Alumni Profiles
Dominic Brigstocke (Archaeology and Anthropology, 1979) By Mark A. Walsh (English, 1997) You may not know Dominic Brigstocke by name, but you will definitely have heard of his work. That’s a bold claim to make at the beginning of a profile, but it’s hard to imagine anyone growing up in Britain from the 90s onwards who hasn’t heard of Steve Coogan, or Caroline Aherne, or Dawn French, or Armando Iannucci. Or Jonathan Ross or Clive James or Olivia Colman or Sally Phillips. Dominic has worked with them all. His directorial credits read like a roll call of some of the most influential comedy shows of the past 30 years: Alan Partridge, The Mrs Merton Show, Smack the Pony, Green Wing, Horrible Histories … the list goes on. Considering all that, you could forgive Dominic if he were somewhat full of himself. But it’s a beaming, friendly grin that comes through the screen when we connect for our interview. He has a comfortable, confident manner, though he does worry about the angle of his camera—not surprising for a multiBafta-award-winning director. It quickly emerges that Dominic puts a lot of his success down to a kind of iron determination. Dominic was born in Nigeria in 1960, ‘One of the last children of the colonial era’, as he puts it. His father worked as a colonial administrator but it is his mother who seems to have given him his ‘pig-headedness’. Dominic’s father bought an 8mm camera to film his mother disembarking from the plane in Nigeria (they had met in London). It would prove a fateful piece of fun. His mother took a shine to the camera and would film great chunks
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of the upbringing of her four children. ‘I found this fascinating. She let me use her old camera, so I started making films when I was 11. I’d always found film and theatre performances absolutely riveting. At a very early age I had an urge to do this and my parents planted that seed completely by accident.’ The family moved back to England in 1963, and Dominic was sent to boarding school at 7. He hated it. ‘I didn’t like a moment of it, but it does teach you independence and self-reliance.’ After finally knuckling down at school to get ‘much better than expected’ grades, he met with the headteacher about applying to read Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. ‘He said, “I’ve had a letter from Girton; they’re taking men for the first time. Why don’t you give that a try?”’ That first year with men in the College was a fairly extraordinary environment, Dominic remembers. ‘Not all the women were pleased to see men admitted,’ Dominic adds. ‘A few
obviously were a bit peeved that their bluestocking, pioneering women’s college had been ruined. And in a sense, it had.’ Dominic threw himself into College life. He joined the JCR Committee as Social Secretary, played for the first Girton men’s rugby team (players were so scarce they had to borrow footballers to make up numbers), helped run the Film Society, started a mobile disco, and staged a production of an Ibsen play. In fact Dominic’s extensive involvement in extracurricular activities drew the attention of his ‘extremely patient’ Director of Studies, Dr Joan Oates, who advised that he needed to make more of an effort if he were to obtain his degree. Girton was not the only exciting place to be in Cambridge in the late 1970s. The likes of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Tilda Swinton and Emma Thompson were all at the University. Dominic was starstruck. ‘It was inspiring, they were clearly stars at that age.’ Dominic wanted to be involved, but ‘it was far too intimidating’.
