Not Again: Not the Nine O'Clock News

This programme contains some strong language.

In 1979, a strange bunch of people made a TV programme.

They didn't have a clue what they were doing, but that didn't stop them.

They did it their own way and it changed their lives.

It revolutionised comedy.

It was Not The Nine O'Clock News.

It was a show you wanted to watch

'and to be part of it was'

the best time to be alive ever.

Can I put this into some sort of perspective?

When I caught Gerald in '68, he was completely wild.

Wild? I was absolutely livid.

'I was hanging on by my fingernails. What I now realise'

is that so was everyone else.

'We didn't quite realise what we had.'

It was an innocent time and a carefree time -

'all for one and one for all.'

HE SPEAKS GIBBERISH

SPEAKS GIBBERISH

Thank you, Cyril.

I had nothing to lose. I had nothing to lose to.

'I could take off anybody. I just wanted'

to do something funny.

American Express?

That will do nicely, sir. And would you like to rub my tits, too?

# Not The Nine O'Clock, Not The Nine O'Clock

# Not The Nine O'Clock News. #

Abu Ben Achhem, may his tribe increase...

..awoke one night from a deep dream of peace...

..and saw, within the moonlight in his room...

ROWAN TALKS GIBBERISH

'I remember watching it and going, "Where's this going?'

"Hmm? Where's this going?

"Hmm? Where's this going?

"Oh, my God, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life!"

I have no idea why that's the funniest thing ever in my life - please do it again.

The Angel heard and vanished.

-The next night...

-it came again with a great awakening light...

..and showed the names whom God of love had blessed and, lo...

SPEAKS GIBBERISH

SOLEMN CHURCH ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS

It's never too embarrassing to watch.

'The quality of the stuff was pretty good.'

('FOREIGN' ENGLISH) Can I help you, sir?

Yes, I would like some deodorant, please.

Ball or aerosol?

Neither, I want it for my armpits.

It's got a kind of punchiness, which is quite shocking.

You don't quite know where it comes from.

It's somebody telling the truth,

saying, "I love this."

There is a lot to be said in favour of cannabis.

Erm...

Where was I?

You were aware that you were watching something that was

a little bit on the edge - a bit naughty.

I'll have a jar of Keep It Up cream, please.

On second thoughts, make that two jars. I'm feeling a bit randy this week.

Hello.

Tonight, I'm talking to Billy Connolly,

a well-known Scottish comedian.

I regard it as a real feather in my cap and a real landmark

'in my life.'

Wonderful to see you, grovel, grovel, slime and it's great, grovel of you to stop in on your short

-visit to our little country, humble, humble to talk.

-My pleasure.

When I look at clips of it, it looks to me like Thatcher's Britain

making fun of itself.

'If you look at the streets behind where those things are taking place,

'it is a scuzzy, run-down, unhappy country.'

It was a very ugly period. There were riots,

there was a lot of unemployment and anger.

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.

And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Britain was a place of great conflict at that time.

For Constable Savage to come on and make fun

of a policeman, at that point, with those tensions that were going on

'was a very necessary safety valve for society at that time.'

I think that perhaps you're being a little over-zealous.

Which charges do you mean, sir?

For instance, this one.

"Loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing."

Maybe you are not aware of this,

but that is not illegal.

Neither is "smelling of foreign food" an offence.

Are you sure, sir?

It was always a trick of the light,

because it was taken and reviewed

as though it was a satirical programme.

'But actually, a lot of the sketches could have gone out any time, any year, any place.'

Do you have a Biro, please?

Thanks.

'The thing we were trying to avoid being like was Monty Python, on one hand,'

and the Two Ronnies, on the other hand.

-She's very attractive, isn't she?

-Isn't she, yes, isn't she?

-Very attractive.

-Isn't she?

My word, very, very, very attractive.

Yes, woof! What?! Woof!

The Two Ronnies didn't represent the life that we lived.

It was guys in blazers with gold buttons and cravats in cocktail bars.

None of us had ever been in such a place.

It was yokels with three X's on their smocks.

That wasn't our idea of farming - it was one man in a modern tractor.

If the Two Ronnies ever went into a telephone box,

I'm sure they never did, but there would be

'a telephone in there with the telephone directory.

'All the phone boxes we went into were used as lavatories.

'That's what telephone boxes were for in the '70s.'

It is about being in contemporary society,

not just a series of fantasy jokes.

'The sketch about the guy waiting at the petrol station and he's trying

'to fill up his car to exactly £5 and there is a man with a little button.

When it gets to £5, he goes - click.'

You're just laughing yourself sick, it's just wonderful, it's wonderful.

And that what we tried to do with Not The Nine, to surprise ourselves, to astonish ourselves

with ideas we would never have been able to think of on our own.

That is just the kind of bad language and, above all, endless references to parts of the body

that are becoming, by their ceaseless repetition, knob,

in the media. Just part and parcel and pubes of everyday conversation.

-For the past 200 years, the American people have conjoined...

-With each other.

..with each other

-in a great quest for...

-Harmony.

-..harmony...

-Democracy.

-..democracy...

-Freedom.

freedom...

-Cupcakes.

-..cupcakes...

Jonathan, I know these kids.

I've worked in the areas we are talking about - Lambeth, Lewisham -

I know their problems, I know their frustrations, lack of community facilities, I know their parents.

And, in my opinion, Professor Duff suggesting we should cut of their goolies is the only solution.

Absolutely, cut the goolies off. Cut them off.

Well, there we have it.

-Whip off the goolies.

-Expert opinion seems to be in favour of...

Cutting off their goolies!

It all began when BBC radio producer John Lloyd teamed up with Panorama producer Sean Hardie.

Sean knew nothing about comedy and John knew nothing about television, but they still thought it would be

a good idea to make a comedy sketch show for TV.

It started off being called Sacred Cows, that was the BBC's title for it.

And it was designed to be a dissing of all the things you weren't supposed to diss.

BBC NEWS THEME MUSIC

Here is the news.

'There was such a thing as the 9 O'Clock News and it was a staple, it was the nation's fireplace.'

You knew where it was and there it was in the schedule, every weekday.

So the idea of something running on the other side on BBC Two,

opposite it, had real meaning and cultural resonance to everybody in the country.

NEWSCASTER: New Yorkers can find some tabloids on the news stands,

but not their usual papers, The New York Times and the Daily News.

In 1978, there was a strike at the New York Times and a bunch of the journalists

devised a thing called Not The New York Times,

which was an absolutely brilliant,

impeccable spoof - every typeface, every ad.

You wouldn't have known until you went into it. We borrowed that.

But it was a perfect title, Not The Nine O'Clock News, because it told you the time,

which was at 9pm, and it was NOT the Nine O'Clock News, and it was opposite

the Nine O'Clock News on One, so you couldn't really miss where it was.

The star of the show, Rowan Atkinson, had developed his unique style

alongside two of other students at Oxford University.

They'd been a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival

and would go on to conquer the world of comedy and film.

Richard Curtis, the writing genius, would go on to write Four Weddings and a Funeral

and create Blackadder with Rowan Atkinson.

And with musician, Howard Goodall,

would write unforgettable comedy songs for Not the Nine O'Clock News.

I was manning the, you know, theatre, or revue, stall

at the Freshers' Fair at Oxford.

And I remember this very curly-haired chap turning up,

saying, "I do music". And it was Howard.

