Bad Show, Goons

Page 13 of the Guardian, Saturday 25th January 1986:

Adam Sweeting on a nerve-wracking new comedy show

Jokes alive

HE CUT his teeth on the Two Ronnies, Blankety Blank and The Generation Game, but Geoff Posner says he's really "one of the Ready Steady Go! generation," and his memories of the kinetic Sixties pop show have left him with a strong and lingering desire to create live television. At 8.30 pm tonight, Channel 4 is broadcasting the first of eleven 90-minute shows called Saturday Live. The series London Weekend, is produced by Posner and Paul Jackson and features almost everyone you can think of in contemporary British comedy.

The obvious precursor of Saturday Live would appear to be NBC Television's Saturday Night Live, the American show inaugurated in 1975 which launched the careers of Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, among others. Not so, says Posner.

"The idea for this came about when Paul Jackson and I worked on Carrott's Lib. That's when we developed a taste for doing long live shows. We decided it would be great if we could do a variety show for Saturday night - that wasn't the traditional kind of Saturday night variety show - using people who are on the cabaret circuit and other people we'd come into contact with through other programmes: Paul via The Young Ones and myself via Carrott's Lib, the Lenny Henry Show and Not The Nine O'Clock News."

Saturday Live uses a few regulars among a constantly shifting crew of performers, special guests and presenters, rather than a stable repertory company of players with a different host each week favoured by the American programme. According to Posner, "the problem with repertory groups is that they start becoming the reason for the show. We decided that we would start with the script first of all and then get people in as we wanted them."

The first show features guest hostess Tracey Ullman, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson as the Dangerous Brothers, the Oblivion Boys, John Wells, Ben Elton, erstwhile revivalist preacher Sam Kinison, Robbie Coltrane, and pop acts Squeeze, Fergal Sharkey and INXS. All the pop groups will play live in the studio.

The potential pitfalls are obvious. Put the cream of the nation's most volatile comedy performers in front of a live TV audience at peak time on a Saturday night, and who knows what the eavesdropping microphone might pick up? Ben Elton, whose recent writing credits include Happy Families and Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder 2, has been a stand-up comic for five years, but stills dreads his regular six-minute slot in the new programme. "Live television is without doubt the most nerve-wracking thing," Elton insists.

Host for show nine will be Peter Cook, a choice which reflects a desire among the Saturday Live team to present a broad spectrum of comedy and to avoid being typecast as yet another permutation of the Comic Strip/Young Ones faction. "Anyone who can raise a smile is welcome," says Ben Elton. "I'm absolutely certain that if Ronnie Barker wanted to do it we'd be completely thrilled. He's a genius performer."

Posner and Jackson have cast their net fairly wide. Posner made a trip to New York to check out the current series of Saturday Night Live and to investigate new young comics in the clubs, while Jackson headed for Los Angeles. They've located half a dozen American performers who they hope will find the Saturday Live climate congenial, though Posner was dismayed to discover that American television has the right wing watchdogs tugging at the seat of the trousers. He suspects there may be a similar climate brewing in Britain.

But isn't it the function of comedy to hit back against that sort of pressure?

"Yes. Oh, yes. But I think the moment government starts dictating what can and can't go on television, starting to comment on television, then I think we're getting into very dangerous waters. Spitting Image is probably under the political microscope more than we're going to be. But it seems to me we're being watched much more than maybe a couple of years ago."

Nobody is making any predictions about viewing figures. Eight-thirty on Saturday night has long been reserved for bland and unchallenging "entertainment", but Geoff Posner feels there are potential viewers who have been catered for hitherto. "We're saying that there is a younger audience, 15 to 35 say, who are around on Saturday night. Maybe they don't have anyone to go out with or maybe they don't want to go out. Well, they may like our programme."

Page 7 of Today, Thursday 15th July 1993:

OLD KINGS OF COMEDY ON THE BBC'S SITCOM CRISIS

Why did the laughter have to die?
by DOMINIC MIDGLEY

IT WAS etched in stone: BBC comedies are the best in the world. Even though we've lost the Empire and the National Health Service has taken to its bed, the sun will never set on Auntie's sense of humour.

Well, that the theory. The truth is that chuckles are hard to come by in today's streamlined BBC.

The director general may have a mission to explain, but he doesn't appear to have a mission to raise a laugh. You have to go right down to number 37 in TV's top 50 before you come across a BBC comedy - and then it's a repeat.

In fact, all three of the BBC's light entertainment entries in the audience chart are reruns: Birds of a Feather, The Good Life and Open All Hours.

The golden age of British television comedy is well and truly over.

Critics round up the usual suspects - too many news people at the top, too little cash - but the root of the decline is an invasion by the men in grey suits of territory once firmly in the hands of the writers and producers with a direct line to the national funny-bone.

Ray Galton of the legendary Galton and Simpson partnership, who wrote for Tony Hancock and produced the classic series Steptoe and Son, recalls the late Tom Sloan, then head of light entertainment, offering 10 half-hour slots, saying: "You can do what you like." Rash? Perhaps. Unusual? Certainly. But it was this trust that produced some of the best TV comedy in the world. And there is no place for it in John Birt's bureaucratic BBC.

One of Sloan's successors was John Howard Davies, who left the BBC for Thames and is now an independent producer.

HE SAYS of the Sloan incident: "It shouldn't really happen like that, but then it was an experimental period.

"The BBC had much more money. Income from the licence fee was going up every year because of the introduction of colour and they could plough more resources and money into programmes.

"It was a golden era and thank God I worked in it.

"The main problem with the BBC at the moment is it seems to have lost its bottle in programme-making terms. Too many people have to agree before a programme is commissioned. Nothing is done on instinct, everything is done on logic."

Johnny Speight, who created Till Death Do Us Part, is working on a new series of In Sickness And Health. He reckons he is one of the lucky ones. And he sees this as part of the problem. "Maybe it's because the writers who wrote those shows aren't employed any more," he says. "Perhaps it's all down to ageism, the culling of the seniors.

"Part of all this political correctness: you can only work up to 45 and then you are put out to grass. I don't know whether younger people are cheaper or what.

"But it seems to me that a lot of young people are employed beyond their capabilities. Look at our Prime Minister.

"I remember talking to (playwright) Harold Pinter about how standards were failing, and he said the worst part of it was these were the standards the people coming into the business would be aiming at.

"Instead of raising standards, they seem to be more interested in lowering the fences so people can get over them more easily. It applies to drama and current affairs as well.

"There's a big rumour going around that it's the university mafia. They're all buddies and give each other work.

"I go round universities quite a lot and I find that all they want to do is be in the media. They don't seem to want to go into industry, the lifeblood of the country, any more.

"In the old days of showbiz, like in any industry, you'd have worked your way up from the bottom. But it doesn't happen that way now."

So what of the future? The BBC1 controller Alan Yentob has already made one contribution to the cause of quality programming by ditching Eldorado.

But many feel that the intellectual who arrived from BBC2 would be happier watching a Ukrainian art movie than sitting through Bobby Davro's Rock With Laughter.

"I can't really see Yentob being at home with the likes of Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck," says Galton.

"Not that most people would be, but it's just not his world. Birt looks like he should work for Abbey National anyway.

"In the so-called golden age of comedy, most people in positions of power were army captains.

"That was one of the things Hancock didn't like about the BBC - everyone had a military background. But it didn't stop them being responsible for good and popular shows.

"I AM pessimistic at the moment. The Beeb is not the Beeb I grew up with.

"Programmes used to have to fight to get ratings but they got them by exciting people. People rushed home to catch programmes and then talked about them all the next day.

"I overheard somebody from one of the ITV companies saying you don't need good programmes because you can market bad ones. I don't think people are such fools."

Page 7 of Today, Wednesday 21st July 1993:

Absolutely hilarious

Sitcoms dying? We're still laughing, says the BBC

LAST Thursday, in an article entitled "Why did the laughter have to die?", TODAY lambasted the BBC for the quality of its TV comedy programmes. We pointed out that its highest light entertainment entry in the TV top 50 was at number 37 - and that all three of its entries were repeats. We spoke to comic scriptwriting greats such as Johnny Speight (Till Death Us Do Part) and Ray Galton (Steptoe And Son) who argued that things are not what they were.

But here MARTIN FISHER, head of BBC Television Comedy, goes on the counter-attack in a vigorous defence of his regime...

SO THE Golden Age of Comedy is over. Well, all I can say is that it takes a long time for comedy to go bronze, let alone gold. Some of the comedies today hailed as classics would never have reached that status if they had been judged by just one series.

Dad's Army was originally shown to three separate audiences, all of which gave it the thumbs-down. BBC bosses disagreed and the rest is history.

Only Fools And Horses was at first believed to be "too downmarket" for BBC audiences - but a second series was commissioned nonetheless and the programme has gone on to become a British institution.

Its creator, John Sullivan, believes that ITV wouldn't have had the confidence to back a second series.

"The BBC has the courage of its convictions," he says. "It transmits second series of comedies to give them a chance to catch on with the public.

"If Only Fools And Horses, One Foot In The Grave, Blackadder and Dad's Army had all been ITV programmes, they would been killed off on the showing of their first series."

No, comedy is still king at the BBC. One Foot In The Grave recently attracted more than 18 million viewers to BBC1, the Jennifer Saunders/Joanna Lumley comedy Absolutely Fabulous walked away with the BAFTA Best Comedy Award this year, and BBC comedy has dominated the BAFTA Awards for the past decade.

DAVID Renwick, the writer who gave us Victor Meldrew the "capped crusader" and folk hero of the Nineties in One Foot In The Grave, endorses Sullivan's point of view.

"The BBC is unrivalled in its ability to nurture programmes in which it has faith," he says. "It has the kind of creative scheduling that ensures programmes are given the best chance to build up audiences."

Johnny Speight and Ray Galton are right when they say that the BBC isn't the same as it used to be. Nothing is the same as it used to be. The BBC's comedy output must move with the times, while retaining its production standards, if it is to appeal to today's audiences.

David Renwick believes that there is a danger in having one foot in the past.

"I have the greatest respect for the work of Speight, Galton and Simpson, but comedy reflects the society we live in - and there has been a sea-change," he says.

"In my experience of working with the BBC, the climate is more receptive than ever to innovative scripts."

This autumn and winter will see the return of many comedies that have won viewers' affections, including Keeping Up Appearances, Waiting For God, Chef, Two Point Four Children, Birds Of A Feather, As Time Goes By and Last Of The Summer Wine.

There will also be six new comedies on BBC1 and a new series of BBC2 pilots harnessing fresh talent and scripted, in the main, by writers new to television.

The BBC has always had an outstanding record for attracting top performers of the calibre of French and Saunders, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson, Alexei Sayle, Victoria Wood, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.

Our situation comedies have produced wonderful characters such as Richard Wilson's Victor Meldrew, David Jason's Del Boy, Patricia Routledge's Hyacinth Bouquet and birds of a feather Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson.

JOHN Sullivan believes that it would be foolish to write off a wealth of comedy for the occasional failure. "I've spent 17 years with the BBC. although I've been offered more money from ITV companies," he says.

"I stay loyal because of the quality, commitment and love that the BBC puts into its productions. If there has been a poor crop occasionally, so what?

"You don't dismiss Manchester United for one lost match and you don't condemn Bordeaux for one bad bottle of wine."

● WHAT do YOU think? Write to TODAY, 1 Virginia St, London E1 9DB.

Pages 4 and 5 of Part Two of the Guardian, Friday 20th September 1996:

Britannia rules the waves...

No way, says American critic Elaine Showalter, who has spent a long miserable summer watching British television and its professional viewers

TUBBY PASSMORE, the hero of David Lodge's bestseller, Therapy, is a writer of a successful TV sitcom called The People Next Door. He is also chronically depressed. Tubby's cognitive psychotherapist thinks he suffers from a lack of self-esteem, and Tubby himself believes there's an epidemic of lack of self-esteem. "It was a time of hope ... when we were beating the world in the things that really mattered to ordinary people, sport and pop music and fashion and television."

I've thought about Tubby and his sitcom a lot. Pop music and fashion are holding their own. So what about television? Thirty years on, is England still beating the world? In a recent poll in London, 60 per cent said yes, probably thinking of Pride and Prejudice and other dramatic glories that carry on the golden ages. But American sitcoms are taking over the audience, and there is increasing evidence that British ones are worrying about the people next door.

I had planned to take a reality check, to do a British TV marathon, the way British TV critics hit New York and hole up in the Paramount Hotel with the zapper and a minibar of cold Buds. But there didn't seem to be any British TV to watch, or not as such. Coronation Street, to be sure, but otherwise five minutes of this, 15 of that, lots of American movies, sports, documentaries on the plight of the Israeli gazelle or sex among the very old.

I was fascinated, though, by the number of column inches devoted to previews, reviews, and opinions. The quantity of British TV criticism is in inverse proportion to the quantity of new British television. Many talented writers are writing about television, but few seem to be writing for it. The contrasts between tube and text suggest that there is a crisis at the moment is British popular TV. In a speech to this year's Banff International Television Festival, Melvyn Bragg argued that television was too infatuated with the present and that its "future growth must lie in a steady cultivation of the past". But most critics think that an obsession with the past is already the burden of British TV. As the Guardian's Stuart Jeffries has observed: "Many Britons are afraid of the present and want to wallow in the dimly remembered, perhaps kinder past."

Writers in the newspapers and magazines have been brooding or bragging about the differences between British and American sitcoms, TV, sports. Journalists disapproved of the Olympics - the patriotism, the commercialism, the unseemly hustle.

Of the success of American sitcoms, Nigel Planer said American audiences liked enterprise and equality between the classes, while "we want irreconcilable differences. Maybe because that's the way we feel - powerless. Also, you can't use smart heroes in British comedy. To be the hero of an American sitcom, you have to be smarter than anyone else." Simon Nye, the writer of Men Behaving Badly, says: "Modern American sitcoms are like stretch limousines: they're slick, expensive, and they go on for ever. A British sitcom is more like an old Triumph motorbike: magnificent when running properly, but hard work."

Television critics, though, noticed the hard work, sharp writing and strong casting that had gone into the success of Seinfeld, Friends and Frasier. Perhaps this success has something to do with the self-confidence expressed in American sitcoms - which, moreover, do not object to attractive actors. Nicholas Barber of The Independent admitted that Friends was very funny, despite its cast of "impossibly well-dressed, breathtakingly gorgeous, painfully witty" New Yorkers, and conceded that "a bit of physical beauty seemed a small price to pay" for non-stop laughs. In The Times, Brenda Maddox wrote: "The Simpsons tells you all you need to know about America today. Why can't someone do the same for Britain?"

Victor Lewis-Smith, of the London Evening Standard, is the most hard-hitting, principled, passionate TV critic in Britain today. He cares about television. It doesn't seem that he is writing about it until something better comes along. Unquestionably London TV reviewers are every bit as witty, gorgeous, and well-turned-out as their New York equivalents.

But overall I found British TV criticism a disappointment. How can the country with the finest cultural journalism in the world, with pop music critics who compare Charlie Watts to Samuel Beckett, continue to treat TV reviewing as badinage? At worst (need I mention A A Gill in the Sunday Times?), the chief qualification for writing about TV seems to be a sneering, dandyish contempt for the medium and its proletarian audience, and an overweening self-regard.

In my view, Clive James did British television a great disservice by establishing banter as the appropriate form for its critics. James set out a dismaying view of TV aesthetics in a collection of pieces for the Observer: "Television is not a medium - at least not in the sense that McLuhan and lesser pundits tried to call it a medium, with special properties shared by no other medium. Television is a medium only in the sense that a window is a medium. His view, which treats all television as shared event or unmediated experience, has prevailed.

His reviews show a preference for easy targets, such as the Eurovision Song Contest. Yet he was fussy about the way actors read Shakespearian verse, and got a lot of mileage out of Johnny Foreigner's funny accent, such as a Japanese TV correspondent reporting the royal wedding ("Royaroo Famiree is so exciting reahree"). Re-reading these reviews is a startling reminder of the casual xenophobia of the past, but otherwise doesn't teach much about the development of British television in the 1970s and 1980s.

So how will the latest British imports - both starting this week - work on American TV? The hilarious and sadistic One Foot In The Grave is much softer as a vehicle for Bill Cosby, but the show's premise is so clever it will probably work anyway. But I found Men Behaving Badly unfunny, charmless, and clumsily written, very different from Nye's witty novel. The production values seemed crude, and I couldn't understand the casting either - why would these men choose these women? NBC has made a lot of changes, particularly in putting together a Friends-style cast. But it still looks dire, clonking, and unsophisticated in the context of NBC's powerhouse comedy line-up. Let's not forget that American television has done versions of this good ol' boy, New Lad shows many times, largely without success. In 1995, cable network UPN tried out Pig Sty, about five men in a two-room Manhattan apartment. In 1996, Fox brought us Local Heroes, about four beer-drinking, marriage-dodging buddies in Pittsburgh. I suspect that another guy straining coffee grounds through his jockey shorts won't catch on either.

What I miss most about British television comedy these days in irony. You know it must be in trouble when the Times Literary Supplement runs pieces about the aesthetic of the native sitcom. I know that British journalism can't get through the week without invoking the myth of the unironic American. Simon Nye clings to this in the face of powerful contrary evidence. "Why," he wonders, "in a country, not known for its sense of irony, are two of the most watched shows Friends and Seinfeld, which ooze cool, knowing detachment?" Maybe, bro, because this treasured British belief that Americans lack irony is blinding you to the truth that we love it. Have you ever watched M.A.S.H, The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead or David Letterman? Bill Bryson says that Americans are so devoid of irony that we haven't even got an equivalent term for "taking the piss". Hello? Has Bryson been in Yorkshire so long he's forgotten how to say "put-on", let alone "camp", "goof" or "riff"?

While British comedy writers are congratulating themselves on their superior sense of irony, American critics such as Andrew Delbanco describe irony as "the dominant style of contemporary American culture".

British television has produced some of the most innovative and influential contributions to contemporary TV programming, from Monty Python and The Singing Detective to Absolutely Fabulous. But TV irony needs an intellectually-committed cadre of TV critics to sustain it. We don't have anything approaching a poetics of TV criticism. The daily and weekly review columns could be doing more to educate viewers and to pressure stations to produce and retain quality programming. irony is the wave of the television future; why doesn't Britannia seize the chance to rule it?

