The "meeeh" noise has a uh...
has a really odd history.
It started, um, when...
at university for my first two years
I used to do a lot of Shakespeare.
And for fun in front of audiences
...um...
I used to add syllables to words,
in the style of a very ancient
Shakespearian actor
so it was that sort of,
"That could not be ma-a-d-o-h... (??)
Like that and it was just a longer
and longer and longer, "mad-o",
and put just little things
would disappear,
and then there would be a sort
of "Meeh!" noise like that.
And I don't quite know
how it happened,
it just became a signature
thing of mine,
And actually it's observable
in the film Peter's Friends,
that there's a noise I
make with the friends
who come to visit me in my house,
"Meh! How are you?"and so on.
And they go "Meh!",
that's just very peculiar. With...
With Melchett it suddenly
seemed absolutely right...
...for it to be enormous and it was
partly that thing I'd observed
that when you get to a certain age,
you make a noise whenever you,
you, you have to do something
that involves physical exertion,
like picking something up, like
that, you suddenly have to shout.
And with him I imagined him
as having really quite bad piles.
So whenever he sat down
there was a kind of "eaa",
like that "eea" noise when he
crossed his legs and "meeh".
And then it becomes a benevolent thing
as well, a sort of "carry on" noise...
It just seemed to work,
and also it amused me...
...to look deep into Rowan's eyes
when I made the noise
and see him sort of doing
a mixture of "oh god", and,
and sort of laughing at the same time.