In my first week at university, I went to the Freshers' Fair.

I had decided that I wanted to be involved as a musician with the Comedy Revue.

So I went to the desk and I said to the guy,

"I'd really like to be involved musically, I don't know how."

We talked for a bit and he said, "Someone will come and see you."

He turned out to be Rowan Atkinson.

That afternoon, Richard Curtis came to see me

and he said, "Me and Rowan are doing a show, like a student revue,

"in three weeks' time in the Oxford Playhouse, would you like to do the music?" "Yes!"

I met Rowan in a, sort of, sketch writing unit,

that was meant to put on a show at the end of a summer term.

And, erm... I thought he was a piece of...

I thought he was a stuffed toy for the first three meetings, he was so quiet.

And he famously has always described me as "being like a cushion",

in that I sat on the chair and I said nothing.

That was our first meeting - I said little, Richard said a great deal.

But when finally we started to submit material, Rowan stood up and did two sketches and was clearly

so much better than all the rest of us put together,

'that I hung on to his coat tails for a decade.'

"Are you mad?"

I asked.

The Oxford Revue was billed as having eight people in it.

By the time we got to see it, there were only two left - Rowan and Richard Curtis.

It was, basically, Rowan doing all the funny bits and Richard being the stooge.

And almost from the first minute of watching this show, you think, "I'm in the presence of a genius".

Sediment?

LAUGHTER

Soda?

LAUGHTER

Tear? Tear?

LAUGHTER

Undermanager?

LAUGHTER

Zob.

LAUGHTER

Undoubtedly, the Edinburgh Fringe was the, sort of, melting pot,

in terms of people seeing me and what I was doing, or what Richard Curtis and I were doing.

I'd seen him in Edinburgh in my first year at university,

I'd gone to the Edinburgh Festival and he did his one-man show there with Howard Goodall doing the music.

Richard Curtis being the other man in the one-man show,

it's famous for not being one man, but of course, it's a one-man show.

I... I mean, it blew my head off. I'd never seen anything

so fantastically funny in my life. I was simply weak with laughter.

We all thought, "Gosh! Wow!"

There is a very interesting and extraordinary idea as a performer.

PIANO PLAYS

LAUGHTER

PIANO PLAYS RAPIDLY

APPLAUSE

He was a very closed down, eccentric person, really.

Quite lonely-looking, interested in machines and cars and quite shy, quite shy.

I have a lot of fits of depression and lack of satisfaction.

But they are nearly all associated with the entertainment industry

and actually, my other interests in life, silly things, but things I happen to enjoy doing

a fantastic amount, like electronics, like driving trucks, are very simple.

The trouble with show business is that what you're doing is you are

exposing yourself entirely and your heart and soul is being torn out of you and shown to millions of people.

Rowan Atkinson was just the right man for John Lloyd's new show,

but the nerdy electrical engineering student from Newcastle

turned up with one of the most powerful agents in show business, the legendary Richard Armitage.

He came in with his agent, who was a very classic old-fashioned agent.

He looked the part.

He was squat, enormously upper-class, smoked cigars. He once said to me,

POSH ACCENT: "I have all my combs made up by a little man in Geneva.

"I find only the Swiss know how to make a really good comb."

This is the man you were dealing with. Incredibly powerful.

John Cleese's agent. He represented David Frost.

Most powerful agent in light entertainment then.

And he brought his boy in, Rowan, the young star.

They clearly thought this was going to be The Rowan Atkinson Show.

BBC management, in those days, was very powerful in its own right and they were very sure of themselves.

Although, in the politest way, they said,

"This isn't going to be The Rowan Atkinson Show and here's our reasoning."

"We want to get other talented people and put them around Rowan,

"so that if he's good, he'll shine by comparison,

"and they'll support him - he won't have to carry the whole weight or use up the material nearly so fast."

And to give Richard and Rowan credit, they saw the point of that.

And they bought into it. And the rest is history.

Not the Nine O'Clock News had found its shining star.

A weird haircut on another Oxford student was the next thing to catch John Lloyd's eye.

We were all very scared of Mel. He appeared to be so confident.

Anybody walking around with that haircut, you think, must know something we don't.

Does it not say in the good book, "Thou shalt part thy hair in the way of the Lord"?

"And thou shalt blow-dry thy fringe and brush the layered sides in tantalising waves to accentuate

"the auburn highlights of the crown, so shall ye." Who did this for you, then?

Essentially in my second year at Oxford, I started to grow it

absurdly long for a person

whose hair is so thin as mine was.

So I just kept it, because it was a, sort of, sign.

It's that pathetic, I just felt as though, "Hey, this is me.

"This is my hair and I'm proud of it."

I don't even remember noticing Mel Smith's hair.

I remember once we were on location, seeing him in his underpants.

And that was really weird.

We all liked Mel. Mel was quite a figure.

He was a sort of...

I think he had a car.

This was 1979.

He actually had a car, he actually drove himself around town.

We were all in our twenties. I had a bicycle.

John remembered a very bad sketch I'd done as part of the Oxford Revue.

It was doing a nonsense version of Modern Major General from Gilbert & Sullivan -

"I am the very diddle of a daddle-diddle..."

You know, "Widdle, baggle, boggle. doggle..." It was just nonsense.

And I didn't know what I was doing at the time,

but it was bizarre to find out that John Lloyd thought, "That's my man!"

Everyone, hands in the air! In the air! Go on, keep 'em up!

All right, nobody moves, nobody gets hurt, all right?

Three ten-penny stamps, please.

Mel Smith and his crazy hair boarded the Nine O'Clock train to Comedy Town.

MUSIC: Theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus

You're on television, aren't you?

Yes, yes.

ALL: Yes, yes!

Up to this point, sketch comedy had been dominated by the Monty Python style of surreal acting.

If they were to make their mark, this new show would have to do "something completely different".

Not The Nine O'Clock News was definitively, negatively influenced by Monty Python.

So, we... The thing we took particular joy in was

naturalistic performances, because the Python style had been so high.

When John Lloyd asked me to do the programme with him, in some strange uppity way,

even though I needed the money, "£100 a programme, I'll have that", I was very concerned that we just

didn't end up doing daft women in screechy voices, that kind of stuff.

One of the big differences was that it was messier.

We wanted the dialogue to be much more realistic.

In a way, more realistic than a drama, to sound much more like

a television discussion, with broken sentences and people going "um" and "er" and so forth.

That was very much something that Mel Smith brought to the programme.

This week we're going to take a look at origami, aren't we, Rowan?

That's right, Mel - the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding.

I remember lots of the sketches that we did together, like the origami sketch,

in which we were just being very flat and very, sort of,

naturalistic to camera, which is something I'd never done,

because even then I tended to do characters that were rather extreme -

either extremely old or extremely silly or extremely young or...

facially very active.

Whereas with Mel, I felt this wonderful sort of peace.

-I'll just start here.

-Mel's just starting...

You can use absolutely any kind of...

any kind of paper for this. You can use...

This is an old Radio Times.

-This is an old...

-Just any old bit of paper.

-And I'm just folding, you see, like this.

-Folding it again, over.

-It's very, very simple.

-It's...

It's an ancient Japanese art dating from centuries... centuries ago.

Now if I make a tear like this...

And another tear like THAT...

Now you can do this on your own, but if there are two of you,

then it probably... We'll just have a pull there.

That's it.

And you see, there, there we have a very nice hat.

