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This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
In 1979, a strange bunch of people made a TV programme. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
They didn't have a clue what they were doing, but that didn't stop them. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
They did it their own way and it changed their lives. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:15 | |
It revolutionised comedy. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
It was Not The Nine O'Clock News. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:19 | |
It was a show you wanted to watch | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
'and to be part of it was' | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
the best time to be alive ever. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:31 | |
Can I put this into some sort of perspective? | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
When I caught Gerald in '68, he was completely wild. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
Wild? I was absolutely livid. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:41 | |
'I was hanging on by my fingernails. What I now realise' | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
is that so was everyone else. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
'We didn't quite realise what we had.' | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
It was an innocent time and a carefree time - | 0:00:52 | 0:00:55 | |
'all for one and one for all.' | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
HE SPEAKS GIBBERISH | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
SPEAKS GIBBERISH | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
Thank you, Cyril. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:10 | |
I had nothing to lose. I had nothing to lose to. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
'I could take off anybody. I just wanted' | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
to do something funny. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
American Express? | 0:01:18 | 0:01:19 | |
That will do nicely, sir. And would you like to rub my tits, too? | 0:01:19 | 0:01:23 | |
# Not The Nine O'Clock, Not The Nine O'Clock | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
# Not The Nine O'Clock News. # | 0:01:28 | 0:01:30 | |
Abu Ben Achhem, may his tribe increase... | 0:01:46 | 0:01:50 | |
..awoke one night from a deep dream of peace... | 0:01:50 | 0:01:54 | |
..and saw, within the moonlight in his room... | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
ROWAN TALKS GIBBERISH | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
'I remember watching it and going, "Where's this going?' | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
"Hmm? Where's this going? | 0:02:07 | 0:02:08 | |
"Hmm? Where's this going? | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
"Oh, my God, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life!" | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
I have no idea why that's the funniest thing ever in my life - please do it again. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:18 | |
The Angel heard and vanished. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
-The next night... -it came again with a great awakening light... | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
..and showed the names whom God of love had blessed and, lo... | 0:02:25 | 0:02:30 | |
SPEAKS GIBBERISH | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
SOLEMN CHURCH ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
It's never too embarrassing to watch. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
'The quality of the stuff was pretty good.' | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
('FOREIGN' ENGLISH) Can I help you, sir? | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
Yes, I would like some deodorant, please. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
Ball or aerosol? | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
Neither, I want it for my armpits. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
It's got a kind of punchiness, which is quite shocking. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
You don't quite know where it comes from. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
It's somebody telling the truth, | 0:03:06 | 0:03:07 | |
saying, "I love this." | 0:03:07 | 0:03:09 | |
There is a lot to be said in favour of cannabis. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
Erm... | 0:03:14 | 0:03:15 | |
Where was I? | 0:03:18 | 0:03:19 | |
You were aware that you were watching something that was | 0:03:19 | 0:03:24 | |
a little bit on the edge - a bit naughty. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
I'll have a jar of Keep It Up cream, please. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
On second thoughts, make that two jars. I'm feeling a bit randy this week. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
Hello. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
Tonight, I'm talking to Billy Connolly, | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
a well-known Scottish comedian. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
I regard it as a real feather in my cap and a real landmark | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
'in my life.' | 0:03:47 | 0:03:48 | |
Wonderful to see you, grovel, grovel, slime and it's great, grovel of you to stop in on your short | 0:03:48 | 0:03:53 | |
-visit to our little country, humble, humble to talk. -My pleasure. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
When I look at clips of it, it looks to me like Thatcher's Britain | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
making fun of itself. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
'If you look at the streets behind where those things are taking place, | 0:04:03 | 0:04:08 | |
'it is a scuzzy, run-down, unhappy country.' | 0:04:08 | 0:04:10 | |
It was a very ugly period. There were riots, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
there was a lot of unemployment and anger. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
And where there is despair, may we bring hope. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
Britain was a place of great conflict at that time. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
For Constable Savage to come on and make fun | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
of a policeman, at that point, with those tensions that were going on | 0:04:29 | 0:04:34 | |
'was a very necessary safety valve for society at that time.' | 0:04:34 | 0:04:38 | |
I think that perhaps you're being a little over-zealous. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:42 | |
Which charges do you mean, sir? | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
For instance, this one. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:47 | |
"Loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing." | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
