Friday Night Dinner writer posed as 104-year-old Elsie

Friday Night Dinner creator Robert Popper has returned to his favourite pastime – writing spoof letters.

But this time his exploits have landed him in trouble with authorities, with his latest correspondence attracting police and social services to his London home.

For his new book, The Elsie Drake Letters, the comedy writer – who previously penned The Timewaster Letters in the guise of alter-ego Robin Cooper –  adopted the person of a confused 104-year-old pensioner.

And he told Chortle: ‘This was the insanest thing I’ve ever done. Because I used my home address on the letters I had two visits from the police and one from social services looking for a 104 year old lady.’

The first was after ‘Elsie’ he wrote to Theresa May, when she was Prime Minister, asking to become her ‘maid in waiting’ as a way of helping society. The letter said: ‘I can clean most surfaces and cook a good shepards pie [sic[ when Mrs Hale doesn’t hide the meat. She is always hiding the meat so one time I hid it under my bonnet. She didn’t find it.’

As with all the letters Elsie sent, £5 was included to help ease things along.

‘They wrote back with a nice photo of Theresa May and said she doesn’t need a maid in waiting,’ Popper said. ‘So I wrote again, being more persistent, also with a fiver. Again it was a firm no. So I wrote again but adding ten pounds "as a bribe".  

‘That’s when the police came round, when my wife was in, asking if a lady called Elsie Drake lives at my address. My wife said "Um, sort of". They said, "We’ve been sent by 10 Downing Street, as the Prime Minister is concerned about an extremely old lady who has been asking to become her maid in waiting, and sending money". 

‘In the end. they kind of saw the funny side of things when she explained who I was and what I’d been doing.'

The second visit from the police was after Popper wrote to Royal Parks in London saying that Elsie had a sofa that was haunted by a ghost called The Pink Lady and that she was going to burn it in the middle of Regent’s Park. 

‘Obviously Regent’s Park didn’t want a polyurethane sofa burning in the centre of their rose garden, so they sent the police round,’ he explained. ‘Again my wife had to explain  who I was, and what I’d done, and the police left, sort of smiling.’

However, he said ‘the most dramatic visit’ came from social services who searched the entire house to see if he was genuinely hiding a 104-year old lady. ‘Luckily I wasn’t,’ he explained.

Popper will be talking more about the book in a session with Cariad Lloyd at the Southbank Centre in London on November 10. And ahead of the gig he put in a prank call to the venue, in the guise of Elsie:

Tickets for the event are available here.

Popper was co-creator of the mock BBC documentary Look Around You with Peter Serafinowicz, was the producer for the third and fourth series of Channel 4's Peep Show and script editor on The Inbetweeners and The IT Crowd.

The Elsie Drake Letters are available from Amazon, priced £14.19 in hardback or £9.99 on Kindle – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.

Published: 31 Oct 2024