A Good Man in Africa

For the first time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Alison Steadman, Alan Rickman and Bill Paterson star in William Boyd’s wry satirical tale of a minor diplomat’s struggles in a fictional West African country.

Bafta-winner Alan Rickman stars as Morgan Leafy, a well meaning but rather buffoonish arrival, more absorbed in women than being watchful of his career as a diplomat. It’s a circumstance which leads him from crisis to farcical disaster until a good man dies.

William Boyd’s 1981 novel (which was adapted for the silver screen in 1994) won the Whitbread (Costa) Book Award for a first novel, as well as the Somerset Maugham Award.

In 1985 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an audio adaptation starring Alan Rickman as Leafy. It was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2022.

Dramatised by Stephen Davis.

Morgan Leafy …. Alan Rickman Priscilla …. Alison Steadman
Arthur Fanshawe .... David Garth Celia …. Elizabeth Rider
Dr Murray …. Bill Paterson

Behind the scenes of “Love Actually”,
27 September 2002

Behind the scenes of “Love Actually”, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, 2002

Alan Rickman about Galaxy Quest:
“I just thought, ‘What a brilliant idea!
How come nobody has done this before?
It’s always a good sign when you keep turning the pages. I kept turning, and I kept laughing. It’s very clever, and I just wanted to do some comedy.”

In the movie, Alexander Dane is a Shakespearean actor who has fallen into the typecasting trap, forever doomed to be remembered as Dr Lazarus.
“I know what that guy could be like and they had designed me an apartment that was so neat and tidy. Because I’m English you get this cartoon English apartment. I walked in and thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’
There were framed portraits of Jane Austen on the wall and photographs of Trafalgar Square and a tin of baked beans in the kitchen.
“I just went round and destroyed it basically; I thought he should be living in a shit heap. Alexander Dane clearly lives in a mess, he hasn’t got anybody that cleans up and he has a terrible diet and a terrible life.”

Rickman also provided input to the bulbous prosthetic that the character wears, which was designed by artists at the Stan Winston studio.
“I thought it was important for it to be good enough to convince the aliens who believe we’re the real thing, but also cheesy enough to imagine that it was something he applied himself.”

“We are playing real people with real lives. You get a glimpse of it, so you’ve got that as your guiding force all the time. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the situation is - these are people who have to go and buy milk. That’s what guides it - these are real people caught up in an extraordinary situation.”

Parisot and his team have been careful to take a very non-cynical, good-hearted approach.
Even the convention scenes, which include 400 fans dressed as crew and aliens from Galaxy Quest, poke fun without being judgmental.
“I think it’s great that there are people who leave their boring old jobs and get dressed up in costumes and live a fantasy life for a moment,” opines Rickman.
“God knows that’s what I spend my life doing!”

(‘Starburst’, 2000)

David Adams: "I met Alan Rickman in 1967 when I was a journalist, setting up an “alternative” local paper in Notting Hill, west London. Alan was training to be a graphic artist and came on board as the paper’s designer. We shared the same politics and became good friends. I admired him for his beliefs and activism, and not just his acting.

The debut issue of the paper attracted some attention, and Alan’s first appearance on screen was therefore in a television news item, in which he was shown sitting on the floor of my flat gluing together a layout of the paper. The glue slurped onto the carpet and stubbornly stayed there for many years afterwards. But it at least gave my wife and me something to show guests over the next few decades as we pointed out our enduring connection with the great actor.

As Alan began to pursue his stage and film career, we drifted apart – and we met only a couple of times before 1992, when I took a group of students to see his Hamlet at the Riverside Studios in London. Afterwards he behaved as if we had never lost contact, and chatted at length to the students, despite there being a queue of agents outside the dressing room door with scripts for him to read. He was a lovely man: an admirable actor but also a genuine, generous person."
(The Guardian, 2016)

"Hamlet", Riverside Studios, 1992

The New York Stage and Film’s 2010 Winter Gala, New York, 12 December 2010