Here's a...

Here's a little bracelet.

And... And here we have a nice pair of earrings.

And, of course, a moustache.

'Some of the naturalism'

was wonderful. I've got a particular favourite sketch,

which was Rowan and Mel pretending to be identical twins.

And you've never seen two people who look less like it!

They're just divine. They're on Nationwide.

And just the little nervous laughter of two completely ordinary guys

who've found themselves on this show.

In the studio now are two men who will tell us what it's like

to suffer the pain and heartache of being identical twins.

Right, now let's see if I can get it right. I've been trying to sort it out all afternoon.

-Brian, yes?

-No. David, David. Sorry.

Sorry. You'll have to wear badges or something.

Don't you find it a problem continually being mistaken for each other?

Yeah. Yeah, we do, I guess.

But we have a lot of laughs, as well, don't we?

-Oh, I think so. Very much so.

-A very, very funny thing happened.

We got on a tube and we swapped tickets and the conductor didn't even notice.

With a young team new to television, they needed at least one person with experience.

And that came in the shape of the maverick, Chris Langham.

PHONE RINGS

I thought I told you never to call me here!

PHONE RINGS

That's better... Good evening.

'Chris was easily the most'

experienced person we had, going into the main series.

'He'd worked with very good people and understood the mechanics of comedy very well.

'He knew how timing and all that kind of thing worked, in a way.'

Chris Langham was very important to holding the first series together,

because he knew exactly what he was doing.

He'd written for Spike Milligan, done stuff with the Pythons and really knew his way round.

I'd seen him being brilliant at the Edinburgh Fringe,

two or three years before. He was extraordinary.

-Are you talkin' to me?

-Anticipating the moment of attack...

-Not yet!

-Sorry.

Exploit your opponent's momentum,

converting a trip and a throw out of his attack.

Let's see what that really looks like.

All this show needed now was a funny woman to complete the line-up.

Easier said than done.

There were very few women doing that kind of performing comedy.

We talked to Victoria Wood.

We talked to Susan George, of all people, who wanted to be in the show.

Allison Steadman we offered it to and didn't want to do it.

It was very hard to find people.

The funny woman they were looking for was making people laugh all over London.

You just had to go to the right party.

For some reason I found myself invited to a Sunday afternoon party with some friends in London,

telling silly stories in my broad Australian accent.

Being whatever I was, 26,

I spent the entire party machinating to try to get introduced to this girl,

who was extraordinary. I mean, she was the most luminous person you've ever seen -

perfect figure and a fantastic smile.

I saw her across the room and just worked my way around to her.

"Hello, would you like to be on television, my dear?"

And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, he just wants to get in my pants."

And he asked me for my phone number and I gave him my phone number,

because I actually thought he was quite cute.

Then he did, surprise, surprise, call me up about work and it was just work.

He called me into the BBC and I auditioned for him and Sean Hardie.

Over the last 10 years, the Japanese have made huge strides

in micro-technology, leaving Europe far behind.

That is, until now.

Because now a British company has come up with a micro-processor which is comparably effective.

The chip, which is derived from an American design, is silicone-based.

It represents the single greatest

British advance in micro-technology this century.

But, you see, it's not as small as the Japanese model.

You know, the whole thing was a kind of junior common room student Oxbridgey type thing.

And actually having Pamela, who was very much not part of that world,

was a good thing and it made it much more contemporary and universal in its appeal.

# I was into yin and yang and healthy yoga

# Ginseng and caraway seeds and being a non smoker

# My cauliflower quiches were better than the bought ones

# And I walked bigger than two short ones... #

'When Pamela exploded onto the scene,'

she was very attractive. She was very sexy.

And for the first time, you saw

'a sexy, attractive woman being funny.'

-# La-la la la

-La-la-la-la la-la... #

Pamela had balls and so I started writing for her.

She wasn't just 'the pretty one' - though she was! -

but she was really funny.

'She kind of broke the mould a bit of being really attractive, but she could do it.'

That is great. OK, OK, give me that one again.

Yeah. Oh, these are going to look really good. We're nearly there, OK?

OK, now give me that big one. Yeah, OK, got it, yeah.

The search was over. Here they were.

It was all looking good.

Sort of.

We had this famous lunch

and I'm sitting there thinking,

"I can't imagine what I've done here, I've made the most horrible mistake."

At the lunch were Sean Hardie, a very bright current affairs director who'd never worked in comedy,

Rowan Atkinson, a painfully shy electronic engineer from Newcastle, hardly said a word through lunch,

Mel Smith, the man with the hedgey haircut, the strange haircut,

Chris Langham, this sort of haunted looking somebody who looked like he took a lot of stuff in the evenings,

and Pamela Stephenson, this kind of goddess, unbelievably pretty. And me. And I'm thinking,

"Apart from a skip out of the back of Madame Tussauds,

I can't think of a more weird collection.

Just to look at them. It was the most uncomfortable lunch.

We had absolutely nothing to say to each other.

And rehearsals started a couple of days later.

And it was very, very awkward, indeed.

The oddball collection of people that was Not The Nine O'Clock News

hit our screens on October 16, 1979.

I am God!

The Father Almighty!

Why don't you piss off!

What do you like doing in your spare time?

Screwing.

This is the biggest load of cock I've ever seen.

Have you... Have you got something about...

about that long?

Sort of...that thick?

Made of wax?

-Yeah.

-You'd better light it then - we're cutting your electricity off.

We had the most bizarre things in the first series.

Like we had four or five people sit inside a gigantic mouth.

I remember that. I mean, why, I've got no idea.

I think it was our way of doing topicality or something, what's on everyone's lips.

'They built this gigantic mouth with the four of us sitting in it,

'trying to be satirical. It was appalling.'

Right, it's this big one at the front, is it?

Beats working for Linda Lovelace, eh?

Look, could we get on, please?

We must think of something to say.

'It was a completely awful idea.

'But we tried not to be like The Two Ronnies.'

After two weeks we dropped it, burned the set and had two people

at a desk and it worked much better.

Back home again and Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, spent the weekend

quietly relaxing at Chequers and reading fan mail.

LAUGHTER

The rail dispute - and in a magnificent show of defiance,

British Rail chief, Sir Peter Parker, ignored an ASLEF picket line

yesterday and drove out a train himself.

LAUGHTER

Behind a desk, you got a lot on your side.

You really have, it's like 'this is official'.

No matter how daft the thing you are about to say is, it places it.

'Of course, that gave it its link back to what the real Nine O'Clock News would be like.'

Following his speech to the House of Commons

on the outcome of the embassy siege, Mr William Whitelaw has been admitted to hospital for medical checks.

Doctors are concerned about the size of his head.

LAUGHTER

Pamela Stephenson had found her place in the show and never looked back.

'She was originally hired'

as just a cool actress.

Then she started doing these weird voices and you'd think, "She is a bit nuts.

"What's that weird voice she's doing now as the newsreader?"

You think, "Where have I heard that before?"

You shut your eyes and, my God, it's Angela Rippon!

The West German Chancellor, Her-r-r Schmidt, has announced measures designed to bring full employment

to Europe, create closer ties between the Allies and provide a welcome slap in the face for Russian expansionism.

He's invaded Czechoslovakia.

I was asked to be a generic newsreader.

But I'd hardly heard any newsreaders.

The only one I'd really heard was Angela Rippon,

so when I started doing a newsreader, it sounded like Angela.

