Popper has been letter-writing since he began the best-selling Timewaster Letters series in 2005 under the pseudonym Robin Cooper, within which he’d menace department stores, hotels and associations with his relentless letters. He’s drawn to the “experimental” practice and the 12-months he spent as Elsie Drake was the “maddest creative year I’ve ever had”.
“I can be as as mad, or as stupid, or as weird as I want, and they might reply. It was never a case of, ‘Oh, look at these idiots I've written to, and they've fallen for it,’ which is just easy to do — and I don't want to make people look ridiculous or show them up or embarrass them,” he says. Instead, he’s motivated by his awe that “this insane conversation through letters has existed in space and time”. And why not put that in a book for us to enjoy?
As the idiosyncratic Elsie Drake, Popper has had a blast. He spent a lot of money — in every letter she pens, she sends a five-pound note — but it was all worth it, and recipients often send the money back out of sympathy for the unconventional widow they imagine on the other end.
The first letter Popper sent in Elsie Drake’s name was to an unsuspecting Blair, who responded with a signed photo and a “best wishes”. He had an elongated exchange with Greggs — to which he physically sent a series of unappetising meat pies he had baked himself. “I’d make them revolting ones, like liver and banana pie and stuff, and send them. They’d write back: ‘Thank you, I’m afraid we had to destroy it.’”
'The Elsie Drake Letters' by Robert Popper[Missing Credit]
Twice, the police arrived at his doorstep, asking for Elsie Drake. The first time, the officers were sent by 10 Downing Street after Theresa May had received a series of letters by an old lady demanding to be her maid-in-waiting. Once, social services even paid the Popper household a visit, warning the writer that “there might be an old lady who’s 104 in this house and we're concerned about her.” Popper had to convince the officials that the geriatric individual in question was him.
If you’ve ever watched Friday Night Dinner — widely known to be based on Popper’s own familial dynamic — you’ll know the writer is a natural-born prankster, and the letter-writing seems to let that instinct flourish. The salt-in-water antics of Jonny and Adam are modelled off the playful banter Popper has sustained with his own brother into adulthood, whether that’s drawing obscene squiggles in his work notebook or replacing home-cooked chicken their mum has lovingly wrapped in tin foil after a family-meal with foul gunk from the bin.
It’s Popper’s natural silliness and surrealist sense of humour that has made him so foundational to British comedy. His proudest achievement to date is the mock BBC documentary Look Around You — a parody of 1980s school science programmes he made with his friend Peter Serafinowicz in 2002. “We never thought we'd do it as a TV series because it's so weird. It is the weirdest show practically ever made on the BBC.”
In 2011, Friday Night Dinner arrived on our screens. As Tracy-Ann Oberman, who starred in the beloved six-season sitcom which ran for almost a decade, wrote in the JC: “For the Jewish community it was a breakthrough; finally, a British Jewish writer had created a British Jewish family. For so long our experiences and representation on screen had come from America, where it was ok to be Jew-ish culturally, if not religiously. Here it felt more like something that had to be hidden.”
When asked if he’s proud of that achievement, Popper quips: “I’m ashamed.” But seriously? “I suppose if I think about it, I guess so, yeah, why not? If it makes people think Jewish people are semi-normal, that's alright.”
The family in the show might not be the most traditionally Jewish — they don’t say any prayers at Shabbat dinner, nor do they light candles — but Popper never set out to depict a conventional Jewish family. After all, “there’s no such thing,” he says.
“I didn’t go, ‘I want to write a Jewish sitcom.’ I wanted to write a sitcom about this family and the feeling when you go home and become 13 again, whatever age you are.” Because it’s based on his own, they just happen to be Jewish. He also didn’t want to over-egg any stereotypes. There’s no “Yiddish music”, or “zooming in slowly on the candles”, and he didn’t want a constant, clichéd hum of “oy vey” at the table.
“We had a lot of fun. It was a really nice cast, which was lucky. They just felt like a family, so it was easy,” says Popper. “They’d make each other laugh; you don’t see that a lot.” His number one memory from that time is working with the late Paul Ritter — television’s favourite Jewish dad — who passed away in 2021.
Part of the joy of the show was that politics never creeped into its cosy, domestic midst, and that’s what makes it timeless. Making quips about contemporaneous “loser celebrities” might have got some cheap laughs, but it would not have been original.
Speaking of celebrities, even though Popper says he does not get “involved in politics”, he did call out Kanye West on X as the “lowest of the low” after the rapper praised Hitler in a recent public rant.
“Is it okay to be a Nazi now? Are people doing Nazi salutes and that? He's probably extremely ill as well, but what can you say to people that do that, or anyone who’s racist? Saying you're a Nazi… you can't get much worse, can you?”
If you're Jewish or if you're Muslim or if you're Hindu, you are a slight outsider, and maybe creative people are generally. You notice things that other people maybe don't, about society and how people talk
Popper says he is currently writing and producing a new project for TV, though the only detail he can reveal is that it’s a comedy that involves humans. And will he be exploring more of his Jewish identity in future projects? Not intentionally, but Popper says anything he makes is inevitably tinged with the subject-position of being the odd one out.
“If you're Jewish or if you're Muslim or if you're Hindu, you are a slight outsider, and maybe creative people are generally. You notice things that other people maybe don't, about society and how people talk.”
Sign up to see Robert Popper speak about the The Elsie Drake Letters at Jewish Book Week on Thursday
