In 1988, I worked on a listings magazine’s competition page. One week, the prize was tickets to a new film called Withnail and I. There were also soundtrack albums and posters designed by Ralph Steadman. The entries did not come flooding in. Watching Bruce Robinson’s movie for myself I thought it was nothing to get excited about. Certainly, I had no inkling there would ever be a stage adaptation with “West End transfer” written all over it.
But then I wasn’t considering the power of the VHS tape. At some point after its general release, Withnail and I became a staple of drunken student nights in. With its eminently quotable lines and air of stoned dilapidation – a kind of 60s answer to The Young Ones – it snowballed into a cult hit, making a star of Richard E Grant and propelling Paul McGann on the road to Doctor Who.
