I was at Cambridge with David Mitchell – he opened my eyes, onstage and off

David Mitchell’s success in Ludwig, as the eponymous puzzle-setting “crime consultant”, delights but does not surprise me. As we settle comfortably into the second series of this hit drama of cosy – but by no means twee – crime, I think back 30 years to my university days, when I went to a late-night comedy show for what turned out to be the first-ever collaboration by a duo of students a couple of years older than me. Their names? David Mitchell and Robert Webb. The title of the show? Innocent Millions Dead or Dying: A Wry Look at the Post-Apocalyptic Age. Yet let’s not hold that against them. I was, you see, there by the personal invitation of Mitchell himself. My then-boyfriend and he had gone to the same school and both been heavily involved in the drama department. When Ben and I bumped into David outside our respective colleges, he handed us a flyer, explained what he was up to and urged us to come along. We did and were sufficiently impressed that we attended all of the duo’s subsequent work. Mitchell and Webb were among the star players in Cambridge’s famous Footlights comedy club, a new Fry and Laurie in the making, and the 1994 Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington, for which I volunteered in a front of house role. They opened my innocent freshers’ eyes in myriad ways, both onstage and off. (I was wryly amused to read Webb’s account of his diva-like behaviour at this time in his 2017 autobiography, How Not to Be a Boy.) In the years after graduation, I would intermittently wonder what had become of Mitchell and Webb. Surely such undoubted talents would be afforded their rightful recognition in an entertainment industry not yet decided against white men from Oxbridge? Mitchell played the insipid Mark Corrigan in cult hit ‘Peep Show’ (Photo: Channel 4) Then, in 2003, came Peep Show, a cult hit with low viewing figures but sky-high critical acclaim and – even better in my eyes – their self-penned sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look, which deservedly won them the 2007 Bafta for Best Comedy Series. The writing was crisp and the majority of sketches genuinely funny; I still think with great affection of their gloriously silly Countdown skit, Numberwang. It’s amusing, too, to recall future Oscar winner Olivia Colman as their hard-working sidekick. Since the heyday period of their double act, Mitchell – always more affable, clubbable and equable than Webb – is the one who has segued into a bona fide Stephen Fry-type national treasure. He has done this via sterling work on Radio Four (panel show appearances aplenty, including his role as chairman on The Unbelievable Truth) and the ongoing brilliance of BBC One’s Would I Lie to You?, in which he serves as team captain alongside Lee Mack and Rob Brydon. For years, the verbal dexterity and genial sparring between the trio has made WILTY one of my favourite programmes on terrestrial television; I fervently hope that it is afforded the longevity of Have I Got News for You. Then, earlier this year, he became joint-winner of Last One Laughing, largely due to his rollicking performance of Tommy Steele’s “Flash Bang Wallop”. Ludwig, which began in 2024, marked an intriguing career shift for Mitchell, moving him firmly into the “household names” category as he headlined a major BBC drama for the first time. The genius of writer-creator Mark Brotherhood is to shape the role to Mitchell’s very particular set of acting skills. You wouldn’t, for example, want to watch him play Hamlet, but when it comes to lovably irascible intelligence and irritation at the foibles of the “modern” world (Mitchell, like Fry, manages to convey a genially erudite sense of a man out of his time) he cannot be beaten. ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’ had crisp, genuinely funny writing (Photo: BBC) There is, too, an intriguing undertone of nascent emotional intelligence, as the reclusive John “Ludwig” Taylor grapples with the mysterious disappearance of his identical twin brother James, as well as his lifelong devotion to James’s spiky but bewildered wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin). It is, in fact, a far superior re-working of a career move that Fry himself made some years ago, when he starred for ITV as the affable titular Norfolk solicitor Kingdom. What next for Mitchell? More, one imagines, of the same, given how successful a combination of his talents it is proving to be. Even before this new series started, it was announced that a third outing for Ludwig had been commissioned, meaning that Brotherhood will have to think of ever more ingenious ways to spin out the missing twin storyline. A knighthood for Mitchell surely can’t be all that many years distant either. It’s certainly a long way from a late night in a small room in a Cambridge comedy club – but I had a sneaking feeling that it was always going to end up here. ‘Ludwig’ is on BBC One on Thursdays at 9pm and streaming on BBC iPlayer