Elaine Showalter is a TV critic for People magazine and Professor of English at Princeton University.

Page 9 of Part Two of the Guardian, Friday 27th September 1996:

Courage under fire

Simon Nye, the creator of Men Behaving Badly, responds to Elaine Showalter's assault on British television, which appeared in the Friday Review last next

I'M GOING to attempt to rebuff Elaine Showalter's hilariously jingoistic view of her native America as the new home of irony (Guardian, September 20). In so doing, I shall be defending Men Behaving Badly, which I write, against her criticisms and against the embittered rantings of the local TV pundit (Guardian, June 28 - must contact new cuttings service). Oh, what the hell, I'll also say something outrageously trenchant about the oppressive culture of criticism of Britain today (Guardian, every day), and comment on the transfer of the show to America (Guardian, September 23).

I am assured that the subject of Men Behaving Badly will then be closed, hopefully for ever. It is, after all, only a situation comedy about two rather dense men.

It is difficult to take Elaine Showalter's critique of British television seriously when she caricatures it as: "Five minutes of this, 15 minutes of that, lots of American movies, sports, documentaries on the plight of the Israeli gazelle or sex among the very old." This suggests either that she was tuned into Belgian TV by mistake or that she was watching the right channels but kept fainting for long periods.

Whatever your view of British television - and having watched Kilroy I'm not blind to its faults - this is a golden age of factual programming, when every week throws up a dozen quality documentaries. Given her preferences, Showalter would no doubt advice the BBC to divert all the money it spent on The People's Century and Fine Cut into one wise-cracking team-written sitcom because that's how much it costs to produce a few episodes of Friends or even - more to the point - Home Improvement.

And, I'm sorry, Elaine, but goddammit, we care about the Israeli gazelle, whatever it is.

She also foolishly attaches herself to the irony bandwagon at a time when everyone knows that we've had it up to here with irony. We've started sending irony back to the kitchen to be heated through. It could be ironic indeed if, just as American gets the bang of the Big I, everyone else is embarking on exciting new adventures like warmth, sincerity and plain-speaking.

But, sadly, the irony theory doesn't really stand up. How much irony was there in NBC's reinvention of the Olympic Games as the Games Featuring Lots Of Plucky Americans Competing Against A Few Annoying Foreigners? Not so much irony as plasticity. Or in the networks' continuing refusal to broadcast any programmes made outside its 51 states? Precious little irony in the great swathe of US programming from Beverley Hills 90210 to Melrose Place, in its daytime schedule or in the splurge of shows featuring helicopters racing across town in search of car crashes, killer fires or murder victims huddled in bundles oozing blood across the tarmac.

I exaggerate, as you do. Seinfeld, Friends, Letterman, Larry Sanders - these are television programmes that make life worth living, rustling as they do with a dry, peculiarly American intelligence. But the US version of Men Behaving Badly, and to a lesser extent the English one, is partly a reaction to that urban sophistication, and surely a worth while one. We're saying: Ok, we've agreed that we love lychees, and these are the best lychees in the world, but now let's go out and grab ourselves some bananas.

It's an overloaded market over there: Caroline In The City shares jokes with Ellen who is sleeping with Frasier and Murphy Brown, a close personal friend of Grace Under Fire, itself related to Roseanne, and so on. Much as I love comedy, maybe it's time to commission some documentaries.

But I hestiate to criticise. There is far too much of that going on already. It's heard not to agree with Elaine Showalter's perception that most British TV critics see themselves as personalities rather than reviewers. Stuart Jeffries (one of the few critics she commends) writes in the Guardian of Men Behaving Badly: "It has tapped into the zeitgeist and has won a ridiculous number of awards. It has become a national institution. No wonder I dislike it so much." Fair enough - I don't always like the show myself - but it is hard to imagine a book reviewer or a dance critic damning the subject of their review simply because people enjoy it in large numbers.

The critic-as-comedy-turn approach is fine if done well, and it is no secret among viewers and readers which of them does it badly. Special mention in this regard must go to Roy Hattersley, who has topped his regrettable performance in keeping the Labour Party in the wilderness throughout the 1980s by producing a TV column which is almost certainly ghosted by a 12-year-old schoolboy. Contrast Victor Lewis-Smith or Nancy Banks-Smith, who don't just know a joke when they see one, they can also write a joke.

I speak as someone who has been treated well by the critics and even learnt from them. Nevertheless it is hard not to feel that the real action is in making and enjoying the programmes. The drudgery, as in life, is in judging and disliking. If making a TV programme is like having sex (it's actually not quite that good), then being a TV critic is like having to come in afterwards and change the sheets. I may regret this analogy when I spend my twilight years reviewing satellite TV for the Brighton & Hove Gazette.

It wasn't until after typing them up that I realised that most of these articles actually have little or nothing to do with the theme of canned laughter or laughtracks, but as they are interesting regardless they're being posted.

From The Guardian, Saturday 9th April 1977:

Oh no, it's real

Sir, - In Peter Fiddick's column (March 29), he made statements that "canned laughter" was used in a recent edition of Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt.

The phrase, "canned laughter," seems to be bandied about indiscriminately in this context. Let me make it clear now that we do not possess some magic "can" of uproarious laughter, or applause, or whatever, which can be injected at will into programmes.

The only audience reaction, whatever it is, heard on Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt is that of the audience present in the studio.

Duncan Wood,
Head of Light Entertainment,
Yorkshire Television Limited,
London.

From the Daily Mail, Saturday 9th April 1977. By Jenny Rees:

ONCE upon a time a joke was only a joke when it got a good round of spontaneous laughter. A bad joke got none.

Now, with television, there isn't such a thing as a bad joke. With the help of canned laughter, one of America's less savoury exports, and nicely warmed-up studio audiences, every gag is a winner - whatever it's worth.

We don't use a lot of the canned variety in British television. The BBC never has done, and the Annan Report reprimanded the independent companies for not following suit.

Coachloads of willing volunteers from sports clubs and women's institutes are wheeled into the studios and really do laugh out loud.

Sometimes, of course, they don't - though you'll never get a television company to admit it.

Guffaws

Thames TV's Head of Light Entertainment, Phillip Jones, says that if they don't laugh it's usually for some technical reason - a camera has moved or a boom is in the way. Then the few laughs get 'sweetened' or strengthened up by the sound engineer.

But none of it is strictly what you'd call spontaneous - every audience is jollied up before the show starts by a warm-up man - and, to some people sitting at home, the sound of the assembled coach parties guffawing away is intensely irritating.

Stands have been taken against manipulated laughter. Comedy writer Barry Took, in his year as Head of Light Entertainment at London Weekend Television in 1970, responded to viewers who had complained that the laughs distracted from the content of the programme.

He set out to produce two comedy shows without audiences. Both were dismal failures.

He chose two comedies that seemed to be more like drama than laugh shows - If It Moves File It, starring John Bird, and The Trouble with You Lillian, with Dandy Nichols and Pat Hayes.

Took remembers: 'I decided there were to be no yakking laughs, but my actors got decidedly disturbed without an audience. People tell jokes, even in pubs, to get a laugh, not silence. So I brought the audiences back, and everything was fine again.

'Almost exactly the same people who had written in to complain, wrote again to say how much they preferred the shows with an audience.'

He learned from that experiment. 'You don't have to have an audience screaming with laughter, but you do need some kind of feeling of exuberance, so that the viewers at home can share it.

'The studio laughter is the electric spark that bridges the gap between the actors and the viewers at home.'

Back in the days of Till Death Us Do Part. Alf Garnett's creator, writer Johnny Speight, took a stand against studio audiences, and remains a solid opponent. 'It's always been my contention that you can do without those people.

'I once had eight minutes taken out of a show, because the audience failed to laugh at the right moment, and I was furious. My words were the important part of the show. The laughs just got in the way.'

Bitter

He didn't win his battle against the BBC, but is left with bitter impressions about manipulated laughter in general.

'What I particularly hate is that American canned variety - I have the terrible feeling that half those people laughing died long ago. It's a chorus of dead voices.'

Impersonator Mike Yarwood is someone who's come a long way from the gag-laugh-gag-laugh routine. He's now got a very sophisticated, technically complicated act, some of which he has to do, unwillingly, without a studio audience.

'When I'm being six people at the same time, it takes about six hours of work to make six minutes of television. I miss the audience then. It's like working to an empty house.

'It's difficult to get your timing right without an audience. Timing is vital to a comedian. We show the recording of that six minutes to a studio audience, then record their reaction.

Booze

'Now that could be called phoney, but for me it gives atmosphere to the show. It would look very strange if you left a gap of silence for the laughs at home.

'Audience reaction is also marvellous for your morale. If you don't get a laugh, then you know the joke deserves to be dropped.'

Paul Fox, managing director of Yorkshire TV, says: 'Artists need that reaction for their timing, and to see that what they are doing is working. The producer needs it, too. It's the only audience he's got that he can use as a gauge.'

He feels the warm-up for a studio audience had become less of a fiasco than it used to be.

'In the old days, they used to get booze. That doesn't happen any more.

'You need someone, a warm-up man, even the producer, to welcome them, to get the used to the fact that they've come to be entertained.'

Flavour

BBC Head of Light Entertainment, Bill Cotton, says it's a tradition there not to dub laughter. His point about studio audiences is that kind of flavour to comedy shows.

'It's a change of gear for viewers. The applause and the audience reaction add to the enjoyment of the programme.'

No, they don't hold large white cards up in front of studio audiences saying 'Laugh' any more. They never did. They do tell audiences to shut up if they're laughing too much - and certainly sound engineers add a bit of volume when the laughs are not loud enough.

Shows with a young appeal are purposely not packed with coachloads of OAPs and the companies like audiences with an even male-female ratio.

It's been said that there's one lady who pops up regularly in comedy audiences with an instantly recognisable laugh. None of the companies is claiming her.

In the happy world of comedy, the quality of laughter is never strained.

Apropos of nothing, on the same page is the following:

ONE MAN'S RADIO WEEK
Bob Monkhouse
TALKING TO DAVID GILLARD

'I AM an absolutely devoted radio buff. I grew up with "Bandwaggon," "Hi Gang!" and "Happidrome".

It was the radio that first started me writing gags and, from the age of 11, I was regularly sending off material to comedians. By the time I was 16 Tommy Handley was occasionally using my jokes and, when he needed more, I'd get a postcard saying: "Wheezes, please. T.H.".

When I was 18 - and on a 36-hour pass from the RAF - I did a BBC radio audition which led to a spot on "Beginners Please". The next day I was a star (the radio made stars of people in the 40s in the same way TV made stars in the 50s) and I was soon resident comedian of "Showtime".

I feel the same sense of excitement doing a radio broadcast today as I did 30 years ago. Stimulating the imagination is radio's job. TV just delivers the goods and you either admire what you get or you don't.

Every room in my house if fitted with loudspeakers and there's an alarm on my wristwatch so that I know exactly when a programme is about to start. I have a quadrophonic system in the car and four tape-recording units at home (one fore each radio channel) so that I can tape all the programmes I'm not in to hear.

Library

Being an acquisitive being I now have an enormous library of radio drama and have taped every Shakespeare production in the past five years.

Today I'll probably get up at about 12 and catch "Two's Best" and then the first 15 minutes of "Jim The Great" (Radio Two) before going over to "Any Questions" on Radio Four. At 5.30 I'll hear most of "Week Ending" before switching to "Critics' Forum" on Radio Three.

My recording techniques come into effect later, because I want to watch "The Magic Flute" on TV so I'm forced to record the "Saturday Night Theatre" (Radio Four) and the beginning of "A Word In Edgeways", though I'll be able to hear the end of this after the "Flute".

On Sunday I'll start the afternoon with "Windsor Davies Presents" (Radio Two) and then go to my favourite programme, "The Leading Ladies". Then I can't miss Hubert Gregg and Charlie Chester afterwards which means I've got to tape "Disraeli's Reminiscences" (Radio Three).

In the evening I'll be tearing madly between Radio Two, Three and Four, just a normal radio weekend in the life of an addict - chaos!'

? Bob Monkhouse appears on 'Celebrity Squares' (ITV today) and reads the 'Morning Story' on Friday on Radio Four.

From the Sunday Mirror, Sunday 22nd January 1978. By Alan Shadrake and Angus Mayer:

SECRETS OF THE TV TRICKSTERS

MANY of Britain's TV comedy stars would rather not discuss it, but...

The truth is that the instant laughter that greets even the weakest gags on some British TV shows comes not from a studio audience - as you viewers at home are expected to believe - but out of a can.

It is pre-recorded on tape, then filed away until needed to be dubbed on to a TV comedy for transmission.

TV producers have many good reasons for adding canned laughter - and we'll come to those in a minute.

But underlying all is the hope that viewers at home, hearing an apparently "live" audience laughing their heads off, will be infected by their guffaws and laugh, too - perhaps even against their better judgement.

Benny Hill, Morecambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd, and the Muppets have all had canned laughs added to their shows for technical reasons.

And nearly all TV shows pre-recorded in studios are pepped up with canned laughter.

As many stars are not keen on the subjects, we discovered the facts from TV's senior sound engineers, who were more forthcoming.

Free drinks

At Anglia TV, we were told they once invited viewers to their studios, poured them a couple of stiff drinks each - then recorded the subsequent hilarity.

The idea was to obtain a huge store of audience laughter to feed into shows.

A special bar was put up in the studio and by the time the guests were led into the recording room they were all suitably relaxed.

"They were given enough to put them in a fun mood and at the same time keep them responsible. We didn't want anyone to get out of hand," said an Anglia technician.

"The guests were shown a couple of comedies and we recorded the laughter to synchronise with the programmes.

"We can make the laughter sound better if we want to. For instance, the sound of fifty people can be made to sound like a hundred people by recording.

"Laughter is infectious. That's why a big audience is better than a small one. If one person laughs the others laugh, too.

"It's much easier to get a good reaction from 100 people than from six or seven.

"If you have one hundred people with a couple of drinks inside them, someone is going to laugh straight away."

Who decides how much laughter is to be dubbed in for a particular gag?

"The directors have overall responsibilty, but it is usually based on the judgement of the sound department," says Anglia. "They have a little room where they balance sound to get a natural blend."

One of Anglia's situation comedy programmes is the successful Backs To The Land, which has just ended its present series.

"A lot of the scenes were shot on location and it was impossible to have a studio audience," says an Anglia executive.

"The production crew have a standard laughter tape and the director decides where he wants it dubbed in.

"He pushes levers to create laughs where he thinks fit.

"You can get an inferior type of canned laughter - a continuous recording. You fade it up and down to emphasise parts of the film you think are funny.

"That's the stuff that really irritates - because it sounds phoney."

Canned laughter and applause, however, were used very successfully in Tommy Steele's last show, a costly Thames Television production.

All the effects to make it sound like a live show with an audience were dubbed in.

One scene alone had taken six days to shoot, so it would have been impossible to have had an audience present,

Arthur [obscured], head of sound at Thames, says: "We sometimes add a bit more laughter to a comedy show where the studio audience didn't particularly get a joke.

"It may be that the audience didn't hear it properly because they were looking at something else going on in the studio.

"Most situation comedy and light entertainment special productions, which take time to record, are given canned laughter for various technical reasons. The Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper shows have it.

"The BBC try to avoid dubbing but sometimes they have to cue it in, during a live studio production.

"We use canned laughter in comedy shows for technical reasons, not to try and make them funny afterwards.

"You can be fooled. I've watched shows I thought had canned laughter - but hadn't. Sometimes live laughter sounds like canned laughter, and vice versa."

Freddie Slade, one of Britain's top dubbing mixers, works for Thames TV. "Canned laughter can become so mechanical," he says. "It is abused more often than not.

"Sometimes it is not the big-name comedian but the warm-up man who comes on before him who earns the laughter you hear.!

Freddie explains. "The warm-up man tells a few jokes to the studio audience. Than, when the show is edited, the laughter he got is often dubbed into the screened version."

Some TV stars hate the idea of canned laughter. June Whitfield, who appeared in the BBC's Happy Ever After, says: "I find it irritating.

"It is not used in programmes I appear in.

"It is so phoney. The Americans are the worst offenders. I am sure it irritates viewers. Good programmes are often ruined by it.

"It takes a very special skill to know precisely when to dub in the right amount of laughter.

"Nothing turns me off a humourous programme more than hoots of unnecessary laughter in the wrong places."

Comedian Terry Scott, co-star with June in Happy Ever After, is even more forthright: "Canned laughter is sordid. Real laughter is infectious, but canned laughter tends to take away the viewers' willpower.

"They find themselves laughing at something they would not normally find amusing.

"I hate hysterical laughter. I prefer it mild, so it doesn't interfere with what I feel about a joke or comic situation.

"Canned laughter should be used only in very exceptional circumstances, where it is necessary to have atmosphere.

"I have heard canned laughter added at the feed-line to a joke. It spoils the whole thing."

Molly Sugden, of BBC TV's Are You Being Served and Come Back Mrs. Noah, says: "I think viewers sometimes get the impression that our programmes use canned laughter. We don't.

"We have an audience of about 500 people when we record the show. Sometimes one of us can be doing something amusing when the camera isn't on us,

"It raises a laugh with the audiences, but viewers at home can be left wondering.

"I think the use of canned laughter on some other shows is a pity.

"You either make an audience laugh, or you don't. If something is not funny enough to be laughed at it's not funny enough to be shown."

Nerys Hughes, of The Liver Birds, says: "We always have a TV studio audience when we are filming the show. The bits filmed outside, in Liverpool, are shown to the audience on monitor screens, between the live shots of us in our flat.

"The audience reaction to the outside shots, which viewers at home hear is therefore genuine, not canned.

"We never use canned laughter. I think shows that do have it are awful."

SOME TV stare use technical camera tricks to achieve new dimensions in entertainment.

Two who benefit from them are Dave Allen and David Nixon.

David Nixon, one of the elite Magic Circle, is a brilliant magician, but on TV some of his tricks are impossible.

Puzzled viewers have seen him appear to spoon water uphill, for instance.

