Ladhood

A few years ago I wrote about university, describing it as the best of times; the worst of times. Well, I’ve been thinking about it again while listening to Liam Williams’ Radio 4 series Ladhood.

I’ve been a fan of Williams for a while. I first became aware of him when I saw an excerpt from his debut Edinburgh show on BBC3. He was my kind of comedian: sharp, smart, self-flagellating. The following year I, along with the rest of the Guardian readership, queued up outside Edinburgh’s The Cellar Monkey to watch his follow-up, Capitalism.

Tinned like sardines in a venue that could double as a dictator’s final hideout, we laughed sadistically as Williams tore himself asunder, decrying his own inertia and privilege. Referencing Fight Club, Williams’ alter ego castigated him for feebly attempting to write a free, political show that would never get beyond the liberal bubble. By the end, having taken a microphone to the head, he lay supine on the floor, basted in blood, cooked by fatalism. Merging storytelling, theatre and stand-up, it was his tour-de-force calling card, bemoaning an apathetic generation that had bought the protest t-shirt, but hadn’t been there and done it.

When Williams was interviewed on The Comedians Comedian Podcast, he referred to this time as an unhappy one, explaining how stand-up left him anxious. The fact that he was critically lauded wasn’t enough to sate his loneliness. Perhaps this is why he’s spent the past few years working on other projects. Writing plays, panto and parodies, he's skewered an 'advanced' society that's vain, shallow and selfish.

For me, the most recent series of Ladhood ranks alongside his best work. The first series can best be described as The Inbetweeners meets a library card. It recounts an age where sex feels theoretical- not practical. The thought of it becomes an Everest of the mind: a pinnacle impossible to reach; a man-made mountain of neurosis and shyness: each setback a fall; each rejection an avalanche. Until... what’s this? A house party invite. Well, call me Edmind Hilary. Everest, I’m coming for you! The first series does a great job in showing those intense highs and lows all teenagers experience. 

Williams at school.

As much as I liked the first series, it’s the second that’s really struck a chord. Here, the focus shifts away from school onto university, with Williams leaving his hometown for Oxbridge. Now, I didn’t go to Oxbridge. I had the GCSEs to go. I had the predicted grades. I also had the ethnicity. After all, Oxbridge is more of a white house than an American political building, sketch comedian and 70’s censor combined. What I didn’t have was the confidence. My Head of 6^th Form said, “Ryan, are you going to apply to Oxbridge?” I said, “No.’ She said, “Ok.” And that was that. 

Given that I would go on to struggle at another Russell Group university meant, that in hindsight, I’m pleased my state school -unlike others- didn’t throw a bag over my head, kick me into the caretaker's cupboard, bolt the door, and only permit release when I agreed to the school newsletter headline: ‘Our Pupil Applies To Oxbridge.’ However, in going from a state school, where no one was privately educated, to a university, where it felt everyone was, I can empathise with Williams’ second series of Ladhood.

Williams at uni.

In the first episode of the new series, Williams is the idiomatic fish out of water. Displaced from his familiar home into unfamiliar surroundings, he is self-conscious and adrift. He can’t even speak the language of Oxbridge: words like bop, buttery and squash are alien to him. Everyone’s gone on a Gap Year but him (“I got fingered up Machu Picchu”), and people are genuinely called Portia. With three years ahead of him, he has two choices: adapt or die. In the Darwinist struggle, he chooses the former, feeling all the worse for it.

It wasn’t just what they were saying I couldn’t relate to, it was the way they were saying it. There weren’t many people with northern accents or many regional accents at all. As I nervously conversed, I felt my own accent changing like the protagonist at the mid-point in the Pygmalion story. (Liam Williams, Ladhood)

Feeling alienated, Williams trundles back home, seeking solace in his friends Cranny and Ralph. They aren’t so pleased to see him, thinking he’s become all uppity surrounded by posh twats that just want to ‘suck each others dicks.’ Like Rita in Educating the aforesaid, he’s trapped between worlds, existing in a social purgatory that seems a long way from home.

Education changes you.

By the next episode he has a friend, Aftab, and a Facebook account. Surely things are looking up. Trawling through Facebook, he notices how people seem to be having more fun than him. Before, when he was unconnected, he could at least imagine that others were as isolated as him; but here, now, was pixilated proof to the contrary. The evidence is overwhelming. He can only find himself guilty of the crime of having a shit time at uni. Not only that, but the sexual promise of uni seems as illusory as sourcing talent on a talent show. All the rugby boys, built on ‘chat’ and cliché, seem to be getting the girls.

Always striking specimens these lads, tall or well built, good-looking some of them, girls pecking the guy on the cheek faux-demurely, while he grins lasciviously. One or two girls even kissing the tie. What kind of sorcery was this? What sort of man was I while I was festering in my own lassitude while others were really living.
(Liam Williams, Ladhood)

After the debacle of hearing a pick-up artist address the Union, Williams’ life takes a better turn when he meets Molly at a comedy night. The two go together like Ross and Rachel, like Lois and Clark, like Jack and Vera Duckworth: they have accents in Cambridge. Soon they are kissing against a backdrop of dreamy spires, ancient bridges ... and an Ask Italian. Episode 4 looks at their relationship following university and how the pyjama days of box-sets and toast mightn’t seem so cute when you’ve got a crust to earn.

It's all throw your mortar boards into the sky now, but someone will have to pick them up in the morning. And that person will be you on a zero hour contract.

Ultimately, Ladhood does a fantastic job at documenting a life in transition: from innocence to experience; from selfhood to responsibility. Indeed, when The National’s ‘England’ scores the final scenes you’ll feel moved by Williams’ growth over the show. The song selection isn’t arbitrary: it was released in 2010, just like the year in narration. In this radio show, Williams has painstakingly crafted a modern period piece that could easily make the transition to TV. Possibly, a British Master of None. If not, this series at the very least requires another. A trilogy would be a fine thing.

Ladhood is available on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098sdt6 and the BBC iPlayer Radio