Maybe you are not aware of this, | 0:04:54 | 0:04:55 | |
but that is not illegal. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
Neither is "smelling of foreign food" an offence. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:02 | |
Are you sure, sir? | 0:05:03 | 0:05:05 | |
It was always a trick of the light, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
because it was taken and reviewed | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
as though it was a satirical programme. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:13 | |
'But actually, a lot of the sketches could have gone out any time, any year, any place.' | 0:05:13 | 0:05:18 | |
Do you have a Biro, please? | 0:05:18 | 0:05:20 | |
Thanks. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:23 | |
'The thing we were trying to avoid being like was Monty Python, on one hand,' | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
and the Two Ronnies, on the other hand. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
-She's very attractive, isn't she? -Isn't she, yes, isn't she? | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
-Very attractive. -Isn't she? | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
My word, very, very, very attractive. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
Yes, woof! What?! Woof! | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
The Two Ronnies didn't represent the life that we lived. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:52 | |
It was guys in blazers with gold buttons and cravats in cocktail bars. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:57 | |
None of us had ever been in such a place. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
It was yokels with three X's on their smocks. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
That wasn't our idea of farming - it was one man in a modern tractor. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:09 | |
If the Two Ronnies ever went into a telephone box, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
I'm sure they never did, but there would be | 0:06:12 | 0:06:14 | |
'a telephone in there with the telephone directory. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
'All the phone boxes we went into were used as lavatories. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
'That's what telephone boxes were for in the '70s.' | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
It is about being in contemporary society, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:33 | |
not just a series of fantasy jokes. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
'The sketch about the guy waiting at the petrol station and he's trying | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
'to fill up his car to exactly £5 and there is a man with a little button. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
When it gets to £5, he goes - click.' | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
You're just laughing yourself sick, it's just wonderful, it's wonderful. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:59 | |
And that what we tried to do with Not The Nine, to surprise ourselves, to astonish ourselves | 0:06:59 | 0:07:05 | |
with ideas we would never have been able to think of on our own. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
That is just the kind of bad language and, above all, endless references to parts of the body | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
that are becoming, by their ceaseless repetition, knob, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
in the media. Just part and parcel and pubes of everyday conversation. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:21 | |
-For the past 200 years, the American people have conjoined... -With each other. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:28 | |
..with each other | 0:07:28 | 0:07:29 | |
-in a great quest for... -Harmony. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
-..harmony... -Democracy. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
-..democracy... -Freedom. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:37 | |
freedom... | 0:07:37 | 0:07:38 | |
-Cupcakes. -..cupcakes... | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
Jonathan, I know these kids. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
I've worked in the areas we are talking about - Lambeth, Lewisham - | 0:07:49 | 0:07:54 | |
I know their problems, I know their frustrations, lack of community facilities, I know their parents. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:59 | |
And, in my opinion, Professor Duff suggesting we should cut of their goolies is the only solution. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:05 | |
Absolutely, cut the goolies off. Cut them off. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
Well, there we have it. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:10 | |
-Whip off the goolies. -Expert opinion seems to be in favour of... | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
Cutting off their goolies! | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
It all began when BBC radio producer John Lloyd teamed up with Panorama producer Sean Hardie. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:23 | |
Sean knew nothing about comedy and John knew nothing about television, but they still thought it would be | 0:08:23 | 0:08:28 | |
a good idea to make a comedy sketch show for TV. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
It started off being called Sacred Cows, that was the BBC's title for it. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
And it was designed to be a dissing of all the things you weren't supposed to diss. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:41 | |
BBC NEWS THEME MUSIC | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
Here is the news. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:46 | |
'There was such a thing as the 9 O'Clock News and it was a staple, it was the nation's fireplace.' | 0:08:46 | 0:08:52 | |
You knew where it was and there it was in the schedule, every weekday. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
So the idea of something running on the other side on BBC Two, | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
opposite it, had real meaning and cultural resonance to everybody in the country. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:04 | |
NEWSCASTER: New Yorkers can find some tabloids on the news stands, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
but not their usual papers, The New York Times and the Daily News. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
In 1978, there was a strike at the New York Times and a bunch of the journalists | 0:09:12 | 0:09:17 | |
devised a thing called Not The New York Times, | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
which was an absolutely brilliant, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
impeccable spoof - every typeface, every ad. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:24 | |
