Entrepreneurs: Have I Got News For You- Hat Trick’s dramatic next episode

The boss sat in the car park, hyperventilating over the perilous future of his company and his life-threatening throat cancer. Inside, his staff were writing jokes. It’s the kind of dark, tragi-comic plotline seen on Reggie Perrin-esque sitcoms — but for Jimmy Mulville, it was a reality.

It’s a decade this year since the Liverpudlian brought his TV comedy-hit factory Hat Trick back from the brink after a private-equity deal, fighting off illness simultaneously. “I would sit in the car park, quaking with fear. The business was crippled with debt, not selling any shows,” Mulville says of those dark days.

Now he’s notched up revenues of £36 million (up 20%), with Outnumbered and Episodes helping the coffers. Creating expensive half-hour TV is not an easy task. “If critics don’t like a comedy, it’s like you’ve pissed on their carpet,” he reflects. “People see music and comedy as the emotional soundtracks to their life. They take it to heart.”

There’s been plenty of emotion in Mulville’s career. The radio-turned-TV producer masterminded Hat Trick with then-girlfriend Denise O’Donoghue (and comedian Rory McGrath) while working together on Who Dares Wins. They married, created Whose Line Is It Anyway? for TV (the first UK show sold to America), Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY), Father Ted. Sold a stake. Divorced (they’re still mates) and saved the business in a deal with ITV.

It’s no wonder the TV exec’s life — which included a breakdown while in rehab in the Eighties (he no longer drinks), and presidency of the Cambridge Footlights drama troupe — made fascinating listening on Desert Island Discs. (He chose Bowie, Squeeze, two Beatles, naturally.)

He reluctantly gave up his “boyhood dream” of becoming an actor in his thirties. “The dressing-up was fun. But it was nagging at me that I wasn’t doing enough with my life,” says the Evertonian, sitting under a menacing picture of The Godfather’s Don Corleone in his office.

Mulville recounts the company’s nadir, shortly after selling 49% to private-equity firm Kleinwort Capital (now August Equity) on the back of a Nineties boom. “Effectively, we paid off the mortgage on the house and put a massive £23 million debt on the business. They thought we would buy businesses but other companies were concerned by our debts.”

Terse meetings with Barclays’ suits followed, in which he’d be quizzed, ridiculously, on which shows were going to be hits. “I said ‘you should pray every night I don’t die in my sleep, otherwise you’re not going to get your money back’,” Mulville laughs.

David Young, founder of Eggheads maker 12 Yard Productions, eventually rode to the rescue, ultimately helping sell the combined businesses to ITV for up to £35 million in 2007. “We drew a line under it and started again, and asked ourselves what we wanted to see on TV. We got ourselves into a situation where we were setting out trying to make shows to pay down debt. Now, we make quality TV for profit — in that order.”

That quality is evidenced all around Hat Trick’s Camden digs. Veteran comedy-writing king Andy Hamilton (Drop the Dead Donkey, Outnumbered) shambles around, humming, making coffee, on-set snaps adorn the walls and the sparkly jacket worn by Father Ted’s eponymous hero hangs outside Mulville’s office.

Hat Trick’s landmark show remains HIGNFY, now running for 26 years. They rode out a “terrible” pilot (“Alan Yentob took a gamble, he said to me ‘do you know how to fix it?’ ‘Yes,’ I lied”) to create an enduring format. Brexit has ensured the show receives pelters from Corbynistas and Right-wingers in equal measure, spurring Mulville on. It’s more than a decade since he had to sack former host Angus Deayton, and there’s no ill will. “I’d love him to come back as a guest host,” he says. Now HIGNFY’s satirical younger brother Revolting is making waves, hurling jibes at politicians.

Mulville also excitedly describes Hat Trick’s latest bonkers creation, a gameshow-cum-sitcom set in an eccentric general store and hosted by Noel Edmonds, who pitched it over lunch. I raise an eyebrow. “It might take the audience three or four episodes to get it,” Mulville admits wryly.

He’s also manoeuvring a new chapter in the firm’s history, creating a joint venture with Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio to expand its drama output and take advantage of the worldwide content boom that is spurring the growth of Netflix et al.

An adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine is on the way for Sky. “Drama is the soup du jour,” he says. “My goal for this year is to grow in China, selling shows via intermediaries.”

Could we have HIGNFY in North Korea? “Kim Jong-un could host a state-sponsored one! I think it might last about five minutes.”