Comedian must have mixed feelings after robbers ask for a mere £750 in ransom for material saved on laptop
Have you heard the one about the thieves who stole Harry Enfield's laptop containing his latest jokes? The good news is that they contacted the comedian asking for a ransom. The bad news is that they only want £750.
For a comedian of such renown, whose 80s catchphrase "Loadsamoney" has entered the English lexicon, the demand for such a trifling sum may be cause for very mixed feelings. Yes, there must be a sense of relief, but might Enfleld's ego be somewhat bruised at the thought that the thieves placed such a low value on his material?
You could conceivably spend £750 for a slap-up meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Yet the laptop – pinched from his wife Lucy's Mini Clubman outside their London home last week – contained what the Daily Mail described as "irreplaceable" material for the next Harry & Paul show for BBC2.
Corporation insiders are said to be fearful that if the material is not returned, the new series could be jeopardised. There is also concern that the thieves could sell the jokes to rival comedians. Now there's a thought. If Enfield saw or heard someone else use his material, he could say with a straight face: "Hey, that man stole my jokes." It would put a new spin on intellectual copyright.
As he contemplates whether to hand over the ransom, he should perhaps consider himself lucky. Bob Monkhouse, who was notorious for his bad jokes on the Celebrity Squares gameshow, had to pay out £10,000 after someone stole two handwritten ledgers containing 25 years of material from his briefcase at BBC television centre in 1995. That was serious money back then. By comparison, Enfield is getting off exceedingly lightly.
Computer nerds will be shaking their heads that Enfield has committed such a rookie mistake as not backing up his work, something all computer users are told repeatedly to do. It would be fitting if Enfield worked the incident into one of his sketches once the shock wears off. As Nora Ephron, the writer and Hollywood director, said recently, quoting her mother, Phoebe: "Everything is copy."