John Eveleigh, a Thames TV senior engineer, explains. "The uphill water effect is achieved with a camera mounted on a trolley which swings at an angle and deceives the viewer."

Bernard Wilkie, head of the BBC's special effects department, has more than a hundred designers and technicians doing nothing else but develop new TV techniques. He says:

"In one Dave Allen show a car had to fall apart when a traffic warden slapped tickets on it. That was a difficult one. The car was rigged with hydraulic jacks and levers.

"The levers pushed the wheels off and a special spring device released the windscreen. There were about twenty-five separate mechanisms to do the tricks."

In another show, Dave Allen was sending up the Bionic Man. He met the Bionic Woman, they collided - and seemingly fell to pieces.

This effect was achieved through a clever technique known as Croma Key.

Dave and the Bionic Woman were draped in blue sheets with their arms and legs poking through.

Using a technical trick the blue sheets became invisible to the camera which registered just the disconnected limbs, apparently falling about.

Setting up tricks can sometimes lead to unexpected results for the effects experts. Martin Gutridge, of Special Effects Associates, recalls working on a Benny Hill show.

"Benny was playing an opera singer, and a huge vase was going to shatter when he hit a high note.

"My job was to make sure the vase shattered at the right moment. I fired small charges at it, but they bounced off.

"I fired all sorts of missiles from a catapult. Still nothing happened.

"After all else failed I shattered it with a sharp piece of granite."

Whatever technical tricks are achieved, some stunts still call for sheer guts.

Michael Crawford, who doesn't rely on camera tricks, performed a whole series of dangerous stunts which made BBC TV's Some Mothers Do Have 'Em so successful.

They were made possible only by Crawford's nerve, and the skills of Bernard Wilkie and his special effects team. "The stunts had to be clever and dangerous to hold the viewers' interest," says Bernard.

In one episode Michael hung to the bumper of a car rocking to and fro on a cliff edge with an 800ft drop below. It was filmed on location near Dover.

During the stunt Michael had to hurl himself over the car roof and grab the bumper on the way down.

As he swung in mid-air the boot fell open and a sack of manure poured over him.

"The old Morris we used a lot of special refinements," says Bernard. "I was underneath Michael, roped into the cliff, pulling levers.

"If Michael hadn't caught the bumper be would have gone crashing to his death."

THE picture on your TV screen is brutal. A rampaging army is burning, looting and raping.

You hear the roar of the flames, the smashing down of doors, the screaming of women.

The effect is horrific. The truth is less startling. It's an even bet that the director of the scene that set your teeth on edge has got his horror-sounds "off the peg" from a sound library and dubbed them into the film.

Let Charles Earle explain. He is a sound expert with Anglia TV.

Friends call him the Ear because, they say, "he has such finely attuned hearing that he can pick up the sound of a raindrop at three miles."

A historical series called Dark Ages needed the sounds of battle. "We had only four sounds, but we wanted them to sound like an army in battle," says Charles.

"Two men in the studio held a sword in each hand and clashed them against each other's swords for a couple of minutes. Then I multi-recorded the sound until it was like hundreds of men fighting.

"I got burning sounds from the sound library and borrowed a couple of office secretaries to do the screaming!" That was for the rapings.

On location in Africa, for a Survival documentary, the camera crew filmed an elephant bathing, but the sound was poor.

"I never like to be beaten," says Charles. "I threw a ground sheet across a five-barred gate and slung buckets of water at it.

"It produced just the sound we wanted."

One day Anglia's news editor received film of four brewery chimneys being blown up - but there was no soundtrack.

A quick search of the sound library unearthed a track of a brewery chimney falling.

"I re-recorded that sound four times, mixed it and sychronised it with the soundless film," says Charles.

Tens of thousand of sound effects are stored away in TV libraries, ready to give life to dull films.

Once in a while things go wrong. Thames Television dubbing mixer Freddie Slade tells how the sound of a tractor's engine was needed for a farming programme. "A chap went out and recorded one, and the sound was dubbed in.

"A few days after the film was screened we got a letter from an angry schoolboy complaining that the engine noise didn't fit that make of tractor.

"We double checked. He was right. We had blundered."

Mistakes are easy to make. One veteran dubber says: "Once we had a sky-lark singing merrily in what was supposed to be a January countryside."

From the Western Daily Press, Thursday 17th August 1978:

Why laughs come in cans
by Charles Fraser

WHAT makes you laugh on TV? Your favourite comedian? Some absurd situation that tickles your sense of humour?

More likely it's an electronic box of tricks looking like a cross between a typewriter and a harmonium, known in TV circles as the laugh-box.

"Hardly any pre-recorded comedy TV show, either in Europe or America, now has spontaneous laughter in it," says Rose K Goldsen, Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, and author of a new book on the inside secrets of TV.

Quota

'The laugh track is now as essential to television comedies as the gags and the music. A burst of happy and appreciative laughter every 30 seconds is now the normal quota for comedy series.

"Producers sat they just can't depend on an audience laughing at the right time. Imagine piping into 20 million homes a comedy show with just a sprinkling of week titters on the tape!"

So next time you hear a studio audience laughing helplessly at the antics of someone you find only mildly funny, don't automatically assume that your sense of humour is lacking.

The laughs are more likely the work of a technician sitting at the laugh-box, working its foot pedals and 36 typewriter-like keys.

Inside the box are loops of audio-tape with ten different types of laugh on each loop - about 400 categories, which can be combined in an almost infinite number of combinations.

Charles Douglas, head of Northridge Electronics, the American firm which leads the laugh-box field says: "Every conceivable kind of laugh has been preserved on these loops.

"From the producer's point of view, canned laughter is preferable to the real thing.

"One reason that studio audiences can't be counted on to laugh properly and at the right time, is that they can hardly see the performers.

"Much of the time, cameras obscure their view, and they have to follow the action on monitor screens.

"And often a show may be recorded in sections, perhaps starting at the end and working towards the beginning!"

Some shows, using the laugh box to liven things up, are taped before two live audiences at the dress rehearsal and the final performance.

Then the finished product is put together from the better bursts of laughter, regardless of which gags caused them.

"It's known in the trade as sweetening a show," says Irving Waring, who operates the laugh box at ABC television headquarters in Hollywood.

"I enjoy doing it. I work on the script with the comedian before the show and during rehearsals.

"The whole idea of television is to be entertaining, and the people sitting at home want to feel they're laughing with somebody."

Why are TV bosses so reluctant to televise a joke with no laughter?

"The ear of the viewer is attuned to expect instant reaction," explains a spokesman for Britain's Thames Television network.

"So if they don't hear studio laughter they get the feeling that things aren't going so well."

What do the stars think of canned laughter?

"It doesn't appeal to me at all," says British comedy star Max Bygraves.

"I'm still old-fashioned enough to prefer applause that's actually made by hand!"

From the Guardian, Saturday 19th September 1981:

The BBC has decided to put out its latest comedy series without any recorded laughter to go with it. Peter Fiddick reports.

Stop it, you're killing me

THERE is a clearly detectable air of apprehension around the BBC's comedy department, about its newest creation. They are worried about the lack of laughter - but not ours. Theirs.

It is not the producer: the highly experienced Dennis Main Wilson thinks it's funny, all right. Besides, toilers in the BBC television comedy department are well used to nursing their babies against the initial disdain of an audience, appearing not even to notice the ruderies of mere critics and quite and quite often being right.

It cannot be the cast. So many of our best actors have a crack at television comedy that it scarcely comes as a surprise to find such worthies as Norman Rodway, James Gossins, Hugh Lloyd, in supporting roles. But to have in the lead a chap who has been voted Best Actor Of The Year for his Hamlet, and won a Tony in Stoppard's Comedians, must beat par for the course. Roger Doesn't Live Here Any More had Jonathan Pryce in the title role. He's off to Hollywood now to make a movie.

Nor is the writer of the piece exactly an unknown quantity. John Fortune has currently been treading the boards himself again, in The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, and is about to start in a new play with West End aspirations, but in partnership with Eleanor Bron his writing has provided several series of wry, sly humour that have found some favour and certainly never courted disaster.

But the fact is, they are worried. And what worries them is not so much that we won't laugh, though that is part of it. It is that the programme itself is not laughing for us: Roger Doesn't Live Here Any More arrives - on BBC-2 next Thursday - without benefit of audience cackle. And that, in the theology and practice of television comedy, is heresy.

With very few exceptions, comedy series are made with an audience in the studio, and the accumulated wisdom of the laughter factories is, first, that the performers need it to get their timing right, and second, that we at home need to hear other people laughing, to nudge (nudge!) us into laughing ourselves.

If they do have to film a sequence - in a field, say, where the cows might lack the right sense of humour - then they show it to the studio audience later, and record the laughs. (Please don't talk about "canned laughter", though - it makes them terribly hurt.) We do, of course, enjoy comedy without laughter. Douglas Livingstone's marvellous Born and Bred did without it - but that came from a drama department. M.A.S.H. fans don't get it - but that is made all on film, and controllers of BBC-2 have always chosen not to use the laughter-track the Americans inflict on their own audiences. West End Tales, from ATV earlier this year, was a very rare example of a series coming out of a comedy stable, BBC or ITV, unattended by its audience.

But this one, everybody agrees, is different. Writer, producer, the head of comedy - John Howard Davies - all recognise it would not be the same, played before an audience. And it is not just the playing, but the writing that is affected.

"The truth is, that if you have got to have an audience, you have got to have laughs, and at frequent intervals", John Fortune says with some force. "You take a script into a comedy executive and the first thing he's liable to do is sit there, whipping through it, ticking the 'laughs'. If there aren't two or three a page, you have to provide them.

"I recognise that as a fact of life, but there are times when I wish I could stop the lift between the two floors at the BBC. You'd go into comedy department and they'd sit straight-faced, ticking your latest script, then up to see how the drama people liked the play and find them falling about, telling you how funny it was!"

Given the assurance that Roger Doesn't Live Here Any More could be done without an audience, Fortune, whose first solo outing as a writer this is, had the pleasure of nipping out the lines that had been consciously dropped in to provoke the necessary titter.

"But then you can write it quite differently, and the studio is liberated too. The audience takes more of the space than the sets, so they have to be limited in size and lined up so that they can all be seen at once. They have to be lit from the front, giving everyone that flat look, and the actors have to play to the audience and the cameras at once. Whatever the merits of my scripts may or may not be, it just looks and sounds altogether more subtle."

Even so, he is nervous. So is John Howard Davies, who took the final decision. "I am sure it is right," he said this week. "And I am sure it is funny. What frightens me is that, having tried, if it isn't an immediate hit, everyone will blame the lack of audience laughter, and we'll be right back at square one. Or further."

So perhaps this is the big opportunity for all of you who have groaned and raged about television's latest idiot cackles, all these years, to give a boost to the new, pure comedy.

On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn't have told you. You might never have noticed.

Page 25 of the Daily Mail, Friday 7th February 1986. By Herbert Kretzmer:

Uncanned, the secret of that corny laughter

'CANNED' laughter comes very high among the pet hates of television viewers. Few subjects I have raised have excited such a wide and furious response.

The majority of correspondents name The Two Ronnies and Yes, Prime Minister as persistent culprits. I recently invited the producers of both shows to assure this column's readers that the laughter on their shows was genuine and not manipulated.

The response has been a vast silence. Clearly there is something to hide.

But I have received a detailed and courteous letter from one of TV's best-known comic actors explaining the process which results in those outbursts of cackling mirth which so madden the public. His letter was marked 'Personal' so I will not name him.

He writes: 'Laughter on audience shows is always, in a sense, manipulated because it is recorded selectively by the sound engineer. There are various microphones above the audience. The engineer listens to each one separately before the show starts (a 'warm up' man gets the audience to laugh for this very reason.) The engineer picks out the best ones, the jolliest laughers, and so on, then locks all these individual mikes into one master control....'

My correspondent explains that the mikes are switched on at the end of a joke line, and switched off before the actor speaks the next line. 'If a shot has to be performed again, for any reason, the audience cannot be expected to laugh a second time, so the laughs from the previous "take" are used, though they may have to be chopped off or lengthened...'

I thank the comedian for his candour. His letter confirms that soundtrack laughter on British TV shows is artificial and cynically manipulated for best results. It is no a criminal offence but readers hate it.

Reginald G. Young of Midhurst, calls it 'this idiotic practice.' Michael Yarrow of Lilley near Luton, Bedfordshire calls it 'synthetic and distracting.' Mrs B. Slinger of Fleetwood, Lancashire writes: "The last edition of The Two Ronnies was unbearable.' Mr J. Haffey of Harrogate says: 'I had to stop watching Yes, Minister because of the lunatic laughter.' Mrs E. M. Lee of Nottingham calls it an 'abomination'. 'Maddeningly annoying,' says Mrs E. M. Deckin or Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

I could easily fill this page with such complaints. Will anyone take heed?

Page 27 of the Daily Mail, Wednesday 12th March 1986. By Herbert Kretzmer:

THE great debate about 'canned' laughter continues. Never a day passes without another fistful of protesting letters from readers maddened by the bursts of automatic cackling that now routinely accompany British TV comedies.

Soundtrack laughter is clearly one of the great hates of the British TV public. Only the BBC does not know it. On three occasions I have invited BBC producers and departmental heads to reply in writing to the wave of criticism.

The response, alas, has been a long and apparently sulky silence. However, my invitations remain open. And that goes for the ITV guys as well. All I want are the facts.

Other correspondents have not been so shy. Ronnie Barker wrote to say that a certain, but hardly criminal, amount of sound engineering does go on at TV comedy shows, especially when a scene has to be reshot. Composer Laurie Johnson saw no reason for studio audiences at all, since dozens of shows like the Laurel and Hardy comedies are regularly shown on TV without studio laughter, and do not suffer as a result.

A similar point is made, from an actor's perspective in an interesting letter from Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister), who writes: 'In common with a number of my concerns I feel strongly that studio audiences are unnecessary. If an entertainment is designed for TV it is clearly a contradiction to invite an audience to attend. It turns it into a theatre performance. Encouragement from an audience tends to make the performer play up to them.

'And I find it wrong that 300 people, egged on to respond with maximum enthusiasm by the warm-up man, should decide for the audience at home what is funny or not.'

Although Mr Hawthorne finds studio audiences 'always unnerving and disruptive', he does not think there's much dirty work afoot when it comes to recording their laughter, although 'it may well be possible that the level of laughter is "fixed" in the control room.'

Comedy writer Richard Waring (Marriage Lines, My Wife Next Door, etc.), an experienced warm-up man himself, insists that studio laughter is not manipulated and is, furthermore a Good Thing. 'Studio audiences,' he writes, ' can be hell, but after 30 years of them I truly believe that they bring out the best in the best comedy writers and performers.'

Page 29 of the Guardian, Thursday 6th February 1992:

Putting a lid on canned laughter

Andrew Clifford warns that the oh-so-set-up comic sketch may be past its sell-by date

CANNED laughter is at best a mixed blessing. At times each short drone of hilarity seems not so much a response to the comedy as in cahoots with it; as though it were the guffaws of the comedians at their real-life audience. This feeling happens not so much in sitcoms, where the humour is less childish, but a lot in sketch shows, like the current run of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie on BBC2.

The uncanned viewer hasn't known whether to laugh or moan at this weak series of preppy, hectic sketches. In 10-second or three-minute bursts we've watched petrol pump attendants who used to be estate agents, silly linguists and, yes, a thriller spoof, to say nothing of vox pops where idiotic vicars, businessmen, and middle-aged women say dumb things to camera, "they way people do". Each programme ends with pianist Laurie playing mouth trumpet as Fry makes wacky cocktails.

Fry and Laurie are funny, talented men and everyone has off days (particularly when given complete editorial control). But judging from the empty feeling one also has had at the end of shows by Paul Merton, Alexi Sayle (an astonishing Monty Python rerun, right down to ad hoc sketch links and Angus Dayton's John Cleese lookalike), to say nothing (thankfully) of Josie Lawrence, it's clear that the problem lies more at the level of the sketch "form" itself.

Did we ever find sketches funny? A man walks into a shop. He makes an outrageously out-of-context demand. The shopkeeper expresses amazement. As the demand is persisted with, the shopkeeper gets angry. Things reach a dismal anti-climax with a non-punchline or symbolic violence. Next sketch. A man being interviewed. He makes an outrageous claim. The interviewer expresses amazement, etc, etc.

Despite music hall and the Goons, the sketch as we know it began with Beyond The Fringe, and as an agent of satire and absurdism it couldn't be bettered. The form peaked with Monty Python, who did whatever could be done, including self-destructing it. Subsequent shows have had muted success but nowadays, even when sketches raise a smile, it's a strained one.

We know all the angles of the sketch. We know its highs, lows, shifts and twists and turns. We know the non-joke, the anti-joke, the joke-joke, the joke double-axle with reverse spin and pike. We've learned to expect the unexpected, to expect the expected, even to expect to expect the unexpected. We know, above all else that, as soon as it starts, something "funny" this way comes. Even when it is funny, it becomes draining because almost viscerally we feel the effort that has gone into it. And for a form which aims at satire, this transparency is a disaster.

For some time professionals have been fighting a rearguard action to preserve the sketch. Smith and Jones and Spitting Image advise their writers to avoid "format" sketches which mock genres, like ads or game shows, thus booting out what is an important staple of the sketch: television itself. And despite the fact that the sketch tends to work best as a verbal (studio?) form, Smith and Jones encourage their team to create ones that are highly visual, usually on film.

Even the "improv" shows, like Whose Line Is It Anyway or the rather feeble S & M, rely on a kind of sketch "short-hand". While Whose Line uses stand-up comedy, the "improvs" are funny often because after two words we know the area satire involved. To that extent Whose Line, though entertaining, can still seem rather vacuous. It attempts to confound the audience's knowingness while only partially addressing the knowingness in the sketch form itself.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that one one will ever write a funny sketch show again. But the gleeful hyperactivity of its items, its glib and almost viciously stupid characterisations, its oh-so-set-up set-ups turn most sketch shows like Fry and Laurie into half an hour of full-of-itself mockery.

