Time for a heated debate

Why Mrs Merton and Malcolm has been called the most disturbing show on television.

When Craig Cash and Caroline Aherne wrote the BBC sitcom Mrs Merton and Malcolm, with Cash playing a 37-year-old mummy's boy, they thought they had created an innocent world governed by old-fashioned values. They were shocked and wounded - and, in the end, also a little amused - to be accused of poking fun at the mentally retarded.

It is true, of course, that Malcolm is a simpleton, but no more so than Frank Spencer of blessed memory. The mental-health charity Mencap did not issue a statement condemning Frank Spencer, however, as it has Malcolm Merton. Perhaps the programme has simply fallen victim to daft political correctness. Or perhaps the writers made a genuine misjudgement. Or a little of both.

Whatever, Time Out magazine described Mrs Merton and Malcolm as "possibly the most disturbing show on television", a verdict which Cash and Aherne have had enlarged and pinned to the wall of their office. The show has been getting audiences of around seven million, not bad but not the stuff of which hits and Christmas specials are made. Before the series began, a Christmas special was planned. Now it is unlikely to see the light of the nation's living-rooms.

"We wouldn't want to put people off their Christmas dinner," says Cash. If there is such a thing as a bitter chuckle, he gives one. "We've been accused of all sorts, from incest to insanity. Even some of the people who like it say, `It's fantastic, it's so dark'. But we honestly didn't mean it to be. We didn't think there was anything offensive about it. Kids seem to love it, I'm glad to say. They see it for what we intended."

Cash and Aherne are not used to a critical pasting, nor to disappointing ratings. With Henry Normal, they conceived and wrote one of the decade's defining programmes, The Mrs Merton Show, and followed it up with a brilliant comedy-drama, The Royle Family, the inspired slice of life in which Cash played Dave Best, fiance of Denise Royle (Aherne).

Cash is the youngest of three brothers, brought up on a council estate in Heaton Norris, Stockport - also the home, incidentally, of Mrs Merton and Malcolm. He left school with no qualifications, having only briefly flourished under the guidance of his first-year English teacher, Miss Williamson.

"The truth is that I fancied her, which is why I tried hard," says Cash. "But she was dead encouraging and used to make lessons really interesting. When she left I just went down the pan again. Then she saw me on the credits of The Mrs Merton Show and wrote to me, saying, `Are you the child I taught years ago? If not, be glad you share your name with a very talented person.' My mum cried when she read that. So I got in touch with her - she works down south now - and I took her out for dinner at The Ivy restaurant. Got her a car home and everything."

For Cash, not so very long ago, The Ivy meant nothing more than a creeping plant, or perhaps a sour old biddy in Coronation Street. After school, he worked as a screen printer, then as a wood machinist. He was sacked from both jobs. Then he cleaned cars for a couple of years. "I wanted to be a TV cameraman but I thought that was something other people did. I had no confidence. Miss Williamson brought it out in me, and then it was neglected again. Now I'm actually in television, I see lots of confidence but not much talent. Yet there are thousands of people out there with loads of talent and no confidence. Daft, innit?"

Confronted by Cash's considerable wit and warmth, however, the obstacles to success began to melt. In 1984 he was given a show on a pirate radio station in Marple. In due course, though, KFM was granted a licence. Cash became a legitimate disc jockey, and quickly befriended one of his fellow DJs, a Wythenshawe girl with a rare talent for mimicry: Caroline Aherne.

Through Aherne, Cash met another up-and-coming Manchester comedian, Steve Coogan. "His career was taking off then, but he would still turn down Terry Wogan to come on my little radio show in Stockport. He really is loyal, Steve. He's competition too, of course."

Coogan, Cash and Aherne have for years shared a co-writer, Henry Normal. But now Normal has decided to throw in his lot with Coogan. "And that's fine," says Cash. "It makes sense for Henry because they both live in Brighton. In fact they play loads of pitch-and-putt together." Cash and Aherne - currently working on series two of The Royle Family - have invited Carmel Morgan, until recently a press officer for Granada, to replace Normal . "She's a very funny girl," says Cash. "But it's like bloody Man About the House now, innit?"

Cash is remorseless in his baiting of Aherne, but there is no doubt of his admiration and affection for her. Love, even, although it is strictly platonic. Cash, 38, lives near Manchester with his girlfriend of many years and their two young sons. Might he move to London, as Aherne has done? "I doubt it. People say it's great living in London because you can wear outrageous clothes and nobody bats an eyelid. But if I'm walking down the street in a silly hat, I want someone to say, `Cashy, you look a clown in that'. Because I'm the type who might think that I look great in that hat, and in London nobody would say owt."

Of the many reasons I have heard not to set up home in the metropolis - expense, traffic, pollution, crime - that is definitely the most persuasive.

`Mrs Merton and Malcolm' continues tonight at 8.30pm on BBC1