ‘Someday I swear I’ll go but not tonight.’ The song concludes with the narrator proclaiming that ‘Someday I’ll shoot somebody… dead.’

Clearly this is portraying a man, who also represents a wider culture, who is fixated on murdering a famous person, perhaps a woman, and therefore because she’s a woman, and a sexualised woman at that. This would suggest that the narrator is an incel — before the term was technically coined, but an incel nonetheless. His isolation and loneliness is reflected in how chronically alone he appears throughout the song, regarding both his surroundings — a dark and still bedroom — and in the delivery of the lyrics and tone of the song. The lyric ‘Politicians laughing at me through the camera, but I am their judge and I accuse’ reflects the alienation he feels and the sense of power he constructs for himself, typical of such men on the far right. But all of this, I think, frames the narrator not as somebody to pity or sympathise with, but to be seen as pathetic, to be mocked for their disturbing and dangerous beliefs, and indeed actions, as other such men have murdered and stolen the lives of others. We all know too well, both in recent years and in past decades: white supremacist, misogynistic, queerphobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic…

The song’s specific mention of John Lennon conjures up images of then 25-year-old Mark David Chapman’s assassination of the world-famous musician in December 1980 — and indeed the song was written only months after this murder. And from there, one is reminded of other Catcher in the Rye-related assassinations, such as one that’s very reminiscent of that described in ‘I’m Going to Shoot Somebody Famous’ years earlier: the misogynistic murder of 21-year-old American actress and model Rebecca Shaeffer in July 1989 by then 19-year-old Robert John Bardo, who was obsessed with her and stalked her for years. He had hired a private investigator to track down where she lived after failing to gain contact with her when turning up at Warner Bros. Studios with chocolates and a teddy bear. Then after seeing her play a sexualised character in the 1989 film Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (she’s only in the film for a few minutes, appearing in a variety of scenes throughout, with her character’s storyline culminating in coercion and predation from a much older man, her mother’s ‘thinologist’), he thought she had lost her… virginal, feminine innocence and thought there was only one way for him to supposedly protect her. (It goes without saying, of course, that Catcher is in no way responsible for these men’s actions but served to them as a helpful shorthand and excuse to justify their murders.)

Romanticisation or Ridicule?

It’s because of this — the tone of the song and the delivery of the lyrics — that I think the song is not romanticising this behaviour or ideology. There’s always a distance between the narrator and the listener, one that doesn’t allow for sympathy. I think giving some specific examples may help me to get my point across. I hope.

The opening lines of the second verse (‘Just a blindfold and a pin so I can choose’), where the narrator is describing his method of choosing which famous person to murder from the photographs all around his room, suggests that he isn’t necessarily focused on one celebrity in particular — but even then, he does emphasise the presence of women in his selection, which very well may be fuelled by his misogyny, for surely he can be both misogynistic and hateful in general (‘So many people to hate’).

He seems focused on an assortment, perhaps even simply the idea of a celebrity, so maybe the famous person themselves doesn’t really matter. This creates a sense of absurdity, which might be the song ridiculing the narrator by showing how pathetic he is, lost amongst a sea of famous faces in his aimless and trivial attempt to gain power. (Of course I’m not then saying that the narrator is to be respected if the opposite was true, if he’d chosen a specific famous person to murder.) I understand this might seem at odds with the lyric ‘I’ve fixed the time, I’ve fixed the place,’ which suggests his plan is thought out well. But perhaps this is referring to a fixed location where he aims to go, but then to murder whoever he sees there — again expressing a kind of pathetic character. All of this is reinforced when the narrator tells us his motive: ‘Just need the courage to show the world my face.’

Perhaps this is him admitting that he knows his actions will bring attention towards him, and perhaps that’s his goal. His murderous intentions arise from within himself: his own insecurities and sense of self-worth. It’s all about him wishing to gain power over others. Indeed, scholar Josef Benson has written that Robert Bardo’s assassination of Rebecca Schaeffer and Chapman’s of Lennon were in part due to their feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.

The song’s mockery of the narrator — that the song’s not only not romanticising his behaviour but actively ridiculing it — is seen most clearly, I think, in the final lines:

‘Someday I’ll shoot somebody famous

Someday I’ll shoot somebody big

I’ve got to do better than shoot the Pope

Assassinate God, it’s my only hope

Someday I’ll shoot somebody… dead.’

These lyrics seem to suggest the narrator is trapped in his ideology, that nothing less than somehow assassinating God will satisfy him — he is lost, hopeless. Perhaps this seems like the song is attempting to humanise the narrator, but I don’t think so. I think it’s showing how pathetic and insecure he is (to simply reiterate the song’s premise: he’s sat alone in the dark in his bedroom fantasising about killing people…), and when he concludes that ‘Someday I swear I’ll go but not tonight,’ it’s to be read as pathetic. How else are we meant to react? ‘Aw, I’m sorry you couldn’t go and kill somebody, that must be really tough for you right now, buddy. Maybe another time…’ He’s almost a tragic character, a human-heart-in-conflict-with-itself kind of character, but no, he falls way short by being, and being a part of, a sickening group of humanity.

Of course deradicalisation is something to continue to work towards, to dismantle the sociopolitical structures that cause many men to become this way — namely patriarchal and neoliberal capitalism. This is by alienating and individualising them within society (a society they’re told is superior to all others, one that they’re expected to thrive within but are seemingly unaware of the hierarchies that are deliberately built in to oppress the overwhelming majority, to greater and greater amounts depending on the group), as well as by imposing and reproducing racist, misogynistic, and murderous views of masculinity onto mostly young white men, such that they willingly uphold these structures and beliefs. But framing it exclusively like this, as though they’re all helpless and without agency, characterises them as victims who have no control, just like how reading The Catcher in the Rye inevitably turns one into a murderer, apparently. And if they were the victims, what does that make their murder victims and abuse survivors? The same can be said when such men’s behaviour is pathologised, attempted to be explained away and justified by a mental illness. I’m not saying they’re not victims at all, but this can surely be expressed in a way that’s not sympathetic towards these disgusting bastards or considers them ultimately the same as their own victims.

The song may remain deeply melancholy to me, but it’s not a romanticisation of murderous, misogynistic, male incel culture. It’s far from that, and I think it’s okay that it can be this way while being as quiet and haunting as it is. Perhaps that’s the most interesting aspect of the song: how it can be so stirring and poignant while simultaneously ridiculing its narrator.

Going back to what I wrote above about the narrator’s motive, about how it arose from his insecurities, seeing these men as pathetic surely has a lot of value — is necessary. What would the alternative be? To be afraid, giving him what he wants? He can’t gain power over us if we don’t let him.