PETER JONES
TREVOR LEVER
Interview, A&B March 1987
Dodgy Geezers? No Way!
Picture the scene if you will - a couple of nights before Christmas, packing and present buying still to be done, your reporter found himself, quite out of character, installed in a pub in South London waiting for the imminent arrival of komedy kings of adventure writing, Peter Jones and Trevor Lever of Hampstead, Terrormolinos and Dodgy Geezers fame.
Time passes. Strange, festive figures pass through the bar but no sign of the freshfaced writers, easily recognisable (I thought) from pictures I'd seen in other magazines. Suddenly before me appeared what looked like a reject from the Albanian secret police! The kind of lateral thinking finely honed by hours of Repton playing suggested that this was Lever in disguise. Well, not quite - it was in fact a brand new trenchcoat, proudly purchased and apparently the epitome of style in Slough ...
The Lever/Jones partnership immediately put me at my ease by telling me that they'd done so many interviews that they often chanted the questions in time with the interviewer, normally just before they savaged people who asked questions they'd heard before.
Wracking my brains, I came up with a real winner! "Er, what did you have for breakfast this morning, Trevor?" That one went down well. Luckily, I was rescued by their innate sense of fun, responsibility and hatred of long unfunny periods of silence.
Peter and Trevor are, as mentioned, the authors of three text only (on the BBC) adventures: Hampstead, Terrormolinos and the new Dodgy Geezers, all published by Melbourne House. But computer games are only a recent innovation: there have been numerous earlier comic creations ranging from a pop group called The Dave, so-called because all the members (including Peter and Trevor) were called Dave, to a stand-up comedy duo called The Three Ronnies, and a documentary film outlining the delights of Slough as an up and coming tourist centre.
Hampstead, apparently began life as an idea for a board game but when Trevor bought a Quill utility for his Spectrum, they realised that it could work as a computer game and the face of adventuring was changed for ever.
Hampstead is a game of social climbing where you have to be seen in the right places and wear the right clothes to attain a desired social status and it appealed to games players on a host of different machines. Sales were excellent, and surprised with the success, Lever/Jones started work on a sequel.
Terrormolinos, emerged a year later after a lot of hard work, and is equally innovative. In this game you have to survive a ghastly holiday package complete with half built hotels, shark infested beaches and two accident prone children. It is very funny and the gags come thick and fast.
A year passed and twice as much work again was put into their latest adventure Dodgy Geezers. This time you are an ex-con, recently released from prison and eager to set up the one final job that will allow you to retire to the Costa Brava with your ill-gotten gains.
Once more, Lever/Jones have produced a game that is both immensely funny and very playable. It's worth making all kinds of dumb mistakes just to discover the gems that they've hidden to make failure more bearable. I'm not a great adventure player but even I recognise this as essential to your collection.
But why this particular theme? Peter, it turns out, works by day in the film publicity world and was inspired by research he had to undertake for a new British film about the underworld. Meetings in darkened pubs with suitable shady characters gave them more material than they could ever believably use, however, and they've begun to see the limitations that computer games place on their creative plans.
Dodgy Geezers then, sadly, may be their last computer game. Although nobody else has yet picked up on their ability to produce a kind of contemporary satire as a computer game (except perhaps Dennis Through the Looking Glass), it is time to move on to other areas. Writing a new adventure every year gets harder each time and there are new fields to conquer. "Like what?" asked your conscientious reporter. "Ah!" replied the mysterious duo, but it doesn't take much skill to realise that they could turn their hands to novels or sketches or radio comedy or even films.
They cite their favourite funny men as Steve Martin and Dick Van Dyke but obviously listen to a lot of comedy. Alternative comedy? "The only alternative thing about it is that it isn't funny!" replies Peter, obviously unimpressed.
For a couple who "met in a car crash" the world suddenly seems a lot larger. Like a perfect double act they spark each other off and perhaps only need the discipline of regular work together to make a mark outside the computer world. As Trevor explained: "People look at our credits and say 'Very good, but what is a computer game?'"
I'd have liked to have stayed longer but duty calls and I reluctantly took my leave. They're nice lads but I'm half-lost in the wilds of South London and the other denizens of the pub look about ready to burst into drunken renderings of carols, Max Bygraves style. So I left them arguing about why Trevor does 90% of the work for 5% of the royalties. Could it be because Peter lives in Teddington not Slough and therefore has a higher social rating? Could it be because he's funnier? Or smarter?
I ponder these dark thoughts as the car drives me homewards through parts of London as far removed from Hampstead as their adventures are from the usual 'Give Wongo the Wizard the golden orb' variety.
Back in the office I looked at my desultory notes. Between large mouthfuls of beer Trevor had scrawled: "These kids are so funny. Rush out and bye all there games!!" I couldn't have put it better myself. Except that I might have spelt it properly...
Dodgy Geezers is available from Melbourne House for both BBC and Electron, tape only for £8.95. Buy it and make yourself laugh.
This article appeared in the March 1987 edition of "A & B Computing", published by Argus Press.
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