The character-led sketches of the wonderful French and Saunders and the peculiarly overlooked Harry Enfield prove that there are ways forward, but perhaps these talents should be more ambitious, because no amount of canned laughter can save the sketch. Nowadays you can't make a silk purse out of a dead parrot.

From the Daily Mail, Monday 29th March 1976:

Return of Fawlty Towers

A NEW series of 'Fawlty Towers,' television's comedy hit of the year, will be shown on BBC in 18 months' time.

John Cleese, who plays a maniacal hotelier in the series, said yesterday: 'We intend to do another. But I can't see us all being able to record it before the summer of next year.'

The first series - shown on BBC 2 - may be repeated on BBC 1

Mr Cleese said: 'It took my wife Connie and I eight months to write the first series.

'I want to do another seven, but I'm off to America to appear in Monty Python on stage, then I'm writing a Python film and a history book.'

Mr Cleese made £6,000 from the first series and his wife £4,000. They have turned down an offer from American TV to write 39 shows a year for five years.

Next month Mr Cleese will appear with other comedy stars in aid of Amnesty International - the organisation dedicated to Human Rights and the release of non-violent political prisoners throughout the world.

From Television Today, Thursday 14th October 1976:

Strange chorus of praise for poor comedy

MANY programmes are liked or disliked as a matter of personal or even regional taste: such is the nature of a medium that tries to appeal to everyone. In no area does taste play a more major role than it does in comedy, for comedy has to endear itself to an audience. The comedy that some find too brash and almost vulgar is enjoyed by others because it seems vital and real: the comedy that some find incomprehensible and unfunny is held by others to be subtle and skilful in using the written word. In any discussion on comedy, therefore, taste must be accepted as a major factor and every professional broadcaster allows for it to be so. One of the most perplexing instances of a poor comedy series. receiving acclaim that is incomprehensible to professional broadcasters is BBC-1's Fawlty Towers. Here is a programme about which nobody writing in the national press seems to have a bad word but yet is devoid of everything that makes good modern comedy. The programme is reminiscent of the post-war university drama society production. Part at least of the audience for such amateur productions has goodwill to the cast, which is just as well, for the cast and writer can get carried away when it comes to farce because of a lack of professional experience and direction.

The idea behind Fawlty Towers had the makings of one good sketch for John Cleese, who has in the past been shown to such good effect in original sketch material. The series, however, has over-acting and exaggeration on his part which is embarrassing to watch, writing that has no vestige of wit or skill about it and set pieces that are protracted and neither funny nor slapstick; the whole is pervaded by ill-humour. There is no warmth, no vulnerability of characters, no pathos, no visual cleverness, no funny lines. It is an amalgam of everything that does not reach out to an audience and is the epitome of self indulgence by those concerned. One funny walk and a shouting, bullying tone do not make a comedy series; it is twenty-five years too late for that.

It would be a pity if a performer who thinks and cares about his work were to be misled by the praise of critics who are perhaps harking back to their adolescence and to the spectacle of intelligent people trying to be amusing. Perhaps these critics are also being too sympathetic to the actor to judge the series on the levels they reserve for others whose start in the business was more traditional. Mr Cleese has to learn (if he has not already done so) not to be deluded by applauding critics just as he must observe those who do not applaud. Fawlty Towers is a try and there have to be many in comedy. But when the try has been made it is time to move on, to change and adapt, bearing the lessons in mind: the most important being a growing awareness of what one is good at doing and what is out of reach of one's ability and personal attributes.

From the Evening Standard, Friday 4th March 1977:

Cleese bans cuts - loses thousands

ACTOR John Cleese, creator and star of the hit BBC comedy series Fawlty Towers, has sacrificed thousands of pounds over a matter of principle.

He has refused to allow the programme to be cut, thus wrecking chances of a profitable sale to a U.S. television network.

Instead, the series, which was made by the BBC, has been sold to public broadcasting stations which pay a fraction of what one of the big three American networks would pay.

Because the U.S. networks have to make room for advertising to get a sale, Cleese would have had to agree to about five minutes being cut out. He refused.

The BBC has scored a hit with its Friday night comedy hour which links two of its most successful series, Porridge and Are You Being Served?

Porridge came top of the ten most popular TV shows in the London area last week.

3, This Is Your Life (ITV) and the Benny Hill Show (ITV); 5, Robin's Nest (ITV); 6, Coronation Street on Wednesday (ITV) and Thunderball (ITV); 8, Six Million Dollar Man (ITV); 9, Coronation Street on Monday (ITV), Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt (ITV) and This Year, Next Year (ITV).

From the Daily Express, Saturday 13th May 1978:

The Big Turn On

THE MONTREUX T.V. FESTIVAL in Switzerland is the place where British T.V. bosses often reveal their plans in the hope of picking up foreign sales.

Here are some of the juiciest morsels we can expect on our T.V. screens soon.

GOOD NEWS for fans of Fawlty Towers, the brilliantly funny misadventures of the lanky John Cleese as the owner of a small hotel.

After two years Mr Cleese has delivered the first two scripts of a follow-up series.

It will star Basil Fawlty, his waspish wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales) and the accident-prone Spanish waiter, Manuel (Andrew Sachs).

Producer John Howard Davies told me: "I took the scripts home and quite literally fell out of bed reading them. I made so much noise that I woke our baby."

Thames Light Entertainment boss, Phillip Jones, has an expensive package of shows coming up in the summer and autumn, boosted by a large lump of the £20 million which Thames are spending on programmes in the next year.

New shows include a Kenny Everett pop and comedy Monday night series.

Special

For older audiences Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Max Bygraves, Benny Hill and Bernie Winters will also have series. The first Morecambe and Wise Special will also be ready for the autumn. They will make another for Christmas.

And for Stanley Baxter fans there is news from London Weekend that he will be back in the studios next month to prepare a Christmas Special.

Pages 20 and 21 of the Guardian's Weekend magazine, Saturday 5th February 1994:

PERSPECTIVES
So comedy is the rock 'n' roll of the Nineties? That explains why it pretends to be rebellious but instead is a showcase for twerps. PHILIP NORMAN is not amused.

Hollow Laughter

I WAS once trapped into watching a television awards show where Paul Merton was yet again being voted Most Brilliant Comedian in the Universe. On receiving his Platinum Funnybone (or whatever it was), Merton naturally was called upon to provide a sample of his comic genius. The routine he offered went something like this:

"Do you remember Lassie? 'E was always meant to be such a clever dog, wasn't he? If anybody was being held prisoner or trapped in a burning building, Lassie would always come and find 'em. Then 'e'd run to 'is owner and tug 'is sleeve and everyone'd say, 'Look, it's Lassie! 'E wants us to follow 'im!' That's all they ever said in those films, wasn't it? 'E wants us to follow 'im! So then everyone gets really excited and follows Lassie, 'cos 'e's a wonder dog ... and 'e leads 'em straight to a crap 'e done two hours earlier."

Humour, I know, is an entirely personal and subjective matter; what makes one person laugh may well make another enraged. But cannot there be some objective criteria for deciding whether the basic ingredients of a good joke are present? Humour, we can safely say, derives chiefly from shared experience. For how many people in today's world recognise Lassie films as representing shared experience? Allowing it may be an appreciable number, is the sharpest observation to be made about these films really that Lassie was always asking people to follow him? And how does "the crap 'e done two hours earlier" shape up as an example of the modern joke-writer's craft?

Of course, many great comedians have worked with ostensibly poor material. So was the style of Merton's delivery, perhaps, so exquisitely droll that the anecdote no longer seemed witlessly dull and crude? No, it came over exactly as it reads, delivered with the bleary doggedness of a plumber who will talk rather than getting down to your S-bend. More disappointing than the joke, to me, was the idle unprofessionalism it revealed. Merton must have known he was up for the award, and might be called on to perform before the cream of his profession, yet he still didn't trouble to prepare anything better.

Comedy is an intensely serious topic in Britain at the moment. Scarcely a week passes without the virtuosity of Paul Merton being hailed afresh in a long newspaper profile, enlivened by witicism of the part either of writer or subject. The recent public debate about whether or not Newman and Baddiel could be called funny was as earnest (and barren of jokes) as a Channel 4 News report on the General Synod.

What they're chiefly saying about comedy, in this desperately po-faced way, is that it no longer belongs to everyone. In the past, the proof of true humour was always its universality. On the morning after an Itma, a Goon Show, a Hancock's Half Hour, a Monty Python or a Not The Nine O'Clock News, all the generations might be found guffawing over the best bits together. Now, we're told, comedy has become the exclusive province of the young in the way pop music was during the Sixties and Seventies. Today's young comedians have the glamour and charisma of rock 'n' roll stars, performing in the same huge arenas on the same huge arenas on the same Messianic nationwide tours. They speak to the young alone, in the secret argot of youth. It's no good trying to appreciate Vic Reeves or Newman and Baddiel if you're over the age of 25.

For those of us in this benighted outer darkness, penetrating the New Comedy is certainly difficult. Its chief, and unifying, feature seems to be the almost total absence of what used to be known as "the punch-line". To an ageing mentality such as mine, accustomed to the outmoded glibness of a Bob Hope or even Tommy Cooper, nothing ever seems to be resolved. You can watch a new-style comedy show for half an hour, right into the closing credits, and still be waiting for it to begin. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are arch-practitioners of this; acting out non-events in strings of non sequiturs which their (many) fans recognise and adore, but which the uninitiated need a cipher book to follow. Is it just disgruntlement on my part that even the very laughter has a hollow and humourless ring; often seeming provoked by nothing funnier than words like "bugger" and "bum" and (if Paul Merton is involved) "dog crap"?

I'm surprised no one has pointed out the great flaw in this "Comedy: the rock 'n' roll of the Nineties" argument. Rock 'n' roll, although seeming a dangerous, iconoclastic medium, actually created a state of mass conformity, where con-artists and twerps could depend on being applauded with exactly the same fervour as genuine talents.

In any case, since when has original humour been the God-given prerogative of youth? Just as the elderly can be wicked and subversive, the young can be conventional, predictable and banal. To the humourless, of whatever age, funniness does not seep through unless semaphored with leaden insistence. Look at any newspaper column by Alan Coren, any stand-up routine by Jim Davidson, any edition of Noel's House Party. And now look at Newman and Baddiel's recent Wembley Arena concert poster, with its stars in Marx Brothers' masks and its tag-line "Live and in Pieces". By contrast, Mr Blobby seems avant-guarde, Alan Coren as light as a soufflé.

The history of modern British comedy has been a series of radical leaps: the Goons, Galton-Simpsons sitcoms, Sixties' satire, Monty Python. "Alternative" comedy in the Eighties was another such leap, but ultimately in the wrong direction. Just like pop music in the Seventies, comedy in the Eighties began turning back on itself, abandoning adventure and experiment for pastiche and regurgitation. Over the past 15 years, show me a new TV comedy show which, sooner or later, has not revealed its ambition to be Python mark II. John Cleese must stand as the towering figure of modern comedy, simply for the number of modern comedy, simply for the number of his imitators. Think of those who have got laughs by portraying Cleese-accented authority figures - Stephen Fry, Tony Slattery, Angus Deayton. Each time Deayton delivers his feeble cue-carded Basil Fawltyisms on Have I Got News For You, I keep willing and willing Cleese to sue.

Television is largely to blame for the rot, with its ruthless suppression of originality, its fear of true danger and subversion, its bullying of studio audiences into orgiastic mirth by producers and warm-up artists. Just as stultifying is the continuing obsession with television itself as a source of material: joke commercials, joke arts' discussions, joke breakfast TV interviews, joke headlines from News At Ten. Steve Coogan's The Day Today - however funny - is no more than a retread of what Monty Python was doing 20 years ago. Newman and Baddiel's dialogue between the two professors, modestly described by them as "the Parrot Sketch of the Nineties" (what a giveaway!) was merely the umpteenth variant on this.

So what's new in New Age comedy? Vic Reeves, with his self-absorbed mugging and bridling, seems to hark back to legends of the Fifties' Variety circuit such as Frank Randall and Al Read. Lee Evans, with his tight suit and orangutan facial contortions, is Norman Wisdom reincarnated. One can't help wondering whether Reeves and Evans are performing acts of conscious homage. Or are they like the modern pop musician who announced he'd written a song called Heartbreak Hotel, blissfully unaware that there'd ever been one before?

A far more urgent question about British comedy is why so many people who used to be brilliantly funny now seem, in various ways, to have gone off the rails. Viewed from the Paul Merton Dark Age, a golden epoch of hilarious men and women seems recently past. It is not long since Ben Elton was doing the most dangerously brilliant stand-up routine since Lenny Bruce; that Blackadder, starring Rowan Atkinson, offered possibly the best ensemble playing ever seen on television; that Smith and Jones seemed viable modern counterparts of Dud and Pete; that Victoria Wood became the natural heir to John Betjeman as a chronicler of provincial minutiae; that cult late night shows, notably Whose Line Is It Anyway?, were constantly producing new talents like Mike McShane and Sandi Toksvig; that you had only to see the Channel 4 logo and a blue-lit set to break into hysterics.

WHERE are they now, the Eltons, the Woods, the Atkinsons, the Smith and Joneses, the Frys and Lauries, the French and Saunderses? Rich and successful, sitcom superstars, best-selling authors, highly-paid columnists, West End thespians, ubiquitous TV voice-overs and - with the exception of Saunders, and Wood when you can find her - nowhere near as funny as before. It seems an immutable rule with British comedians (unlike American) that inspiration and effervescence diminish in direct proportion to financial success. I remember noticing it in the Sixties with Peter Cook, who rapidly metamorphosed from gauche undergraduate regular on the chat show circuit. I saw it again with dismay a couple of weeks ago, as Ben Elton discussed his latest book, solemn-faced, with Des O'Connor. Could he really not sense the nation's silent scream of, "Bring back the silver suit"?

Over Christmas, I watched a marathon television tribute to the great funny men of history. It was by no means as dire as it sounds, with interesting film clips of forgotten pearls like Sid Field and Nat Jackley, and articulate commentary by comedians of all eras. Most agreed that the consummate practitioner was Ken Dodd - not for the quality of his material so much as the quantity. As Ernie Wise (I think) put it: "That man gets off so many jokes per minute that sooner or later everybody's going to hear one that makes them laugh."

For me, comedy at its best has this same reckless, spendthrift quality, coming at you so hard and fast so many directions, it makes your head spin. Ben Elton used to do it with his almost levitating free associations about the Thatcher government and black plastic sacks; Rory Bremner does it in his minority spot on Channel 4, spilling out impressions that change in mid-sentence or even mid-word; jokes that often have barely formed their opening syllables before mutating into something else.

It's no disgrace, but rather a mark of utter professionalism, that great comedians like Bob Hope and Sid Caesar used to employ huge teams of writers, using and casting them aside faster than Catherine the Great did young hussar officers. No other kind of performance is so vitally dependant on making every second count. To me, newcomers like Jack Dee and Jo Brand, while stylistically original, seem to perform in an aching void of what American radio people call "dead air".

Incidentally, the same comedy awards which named Paul Merton Supreme Comic Genius of All Time and Space recorded an almost insultingly small vote for Rory Bremner. The appeal of dog crap is evidently universal.

Page 21 of the Independent, Saturday 7th January 1993:

Always look on the dark side
From Seaside Special to Absolutely Fabulous by way of the Comic Strip, the director Bob Speirs has changed the face of British television comedy. John Lyttle tried to find out the secret of his success

Bob Speirs has spent the morning rehearsing with French and Saunders. "Let's see, the next series ... We've already done the pre-filming, now we're working on the musical items and the stuff that'll be done in front of the audience. The stuff in Jennifer's flat,a two-hander about ladies who organise society parties. Hmm, and a pop video ... the band's called Dickens' Daughters. More? Huh, film parodies: Thelma and Louise, Misery and In Bed with French and Saunders. We're busy, very busy."

Bob Speirs is perennially busy, very busy. Not that you'll find his name in the standard television reference works or singled out in reviews; but since the mid-Eighties he's become the director of choice for personalities as diverse as the Comic Strip, Ruby Wax, Alexei Sayle and French and Saunders, together and separately: witness Dawn French's Murder Most Horrid, not to mention the recent success of Jennifer Saunders Absolutely Fabulous, BBC2's highest-rating show of 1992. Tonight, BBC2 transmits Spiers latest, "a carnal comedy" entitled Joking Apart. It's a consciously slick effort about divorce, jealousy and the methods of modern love; the "hero" (Robert Bathurst) is the sort of stand-up comic you itch to knock down, professionally committed to transforming his private life into public spectacle. "It's adult, sexy," Spiers says. "I think it's timely and dramatic as well as funny. Hopefully it moves the sitcom thing on."

He's entitled to a deciding vote. Indeed, with the possible exceptions of the one-time director-producer Paul Jackson (currently playing executive at the new London franchise-holder Carlton), "friendly rival" Geoff Posner, Victoria Wood's long-term behind-the-camera collaborator, and certain influential performers, few people have done more to shape the public face of contemporary British television comedy.

Peruse the Speirs CV, close to being a Greatest Hits catalogue. You may not want to hum all the tunes - the man was partially responsible for Seaside Special - but you can't deny his range: Dad's Army, The Goodies, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served?, Fawlty Towers, Five Go Mad In Dorset, Didn't You Kill My Brother?, Lazarus and Dingwall, the clinically disturbed Little Armadillos, Ben Elton's stage hit Gasping ... The list rolls on, relentless, implacable, impressive.

So - what's the secret? Explain the career longevity, the genre-hopping, the ability to move from old-fashioned, sequin-strewn Light Entertainment ("I did a lot of Cilla Black show") to today's New Comic Establishment? Tell us Bob, how come you can skip from low slapstick to lower sexual innuendo, reversing into high weirdness, then up, up, up to the dizzy heights of true wit?

"Hmm?" The silence stretches out like a snake; a veritable boa constrictor. Fine. Next question. When you read a script, how do you know that it's funny? "Argh. I haven't a clue. No ... you just know." Okay. Try this. What makes you different? Silence. Then, with utter certainly: "I do it on instinct. I don't copy anyone or anything. I don't watch other people's comedies. I'm too busy ... and too, oh, ah, sort of self-conscious."