You wouldn't have known until you went into it. We borrowed that. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
But it was a perfect title, Not The Nine O'Clock News, because it told you the time, | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
which was at 9pm, and it was NOT the Nine O'Clock News, and it was opposite | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
the Nine O'Clock News on One, so you couldn't really miss where it was. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
The star of the show, Rowan Atkinson, had developed his unique style | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
alongside two of other students at Oxford University. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
They'd been a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
and would go on to conquer the world of comedy and film. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
Richard Curtis, the writing genius, would go on to write Four Weddings and a Funeral | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
and create Blackadder with Rowan Atkinson. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
And with musician, Howard Goodall, | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
would write unforgettable comedy songs for Not the Nine O'Clock News. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:09 | |
I was manning the, you know, theatre, or revue, stall | 0:10:09 | 0:10:14 | |
at the Freshers' Fair at Oxford. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
And I remember this very curly-haired chap turning up, | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
saying, "I do music". And it was Howard. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:27 | |
In my first week at university, I went to the Freshers' Fair. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
I had decided that I wanted to be involved as a musician with the Comedy Revue. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:36 | |
So I went to the desk and I said to the guy, | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
"I'd really like to be involved musically, I don't know how." | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
We talked for a bit and he said, "Someone will come and see you." | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
He turned out to be Rowan Atkinson. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:46 | |
That afternoon, Richard Curtis came to see me | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
and he said, "Me and Rowan are doing a show, like a student revue, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
"in three weeks' time in the Oxford Playhouse, would you like to do the music?" "Yes!" | 0:10:53 | 0:10:58 | |
I met Rowan in a, sort of, sketch writing unit, | 0:10:58 | 0:11:03 | |
that was meant to put on a show at the end of a summer term. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
And, erm... I thought he was a piece of... | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
I thought he was a stuffed toy for the first three meetings, he was so quiet. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
And he famously has always described me as "being like a cushion", | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
in that I sat on the chair and I said nothing. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
That was our first meeting - I said little, Richard said a great deal. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
But when finally we started to submit material, Rowan stood up and did two sketches and was clearly | 0:11:24 | 0:11:30 | |
so much better than all the rest of us put together, | 0:11:30 | 0:11:34 | |
'that I hung on to his coat tails for a decade.' | 0:11:34 | 0:11:37 | |
"Are you mad?" | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
I asked. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:42 | |
The Oxford Revue was billed as having eight people in it. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
By the time we got to see it, there were only two left - Rowan and Richard Curtis. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:51 | |
It was, basically, Rowan doing all the funny bits and Richard being the stooge. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
And almost from the first minute of watching this show, you think, "I'm in the presence of a genius". | 0:11:57 | 0:12:03 | |
Sediment? | 0:12:04 | 0:12:05 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
Soda? | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:11 | 0:12:12 | |
Tear? Tear? | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
Undermanager? | 0:12:19 | 0:12:20 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
Zob. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:24 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:12:24 | 0:12:27 | |
Undoubtedly, the Edinburgh Fringe was the, sort of, melting pot, | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
in terms of people seeing me and what I was doing, or what Richard Curtis and I were doing. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:36 | |
I'd seen him in Edinburgh in my first year at university, | 0:12:36 | 0:12:41 | |
I'd gone to the Edinburgh Festival and he did his one-man show there with Howard Goodall doing the music. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:47 | |
Richard Curtis being the other man in the one-man show, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:50 | |
it's famous for not being one man, but of course, it's a one-man show. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
I... I mean, it blew my head off. I'd never seen anything | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
so fantastically funny in my life. I was simply weak with laughter. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:01 | |
We all thought, "Gosh! Wow!" | 0:13:01 | 0:13:05 | |
There is a very interesting and extraordinary idea as a performer. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:13 | |
PIANO PLAYS | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
PIANO PLAYS RAPIDLY | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
He was a very closed down, eccentric person, really. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:45 | |
Quite lonely-looking, interested in machines and cars and quite shy, quite shy. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:52 | |
I have a lot of fits of depression and lack of satisfaction. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:58 | |
But they are nearly all associated with the entertainment industry | 0:13:58 | 0:14:02 | |
and actually, my other interests in life, silly things, but things I happen to enjoy doing | 0:14:02 | 0:14:08 | |
a fantastic amount, like electronics, like driving trucks, are very simple. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:13 | |
The trouble with show business is that what you're doing is you are | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
exposing yourself entirely and your heart and soul is being torn out of you and shown to millions of people. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:24 | |