'And then, we decided to really go for it and then I studied her

'and tried to make myself look like her.'

There!

After she has finished a sentence,

She looks down and she goes, "Foo",

then she goes, "dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah".

So, I just took it a little bit further.

So instead of guerrilla, it was ger-rilla.

Another of Mr Mugabe's ger-rilla commanders has been refused service

in a Salisbury hotel for not wearing a tie.

The manager was later sacked for not wearing a head.

I loved the way that she would push her impersonations

to a slightly grotesque place. They were very funny.

I think, didn't she hold Jan Leeming's hands like that?

She had the hands like that,

and then earrings got bigger and bigger and bigger.

But the hands, I thought, "I don't sit like that."

Golf. And there was excitement

at the Harrogate and District Pro-Am tournament yesterday,

when a competitor insisted on playing the ball

after the umpire had declared it out of bounds.

LAUGHTER

She got the overall impression. She got the hair, obviously,

and the earrings, well, that was a touch of genius.

MUSIC AND LAUGHTER

Each week, the show took real TV news film - and ripped it apart.

It was then put back together to look like

no news you'd ever seen before.

(Ahem. It's God bless America, Mr President.)

God bless America.

LAUGHTER

VIOLIN SCREECHES

What I wanted to do was say to people, things are not always as they appear to be.

And that's why we messed with news film and things like that,

to tell people just to look at things from another angle.

It was fun to think that nobody is that clever,

nobody is that beyond criticism.

DAVID DIMBLEBY: Lord Great Chamberlain

with his white staff...

gives the sign for the procession to turn

and for

the fanfare from the trumpeters.

BIG BAND MUSIC

That's such an important part of what Not The Nine O'Clock News became,

that notion of funny things against real footage.

People looked forward to those elements in the show every week.

CREAKING

The first series was hit and miss and the TV critics didn't like it.

I remember reading reviews at the end of the first series, which said, "Nice try, but don't bother again".

"Several viewers who phoned the Mirror used the word, 'disgusting'."

"Rarely have I seen a programme containing so much violence and hatred towards society in general."

"It is the most obscene programme I have ever seen.

"If the BBC want to corrupt the young, they're going the right way."

"Monday's offering was designed to offend almost everyone."

"I was utterly ashamed and disgusted by Not The Nine O'Clock News."

Firstly, Not The Nine O'Clock News never got above a million, never.

And was absolutely ripped to pieces

by everybody and anybody who wrote TV criticism.

Just in general, we were a disaster area.

Terrible, isn't it?

I've been on this programme 15 months.

I've done every single programme.

And I think it's awful.

There was something not quite right with the show.

And the finger of blame was pointing at Chris Langham.

Sean and John came to see me one day in the office

to express their worries about Chris, in the sense that he

was a formidable character and he was disproportionately affecting

the balance of the comedic structure of the programme.

Every day, Chris would say,

"Let's do this, let's do that, we can save that one, do this one."

The others just found themselves working on stuff they didn't like.

He would go over the top because he had the confidence to do so.

He'd been in it a much longer than any of us.

Chris must have been five or six years older than us and had much, much more experience.

But the wedge, I'm pretty certain, was between Chris and John Lloyd.

He was a difficult guy.

He was under the influence a good deal of the time and I can say this because he has been in AA for years.

He was a very manipulative person - his addictions produced

a kind of paranoia which enabled him to try and destabilise any situation he was in.

It was very hard working with him.

Do you find it risible...

..when I say the name...

..Biggus... Dickus?

< STIFLED LAUGHTER

Chris Langham's appearance in Monty Python's Life Of Brian,

-would unexpectedly bring the tension to crisis point.

-Go away!

The film stirred up a huge controversy

and Not The Nine O'Clock News exploited the angry debate.

Oh, come now, Bishop, the leading figure in this film -

what is it, Jesus Christ? - is quite clearly a lampoon of the Comic Messiah himself.

Our Lord, John Cleese.

Even the initials, JC, are exactly the same.

I remember the joy of discovering that Jesus Christ and John Cleese had the same initials

and, therefore, that can form the basis of an argument

that someone could put in a sketch. It was very pleasing.

There had been his gloriously pompous debate between two of the Pythons

and Malcolm Muggeridge and a bishop, as to whether it was blasphemous.

When I look at that figure,

I know you'll say, "It's Brian, not Jesus", but that's rubbish.

You keep making the basic assumption that we are ridiculing Christ

and Christ's teaching. And I say that we are not.

I know what you're saying. If I may say so, it's rubbish.

Chris was very unhappy with the Life Of Python sketch.

He felt it wasn't the kind of thing we should be doing,

that it was incestuous and it was kind of a very awkward moment

in the history of the programme -

that question of where we were going and what we could and couldn't do.

-I must explain to you, the Christ figure is not Cleese.

-Come on...

No, he's just an ordinary man who happens to have been born in Weston-super-Mare at the same time

-as Mr Cleese.

-Jonathan, you know as well as I do...

He is mistaken for the Comic Messiah by vast crowds of people who follow him about, doing silly walks,

shouting, "No, no, not the comfy chair!"

Alexander, the final scene has attracted the most attention.

Here, I think we have the ultimate blasphemy.

It is set in a hotel, in Torquay, where, literally, hundreds

of Spanish waiters are being clipped about the ear by this Jesus.

It is obviously a lampoon of the Comic Messiah's greatest half-hour.

It's not at all... It's Torbay.

Come on! Torbay, Torquay. We're quibbling over...

Bishop, Alexander Walker, thank you both.

Life Of Python, it suddenly started to gel.

You could see there was respect between the actors, respect of the actors for the writers

and an ability to let the production go to the producers.

We started to believe in each other and this chemistry happened.

It was very, very exciting and different.

None of us could think of any sketch that had ever been quite like it.

Chris was resentful. I think he thought he'd lost control at that point. And he had.

A defining moment in the story of Not The 9 O'Clock News had been reached.

Something had to be done.

It was a period of his own life

where he was in a bit of a mess, anyway, which didn't help.

There was a fair amount of drink and drugs going on, which didn't help matters.

We could never make up our minds whether to keep him in the cast or not.

John and I would agonise about it for ages and ages.

In the end, we were told to get rid of him.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do and I didn't want to sack him.

That's the thing. I let it drift and I let it drift

and then he just wasn't asked back.

That wasn't a good thing at all. I'm not in the least bit proud.

So, we were cowardly and...did it badly.

The only man brave enough to give Langham the bad news was the BBC's head of comedy, John Howard Davies.

He came in and sat down on the sofa and I said,

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave the series."

And he said, "Why?" And I explained, as best I could, without actually offending him.

I think Chris was in some doubt as to what had happened,

whether he was being praised or fired. In fact, it was the latter.

Not The Nine O'Clock News now turned to the man who had just been a bit-part player in series one.

He had everything they were looking for.

He was young and funny.

He had been in the Cambridge Footlights.

He had three names.

He was Griff Rhys Jones.

Hello.

Griff was obviously going to be famous, from the first day I knew him.

From the first day I saw him, I thought, "This guy is going to be so famous."

Long before I'd seen him as a student actor, I saw him in a play.

I remember being quite jealous of Griff,

because, Griff had this ability to make John absolutely pee himself

with laughter by his facial expressions.

Griff would, kind of, tense up all his muscles and make this face

and I remember a lot of the rehearsals were spent with John

absolutely just dying with laughter.