Howard Schuman chuckles at the recounted quote. Spiers directed the writer's four-part, award-winning Upline, a rare directorial venture into not-so-straight drama, inexplicably unrepeated by Channel 4. "Bob articulate? No. In an age of self-promotion he's the least able at selling himself. But a natural, a visionary? Yes. Definitely. He just doesn't carry a neon sign exclaiming 'Artist'.

"Yet when you look at the Comic Strip films you can instantly identify his work. He's incredibly visual. His camera moves. The editing, design, the pacing is impeccable. And he's the first to go to the dark side, to the sinister, without hesitation. It's very rare - a comedy sense with bite."

One reason Spiers is ill-at-ease with words is because, to borrow a Hollywoodism, he "thinks with his eyes", a trait associated with American, not British, directors (perhaps because even British visual media is so damn literary). Most televisual comedy is a mournful matter of idiot-simple composition - a master shot, a medium shot, a reaction shot, oops, here's another joke. Not for Spiers. For him the camera bobs, dips, weaves and tangos, refusing, as Spiers notes after many hesitations, "to be a passive observer. It should move, push, participate."

What the unfettered lens increasingly observes is parody, pastiche and grotesque exaggeration, the preferred modes of modern comics, now too all-knowing and media-literate to be wholly original. Yet the spoofs have their own validity, from the heartless precision of Ruby Wax's fake home video of a quarrelsome Irish family, to the demented liposuction sequence that adorned Episode 2 of Absolutely Fabulous; there lay Jennifer Saunders, speeded-up and reduced to nothing but a pair of collagen-enhanced child-bearing lips and two mad, staring eyes. Funny like a nightmare.

"Of course, Bob would be drawn to that material," says Howard Schuman. "He has very strong political and moral ideas. He's exactly the right person to dissect the mindless fashion set, whom he knows inside out. That's his other great visual gift - extraordinary detail."

Which is not to suggest that Spiers is, heaven forbid, auteur. "Think of the people I work with! It's there in the scripts. I'm in safe hands. I simply have to bring it out." But it's also true that his technique and temperament suit perfectly his writers and stars. (And suit the times, too. Today even a mainstream success like Waiting for God will stop for a prickly plot about, say, imminent death. Sitcom is yielding to serio-com.) "Well, I began by working in the fields they grew up watching and now enjoy satirising; the old sitcoms, the pop programmes. I mean, I've worked with Pan's People. It all comes round again and I call upon it a lot. Remember when Dawn and Jennifer did the Abba take-off? My type of background was useful then ... and the girls have their finger on the pulse."

They certainly do. The bulk of Spiers' best work has been with women, where the real action is. Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall may be content to recycle their Dangerous Brother personas for Bottom but, as Spiers reports, "the girls take risks. Murder Most Horrid, for instance. Dawn did six characters in one run, finishing with one character on a Wednesday, playing another on Thursday. The emphasis is different. Ruby, Jennifer, Dawn and Victoria Wood - they look at something from every angle."

"Bob likes women," says Joanna Lumley, star of Absolutely Fabulous. "He likes women for what they are. Some directors don't. There's this amazing hangover of what women should be on screen. I was once told 'You mustn't frown if you're playing anger - it makes you look ugly.' None of that with Bob. He has a way of looking dreamy and blue-eyed, but somehow egging you on. He also has this flawless - how can I put this? - unmarked sense of humour. He knows how and when to let things run free."

Still, attempt to draw Spiers on comedy artists or try to get him to analyse their gifts, and a stuttering silence reigns. He makes his involvement sound like directing traffic, not talent. "Oh, Bob knows what's he doing" says Lumley. "He may not say anything but he understands certain performers' unreconstructed, not to say shambolic, ways of thinking. If he says something isn't right, believe me, they listen."

One final effort. What is the secret of good comedy? Spiers gives the enquiry some thought. And some more. "Well, if you think a gag isn't going to work, shoot it separately, so you can have a go at making it work in the editing. If it still doesn't work, at least it's removable." Beginners take note.

Page 72 of Time Out, 29th April to 5th May 1983:

FRESH FROM THE COMEDY STORE ... BUT IS IT ART?

With 'Alfresco', another wave of new comedy breaks onto the TV screen. John Collis tests the water.

Ben Elton cynically calls it 'middle class comedy', coming from somewhere between Oxbridge and the streets. And with Granada's new seven-part series ' Alfresco', to be networked in the 10pm Sunday slot after a year of pilots and experiments, the 'new wave' of comedians has come of age. Impressively enough, indeed, for there to be 'active moves' towards a second series, before the first has even been exposed to a critical nation.

'Alfresco' is at the other extreme from the energetic 'bullseyes-thru-buckshot' technique of Elton's previous TV credit 'The Young Ones'. On that series (to be repeated from Thursday, making it a good week for him), Elton worked as co-writer with the original creators Rik Mayall and Lise Meyer: he has now graduated to become chief writer, as well as being one of the six performers.

The acting team is a strong one, arising from the twin disciplines of 'straight theatre' and revue. Trinder-chinned Stephen Fry and his blank-faced colleague Hugh Laurie have toured the revue circuit, collecting the odd Edinburgh award on the way; Emma Thompson reached 'Alfresco' by a similar route, clocking up a number of TV and radio credits; Robbie Coltrane came from the straight side, including the London production of 'Slab Boys', before moving on to 'The Young Ones' and 'Comic Strip Presents'; Siobhan Redmond went from drama school into fringe and repertory theatre.

There's a collaborative feel to the comedy, but each item is the work of one writer, almost always Elton. And there's no back-up squad of freelancers shooting in their one-liners, which helps the show's 'integrity'.

'Alfresco', from its moody 'mean streets' credits on, is pitched in a lower key to the previous youthful attempts to break away from the 'Terry and June' graveyard (through Richard Waring's new 'Tears Before Bedtime' prove that the graveyard is still disinterring the occasional corpse).

'We made a conscious decision to slow down,' says Elton. 'From "Monty Python" on, a fast-paced hi-tech style has developed, and I'm not knocking it at all - "The Young Ones" is part of it - but we decided to try something different, to rely more on the performances and the writing.'

In the first episode, there are none of those bubbling accents and eager faces intended to signal 'My God, we're being funny' 'OTT'-style, to an increasingly resistant audience. The settings are conventional: there's a customer and a salesgirl at a perfume counter, frequent dialogue across desks and we're soon plunged among the familiar group of British soldiers trying to escape from a German prison camp. We are back in the territory of 'the sketch', working its way towards some sort of punchline, dissolving in a wacky freeze frame.

What justifies this seemingly unwacky approach is the building-block skill of the writing: Elton and his 'additional materialisers' (in the first show fellow comic Andy de la Tour and Scottish songwriter David McNiven, with one sketch each) set up a situation, and then subject it to a series of surrealistic little tweaks that subtly pervert its progress.

'Alfresco' deliberately breaks no brave new ground and it's barely subversive, even if it does get incest in as soon as is decently possible. But neither is it a slave to the predictability of the 'sketch-to-punchline' format. For me, it passed the 'alone in a darkened room' chuckle test with commendable efficiency.

'Alfresco' is on LWT at 10pm on Sunday. See TV listings.

Page 37 of the Evening Standard, Tuesday 28th July 1992:

Are we seeing too many spooks?

As yet another ghost glides across TV screens, GEOFFREY PHILLIPS feels his own spirits begin to sink

TOMORROW night Channel 4 unleashes a new series upon its eager audience. It is enticingly entitled My Dead Dad. It is a comedy.

Made by Scottish TV, My Dead Dad is based on a stage play by John McKay called Dead Dad Dog and concerns a young would-be TV producer whose father, who has been dead for 14 years, reappears outside a toilet cubicle.

Dad is still wearing his Seventies flares and kipper tie and, what is more, father and son appear to be linked by an unbreakable umbilical cord. So far, so hilarious.

But, with all due respect to the energetic performances of Roy Hanlon, as Willie, and Forbes Masson as Eck, the appearance of yet another ghost, even one in flares, causes one's own spirits to sink. Eck might have been dead for 14 years, the idea of comic spooks has surely been dead for much longer.

One cannot fail to observe an apparently incurable obsession with the supernatural as a storyline springboard. We have had recently a BBC sitcom, So Haunt Me, with Miriam Karlin as a Jewish ghost. On a considerably higher plane we have had the films Ghost and Truly Madly Deeply leaving cinemas around the world ankle-deep in soggy tissues.

The recent BBC1 drama series, Friday On My Mind, was another grieving process exercise in which Maggie O'Neill's pilot widow met her dead husband on the beach for a last farewell. We were not told whether the deceased airman knew that his wife had, as part of the grieving process, been to bed with one of his comrades, but we will let that pass.

Whether the apparitions in Ghost, Truly Madly Deeply and Friday On My Mind count as real ghosts is a fair debating subject to lob into a wilting dinner party conversation, but showing hallucinatory ghosts on cinema and TV screens tends to raise just as many, if no more, questions than the portrayal of traditional ghosts.

Personally, one found the fact that Alan Rickman's dead cellist in Truly Madly Deeply had managed to catch a cold in the hereafter rather disturbing. The thought that there might be no escape from the sniffles beyond the grave proved so distracting that frankly one did not really care whether Juliet Stevenson was coming to terms with her loss.

What one wanted to know was: are there man-size tissues and Night Nurse beyond the grave? Perhaps hell will turn out to be an eternity of runny noses and no hankies.

In the much-acclaimed 1946 Michael Powell fantasy, A Matter Of Life And Death, David Niven glides heavenwards on an escalator rather more advanced than anything on the Underground. Was one alone in wondering how the escalator was powered? Did it operate around the clock? One noted that all the people being borne upwards were respectably clad.

Was there a divine law which ruled that people who had died in the nude must use the back stairs?

It may be that the current spate of supernatural stories is a consequence of disenchantment with Eighties materialism.

If Mammon has proved a disappointment worship-wise, perhaps the spiritual has investment potential.

Whatever the reason, the message ought to be as clear as if delivered by floating trumpet: give up the ghosts.

Page A7 of the Sunday Times, Sunday 28th August 1988:

Row over papal satire

● Channel 4 is planning a three-part series which satirises the papacy, according to a report in the Observer.

The proposed series, which has already caused concern to senior executives about allegations of blasphemy, comes just as Cardinal Basil Hume has told Catholics not to see the controversial new film "The Last Temptation of Christ."

The series stars Alexei Sayle and will possibly be sceened next year. But Michael Grade, the station's chief executive, is said to be worried in case it provokes a similar outcry as the film.

Page 3 of the Catholic Herald, Friday 2nd September 1988:

Papal satire under consideration by Channel 4

CHANNEL Four is considering the first draft of a three part series satirising the Papacy for broadcast next year. Provisionally entitled either "Who Killed the Pope?" or "The Pope Must Die", the series has been scripted by the Comic Strip, a production company responsible for many recent send-ups of current events, including the 1984 miners' strike.

The first draft of the script about Pope Dave the First is now being considered by Channel Four executives. The Commissioning Editor for Entertainment, Seamus Cassidy, will be taking soundings from senior colleagues including Chief Executive Michael Grade, and Director of Programmes, Liz Forgan. Ms Forgan has this week rejected concerns about the subject mater. "You will just have to wait and see. Some people say the Comic Strip people bring problems and controversy, others that they are a delight".

The three one-hour programmes will star Alexei Sayle as Pope Dave, and will feature comedians Robbie Coltrane, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. The planned series will take the form of a parody of the American mini-series genre.

A spokesman for Channel Four this week told the Catholic Herald that the series was still in the planning stage. No final commitment had been made.

● IN a speech at the International Edinburgh Television Festival, Greg Dykes, director of programmes at London Weekend Television, dropped heavy hints that the challenge of satellite broadcasting in the 1990s would mean that specialist areas like religion would be pushed to the margins of maintime scheduling. His comments were in line with his recent reported enthusiasm for axing the "God-slot", the Sunday evening "gentleman's agreement" between BBC and ITV to run parallel religious programming.

Page 3 of The Universe, Sunday 4th September 1988:

Papal comedy is just satire, Channel 4 says

CHANNEL 4 has denied suggestions that a forthcoming comedy series satirising the Papacy may be blasphemous.

A spokesman said the series, to be produced by the award winning 'Comic Strip' team, and starring Alexei Sayle as 'Pope Dave the First' had no connection at all with the controversial Maryin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.

He stressed that it was 'not in any way an attack on the Pope' and was not going to be about religious belief. He said it was too early to give any more detail since the script was not yet confirmed, but admitted that Comic Strip were 'fairly anarchic' in the humour.

Nicholas Coote, Bishops' Conference Assistant Secretary, said there should be a sharp distinction between programmes that satirised religious leaders and church organisations and things that were actually blasphemous.

"One would be very reluctant to look so pompous that we couldn't take light-hearted amusement at our expense. If Spitting Image can make fun of politicians and the Royal Family, we oughtn't to get too excited," Mr Cooke said.

Page 4 of the Observer, Sunday 18th September 1988:

Channel 4 kills off Pope Dave satire
RICHARD BROOKS
■ Media Editor

CHANNEL 4 has scrapped plans for three programmes which would have satirised the Papacy. Lawyers have advised that the series from The Comic Strip group of comedians presents too many potential legal problems.

A spokesman would confirm only that the series, provisionally called 'The Pope Must Die', has been 'indefinitely postponed'. But the series is known to have worried senior executives, who were concerned about the dangers of prosecution for blasphemy and libel.

The series was due to star Alexei Sayle, above, as 'Pope Dave the First', and would also have featured comedians Robbie Coltrane, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

The programmes would have been in the form of a parody of an American mini-series, which portrayed a modern-day Pope and his rule across two continents. 'It's a big disappointment for me,' Sayle said yesterday. 'It would have been my first chance of a major leading role.'

The channel has decided instead to commission another programme from The Comic Strip. 'Five Go to Hell' is to be set in a corrupt South American country, and is a parody of Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' books and characters. The 'Five' meet up again after an absence of 20 years in South America.

This will be the third in the 'Five' series for The Comic Strip, who also made last year's award-winning 'The Strike', a parody of a Hollywood film about the 1984 miners' strike.

Page 17 of the Sun, Monday 19th September 1988:

Telly chiefs ban 'boozy Pope' show
By PIERS MORGAN

A SHOCK comedy show "starring" a boozy, woman-chasing POPE has been axed by nervous TV chiefs.

Channel 4 bosses feared the three-part series, by the Comic Strip team, could be blasphemous AND libelous.

Comedian Alexei Sayle was to have played a modern-day Pope Dave the First in the show, The Pope Must Die.

Alexei would only say last night: "I'm upset. It would have been my first leading role."

Other Comic Strip stars, including Robbie Coltrane, were said to be furious.

Gutless

One insider said: "Channel 4 has become gutless."

But a top source in the TV company revealed: "The script was almost Marxist in its content.

"It showed the Pope amassing vast wealth at the expense of the poor and blowing it on worldly pursuits like booze, fags and women."

A Channel 4 spokesman said: "The series has been shelved for legal reasons."

Page 3 of the Catholic Herald, Friday 23rd September 1988:

Papal send up axed by Channel 4

A SATIRICAL series on the Pope scheduled for broadcast on Channel 4, has been "postponed indefinitely" because of potential legal problems.

The series of three films by the Comic Strip group, which would have starred comedian Alexei Sayle as "Pope Dave the First", was axed after senior Channel 4 executives got cold feet over potential prosecution regarding blasphemy and libel (Catholic Negative, September 2).

Planned as a send up of a US mini-series, the programme, tentatively entitled "The Pope Must Die", has now been replaced in Channel 4's schedules by a parody of on Enid Blyton's "Famous Five" characters by the Comic Strip group. "Five Go to Hell" is to be set in a corrupt South American country. It will be the company's third offering on the theme of the "Five" for Channel 4.

Page 16 of the Sunday Sport, Sunday 16th October 1988:

Church takes Pope at Alexei

SICKO comic Alexei Sayle was last night slammed for agreeing to star in a mini-series insulting Catholics.

For the roly-poly star, who launched Alexei Sayle's Stuff on TV last week, wanted to take the lead role in The Pope Must Die.

Alexei was to play Pope Dave the First romping round Rome insulting and condemning his followers.

The Comic Strip production's pompous Pope eventually becomes an assassination victim when Catholics can no longer stand his crazy campaigning.

And last night a spokesman for Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Catholic Church in Britain, blasted: "It seems unbelievable that such a programme with such content could even be considered.

"It would be an insult to every Catholic watching it and could have awful repercussions.

"There is nothing humorous in this sort of so-called entertainment, and more stringent restrictions must be introduced."

The Comic Strip production would have cost £1.5 million to make. But it was shelved after Channel Four bosses got coldfeet.

Changed

They were concerned about charges of libel and blasphemy and the mini-series was "Indefinitely postponed."

Now they have back-tracked again and are considering filming the mini-series if the script is changed.

But Alexei, who is currently starring in the West End production of The Tempest, may have lost his chance of landing his first major role.

Page 13 of the Daily Star, Monday 4th June 1990:

Rik and Co pray for their swipe at Pope

* THE Comic Strip team are STILL battling to produce their most controversial film so far.

They quit Channel 4 in a huff because boss Michael Grade refused to back their efforts to make a film called Kill The Pope.

They turned instead to the Beeb where BBC2 boss Alan Yentob proved to have a more open mind about their wild ideas.

But 12 months later, the Pope film - which would have starred Alexi Sayle - is still not in production.

Vintage episodes of the COMIC STRIP (Channel 4, 10 p.m.) are still being screened wile the team, starring Adrian Edmonson, Rik Mayall, Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Nigel Planer, work on a series for the Beeb.

A Comic Strip spokesman says: "The Pope film is no nearer production than it's ever been."

As a footnote, somebody who worked on the Comic Strip Presents... series once told me that the above mini-series was to be in three parts and based on the hanging of Roberto Calvi, and that the legal matters that intervened were due to the characters being based on real people. The project was scrapped but all three parts were rewritten and restarted several times until they finally emerged as three separate productions: Oxford, Spaghetti Hoops, and The Pope Must Die.

Richardson still holds dreams of someday producing Five Go To Hell, and was known to have carried the script around with him during post-production of the last (to date) Comic Strip production, 2005's Sex Actually. However if it were to be made today it is unknown who would play Uncle Quentin, Ronald Allen having died in 1991 (I don't think it is much of a spoiler to reveal that in this production Uncle Quentin is The Devil).

