Life & Wisdom Quote by Neil Innes

There is a whole philosophy of performance tucked into that shrugging “I suppose.” Neil Innes isn’t praising rule-breaking so much as sketching the quiet social contract of show business: the room sets the rules. “License” frames creativity as permission granted, not genius bestowed. It’s a sly way to describe how certain performers - the “Roger” here likely being a figure with status, confidence, or both - can stretch behavior until it nearly snaps, as long as it reads as appropriate to the setting.

The key phrase is “fitted the venue,” which sounds polite but carries bite. Venues aren’t neutral spaces; they’re audiences with expectations, promoters with anxieties, and a reputation to protect. Innes, coming out of Britain’s postwar comedy-and-music ecosystem (where absurdity often wore a straight face), understands how transgression is often just professionalism in disguise. The joke is that “anything” turns out not to be anything at all: it’s bounded by taste, by class signals, by what a particular crowd will reward.

Subtextually, it’s also a comment on power. Not everyone gets that license. Some artists are policed for improvising, while others are celebrated for the same move because they’ve been anointed as “the kind of person” who can pull it off. Innes delivers the idea with offhand understatement, the classic British technique for smuggling a critique into what sounds like mild anecdote: the freedom onstage is real, but it’s always leased, never owned.