Me and my mates, we went down Brighton the weekend, right?

And we met mods down there, right?

And I hate mods, cos they make me puke, right?

I goes down there with my mate and old Les, he got a pickaxe handle

and I've got the old bicycle chain, right?

Like that. So, we start doing them, you know?

These two other ones, they got me down an alley way. I'd an old fork

stuffed up my pullover, you know? And I really done 'em!

With Griff Rhys Jones in place, they were finally ready for take-off.

I remember Griff doing formal impressions of famous people,

which he started doing with his Donald Sinden impression in series one.

Then, he discovered this amazing gift for it.

Good evening, I'm a famous English actor.

I've come here tonight to this...church.

Finally, were the Lambeth Poisoners, the Lambeth Poisoners

also responsible for a string of bank raids in July 1979?

No.

I can give you some help here - nice hotel in Rio, change of identity,

protection, 60,000 in a secret bank account.

Yep, yeah. They did it, yeah.

Cyril...

I'm indebted to a gentleman from Swansea,

who wrote to tell me that his television entertainment

is constantly ruined by the appearance of a camp old twat,

who continuously reads his appalling drivel over the air.

I think a lot of Griff's comedic charm

was his boyishness, his pudginess.

He was a bit like me - he'd do anything for a laugh.

-Don't slurp your orange juice.

-What did you say?

I told you before not to slurp your orange juice.

You cannot be serious?!

You cannot be serious!

I did not slurp my orange juice!

I did not slurp my drink! I did not slurp!

Did you hear a sound? Did you hear a sound? Tell me!

It was quite a classic sketch at the time, McEnroe having breakfast.

"I cannot believe it! You cannot be serious!"

For a very learned man, a very wise man, a man you can't get to shut up

about stuff a lot of the time, because he knows so much about everything,

he played 'moron' very, very well. Half of his characters seem to be...

That. That was a Griff Rhys Jones acting masterclass.

That was a large part of it.

Some of these cases are just plain stupid.

"Looking at me in a funny way."

-Is this some kind of joke, Savage?

-No, sir.

And we have some more here.

"Walking on the cracks in the pavement."

"Walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area...

"..during the hours of darkness."

And "Walking around with an offensive wife."

Savage was a corker, yeah. It was great.

Very good at (PUTS ON DOPEY ACCENT) being a bit like that.

Rowan was brilliant. It was a great idea.

Savage, why do you keep arresting this man?

He's a villain, sir.

-"A villain".

-And a jailbird, sir.

I know he's a jailbird, Savage. He's down in the cells now!

We're holding him on a charge of "Possession of curly, black hair and thick lips."

Well...

Well, there you are, sir.

-You arrested him, Savage!

-Thank you, sir.

# Let's spend our... #

Griff's arrival as a full-time member of the team luckily coincided

with the weird goings-on in pop music videos.

It was the New Romantic movement.

"Nice Video, Shame About The Song" sums up the song.

The video itself became a mammoth industry.

All sorts of directors started making their name

producing this flamboyant crap.

The videos themselves that we were parodying, were already almost beyond parody.

Actually, to show people we were making fun of it and not just doing another one, was the task.

# The devil's lunar craft makes swathes in time

# My Asian brother says

"Spare me a dime"

# Nice video

# Shame about the song

# Nice video

# Shame about the song... #

I think the session where Griff put the vocal on was one of the funniest three hours of my life.

# The cruel sea

# Of the heartless earth

'Something about his innocence of singing badly

'on the middle of that track and the madness of the video'

makes it I think very funny.

I thought I sung it quite well.

# Nice video

# Shame about the song

# Nice video, shame about the song... #

The songs came thick and fast.

I Like Trucking was another one that hit the right spot.

Good news for Rowan - bad news for hedgehogs.

# I like trucking, I like trucking

# I like trucking and I like to truck... #

'Rowan absolutely loved it, because he got to drive an HGV.

'He's the only comic, that I'm aware of, who has got'

an HGV licence. It was absolutely fantastic for Rowan, brilliant.

You couldn't get him out of the bloody lorry, I tell you.

# I like truckin' I like truckin'... #

'I can't remember whether it was because they knew I had'

an HGV licence or because I made the suggestion myself,

that the I Like Trucking song was contrived.

'It was thoroughly enjoyable.'

-#

-On the road

-You must be tough and ruthless... #

'It was a rather jolly tune. It was very funny.'

It had no real point other than that they ran over hedgehogs!

On screen, it was clear the programme had a winning formula,

but it was off-screen, with the release of the records and books

which confirmed that the show was now big news.

A Not The Nine O'Clock News book came out.

We went to Oxford to sign it in the Penguin bookshop.

The queue for people who had come to get their copy of this book,

stretched all the way down Oxford High Street.

We just sat there going like this, signing these ruddy books one after the other.

People filed past all morning, buying these books.

They had to send off to London for lorry-loads more books to be delivered,

so that we could sign for this massive crowd that had appeared.

Your album's gone double platinum and you've knocked Queen off the top of the charts!

You kind of go, "Good Lord!"

You mean, 600,000 people last week bought the album?

That album's success gave us a cheque each that was,

in those days, beyond the dreams of Croesus.

I think we got something like 25 grand each.

I'd rang up my parents and say,

"Hey, guess what? I just got a cheque for this, that or the other."

They couldn't believe it. I couldn't either.

Suddenly, the royalties started to come in, because the record sales were quite bizarrely large.

My predominant thought was probably,

"Which model of Aston Martin will this buy me?"

I suspect that was my priority when looking at a large cheque.

It was always, immediately, cars that flashed into my head. Thinking, "I can just about run to the V8."

It was quite a staggering sum of money.

I remember going to see my agent. He said to me,

"They've asked if you want to do another one of those record things.

"Are you interested in doing that? Because you did the first one before you joined me?"

And I said, "Yes".

He said, "Did you make any money?"

"Yes, well, about £30,000."

And he fell off his chair.

I'd never seen anybody actually do that. I'd never seen anybody go... Whoa!

# Super duper, super duper

# Super duper, super doo... #

The show was now at the peak of its popularity

and the hits just kept on coming. Everything was Super Duper.

# One of us is ugly One of us is cute

# One of us you'd like to see in her birthday suit

Two of us write music Two of we are sung

# Sorry, in translation that line come out wrong

# But still, super duper It's super duper

# That we're number one again

# Singing super duper duper

# Makes a super-duper refrain... #

The pressure and the agony and the struggle and all the difficulty

is repaid by ludicrous success. I mean, fantastic acclaim.

Their figures, I don't know what they were, but I guess they were in the very high millions -

up to eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14 million - which are now unthinkable figures.

Not The Nine O'Clock News was the hit comedy show of the day.

The books and records were flying off the shelves

and the awards piled up for the whole team,

especially for the star of the show, Rowan Atkinson.

Most of the last year of my life has been spent working on

a notorious programme called Not The Nine O'Clock News.

And I'd really like to devote this award, as much to myself,

as to Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones and Pamela Stephenson.

And to our two producers, our two relatively unsung heroes, John Lloyd and Sean Hardie,

without whose extraordinary producing talents, the programme would never have happened.

Earlier today, we at Game For A Laugh came round to his house and cut his wife's head off.

I hear through my ears that Geoffrey is just coming round the corner.

Let's see if Geoffrey Lewis is Game For A Laugh.