Front page of the Jewish Chronicle, Friday 10th August 1990:

A sick sit-com
By RUTH ROTHERNBERG

British Satellite Broadcasting subscribers could be receiving a new sitcom next year entitled "Heil Honey, I'm Home."

Television comedy writer Geoff Atkinson, who has written for the satirical TV programme, "Spitting Image," said: "The intention is to lampoon Hitler in the guise of an American mid-1960s 'I Love Lucy'-style situation comedy.

"Adolf and Eva are shown as a couple in one flat. Their next-door neighbours are a Jewish family. The setting is nominally 1938 Berlin, but the whole thing is done as classic sharp New York Jewish humour.

"It is black comedy but the intention is not to offend, except possibly neo-Nazis. Three-quarters of the cast are Jewish and their reaction has been very positive."

A pilot episode has been made by an independent company, Noel Gay Television. The cast includes Gareth Marks, son of actor Alfred Marks, and Caroline Gruber, who took part in the 1987 Edinburgh Festival play-reading of "Perdition," the controversial Jim Allen play.

Mr Atkinson, who is in his thirties and is not Jewish, said: "I got the germ of the idea 15 years ago when I saw the film 'Young Winston' (depicting Winston Churchill's early years). I played with the idea of 'Young Adolf' as a pathetic figure of fun and it finally blossomed."

BSB's entertainment channel, Galaxy, is to decide on whether to go ahead later this month.

From the Observer's 'Pendennis' column, Sunday 12th August 1980:

THE Jewish Chronicle reports that BSB is considering mounting a situation comedy about Adolf Hitler's early days, provisionally entitled Heil Honey, I'm Home.

I particularly enjoyed the hopeful comment of the writer, Geoff Atkinson, about his scenario in which Adolf and Eva live next door to a Jewish couple: 'Our intention is not to offend.'

Page 41 of Broadcast, Friday 24th August 1990

Jewish group slams BSB over Hitler sit-com
by Kizzi Nkwocha

BRITISH Satellite Broadcasting has been criticised by Jewish groups for commissioning a half-hour sit-com pilot which features Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in an American mid-Sixties I Love Lucy-style situation comedy.

The show, Heil Honey, I'm Home, is produced by Noel Gay Television. It features the couple living in a flat opposite a Jewish family called the Goldsteins.

Hayim Pinner, secretary general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: "Anything that trivialises Hitler is to be deplored. Someone who caused so much human misery and grief is not really a fit subject for humour and trivialisation."

Comedy writer Geoff Atkinson, who produced the script for the show, said: "The joke is that Adolf Hitler is a fool - the guy who always gets sent up. It's not because he's offensive, it's more because he is the ultimate loser.

"He might be a winner at war but at home he loses out to Eva and he loss out to the Goldsteins."

He added: "Obviously there will be a group of people who were so close to the event that it causes some upset, but hopefully many people will get the joke and see that it just proves what a fool Adolf was."

"I hope it was never done to be tasteless on the grounds that the show's situation may be a little hard for some people to swallow."

BSB confirmed that they had commissioned the pilot of Heil Honey, I'm Home, but said "the series is definitely not in our autumn schedule".

Page 5 of the Daily Express, Saturday 1st September 1990:

Protest at Hitler TV sit-com
By ANNIE LEASK

A STORM of protest has greeted a new satellite TV show depicting mass murderer Adolf Hitler as a cuddly comedy character.

Producers of the Terry And June-style sitcom, called Heil Honey, I'm Home, have been accused of "incredibly bad taste".

Set in the 1930s, it revolves around the cosy domestic life of Hitler and his lover, Eva Braun.

A TV insider said: "If people thought 'Allo 'Allo was in bad taste, just wait until they see this."

Last night angry Jewish groups attacked the show, to be screened on BSB.

"We can not believe that someone wants to make a comedy show based on Hitler," said the Chief Rabbi's spokesman.

BSB yesterday defended its decision to show a pilot programme for the series at the end of the month.

The Noel Gay production company has the go-ahead for 12 episodes.

Page 3 of the Observer, Sunday 30th September 1990:

Jewish anger over Hitler TV comedy
Richard Brooks
Media Editor

IS HITLER funny? The Board of Deputies of British Jews obviously does not think so. It is very concerned about a comedy programme due to be broadcast on British Satellite Broadcasting tonight called Heil Honey, I'm Home.

The programme is set in Berlin in the 1930s and concerns two neighbours, a Jewish family called the Goldensteins, and the couple next door, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

While BSB says the show, initially a one-off to see if there is scope for a series, is meant to be amusing, it is well aware it might cause offence. It has not let the Board of Deputies see an advance copy, nor, most unusually, has it allowed journalists to see the programme.

The board is very worried about anything which 'makes fun of the war and, in particular, the way that the Jews were treated in pre-war Germany'. Several leading members of the Jewish community will watch the programme tomorrow, as they have been unable to find anybody with a BSB dish to allow them to view it tonight.

Some theatrical agents decided against sending actors on their books to audition for the programme, because they were worried about the subject matter. The actors chosen to play the Goldensteins and the Hitlers are not well known. However, Patrick Cargill plays Neville Chamberlain in tonight's programme.

BSB says the show is really like some of the American situation comedies of the 1950s and 60s, similar to I Love Lucy, where, instead of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez inviting their friends the Mertzes around, the Goldensteins pop in to see the Hitlers. Both families are given odd Germanic New York accents.

The first episode depicts the Goldensteins as a nosy couple, in particular Mrs Goldstein. They are curious and suspicious about Adolf Hitler's intentions now that he has become Chancellor of Germany. The Goldensteins have heard worrying rumours. Is Hitler going to declare war?

In the programme, the Hitlers invite Neville Chamberlain to tea to try to sort out any problems. The Goldensteins, anxious to discover more, drop in. Chamberlain is portrayed as a 'wet' character who sings the ditty 'I'm a little teapot'.

BSB hopes the programme will be regarded as funny, not offensive. It says future scripts show the Goldensteins gradually getting the upper hand over the Hitlers. Certainly, Hitler is painted as an unpleasant character, with a nasty habit of never changing his socks. Eva Braun is rather a loud-mouthed gossip. Mussolini, who is intended to show up in a later episode, has been written in as an idiotic leader who invades Abyssinia because it is the first country in the world atlas.

BSB, as if to assure that it does not want to offend the Jewish community, deferred the planned transmission of Heil Honey I'm Home from yesterday, which was Yom Kippur, to today. 'It was actually going to be transmitted an hour after Yom Kippur ended at dusk,' said a BSB spokesman. 'But we thought we'd better be ultra-careful.'

To date all articles on this weblog (bar the first one about The Comic Strip Presents... Back To Normal With Eddie Monsoon) have been taken from the ITC clippings catalogue. Four of the articles below come from the microjacket of articles collated by the BFI Library, so credit must also go to them.

Page 4 of the Leicester Mercury, Tuesday 16th January 1968:

I FEEL I must write and ask if other viewers are as I am by the new ITV programme for children "Do Not Adjust Your Set."

This programme is shown on Thursday at tea-time, when the youngest children are looking forward to happy entertainment and the best offered is a programme full of what can only be described as undesirable rubbish!

Last Friday my five and seven-year old daughters were able to see twice the phrase "Auntie Denise is a silly old bag", blazed across the screen. I can't see any sense in allowing this programme to be continued. Although I know I can switch off the set, and will next week, lots of children will be allowed to watch, and ITV should clean this programme up.

DISGUSTED MUM.

From the Sunday Times, Tuesday 23rd January 1968:

No kidding

A FUNNY THING HAPPENS on your T V screen on Thursday afternoon. At 5.25 p.m. - the tea-time slot - they're putting out another in the comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set. It has no sexy sketches. No one comes on wearing drag. There are no jokes about politicians. It's adult in a way that those late-night satirical shows never manage to be adult. But, in fact, it's a revue designed specifically for children.

It's written by Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. They all take part in the show, along with David Jason and Denise Coffey, and they're all in their mid-twenties. Humphrey Barclay, who produces the programme, was brought over from radio where he put on I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. He's twenty-six, went to Harrow and Cambridge, and was meant to be a diplomat. He's much happier with comedy. "When Rediffusion invited me in they told me they wanted a far-out show. No compromise. None of the old second-hand stuff which is so often foisted on to kids."

What's emerged is all first-hand stuff, very Goonish, with its own self-contained serial - a cold-eyed cod of all super heroes called Captain Fantastic. Children love it. The only complaints come from adults who write in to say "I thought your programme was disgraceful and my two sons sons aged two and two and a half agree."

Idle, Jones, and Palin started in revue while they were at university. Denise Coffey has been a straight actress for years. David Jason had his own electrical firm until three years ago when he gave it to his partner, and took the plunge into show business. The veteran member of the team is the director Daphne Shadwell, daughter of Charlie Shadwell, the B B C conductor whose high-pitched laugh made lots of old steam-radio shows sound funnier than they were.

Do Not Adjust Your Set has seven more weeks to run. After that, everyone's on their own. Michael Palin's not worried. "Every time we write a sketch which we can't use on the programme because it offends one of those taboos we just file it away. Very thrifty. We should be able to flog the lot to one of those adult comedy shows."

From the Daily Mail, Friday 23rd February 1968. By Virginia Ironside:

In the same way as it seems curious that David Nixon should be dished up as adult entertainment it is odd that Do Not Adjust Your Set (Rediffusion) isn't.

For this very entertaining show is featured at 5.25, a time when only children, mothers, the out-of-work and the idle rich have an opportunity to see it. And though it includes jokes about Desmond Morris, bank managers, David Frost, it still comes under the heading of Children's Television. It's not the last word in originality. The Archie Andrews take-off was recently done in Cilla Black's show and I'd recognise that Peter Cook voice anywhere.

But although it smacks just faintly of BBC 3 it is at least a programme that is concerned solely with being funny. No one's trying to ram any points down your throat; any debunking is of the mildest nature. And there are proper laughs, the sketches are brief with good punch lines and, best of all, there's a happy lack of any ageing young compare to make you feel as if you're back at school.

From Television Today, Thursday 14th March 1968:

Problems of women in comedy
by Ena Kendell

ONE of the delights of television comedy at the moment is Rediffusion's Do Not Adjust Your Set, which can best be described in generic terms as son of At Last the 1948 Show.

This fast-moving half-hour tea-time revue with its young cast, hilarious sketches, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Denise Coffey as one of its zanier characters, Mrs. Black, has as its director one of the few women in this country directing a comedy show. When you know the woman is Daphne Shadwell, you know why Do Not Adjust Your Set has been such a hit.

Fresh from a long day's rehearsal of a special edition of the show for adult viewers, which will be going out in June as part of Rediffusion's swan song, this small, lively woman with the ready smile clowned good-humouredly with Denise Coffey during a photographic session and confirmed what was obvious - that she enjoyed her work very much.

"I laugh so much. I enjoy what I'm doing, and as long as that is the case, I'm happy with it."

Daphne Shadwell, daughter of Charles Shadwell, the BBC conductor who became a national name through his association with ITMA and other shows, has her roots in show business. She left the BBC in 1955 to join Rediffusion and has been directing for the company since 1956.

Experience varied

Her experience could scarcely be more varied. She began with woman's programmes under Mary Hill, covering cookery, fashion and films. There were advertising magazines, an invaluable basic training ground, then came children's television and the whole gamut of comedy, drama serials, light entertainment.

She directed plays which were the fore-runners of No Hiding Place, Cool for Cats, and shows with Rosemary Squires and Michael Holliday. Then Ready, Steady, Go came on the scene, and more light entertainment.

"I love light entertainment. I always have done. I've never made a big feature documentary or political programme because it is something I wouldn't choose." But she recalled one venture into this field in the 1964 general election, when she was in charge of a programme from Trafalgar Square. "I'm inclined to be claustrophobic and was frightened to death of the crowds."

Daphne Shadwell - married to director John P. Hamilton, who also works for Rediffusion - has seen humour and light entertainment change enormously in style and presentation since she joined the company. "It has to, otherwise we would still be in old-style variety, but I don't like humour so broad and so strong as to be offensive. I know there is always the knob on the set and all that, but I don't think this sort of humour should be thrust on people when they don't expect it."

One of the stars of Do Not Adjust Your Set is Denise Coffey ("The greatest delight of my life has been in having Denise in the series because it is the first time I have worked with somebody smaller than myself," says Daphne).

Filmgoers will recognise Denise as the pert and witty farm-maid in Far From the Maddening Crowd.

Both Daphne and Denise are on the same wave-length, an obvious advantage in working together on the same show for three months, and their views on women and comedy, drawn from practical experience in this, also dove-tailed.

Tessie O'Shea

"I don't think people accept a woman comedian as readily as they do a man," said Daphne. "It 's very hard for a woman to be a stand-up comedian in her own right. A man can joke about his mother-in-law, the races, the pub last night. He has a broader field to draw upon. Can you imagine a woman standing up and telling jokes about her father-in-law?

"Some get away with it - Tessie O'Shea, for instance, as Two-ton Tessie - but she is pretty and charming, and has a voice. She is an entertainer. There is Mae West, too - a great comedienne, but she was always more than that."

Denise has concluded that people do not like to hear woman telling jokes.

"One is more embarrassed if a woman dies the death than if a man does. People like to see woman being funny. Perhaps men are better at commenting on their own shortcomings than women. A man feels free to comment on himself because it is not so important to him. Women are more vulnerable in that they want to be thought marvellous, or stars, and want to be cherished. A woman telling jokes against herself sounds as if she is sniping at herself or it can come out sounding tasteless."

Do Not Adjust Your Set is a humour show aimed at young people, but not surprisingly drawing in the whole age spectrum. It can be enjoyed at different levels. "The only thing we will take out is anything we feel might be above children's heads or unsuitable. It is a show that anybody and everybody can understand and, we hope, will," said Daphne Shadwell.

"The pattern goes back to Take It From Here, the BBC radio show. There you had a broad gag and a subtle gag alternating. What one lot missed the other would get - it's like all revue, where you have an up-and-down bit. We try to create something that in itself can be seen from different aspects.

Gauging taste

"It's very hard to do a funny show every week for 13 weeks, particularly in gauging what people will find funny. There are sketches which we think not so funny yet they are often the ones people write in to say they have enjoyed."

The Do Not Adjust Your Set atmosphere is a happy one. "I have to look after Denise," joked Daphne, "because the boys forget to write her into the sketches. Although we pretend at rehearsals that we have been left out - women think and feel and all that, she added in mock seriousness - we are seeing ourselves all right quietly, what with my personal assistant, unit manager, stage manager, make-up girls, vision mixer, Denise and myself."

The show ends its current run on March 26, to re-appear for one show in June.

"We are hoping there will be another series, but with the change-over in contracts, it is very hard to say. It is a very sad time for everybody and there are a lot of heart-aches. At the moment my own plans are not fixed."

Whatever the future holds for this show, it has offered an oasis of genuine, unfraught, crazy fun.

From the Sun, Thursday 13th March 1969:

SUNTV
By Nancy Banks-Smith

NAUGHT, OR ALMOST NAUGHT, FOR MY COMFORT

As it was my birthday I observed two minutes' silence. Then looked round for what comfort I could find. Mercifully there was a tonic on TV, 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' (Thames) and a pick-me-up on radio, 'I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again' (Radio 2).

I don't promise that You Too Will Fall About The Floor. If a solicitor called Marchin (from the firm of Boots, Boots, Marchin Up and Down-again) or Queen Victoria (A Lady Ventriloquist with a dummy called Little Prince Albert) doesn't appeal to you, try something similar but simpler - 'Do Not Adjust Your Set'.

For kiddies

Technically it's one for the kiddies. But don't let that bother you, as I used to say while pouring the baby's welfare orange juice into the gin.

Mostly it mickey-takes television, like yesterday's skit on Percy Thrower: "When you are feeding your Maneaters, just give them a handful of peat. Or Fred."

Or Outrage, "in which we face the Minister of Education with one of his most virulent critics. The BBC won't take responsibility for anything said on this programme, as it's on ITV."

From the Guardian, Monday 24th March 1969:

TELEVISION
Stanley Reynolds

KIDDING WHOM?

How different are Granada's "Discotheque" and Thames Television's "Do Not Adjust Your Set"; Both are teatime programmes networked each Wednesday, and one assumes they are aimed at the same audience. "Discotheque" is a pop music programme introduced by a "resident disc dolly", and it is a very tired little mime-along-with-morons show. The programme has no visual style that would appeal to a child accustomed to the sophistication of television commercials, but conveys the miserable feeling of being done on the cheap for an automatic pop audience. One element of fun, not exploited at all by the producer Muriel Young, is supplied by the sharp-eyed Northern kids sitting around the studio looking at the pop singers with the flintily appraising glances of comparison shoppers in a supermarket.

"Do Not Adjust Your Set," on the other hand, is a programme that appreciates the visual and verbal sophistication of today's children. Satirical sketches make fun of things that children know about like television, newspapers, advertising, personality fads and fashions, pop music - things that any humorist uses. Children are responsive to the verbal humour of "Don Not Adjust Your Set" - the puns, the word play, and the sending up of clichés - because they are still sensitive to words. Their vocabularies are expanding daily and their ears are more finely tuned than most adults' to the cadence of a phrase. The compressed imagery and sophisticated photographic technique employed in television commercials, the dramatic presentation of even the most mundane household products, all contribute to a child's sharper eye for style. "Do Not Adjust You Set" appreciates this sophistication and plays to it with admirable effect and not the least hint of either patronage or condescension.

From the Observer, Sunday 30th March 1969. By George Melly:

Another growing cult is the children's show Do Not Adjust Your Set (Thames). This is indeed worth catching if you're home by 5.30 on Wednesday evenings. It's not in itself particularly original in format. There are echoes of every comedy show, some of them with almost no effort to conceal the original source. Yet, like many children's programmes it has the relaxation that comes from knowing that its audience is comparatively uncritical and this allows it to take outrageous risks, at least half of which come off triumphantly.