Rowan Atkinson was just the right man for John Lloyd's new show, | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
but the nerdy electrical engineering student from Newcastle | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
turned up with one of the most powerful agents in show business, the legendary Richard Armitage. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:39 | |
He came in with his agent, who was a very classic old-fashioned agent. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:44 | |
He looked the part. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:45 | |
He was squat, enormously upper-class, smoked cigars. He once said to me, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:50 | |
POSH ACCENT: "I have all my combs made up by a little man in Geneva. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:55 | |
"I find only the Swiss know how to make a really good comb." | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
This is the man you were dealing with. Incredibly powerful. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
John Cleese's agent. He represented David Frost. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
Most powerful agent in light entertainment then. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
And he brought his boy in, Rowan, the young star. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
They clearly thought this was going to be The Rowan Atkinson Show. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
BBC management, in those days, was very powerful in its own right and they were very sure of themselves. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:21 | |
Although, in the politest way, they said, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
"This isn't going to be The Rowan Atkinson Show and here's our reasoning." | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
"We want to get other talented people and put them around Rowan, | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
"so that if he's good, he'll shine by comparison, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
"and they'll support him - he won't have to carry the whole weight or use up the material nearly so fast." | 0:15:35 | 0:15:42 | |
And to give Richard and Rowan credit, they saw the point of that. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
And they bought into it. And the rest is history. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
Not the Nine O'Clock News had found its shining star. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:53 | |
A weird haircut on another Oxford student was the next thing to catch John Lloyd's eye. | 0:15:54 | 0:16:00 | |
We were all very scared of Mel. He appeared to be so confident. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:05 | |
Anybody walking around with that haircut, you think, must know something we don't. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:10 | |
Does it not say in the good book, "Thou shalt part thy hair in the way of the Lord"? | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
"And thou shalt blow-dry thy fringe and brush the layered sides in tantalising waves to accentuate | 0:16:14 | 0:16:20 | |
"the auburn highlights of the crown, so shall ye." Who did this for you, then? | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
Essentially in my second year at Oxford, I started to grow it | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
absurdly long for a person | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
whose hair is so thin as mine was. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
So I just kept it, because it was a, sort of, sign. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
It's that pathetic, I just felt as though, "Hey, this is me. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:39 | |
"This is my hair and I'm proud of it." | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
I don't even remember noticing Mel Smith's hair. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
I remember once we were on location, seeing him in his underpants. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:52 | |
And that was really weird. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
We all liked Mel. Mel was quite a figure. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
He was a sort of... | 0:16:58 | 0:17:00 | |
I think he had a car. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:02 | |
This was 1979. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
He actually had a car, he actually drove himself around town. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
We were all in our twenties. I had a bicycle. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
John remembered a very bad sketch I'd done as part of the Oxford Revue. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
It was doing a nonsense version of Modern Major General from Gilbert & Sullivan - | 0:17:40 | 0:17:48 | |
"I am the very diddle of a daddle-diddle..." | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
You know, "Widdle, baggle, boggle. doggle..." It was just nonsense. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
And I didn't know what I was doing at the time, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
but it was bizarre to find out that John Lloyd thought, "That's my man!" | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
Everyone, hands in the air! In the air! Go on, keep 'em up! | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
All right, nobody moves, nobody gets hurt, all right? | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
Three ten-penny stamps, please. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
Mel Smith and his crazy hair boarded the Nine O'Clock train to Comedy Town. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:21 | |
MUSIC: Theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
You're on television, aren't you? | 0:18:28 | 0:18:29 | |
Yes, yes. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
ALL: Yes, yes! | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
Up to this point, sketch comedy had been dominated by the Monty Python style of surreal acting. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:39 | |
If they were to make their mark, this new show would have to do "something completely different". | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
Not The Nine O'Clock News was definitively, negatively influenced by Monty Python. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
So, we... The thing we took particular joy in was | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
naturalistic performances, because the Python style had been so high. | 0:18:54 | 0:19:01 | |
When John Lloyd asked me to do the programme with him, in some strange uppity way, | 0:19:01 | 0:19:07 | |
even though I needed the money, "£100 a programme, I'll have that", I was very concerned that we just | 0:19:07 | 0:19:14 | |
didn't end up doing daft women in screechy voices, that kind of stuff. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:20 | |