SCREAMING FROM HOUSE

Yes, yes, I think he's found her.

Let's go and see if Jeffrey Lewis is Game For A Laugh.

Hello, Geoffrey.

Oh, God! Oh, God!

Geoffrey, can I ask you, why you're looking so perturbed?

My wife!

Her head!

Right...

-You knew?

-Yes, Geoffrey, we knew,

but what you didn't know was that a couple of weeks ago

your wife rang us up and said you'd be the sort of fellow

who was...Game For A Laugh!

Oh, I don't believe it!

Oh, great!

This is unbelievable! You mean, you guys cut her head off?

That's right.

And I came out and you're...

-What a bunch of loonies.

-Great.

It was the most successful comedy show in years.

But keeping it going put more pressure on some than others.

It was a nightmare of overwork.

Everything was stressful. We were green with exhaustion.

We were within an ace of disaster more less every week.

I thought it was very disorganised.

We were making it up as we went along.

We did this insane weekly turnaround.

The show would go out on a Monday night and on Tuesday we'd have the script meeting.

Within a week, you've started from no script to a recorded edited programme and a transmission, in a single week.

The Not The Nine O'Clock News was in a real, um...

A vortex of filth.

And greyness.

And teacups and men who hadn't shaved. It wasn't beautiful,

the way you see these sexy offices and people coming down with trays of things.

I don't remember eating.

It was like being in a boys' dorm.

My major memory of the show is sitting in a basement in Camden Town

writing lots and lots. Sometimes you'd watch a show and there would be almost nothing by you.

It is miraculous what we did and we were only able to do it by basically going without sleep for three months.

For the actors, it was a very nice job.

My job I always felt was quite straightforward.

I just turned up and learnt the scripts and turned up

on the Sunday and recorded them. It seemed like a very simple job.

There was always work going on, because there would be a series of sketches that needed to be done.

And...John would want to rehearse something with whoever was in it

and the rest of us would read the newspapers

and fiddle around with scripts that we were trying to work on.

Or play pinball. A lot of pinball.

It was partly the joy of having a big, flashing

colourful thing that you knew nobody else had.

The Roy Castle Special certainly didn't have a pinball machine.

It was amazing, the energy and the fire and the creative enthusiasm

when they were playing pinball.

Then they'd say, "We better go back to the sketches."

And everybody would go, "Oh." Just waiting for something funny to be said.

COMMENTATOR: And a very good evening to you.

You join us during the final stages of this truly titanic struggle,

between Dai "Fat Belly" Gutbucket...

..and the English champion, Tommy "Even Fatter Belly" Belcher.

It's all down now to this last leg and it's Fat Belly on the oche.

Game on.

So, it's Fat Belly to go first.

And it's a good start.

Double vodka.

Single pint.

Another double vodka.

100 milligrams!

100 milligrams.

That's a good start for Fat Belly.

The writers kept the flow of good ideas coming,

but in the cut and thrust of the script meetings,

some of the best ones nearly didn't make it.

I remember John saying, when I handed in the bit of paper saying,

"Rowan walks along the street, sees a camera and hits a lamp-post"

saying, "One, it's not funny. Two, you don't expect me to pay you for that?"

I turned over the page, there was an interesting set up.

"What's the joke?" He said, "That's the joke."

I said, I don't know why you...

I probably got a bit cross, because we were all under such pressure

all the time, you think, "What the hell is this, Richard?

"There's no joke in it." He said, "No, please, please.

"Can we try it? Rowan was very keen.

It was just something that felt funny -

a sort of gimpish self-consciousness.

And the minute you see it on camera, you go,

'"What a fool!" Of course, it's brilliant.'

'You know, this sweet reaction'

of the self-conscious man, who has no performing talent per se.

It's just, what you do if you notice someone.

You know,

I'm not sure where to put myself and so, inevitably,

you're going to hit something eventually.

It's not about bumping into the tree.

It's about the vanity of looking into the camera and then

you don't pay attention because you think, "Oh, I'm being filmed."

It's absolutely charming and probably the most famous Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch there is.

So, bully for me. Just shows how useless I was.

We tried to work out things which were odd and which Rowan and I'd sort of do more on stage,

rather than writing satirical things about trade unions or train timetables or stuff like that.

Good evening, sir, May I take your coat for you?

Please, yes.

Would you like me to take your jacket for you?

Yes, please.

Rowan is a complete performer. I mean, everything's important.

The size of the shot, the body position,

tiny little tweaks of the face, the timbre of the voice, the pauses...

You know, everything. The lines, as we know, Rowan can do an awful lot

of things just by going "um" several times

or going "Bob". Or "gram-o-phone".

-Ahem, excuse me.

-Yeah?

I want to buy a gramophone.

-A what?

-A gramophone.

Gram-o-phone?

A gramophone, yes.

I don't think we've got any gram-o-phones here, granddad.

'Yes, his comedy seems to come from'

his physical presence - his body, his face, his limbs and his voice.

So, you've got your deck, do you want a Dolby with it?

Er, yes please.

GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY

You only get Dolby with tape recorders, chief, all right?

-Do you want an amp?

-No, I won't bother with...

GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY

You won't hear anything without one.

Oh, sorry, of course. Yes, I want an amp, yes, an amp.

What sort of output are you wanting?

What sort have you got?

Ah... No, no clues.

About medium.

How many watts, exactly?

I should think about, erm, about three.

GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY

No, 2000.

500?

-30?

-30?

-30.

30. So, you know all about it now, then, do you?

You want a 30 watt amp?

-A 30 watt amp.

-Do you want speakers?

-Yes.

-Do you want rumble filters?

-Yes.

-Do you want a bag on your head?

-Yes.

There we are, have a bag on your head.

There was nothing like him on the television at the time.

There was no one as funny bones, no one as innate, no one as just, you cannot take your eyes off him,

because he will do that dopey face, that thing and you will want to watch that.

A flash bulb suspended

here, to be connected to an aerial receiver, here.

So now, when this discreet accessory is worn,

even a deaf person knows when the phone is ringing.

PHONE RINGS

'Hello. Hello?

'Is anyone there?

'Hello?.. Hello?'

'I remember practising in front of a mirror.

'I remember when, I sort of, first discovered, you know,

how extreme my facial expressions could be for comic effect.

And practising them and thinking, "Gosh, that looks pretty funny.

"I think I'll try that tomorrow night

"in front of a paying audience and see how they react."

A runny nose cannot be prevented but it can now be cured.

Contac 1200.

For fast, effective, painful relief.

Rowan, Mel, Pamela and Griff, were now television stars and their lives were changing fast.

They were young and funny and now they were also rich and famous.

It's wonderful to have the wind in your sails, you know? It's wonderful.

And you think, "Yeah, why not, actually? Why not? Yep."

There's nothing better than being 26, 27

and being able to walk into a room

and everybody turns around and goes, "There he is. Look who it is."

Good evening, smarm, smarm, very good to be here with you again and tonight I am grovelling

to one of the most extraordinary, how should I put it, smarm, smarm, performers of our generation.

Tonight, I'm grovelling to Billy Connolly.

The appearance on the show of the very famous Billy Connolly

started off as a day of mutual admiration between showbiz chums.

It soon turned into a major, life-changing event.

Scotsmen, drunk Scotsmen, especially drunk Glaswegians,

walk with one leg like that.

And they ask everybody if they're all right, all the time.