Among other goodies there is an endless serial about a runty bowler-hatted little moron called Captain Fantastic who is constantly pursued by a dangerous adversary called the evil Mrs Black. The most inspired lunacy last week was a sketch in which a trades union meeting of gnomes, elves and fairies got side-tracked into an argument as to whether humans existed. Most of the little people thought they didn't, but a leprechaun and a fairy were strongly convinced of our reality. 'If there aren't people,' asked the fairy, 'who makes Frank Sinatra records?' 'They are sent from above from whence or for what purpose we know not,' parried a sententious gnome. Undefeated she came back with another piece of evidence, 'Who trod on Basil, the mad stoat?' she asked triumphantly. The children thought I'd do myself an injury.

From the Guardian, Thursday 3rd April 1969. By Stanley Reynolds:

COMEDY SHOWS

It is a shame that Thames Television "Do Not Adjust Your Set," goes out before six o'clock. This early hour means that only a relative handful of working adults may see this really inventive comedy serious. Of course, the programme is a children's show, but it is totally unlike anything else put out for children. One must compare it to Marty Feldman's "Marty" on BBC-1, Granada's "Psst" or Spike Milligan's "Q 5" or the American "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, both on BBC-2. It is, I think, a better programme than the last three, and just as good as the superb "Marty." It is written by Eric Idler (what a name for a comedy writer) Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, who also appear in the programme along with Denise Coffey and the Bonzo Dog Band, which does marvellous take-offs of the sort of pretentious pop groups that readers of our own Geoffrey Cannon will know about. Yesterday, the show included a new feature, some really clever animated cartoons done by Terry Gilliam. These cartoons were as good as you would get at any hour on television, the equal of cinema cartoons.

Page 15 of the Daily Star, Tuesday 24th January 1995:

TV calf sketch apology

CHANNEL 4 has apologised for a sketch in which a comedian dressed up as a "militant calf" threatened to eat Mr William Waldegrave's children, writes David Millward.

The three-minute monologue by Mark Thomas, broadcast at the height of the controversy over the export of live calves, prompted six separate complaints to the Independent Television Commission.

Mr Waldegrave, the Agriculture Minister, who has four children aged six to 14, did not complain directly about the programme, You Don't Know Me But.

Mr Michael Grade, Channel 4's chief Executive, admitted broadcasting the programme was a mistake and said he understood why some viewers took offence.

But Mr Thomas, 31, said: "If Channel 4 wants to broadcast an apology, it is up to them. Personally, I would not have done so. I don't think I went over the top.

"He is a Cabinet minister and if I upset him, I think it is entirely fair."

Page 15 of the Daily Star, Friday 29th March 1996:

MARK LOSES TV'S £10,000 ON A NAG
EXCLUSIVE by JERRY LAWTON

TELLY bosses were trying to see the funny side after wacky comic Mark Thomas blew his show's entire £10,000 budget on a HORSE RACE!

He was given the cash by Channel 4 to produce the last show in the series The Mark Thomas Comedy Product. But in the end madcap Mark was forced to film tonight's episode in his living room.

Mark spent £1,500 sponsoring a race at Doncaster, South Yorks. Then he bet the remaining £8,500 on the 14-1 shot Rebel Country, but lost the lot when it trailed in eleventh. A C4 spokesman said: "This series is supposed to be radical, and you can't get much radical than blowing all the money on a horse race."

Page 9 of the Daily Mail, Tuesday 5th December 1995:

ONE OF OUR TOP COMEDY WRITERS LAMENTS THE BAD LANGUAGE OF TODAY'S TV COMICS
When did you ever hear Eric and Ernie swear?
by EDDIE BRABEN

THE Morecambe and Wise show was the most popular light-entertainment programme of its day and I wrote for them for 14 years. A recent repeat still drew huge audience figures.

But in all that time, and in all those sketches, I only used the word 'bloody' once. The situation was this. Eric had taken Ernie to meet his Mum and Dad. After a while, Eric said: 'I'm gong now.' His dad said, 'Hoo-bloody-rah.' He was pretending to be a very hard man.

But then the father said: 'I'm off to work now, anyway,' went into the other room, and came out dressed as a vicar. So there was a very good reason for using that word, and I never did it again.

I turn on the television now and I wonder what on earth is happening. Comedy shows are littered with swearing. Sometimes you can barely make out the joke for the bad language.

Even the Comedy Awards at the weekend, humour's great night of the year, was ruined because so many of the stars resorted to dirty talk - like Martin Clunes, who lived up to his hit show's title Men Behaving Badly by blurting out the f-word.

A four-letter word can never make an unfunny line funny, and every night these comedians prove my point. I look back and think: Did you ever hear Tommy Cooper swear? Or Ken Dodd? Or Morecambe and Wise? And the answer is: Of course not.

Sometimes the older comedians were smutty - British humour has always had that element - but they were never offensive. These days some comedy shows are downright repellent. You watch them for a while and you're left with a nasty taste in the mouth.

I've thought a lot about how things have changed, and the one thing I keep coming back to is warmth. Good comedy leaves you glowing. It has an element of fantasy and a large dollop of humanity, and they are what lift you out of the gloom.

AS A CHILD I used to listen to Arthur Askey on the wireless, and even before I could understand the jokes I knew that he was this happy, jolly man who made people laugh. At the end of the show I'd feel a glow.

Throughout my career I've always striven to reproduce that feeling - but many new writers have no idea that that's what it's about. They write cold, hard humour for cold, hard comedians. But without a bit of compassion, that kind of dry, cynical wit will never really make people laugh. Go backstage with Eric and Ernie and it was clear that it wasn't just respect they had for one another - there was real love. When they got in front of the cameras the audience could see that, and they liked it. It was a sort of love affair.

The problem is that modern writers of comedy have never really served their apprenticeship. They have leapt straight into television and barely know what works before a live audience.

I was lucky. I caught the last of the music halls and sold my first gag to Charlie Chester for 2s 6d (12½p). It went like this: 'When Hopalong Cassidy was a baby his mother always knew he would be a great cowboy because he had a ten-gallon nappy.' I'd written 100 jokes for him, but that was the only one he took. After that I wrote for Ken Dodd, and then I moved to the Morecambe and Wise show.

I was the sole writer for Eric and Ernie; the sole responsibility rested on my shoulders and I wanted my stamp all over it. I think that's very important. But I also took the blame. I watched the Russ Abbot show recently, and at the end about 16 writers were mentioned. No wonder the jokes weren't very good.

WHEN a writer hits a run he'll think: 'Never mind, there are 15 others who'll get it right instead.' But the other 15 thinking the same thing. So at the end of the day you have weak jokes and a sort of mongrel product with no real identity. It's not entirely the writers' fault. There are too many get-out clauses and you need pressure to write really well.

Take canned laughter. I'm not saying there wasn't any in the Sixties, but the Morecambe and Wise show never used it. Nowadays, the writers probably never know when the material is no good but think: 'Thank heavens for the laughter machine.' Sometimes you'll hear laughter when there hasn't even been a joke.

If you really want to understand where things have gone wrong, you have to go back to shows like Dad's Army and Steptoe And Son. There you had all the classic ingredients: great situations, clear conflicts, and brilliantly drawn characters.

They were very different. Dad's Army had a very gentle humour with no hate and no violence. There was a fantasy element - these men were in their own little world - but it's as funny today as it was then. And I'm sure we'll still be laughing in another 20 years' time. Steptoe And Son had animosity right the way through, with the father and son bickering at one another all day. But underneath you knew they loved each other. If you'd thought they really hated each other, you'd never have wanted to watched.

When Last Of The Summer Wine first appeared I had high hopes. Again there was the element of fantasy, and the characters were wonderfully drawn. But somehow it lost the plot. The situations became unconvincing, and the whole show became contrived.

The same had happened with Keeping Up Appearances. It stretches the imagination too far. No man could stand that Hyacinth Bucket woman, and I can't believe that everyone would go in fear of her. Someone would put her in her place.

When you watch these shows you, think, 'Who decides? Who decrees that this is funny?'

PERHAPS somewhere, in some darkened room, there's a genius that television chiefs consult, a man who really knows what's what. But I don't think so.

In my day there was Bill Cotton at the BBC. He could make decisions because he'd been brought up in music hall. His father played all the variety theatres with his band and he'd been out there on the battlefield.

I'm not sure that some people who commission comedy now have even produced a TV show. No wonder they keep on showing The Brittas Empire, which makes me scream - but not with laughter.

I wouldn't slam all comedy shows. Only Fools And Horses was superb and, unlike the critics, I am enjoying The Thin Blue Line, which goes out Monday nights. There is a warmth and a quirkiness about it that could make it a real winner.

We should go back to light entertainment and only have stand-up comedy and sitcoms if they really are funny. The new Morecambe and Wises or Tommy Coopers are out there and will battle through.

What we must not do is allow filth and bad language to take over. If you give audiences something that is bad for long enough, they'll accept it. Have we reached that stage yet? I hope not.

From News of the World, Sunday 20th March 1977:

Oops! It's the big Blooper Show

THEY'RE the funniest film clips you've never seen - the clangers that end up on the cutting room floor during the making of TV shows, commercials and movies.

And some of the best are to be screened soon in an ITV programme called It'll Be All Right On the Night.

The hour-long collection of "bloopers," as they're known in the trade, promises to be far funnier than many so-called comedies.

It includes a snippet from the film The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, in which Goldie Hawn has to fire a rifle. Ten times it fails to go off - and ten times she snaps out a four-letter word.

A clip from a London Weekend programme shows a girl singer carrying on bravely through her number while her scanty costume keeps slipping revealingly.

In a piece from ATV's Space 1999, one of the stars walks backwards across the set and trips over a "dead" actor.

And there's part of a Harlech TV talk show in which the scenery falls down.

But clangers dropped in news and current affairs programmes will not be shown. It was decided that they might affect the programmes' credibility.

From the Sun, Saturday 27th August 1977:

What A Clanger
Excuse me, your slip will soon be showing
By TIM EWBANK

STAND by for the great screen blunder show! Starring dozens of your top telly and film favourites - at their very worst.

For top stars like Peter Sellers, Roger Moore, Goldie Hawn, George Segal, Bruce Forsyth, John Thaw and Denis Waterman have all agreed to allow their film mistakes to be shown on television.

The awful slip-ups that had the directors cursing will be screened next month in a show comprised entirely of clangers that ended up on the cutting room floor.

The celluloid disasters have been put together for the ITV show, It'll Be Alright On The Night.

Among the prize blunders are...

■ JOHN THAW, the Sweeney star, during filming of a chase sequence, runs towards the camera and trips over a kerb.

■ HENRY COOPER in a TV commercial. Britain's ex-heavyweight boxing champ runs through some woods with former Olympic hurdling champion David Hemery.

Name

He turns to talk to Hemery - and can't remember his name!

■ ROGER MOORE in the film That Lucky Touch. Moore tried to unlock a door in a tense scene.

As he strains against the door, he says: "I should have learned my lines before I got here."

■ PETER SELLERS in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Several times he tries to film a sequence where he grabs another actor by the tie across a desk. Each time Sellers dissolves into fits of giggles.

■ BRUCE FORSYTH in Thames TV's Bruce And A Hundred Girls. Forsyth is filming a sketch in a mock kitchen.

Match

It collapses around him.

■ And an un-named actor in a war film tries to light his co-star's cigarette. By mistake, he holds the match to the man's nose.

Other programmes to get here-are-the-blunders treatment are Space 1999, Yes Honestly, Gunsmoke, and Star Trek.

There are several from The Waltons, including Richard Thomas as John-Boy getting his lines mixed up and shouting a very rude word.

London Weekend Television, who made the programme, had to obtain permission from every actor involved.

Producer Paul Smith, 30, says: "They have all been really good sports.

"It is very noble of them to agree to let us show their faults.

"We also had to get permission from the film and TV companies. Some said No, but mostly they were very helpful, especially in America."

Many of the film clips came from private collectors.

Others are from reels of film compiled by editors and cameramen for a film crew's amusement at the end of the making of a movie or TV series.

From the Birmingham Evening Mail, 8th May 1978:

It's all right to screen clangers, says ATV
from STAFFORD HILDRED in Montreux

ATV has lifted its ban on TV mistakes being screened on Denis Norden's entertaining collection from the cutting room floor, "It'll Be All Right On The Night."

Delegates at the Golden Rose of Montreux television light entertainment contest last night laughed throughout the programme, which is in the non-competitive Hors Concours class.

And afterwards ATV's director of production, Francis Essex, said: "We will certainly contribute to the next show."

ATV refused to allow Norden to include any of its clangers in the original programme. Francis Essex said: "We did not know the shape the show was going to take, but eventually the format turned out to be very acceptable."

The show went out on British TV last year and went straight to the top of the ratings. Producer Paul Smith, whose original idea it was to collect the double-takes, is preparing a sequel to be put together later this year.

He said: "We've got some very funny ATV Today clips and I'm delighted that we'll be able to include some of them. The second show will probably go out in the winter, but we are determined not to do it too often. That would devalue the whole idea."

The use of the ATV material will help the programme makers who had enormous trouble getting the necessary permissions for their first show.

● London Weekend TV has bought the Bette Midler Show, which also features film star Dustin Hoffman, and British TV viewers will see it this summer.

Page 13 of the Sun, Saturday 20th April 1985:

It'll be all RUDE on the night

A BLUE version of It'll Be Alright On The Night is on its way to our screens.

The new, anything-goes show, which includes sex, nudity and four-letter words, was recorded this week for transmission soon by ITV.

Host Denis Norden said the London Weekend show, called It'll Be Alright Late At Night, was "rude and risque".

Among the stars caught with their trousers down or their language out of control are comedian Jim Davidson, quiz show host Max Bygraves and dancer Lionel Blair.

Viewers will be shocked to see shots of the Queen and Prince Philip caught off guard sandwiched in between candid scenes of nudity and swearing.

One highlight shows a couple making love so passionately that the bed collapses beneath them at the crucial moment.

In another scene, a girl is fired from a circus cannon - but loses her outfit.

President and Mrs Reagan are shown looking embarrassedly at a group of stallions - one of which is in a state of sexual excitement.

Another highlight shows a red-faced Dickie Davies, host of ITV's World of Sport, getting his tongue in a twist over the words "Cup soccer".

Norden said: "I call this an unbuttoned version of the earlier shows. Since the earlier shows were a great favourite with children, we had to be ultra careful. With a late night version, we can afford to relax a bit."

From the Sun, Saturday 8th February 1975:

Secret Plot by the Potty Pirates
Fun TV will replace BBC!
By CHRIS KENWORTHY

A NEW comedy series which threatens to be as funny and outrageous as Monty Python's Flying Circus has been made by the BBC.

It's called Rutland Weekend Television and its mastering is 31-year-old Eric Idle, of the original Python team.

He wrote it. He stars in it. And a lot of the inspired lunacy that was a feature of the Python programmes has gone into it.

The idea of the show is that when the BBC shits down, the Rutland Weekend TV "pirates" station opens up.

Nerves

This week, the last of the six half-hour shows was finished. The series is likely to be seen later this year on BBC 2.

But nobody at the BBC is keen to talk openly about the series. It seems there has been a bout of executive nerves about it. Just the way there was over the Monty Python show.

Well - what have they got to be nervous about?

A technician connected with the series told me:

"Rutland Weekend TV will, we hope, be just about the funniest network in the world.

"And the worst - everything it does is awful, because it's so cheap and incompetent.'

Hmm ...

Drastic

"We aimed at taking to a logical conclusion what could happen to the BBC, if it was compelled to make drastic economies.

Ah - politics!

"Whether it will actually give offence," the technician went on, "depends on the kind of person you are.

"For instance, we show vicars and bishops in funny situations."

Oh dear ...

"In another," the technician said, "we show politicians being given lessons in television deportment.

"Which might upset some politicians and their supporters."

It might, indeed.

And since the BBC have had plenty of clashes with thin-skinned political people, that could be the main reason why everybody is making such a secret of the new venture.

Why Rutland Weekend Television?

Rutland used to be Britain's smallest county. Then it disappeared off the map altogether.

Which could make it a safer target for anything that Idle plans to do with its "television service."

Each show will include a song spot by Neil Innes, 29-year-old former member of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Other members of the cast will include Wanda Ventham, who starred in The Lotus Eaters and David Battley - the undertaker's gormless assistant in the comedy series That's Your Funeral.

Wanda Ventham, 35, told me: "I don't see any reason for worries about the programme."

The BBC say: "Yes, we are laughing at it behind our hands.

"It really is very funny."

Just as long as we're all allowed to share the joke.

From the Daily Mail, Wednesday 14th May 1975:

Rutland is definitely not amused

THEY don't like the BBC's new Monty Python-type programme up in Rutland.

Rutland Weekend Television, written by Python man Eric Idle, had its debut on BBC 2 on Monday night.

Scenes included people disappearing under priests' clothing and a male pop singer wth the figure of a naked pregnant woman.

'An insult to the fair name of Rutland,' was a typical response yesterday.

Foremost among the protesters were three former chairmen of the urban council of Oakham, the market town in the centre of Rutland.

Rubbish

Mr Herrick Watchorn said: 'It was absolute tripe.'

Mrs Winifred Clark described the show as 'a load of rubbish with disgusting language and pictures.' She hoped that people in other parts of the country would not associate Rutland with the kind of thinking behind the programme.

Mr Bill Steele said: 'It was pathetic, in bad taste and should never have been linked with the name of Rutland,' he said.

A BBC spokesman said: 'It is an extremely silly programme and we hope no one will take it too seriously.'

● Rutland used to be Britain's smallest county. Now it's just a part of Leicestershire.

From the Daily Express, Friday 17th March 1978. By David Wigg:

ROLLING Stone Mick Jagger is to appear in a new TV show - sending up The Beatles.

The show is called "All you Need is Cash" and stars a group called The Rutles.

Like the Beatles, they have mop-style haircuts and wear the same round-collared jackets of the sixties.

The 90-minute musical comedy, which also stars Mick's wife Bianca, George Harrison, Paul Simon and fellow Stone Ronnie Wood, will be screened on B.B.C.2 on Easter Monday.

The show has been masterminded by Monty Python star Eric Idle. He plays one of the Rutles with another Python name, Neil Innes.

