Tom Woffenden was born in Guildford and grew up dreaming of being funny: ‘I loved doing impressions and quickly found myself in every school play and making people laugh – I wanted to be Mr Bean and Robin Williams with some Laurel and Hardy and Monty Python thrown in,’ he says. Then he went to study English and Politics at University of York, which is far from being funny, writes Michael Holland.
After graduating ‘I worked in many unfunny jobs but was keen to give TV a go so freelanced for two years, working on Big Brother and Gogglebox; both very hard work but very rewarding.’
But Tom still wanted to be funny. ‘I’ve always enjoyed writing. When I was about ten I wrote my own series of Blackadder! I used to write my own episodes of The Simpsons, short stories…I used to make sketches on our home video camera. I think I always preferred escaping reality to being stuck in it.’
Tom considered writing a play didn’t know how to put a play on. That’s when he teamed up with Hamish Clayton who ‘has had shows performed at The Edinburgh Fringe and Soho Theatre, so he had the knowledge I lacked.’
Together they wrote Cockfosters, a play about a journey on the Underground: ‘Taking the tube every day of my life, it just felt like a setting for something. I’d never written a play – but it felt like it had to be that. Start at one end of a line (Heathrow) and head towards the other end (Cockfosters) and work out what could happen at each tube stop along the way – which felt like an opportunity for a lot of characters. The structure did all the work! And it’s such a familiar setting to so many it’s easy to picture the show before you’ve even seen it! We’re still surprised there wasn’t already a long running tube set show before us…but now we can say we got there first!
Cockfosters started with a two night run in May 2023 at The Drayton Arms. Now, Tom and Hamish are back at the Southwark Playhouse for a month over Christmas.
‘We’ve done six runs of the show and each time has been a different cast. It’s been fantastic to have so many different actors come into the show and bring their own take on the characters. Beth Lilly has done nearly every show – I think she’ll be on 88 performances out of 94 when the next run ends.’
Since it’s first outing in a pub the production has had to grow to fill the bigger venues. ‘The set has grown massively,’ begins the writer. ‘Our tube carriage started as just nine chairs borrowed from a church. It’s now made up of nine actual tube seats!’
This time at the Playhouse there will be some additions and alterations. Tom reveals, ‘We always like to keep the script fresh and make little changes here and there between each run. We look again at packing more jokes in and try and make things easier for ourselves wherever we can.
I wondered if Cockfosters being put on for Christmas is a good thing?
‘Comedy at Christmas sounds good to me!’ Tom says logically. ‘If you’re perhaps not a big fan of pantomimes, Elf or The Nutcracker then this is a good alternative. Of course, we’ve thrown in a couple of Christmassy things – not a lot! – but a couple of things for a festive flourish.’
I travelled on the Cockfosters train when it pulled into Southwark in May and I said it was the best thing I’d seen this year. It’s now November and I stick by that statement.
Southwark Playhouse from 4th December – 3rd January.
Booking and full details: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/cockfosters/