"You a' right?"

Billy was a phenomenon in those days.

Billy was the only...

I mean, now we're used to the idea of stand-up comedians traipsing around England and filling halls.

Billy was the only person who did it.

He would go around Britain, like a rock star,

playing these massive halls to huge acclaim,

as, principally, the only stand-up comedian of his kind in the country.

And so, we were in awe of him, we worshipped him.

One of the first things I did was with Rowan Atkinson.

He interviewed me like a Parkinson kind of guy,

but the whole theme was that I was working class and interesting

and he was a toff and deeply patronising.

You know, I remember him, he said,

"Grovel, grovel" he kept saying, "grovel".

And then he said, "And you come from Glasgow?" And I said, "Yeah."

And he said, "Oh, Glasgow, Gorbals, Gorbals, grovel, grovel."

Let's get down to you.

Apparently, you were born on your kitchen floor? How interesting.

-We'd just moved to the Gorbals...

-Oh, grovel, Gorbal, grovel.

But I had a hugely high opinion of them and they were flying, they were rock and roll.

When they did private appearances, the streets were jammed with people.

So they were big, big news.

We asked Billy Connolly to be on the show because I really wanted him

to get married to Pamela. I'll say no more about that.

Well, I didn't really know who Billy was.

Because I was just this young Australian.

I hadn't really seen him - at all. I'd actually never seen him.

Yeah, you.

-Aye.

-Has Jimmy "Chainsaw" McPhee been in here tonight?

No.

What about Big Jock, "The Knee Cruncher"?

No.

ROWAN WHISPERS

What about "Stick The Boot In His Head And Ask Questions Later" McDonald?

No.

"Hacksaw" Haggerty, the hen choker?

No.

Phew! Can I have a Campari and soda, please?

We got to the rehearsal room and I saw...

I was in a corridor and they were in a room,

they'd been rehearsing for a while when I arrived.

And there was a doorway and Pamela came past the door

on a tea trolley, like Superman, horizontal on the top!

And I thought, "This is different!"

I mean he was just this huge, Scottish beast.

I mean, I thought he was some kind of animal.

And he ate his meal, the fish meal, with his hands.

He didn't pick up a knife and fork at any point.

And, actually, I thought that was rather attractive.

Well, hello, and tonight I'm talking to Billy Connolly,

a well-known Scottish comedian.

He was absolutely brilliant and you could see there was a chemistry

with him and Pamela straight away. The swine(!)

When I look at that sketch, the Janet Street-Porter one,

I can definitely see a spark between us, that was more than just a comic spark.

It was a love affair made in the Not The Nine O'Clock News studio.

Billy, I understand that when you first came to England,

people had a lot of trouble understanding your accent.

LAUGHTER

Is that right?

Sorry?

The affair with Billy Connolly made Pamela Stephenson

even more famous than she was before. Now, Pamela was a news story herself.

Pamela went through, as you know, a sort of astral fame phase where she was probably the most famous

woman in the country, along with Princess Diana, with whom she was quite friendly.

And she was on the front page of the paper more or less every day.

Pam became a very big star, very quickly.

And often for... because she was a pretty woman,

apart from being a very good performer.

So, she was very high profile in the tabloids and all the rest of it.

And so she was caught between being very famous, by that stage, and also having to try to draw

the borderline between that and what was going on in her private life.

So, she was under a lot of pressure in that way, much more pressure than the boys were, really.

Pamela said to me once, "The first six months of being famous is like

"being totally high, like being on drugs on a skiing holiday.

"And the rest of it is just rubbish. It's awful."

Let me see your tongue, that's right. That looks nice.

'It was definitely quite overwhelming, everything.'

I remember feeling very out of control.

Pamela Stephenson.

APPLAUSE

'Parky invited me to go on with Reggie Bosanquet.'

And I seem to remember, sort of,

I don't know, climbing on top of him at one point.

I think I did something really... pretty out there.

Stand up for me.

I mean, if I was sort of...

Michael!

Oh, my God!

'I remember his toupee taking a full 360 turn at the time.'

And, yeah, I don't know what I was thinking.

Michael, I didn't realise it was this kind of show.

She was always getting into trouble

by doing untoward things on Parkinson

and slightly ill-judged piece of bad luck, but again,

it was a lark and what would have been very larky

with your friends on a stag night or something,

not necessarily acceptable at ten o'clock on BBC One.

Pamela wasn't the only wild thing on TV in 1979.

There was also David Attenborough's encounter with a gorilla on Life On Earth,

which inspired a much weirder encounter on Not The Nine O'Clock News.

Professor. Can Gerald really speak as we would understand it?

Oh yes, yes, yes. He can speak a few actual words.

Of course it was extremely difficult to get him even to this stage.

When I first captured Gerald in the Congo, '67 I think it was...

GORILLA: '68.

We had a kind of strange, kind of, off-key notion of a man who's been trying to raise a gorilla

and has become obsessed and is clearly in love with this gorilla, but daren't say it.

Yes, I was going to ask you actually, Gerald, do you have a mate?

Yeah, I've got lots of mates.

There's the professor, his son, Toby, there's Raymond next door...

No, actually, what...

Oh, I see, I see what you mean. Er, crumpet, crumpet.

-Well...

-You didn't tell me you were friendly with Raymond.

Do I have to tell you everything?

'It's brilliant teamwork between the three of them because'

Mel is playing a fantastic straight performer and Pamela is brilliant, I mean, that's wonderful acting.

Those flat looks she gives as the interviewer.

You can just see her brain going, "This is going horribly wrong.

"My television career is over."

You can almost hear the producer, in her ear, shouting, "Get them off, get them off!"

There was a lot of work, it was slow and difficult.

I had to do a lot of work on a one-to-one basis...

Yes, if I might just butt in at this point, Tim,

I think I should point out that I have done a considerable amount of work

on this project myself and if I may say so, you're teaching methods leave a bit to be desired.

-That's a bit ungrateful, isn't it?

-And your diction, for instance, is not really...

I'm sorry, can I put this into some sort of perspective, when I CAUGHT Gerald in '68...

he was completely wild.

Wild?! I was absolutely livid!

God knows how you make that terrible gorilla costume look funny.

Because it's, you know,

not wanting to knock what we could afford as a costume,

but it really doesn't stand up as anything like the Planet of the Apes, does it?

But there was something in the body attitude that was perfectly possible

to convey while in a gorilla suit and it was nice to discover that,

you know, the body language could be...heard.

I know you've never got on with my mother...

She didn't exactly like me, did she?

She got on perfectly well with David Attenborough.

David Attenborough! All I ever hear is David bloody Attenborough!

-Leave Dave out of this.

-Shut up and have a banana.

'I remember that I couldn't see the plate,'

and I couldn't feel my mouth. It was very difficult physically, very challenging sketch.

The programme had gained a reputation for being edgy and outrageous.

Every week, they were accused of going too far.

But when complaints started coming from other comedians, it was time to fight back.

There were a lot of snide remarks that used to go on

about how Not The Nine O'clock News was rude and juvenile,

and how pathetic it was

and shouldn't be allowed, and I think Ronnie Barker was not averse to dropping those sort of remarks.

A tragic accident has ended the career of Plastex, the amazing plastic man.

He sat on a radiator today and made a complete pool of himself.

LAUGHTER

I went through a whole episode of the Two Ronnies,

counting all the rude jokes, and there were 54 in half an hour.