There are songs performed by The Rutles that have a Beatle ring about their titles - like "Hold My Hand," "With A Girl Like You" and "Ouch!"

With tongue-in-cheek humour the story states the meteoric rise to "excess" of the Rutles.

One of the funniest sequences is when former Beatle George Harrison is seen in the streets disguised as a greying interviewer.

Mick Jagger is asked why as thought The Rutles broke up? He replies: "Women. Just women getting in the way, Cherchez la femme you know."

The show is a bundle of laughs. All you need is to be old enough to remember...

From Time Out, 24th to 30th March 1978:

Beatles Burlesque

An expensive, comic resurrection of The Beatles appears on BBC-TV on Easter Monday. John Collis previews

To paraphrase Woody Allen, Eric Idle had an idea and managed to find the financial backing to turn it into a concept. The idea was to parody The Beatles, in an episode of 'Rutland Weekend Television', Idle's BBC series. In collaboration with that expert of musical pastiche, Neil Innes, the sketch was developed on the American comedy show 'Saturday Night Live', and now arrives as a fully-fledged package: an elaborately-garnished record album and a TV documentary, featuring the rise and fall of The Rutles.

There is really only one gag in the film 'All You Need is Cash', but while the comic philosophers sort out whether there are three or 12 basic jokes, it's a good enough gag to be going on with. It simply involves recognising which public icon of The Beatles' career is being re-created; the laughs come from the extraordinary accuracy of the pastiche, combined with a sudden nostalgic charge prompted by memories of the real thing. In spite of the Pythonesque distortations, that is the Fab Four (now transformed into the Prefab Four) appearing on BBC-TV, arriving in America for the first time, recording 'All You Need Is Love', reacting to Epstein's suicide.

The whole thing is bound together by Idle's familiar but always welcome TV interviewer persona who stands on drab streets outside theatres and in the cellars which are all that remain of The Rutles' myth. He does not seem to have spoken to everyone, though they are now sadly aged, who had any part in the career of The Rutles. At times the in-jokes become delightfully convoluted.

George Harrison lays a TV interviewer who talks to Michael Palin, playing press-officer Derek Taylor under the pseudonym Eric Manchester, about the idealistic naivete of Apple. Meanwhile the Apple building is ransacked behind them. Harrison is the only Beatle to take part in the farce, though Mick Jagger reminisces splendidly about the long-gone rivalry between The Stones and The Rutles.

As a sound-track to the film, Neil Innes' words and music are an integral part of the joke. His music parodies sometimes refer to specific songs, sometimes to a stage in the development of one of The Beatles. They are invariably spot-on, but as a record album they need the support of the third element in the package, the album art-work. Without this, the purely-aural joke would soon wear thin.

Sometimes the metaphor is a little obvious; for example, The Beatles' much-publicised drug-taking is transformed into a penchant for tea. But 'Leggy' Mountbatten, bizarrely representing Epstein, is a masterpiece. At the point where 'Leggy' recognises that his hold over 'his boys' is weakening, and while they sit at the feet of Surrey mystic Arthur Sultan, he is overcome by a fit of depression. Lonely, and unable to reach anyone on the phone, he emigrates to Australia. The shot of the ridiculous 'Leggy', standing at the window with the curtains billowing around him, is at once hilarious, cruel, and touching. 'All You Need Is Cash' is the most extravagant, the funniest, and with any luck the last, indulgence in nostalgia for the '60s.

'All You Need Is Cash' is aired on BBC 2, 8.45, March 27.

From the Daily Mail, Thursday 28th March 1974:

Clouseau on TV - by Sellers

PETER SELLERS is planning to make his first TV series - based on his screen role as the world's worst policeman, Inspector Clouseau.

Sellers, who made the accident-prone detective as famous as his Parisian Surete rival Maigret through two films - 'The Pink Panther' and 'A Shot In The Dark,' has discussed the series with Sir Lew Grade, chairman of ATV.

A pilot show is to directed by Blake Edwards, who made the Clouseau films, has already been written.

The series would probably consist of 28 episodes of 60 minutes each, and could cost £500,000.

It would undoubtedly have enormous appeal in America, which is why Sir Lew, noted for his flair at selling TV shows to the States, was initially attracted to the project.

A spokesman for Sellers said: 'Peter is very excited about the possibility of playing Closeau again. It's one of his favourite characters. So far negotiations are progressing very satisfactorily.'

'The Pink Panther,' which also starred David Niven and Claudia Cardinale was released in 1964. Sellers stepped into the role at the last moment after Peter Ustinov walked out following a script row.

Sellers said 'Closeau is one of those lovable characters that actors love to do. He's comic and gives so much room for individual interpretation. I love him.'

From the Sunday Mirror, Sunday 2nd July 1978:

It's no go for the Goebbels show

THE new scriptwriting partnership of Johnny Speight and Ray Galton has suffered a set-back.

B B C-TV has turned down their comedy series, Goebbels' Diaries.

This would have been the first T V product from Johnny (of Till Death Us Do Part fame) and Ray (who recently split with co-writer Alan Simpson after a long partnership which produced shows like Hancock's Half Hour).

Says Johnny: "When Jimmy Gilbert, the B B C-TV's head of light entertainment, read the script we gave him on Goebbels' Diaries, he said: 'It's fearfully funny, but no way can we do it on T V.

"'If I saw it in the theatre I'd probably fall off the seat laughing, but it goes too far to allow it on the air.'

"I suppose Jimmy has a point," says Speight. "Although I can't understand the reasoning.

"I know people are worried about Nazi revivalism, but comedy can make a serious comment.

"You can do real damage to an evil cause by making fun of it.

"In Goebbels' Diaries, we have put in all those marvellous songs of the period which offer an oblique comment.

"We have Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, pacing up and down in his bunker after heavy bombings. On the radio the young Frank Sinatra is singing I Didn't Sleep A Wink Last Night.

"In comes Hitler screaming: 'He should complain. Nobody in the whole of Germany slept a wink last wink.'

"Sure, Goebbels' Diaries might shock some people but so did Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part.

"We'll probably put Goebbels' Diaries into the theatre," said Johnny.

"And we've been commissioned by ATV to write a pilot for a new series about a suburban police force. This is a big mickey-take of series like Kojak. The Sweeney and Starsky And Hutch.

"Don't worry about us - it's all happening, although we're not going to write pap for anybody or anything."

From the Sun, page 14, 12th May 1982:

ITV PLAN A SATIRE FUN SHOW

ITV is planning a new LIVE satire show on the lines of the BBC's hit series Not The Nine O'Clock News.

The programme is called QWERT - after the first five letters on a typewriter - and will feature four presenters, including a girl.

Writers Colin Bostock-Smith and Laurie Rowley have already been recruited from the NTNON team.

The show is part of a new package of light entertainment planned by ITV next year.

I have it on reliable authority that this show became Channel Four's Who Dares Wins.

The Daily Star, Friday 11th January 1985:

MORE PORRIDGE ON THE WAY...
By PAT CODD

THE BBC are planning a new series of Ronnie Barker's top-rated TV comedy, Porridge.

A repeat of the 1975 show was such a success at Christmas it beat Raiders of the Lost Ark in the ratings.

It attracted 19.36 million viewers compared to the American film's 19.33 million.

In Porridge, Barker plays an incorrigible old lag doing time in prison.

BBC 1 boss Michael Grade said yesterday:

"After the Christmas success we have discussed doing more Porridge with Ronnie.

"Ronnie and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais would love to do more episodes."

Mr. Grade refuted ITV claims that they had won the Christmas ratings battle.

Page 5 of the Sun, Thursday 2nd May 1988:

BLACKADDER BEN IN QUEEN RUMPUS
By GARY BUSHELL

LEFTIE comic Ben Elton has outraged BBC bosses with plans for a Blackadder series based on a bastard son...of the Queen.

TV insiders yesterday revealed that Beeb chiefs are "seriously concerned" about the bad-taste plot which would star Rowan Atkinson as the "Royal bastard".

Co-writer Ben, 30, scrapped plans to call next year's series Bat Adder based on Batman in favour of the new storyline.

A friend said: "Ben would be the first to admit he doesn't like royalty, but he doesn't think this is particularly over the top."

Page 25 of Today, Monday 26th June 1989:

ITV sinks Carling black comedy slot
by KEVIN O'SULLIVAN

A NEW comedy series has been axed because its stars shot to fame in a TV commercial.

Programme chiefs at first wanted to cash in on the success of Mark Arden and Steve Frost, who play two likely lads in the adverts for Carling Black Label lager.

But they dropped the show after one pilot episode rather than risk it becoming a half-hour plug for the beer giant.

A Thames Television executive says: "Carling would no doubt clamour to get their commercials screened during the programme.

"But other beer companies might shy away and the situation would become too difficult.

"Mark and Steve are a brilliant partnership, but you have to be wary of trying to draw on the success of an advertising campaign."

Arden, famous for his catchphrase "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label", is philosophical about the rejection.

HUMOUR

He says: "It was disappointing but Steve and I don't want to become another Hale and Pace, or be compromised in any way."

But Arden, who does a stand-up routine with Frost on the alternative comedy circuit, does feel that some TV chiefs are out of touch with modern humour.

"Some have latched on to the new breed of comedy, but others are deeply seated in their previous experiences," he says.

"Someone who produced Terry and June 15 years ago is bound to get paranoid when handing out commissions for new stuff today."

Carling's campaign meanwhile has boosted consumption of lager. It has also made instantly recognisable faces out of Arden and Frost - which means the former can even joke about his series' cancellation.

He says: "Maybe Thames shelved it because there wasn't enough money. Or it might simply be because it was rubbish."

Page 3 of Today, Thursday 30th May 1991:

You're just a load of goons
Spike's spitting mad at Blackadder and co
EXCLUSIVE by ANTON RUSH

THE grand old man of British humour, Spike Milligan, yesterday launched a bitter attack on modern comedy stars.

Hit shows like Spitting Image and Black Adder leave the former Goon cold.

He rubbished the crude Spitting Image scripts and added: "I prefer humour that's more abstract - nothing to do with the waist downwards."

Even award-winner Rowan Atkinson did not escape his contempt.

"I was horrified by the coarse sense of humour in Blackadder - sticking celery up people's backsides and all that. I left that kind of humour behind when I was in school."

But Spike gave the latest wave of comedians a grudging "OK".

"Some of them are funny - but the swearing is unbelievable, every second word is a curse."

Spike, 73, who wrote the Seventies cult TV show Q and several best-selling books, has had his confidence shattered by the rejection of his latest project. He said: "It's called Over The Hill and was written for Eric Sykes and myself as two over-the-hill comics trying to get back in.

"The BBC didn't think it was funny, then Thames TV read it and didn't think it was funny. Young people come along, you see, and feel they fire somebody."

Spike, a vegetarian, does 50 laps before breakfast round the pool of his huge house at Rye near the Sussex coast.

But, along with the rejection of his work, a nervous breakdown after the death of his mother last year has had a disastrous effect on his character.

"I used to have the urge to get up and go for a long walk in the morning and now I have to force myself to do that, I force myself to swim every morning in the pool. I'm a forced person.

"I've suffered a personality change and now I haven't got what it takes, it's all come to an end," he added.

Even the memory of his success with the Goons fails to cheer Spike.

"When I see a tethered horse blindfolded and going round and round in circles to turn a wheel I realise I was doing the same thing by writing The Goons.

"But I didn't know any other way to make a living."

To mark the 40th anniversary of the series BBC radio is re-running seven shows this week.

But Spike said: "I expect someone was just sitting around in a meeting and said, 'When is the anniversary of The Goons? Wouldn't it be a jolly good idea to bring some out?'."

Page 3 of the Daily Mirror, Wednesday 6th May 1992:

BENNY SIGNED BIG TV COMEBACK DEAL
By LOUISE FORD

BENNY Hill was signed up for a great TV comeback just eight days before his death, it was revealed last night.

He was thrilled with the deal, and happier than he had been for a long time, said friends.

The comic was shattered when Thames ditched him three years ago - a move that put him into TV exile.

The new contract - with Central - was kept secret because the firm wanted to announce their coup at last week's Montreux TV Festival.

Benny was to have started work almost immediately on two hour-long Christmas specials directed by his pal Dennis Kirkland.

The comedian, who was in and out of hospital from February for heart treatment, signed the deal in his agent's office on April 10.

On April 18 he died in his Teddington flat.

Page 3 of the Daily Star, Wednesday 5th January 1994:

Manuel Switches Channel - ITV Return For Basil Sidekick
EXCLUSIVE by NIGEL PAULEY

FAWLTY Towers waiter Manuel is planning an El of a TV comeback after 15 years.

But the hapless Spanish sidekick from Britain's most awful hotel has ditched Basil...and the Beeb.

The new sitcom Ole! Manuel! - starring 63-year-old Andrew Sachs - will be screened by ITV at a costa £1.5 million.

The wacky waiter from Barcelona soared to fame in the hit series which was a massive money-spinner. But Fawlty Towers creator John Cleese - who played manic hotel boss Basil Fawlty - won't appear in the Yorkshire-Tyne Tees series.

Neither will Prunella Scales, who starred as his shrewish wife Sybil.

There's been no real-life bust-up between the old telly team-mates, though.

In fact Cleese, who killed off the original series after only 13 episodes, has given the new show his backing.

Andrew's son John, whose production company is behind Ole! Manuel!, said: "Manuel will be older - but no wiser.

"He's escaped from the clutches of Basil and Sybil but he's still working in a lowly position in catering and being bullied and generally terrorised."

German-born Andrew has often claimed Manuel blighted his telly career.

But he's still earned a nice paella money from commercials and wildlife programmes.

Page 9 of Broadcast, Tuesday 15th March 1994:

C4 raises its sitcom quota
BY SARAH LITTLEJOHN

Channel 4 is seeking to expand its sitcom output and has ordered treatments for two comedies from specialist Hat Trick Productions.

Seamus Cassidy, Channel 4 commissioning editor of entertainment, has narrowed down new ideas for 1995 to six ideas. 'I'll be rebalancing things a bit and changing the emphasis to accommodate more sitcoms,' he said.

Hat Trick sitcoms in development with C4 are Father Ted Crilly, written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews about three Irish priests, and Otherwise You'd Cry, by David Firth about a son looking after his bed-ridden mother.

Other sitcoms under development for Channel 4 include : The Cows, a story of a cow revolution in the 1930s, written by surreal stand-up comic Eddie Izzard, which will be piloted nine months behind schedule in the summer; Captain Butler of the High Seas by Rob Sprackling and John Smith and produced by Humphrey Barclay Productions; and The Horn Beams by Terry Frisbee being developed by Humphrey Barclay, about a family reunion.

Dressing for Breakfast by Stephanie Calman is in development with Warner Sisters. It is a story about women in their late twenties who are under pressure to get married. Just Good Neighbours, by Geoff Rowley, is a sitcom about two next-door neighbours having an affair.

Channel 4 is pressing ahead with programmes for stand-up comedians Lee Evans, Mark Thomas and Mark Lamarr.

Also being negotiated is a second series - of between 20 and 26 episodes - of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.

Page 3 of Mail On Sunday, Sunday 15th June 1997:

No, Minister - it just won't do for Brussels
Yes, Commissioner is turned down by BBC as 'not funny enough'
By Michael Burke

THE antics of Brussels bureaucrats seemed ripe material for a TV comedy...but the BBC failed to see the joke.

So Corporation bosses have turned down a proposed sequel to the highly successful Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister called Yes, Commissioner, it emerged yesterday.

They were decidedly sniffy about hit writer Sir Antony Jay's idea of transplanting the wily and urbane Sir Humphrey Appleby to the heart of Euro indecision-making.

As a spokesman said last night: 'We decided after very careful consideration that Brussels simply did not offer the comic opportunities of Westminster, so we passed on it.'

Beastly

But the rebuff has astonished Sir Antony who declared that whatever the BBC thought, he would still be going ahead with the project.
'Yes, Commissioner will be funny all right,' he said. 'You wait and see.'

Indeed, the BBC might well live to rue its decision. ITV and Sky say they can't wait to see the scripts.

Nigel Hawthorne, who played Sir Humphrey to the late Paul Eddington's Jim Hacker, was also said to be highly enthusiastic.

Apparently, the plan is to lock the Machiavellian mandarin in a new battle of wills - this time with a British Commissioner.

But it could also involve him being beastly to the Germans and offensive to the French.

Sir Antony, knighted by Margaret Thatcher in 1988 for his part in writing the two series with his former partner Jonathan Lynn, is working on the idea with his 38-year-old son Michael.

But last night he was keeping the details close to his chest. 'We don't want to give too much away at this stage because we don't have a broadcaster yet,' he said, 'and we don't want people stealing our ideas.

'I suppose we are now looking for a little bit of encouragement.'

One broadcaster who has been briefed on Sir Antony's plans said: 'Frankly, a lot of people are amazed at the BBC's attitude.

'Perhaps it is that these days the Corporation is a bureaucracy only marginally less labyrinthine than the EU itself - and it has simply lost the ability to spot a good idea handed on a plate.'

He said that if Paul Eddington had lived Sir Antony could have had him losing a General Election and becoming a European Commissioner. In real life that happened to former Labour leader Neil Kinnock who joined Sir Leon Brittan in Brussels.

'The character who does survive and is transferred is Sir Humphrey,' said the broadcaster.

'I understand that initial approaches have been made to Nigel Hawthorne in connection with this and he has responded with enthusiasm. But nothing is signed and sealed yet.

Jokes

'In Yes, Commissioner the central battle of wills is between Sir Humphrey and the British Commissioner whom, naturally, he thwarts at every turn.

'However, on occasions, Sir Humphrey and the British Commissioner will form an alliance to do the dirty on Commissioners from other countries.

'I belive the French will be the butt of a lot of the humour, There will also be a great many jokes made at the expense of the Germans.'

Some observers wonder whether this lack of political correctness could have had a bearing on the BBC's decision.

But a spokesman would only say: 'Certainly, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were brilliantly funny.

'The Jays came to us very early on - but we didn't think Yes, Commissioner had the same potential.'

Sir Antony retorted: 'We think the BBC's wrong. There is plenty of comic potential in Brussels.'