Walliams on Larkin

You can trust Radio 4's Sunday afternoon 4.30 slot not to deliver some of the uncomfortably contemporary 'street' literature that Ian MacMillan sometimes enthuses over on Radio 3's The Verb. Although last week, Paul Muldoon was on The Verb, I still after all these years don't think MacMillan is a Radio 3 presenter.
Radio 4 wouldn't upset its audience with anything quite so chatty and broad church. We are safe there with our funny uncle, Roger McGough, and when he's taking a break, there's another poetry feature. Nice things like Frank O'Hara or Andrew Motion talking about Philip Larkin. But who was he talking to about him today? David Walliams, of Little Britain and escort to all the young flappers you've never heard of until he got married.
Walliams is, of course, a fine actor and no fool but it seems like only yesterday that Larkin's reputation was at the level that Gary Glitter's now is and yet now any number of celebrities are lining up to put on record their admiration on TV quiz shows, in the newspapers and on the wireless. What goes round does indeed come around and attitudes change. You can't find a shrill feminist, or even Alan Bennett, to denounce Larkin for love nor money now (or can you?) and Larkin is as 'cool' as he couldn't ever have dreamed of being. For those of us who knew that all along, we can only nod wisely and reflect that fashion will catch up with us eventually.
It seems that Walliams is in the habit of reading Larkin poems at family gatherings, like weddings and funerals, and although Motion added the expert commentary that he always does so judiciously, he agreed with most of what Walliams had to say and it was a cosy meeting of minds rather than a debate.
The 'Enormous Yes' in For Sidney Bechet was identified as an insight into the life-affirming side of Larkin when the general perception of him has been to expect an enormous 'No' or at best a 'Perhaps'. Even the bleak Aubade was used as evidence that Larkin actually enjoyed life because otherwise he wouldn't be so dismayed at the prospect of its forthcoming cessation. If we continue at this rate, with everybody finding the happier side of Larkin, some of us are going to have to change sides and start re-emphasizing the miserabilist themes to redress the balance.
Some of the less anthologized poems, like The Mower and Mother, Summer, I were considered and the 'rented' nature of life was a detail that Walliams picked up which suggests that he has read Larkin quite thoroughly and also that the relatively meagre oeuvre has strength in depth so that stable stars like The Whitsun Weddings or An Arundel Tomb can be rested for some games.
The comparison with Morrissey might have been taken further. Yes, the gloomy provincialists differed in that the singer went to live in Los Angeles while the poet stayed in Hull but the pop star actually espoused celibacy whereas the librarian had three girlfriends on the go at once.
But as the latest in an ever accumulating catalogue of Larkin features, this was an amiable chat and filled half an hour most pleasantly. Larkin, who wrote a poem called Nothing To Be Said, would be surprised to find how much there still seems to be to say.