They were just unbelievably smutty.

But they posed as this thing, that they weren't rude, because they disguised it, and we were rude

because we actually said bloody rather than ruddy.

# I had a nice little donkey

# I fed it on nettles and grass

# One day my donkey went wonky

# And now I can't sit on my ass... #

I mean, we were all sick of old-school comedians

pretending to almost say a rude word and then not saying it.

And, you know, while Ronnie Barker is a legend,

it's not the greatest comedy device in the world to ALMOST say, "Poo."

The Not The Nine O'Clock News team didn't have to wait long before a chance came

to show Ronnie Barker just how far the rudeness envelope could be pushed.

Good evening, it's wonderful to be with you again, isn't it, Ronnie?

No. It's a bleeding pain in the arse, frankly.

But, you will be reassured to know we'll be using exactly

-the same sort of material...

-As we've used for the last 20 years.

In the fourth series, we had this brilliant sketch from a guy

who was a disaffected Two Ronnies writer.

And it was an absolute assassination thing, which is to say, when he says

cobblers, I mean testicles, and so on.

And it was a brilliant destruction of the Two Ronnies.

Later in the show, I shall be implying, through smutty innuendo...

-..that I have a very small part...

-And I have an enormous penis.

They basically called the bluff of innuendo and the Two Ronnies chose to be very offended by this.

What we did was just to say, "This is what it would sound like

"if they actually said what they were pretending to say."

And all the way through the show, I shall frequently cry...

-Spectacles...

-Meaning testicles.

-Cobblers...

-By which he means testicles.

-Didgeridoos...

-By which he means penises.

-Water melons.

-Breasts.

-Articles.

-Testicles again.

-Bristols.

-Breasts again.

-And bouncers.

-Breasts or testicles.

I mean, the Two Ronnies always ended with a big musical number where they

basically sort of marked time and did sort of silly rhymes marching up and down upon the spot, spot, spot.

You see, I used to love the show.

It's just a bit old-fashioned and, in the way that young people,

as we were in those days, have to, you know, slag those things off, and so we did. Slag them, we did.

# We like birds We're ornithologists

# Orni-porno-thologists

# I've got a nice pair of binacu-nocul-arse

# You can stick them up on your tripod... #

It was quite malicious, actually. It was quite funny.

It was about the choreography, "We're marching up and down upon the spot, spot, spot.

"Cos the sodding choreographer's a twat, twat, twat."

# And I couldn't care a jot if we're military men or not

-# With a bum...

-Tit

-# How's your father

-Oops!

-A-diddly-ay-do...

# ..Just crawling through the grass Thistles in me hair

# And bracken up me anus

# Thrilled to bits if I see a pair of tits

# And I love to watch the sun go down

# Oh, vagina, oh, vagina Over Chinatown... #

Poor old Ronnie Barker saw this and thought, "OK, what bastards."

I mean, he hated it. And he was what they call in the BBC,

there's always, at any time, the BBC have a thing called the guv'nor.

Well, he was the guv'nor in those days.

And he had a lot of clout.

Although, all power to everyone's elbow, it went out and that was it.

Sorry if it offends you but there you go.

Ronnie Corbett loved it.

# J Arthur Rank and the titty bum Urals

# Nippling away with a pain in the Balkans

# Spotty botty wee-wee piddling about

# In the Jimmy Riddle camiknicker orchestra

# Knickers up and down to me willy bum gooly

# Knockers to the mammary Nympho beaver

# Knackers in the Baltic clappering away

# So we knicker and we knacker and we knocker all day

# Knickers up and down to me willy bum gooly

# Knockers to the mammary nympho beaver

# Knackers in the Baltic clappering away

# So we knicker and we knacker and we knocker

# And we knacker and we knocker all day! #

I didn't want to do it at the time, anyway.

Not because, not because...

I just didn't see what the big satirical edge was in having a go at The Two Ronnies.

Griff, I think, met Ronnie Corbett at a party and he said,

"We shouldn't make jokes about Ronnie Corbett. He's very nice."

And I thought that's when I knew I'd lost everybody, you know?

That you are...that the famous are different from us.

The Fab Four had gone from a tight-knit team of unknowns

to a collection of ambitious stars with big career plans.

Rowan, who was the only real technologist amongst us said,

"We really ought to do a video from this."

So he said, "I'll get some video time and I'll cut together a 90-minute special from all the best sketches."

So he took months doing this and eventually called me and said, "Would you have a look?

"What do you think? I'm quite pleased."

So I went and saw this 90-minute video and I watched it

right the way through and I said, "Rowan, where's Pamela?" He said, "Pamela?"

I said, "Yes. She doesn't appear to be in it at all.

"You've managed to take out every frame of Pamela.

"There wasn't one sketch or song with her in it?" I said.

He said, "Do you know, I never really thought she was that funny."

I said, "Yes, but, Rowan,

"She's one of four people." So that never saw the light of day.

But that was how strongly he felt, I think.

There wasn't a lot of love lost between them towards the end.

There were rumours of various misunderstandings, shall we put it,

between the female and male members of the cast.

And I think they became

a bit of a more formidable problem as time went on.

I think there was a lot of strain in there as well.

There was a lot of stress and strain between people, individuals.

You know, bits of jealousy

and all that crap that goes on in shows like that.

I was always a bit too much of a sexpot or something.

I was always sort of interested in being attractive.

And you have to kind of drop that

if you want to be matey with the boys and get on with them.

I think they were, understandably, a bit wary of me.

I think it was a bit...

electric in there.

Even when I was working with them, you could see the shape of it.

You know, the way they hung out, physically.

They were there and he was there and she was there.

You could see the shape of it all.

It happens with bands, it happens with most performing teams

that it starts off tentatively, you get a period of time...

It's only a matter of time where it's all gelling

and then things start breaking down.

Dennis, wilt thou leave this woman who is thy wedded wife?

Dost thou dislike her, despise her, hate the sight of the moth-eaten Snoopy doll she's had since college,

and despise her brother, the chartered surveyor

who invites himself for dinner and drinks thy scotch after ye have gone to bed?

Dost thou dislike her mother, hate her cooking, get irritated that she picks at her toenails in bed

and that the clippings somehow find their way into that little crack in the side of the duvet?

And wilt thou forsake her for as long as ye both shall live?

I will.

Muriel, wilt thou leave this drunken shit who is thy wedded husband?

Not The Nine O'Clock News had reached the top of the comedy hill.

They were now faced with a big decision - take it to the next level or quit while they were ahead.

We had an empire, we had a franchise.

And what I wanted to do was break into America and I wanted to do movies.

And I, you know, I wanted to...

..to make something that would last forever.

Sean and I asked the cast, the full cast, to dinner.

And the proposal that we were going to make was that we were going to do exactly what the Pythons had done,

which was they started Monty Python Productions and then we would go on doing as we had done.

Very successful books. One of the books sold a million copies.

The Not The Nine O'Clock News books were very successful in their own right.

And Rowan said... These were not his words, they were the words of Richard Armitage, his agent,

of whom I spoke earlier, the man with the huge cigar, who said,

"I don't think you should play with the second 11 any more."

And that's what Rowan passed on to us.

He said, "My agent thinks I shouldn't play with the second 11 any more."

And he prefaced it by saying, "You're all very nice people

"and I like you a great deal and you are all very talented."

I remember thinking, "Gosh...

"There are people here