Not unpredictably, given his genius for improvisation, Tony Slattery’s Rambling Club more than lived up to its name.
In the final episode of his eponymous podcast show, the discussion between the late comedian and his friends Paul Carmichael and Allan Lear lurched whimsically from Judi Dench to the Vicar of Dibley, then on to Kim Jong Un‘s love of emmental, cannibalism, and the relative merits of King John and Richard the Lionheart.
Amid the free-wheeling mayhem, though, one segment felt strikingly poignant following Slattery’s death from a heart attack on Tuesday.
With the conversation ostensibly focused on local government, Slattery was asked whether he had ever considered pursuing a position of power.
‘No, I think that would be a dangerous thing to do,’ replied the 65-year-old, before shifting to a discussion of therapy through a typically sharp play on the words ‘councillor’ and ‘counsellor’.
‘If I were a councillor, I think I would be as much use as [serial killer] Dennis Nilsen – or a therapist. The thing is, anyone can set themselves up. If you’re being a therapist, talking therapy – say CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] – it’s proven to be very good.
‘But it’s very hard to get on the NHS. There is an institute, it’s a really useful tool.
‘If you go to a therapist, and it just says ‘therapist’, and it’s recommended, and they deal with, say, lots of problems – unless they show you a genuine certification, and they’ve done their exams in the past, and they know what they’re talking about, then anyone can set themselves up.
The comedian Tony Slattery, who suffered a fatal heart heart attack on Tuesday, reflected on the potential pitfalls of undergoing therapy in the final edition of his eponymous podcast
Slattery, seen here flanked by his friends Allan Lear, top left, and Paul Carmichael and
‘My friend Richard Vranch once said, and it made me laugh, he said, ‘There are specialist therapists who deal with addiction, of any sort.’
‘Richard said, ‘Is there a therapist who specialises in people who are addicted to therapy?’
‘Now that’s a conundrum. How does one possibly solve that? Except the therapist saying, “Oh, not you again, f**k off!”‘
Given the trajectory of Slattery’s career, which peaked with his appearances on the hit Channel 4 improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? in the late 80s and 90s, his words were shot through with pathos.
Once a ubiquitous presence on panel shows and TV adverts, Slattery suffered a major breakdown in 1996 as years of unstinting work, alcoholism and substance abuse caught up with him.
Underlying it all, Slattery revealed in 2020, was a mental health battle that eventually culminated with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a condition that causes extreme mood changes.
In 2020, his attempts to make sense of the challenges he faced, which included childhood abuse by a priest, became the subject of a moving BBC documentary entitled What’s the Matter with Tony Slattery?
Before the relevant passage of the podcast drew to a close, one of his co-hosts reflected that the word to look out for was ‘counsellor’, because ‘counsellor is not a legally protected term, anyone can call themselves a counsellor’.
Slattery replied: ‘Is there a general consensus that we should not resort to them?’