One of the big differences was that it was messier. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
We wanted the dialogue to be much more realistic. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
In a way, more realistic than a drama, to sound much more like | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
a television discussion, with broken sentences and people going "um" and "er" and so forth. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:37 | |
That was very much something that Mel Smith brought to the programme. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
This week we're going to take a look at origami, aren't we, Rowan? | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
That's right, Mel - the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
I remember lots of the sketches that we did together, like the origami sketch, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:54 | |
in which we were just being very flat and very, sort of, | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
naturalistic to camera, which is something I'd never done, | 0:19:57 | 0:20:00 | |
because even then I tended to do characters that were rather extreme - | 0:20:00 | 0:20:05 | |
either extremely old or extremely silly or extremely young or... | 0:20:05 | 0:20:09 | |
facially very active. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:11 | |
Whereas with Mel, I felt this wonderful sort of peace. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
-I'll just start here. -Mel's just starting... | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
You can use absolutely any kind of... | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
any kind of paper for this. You can use... | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
This is an old Radio Times. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:24 | |
-This is an old... -Just any old bit of paper. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
-And I'm just folding, you see, like this. -Folding it again, over. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
-It's very, very simple. -It's... | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
It's an ancient Japanese art dating from centuries... centuries ago. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:40 | |
Now if I make a tear like this... | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
And another tear like THAT... | 0:20:43 | 0:20:47 | |
Now you can do this on your own, but if there are two of you, | 0:20:47 | 0:20:50 | |
then it probably... We'll just have a pull there. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
That's it. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:55 | |
And you see, there, there we have a very nice hat. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:03 | |
Here's a... | 0:21:06 | 0:21:08 | |
Here's a little bracelet. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:09 | |
And... And here we have a nice pair of earrings. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
And, of course, a moustache. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
'Some of the naturalism' | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
was wonderful. I've got a particular favourite sketch, | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
which was Rowan and Mel pretending to be identical twins. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:35 | |
And you've never seen two people who look less like it! | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
They're just divine. They're on Nationwide. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
And just the little nervous laughter of two completely ordinary guys | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
who've found themselves on this show. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
In the studio now are two men who will tell us what it's like | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
to suffer the pain and heartache of being identical twins. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
Right, now let's see if I can get it right. I've been trying to sort it out all afternoon. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:04 | |
-Brian, yes? -No. David, David. Sorry. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
Sorry. You'll have to wear badges or something. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
Don't you find it a problem continually being mistaken for each other? | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
Yeah. Yeah, we do, I guess. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
But we have a lot of laughs, as well, don't we? | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
-Oh, I think so. Very much so. -A very, very funny thing happened. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
We got on a tube and we swapped tickets and the conductor didn't even notice. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
With a young team new to television, they needed at least one person with experience. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:36 | |
And that came in the shape of the maverick, Chris Langham. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
PHONE RINGS | 0:22:40 | 0:22:41 | |
I thought I told you never to call me here! | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
PHONE RINGS | 0:22:43 | 0:22:44 | |
That's better... Good evening. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
'Chris was easily the most' | 0:22:46 | 0:22:48 | |
experienced person we had, going into the main series. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
'He'd worked with very good people and understood the mechanics of comedy very well. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:55 | |
'He knew how timing and all that kind of thing worked, in a way.' | 0:22:55 | 0:23:00 | |
Chris Langham was very important to holding the first series together, | 0:23:00 | 0:23:04 | |
because he knew exactly what he was doing. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
He'd written for Spike Milligan, done stuff with the Pythons and really knew his way round. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:11 | |
I'd seen him being brilliant at the Edinburgh Fringe, | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
two or three years before. He was extraordinary. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
-Are you talkin' to me? -Anticipating the moment of attack... | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
-Not yet! -Sorry. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:23 | |
Exploit your opponent's momentum, | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
converting a trip and a throw out of his attack. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:32 | |
Let's see what that really looks like. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
All this show needed now was a funny woman to complete the line-up. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
Easier said than done. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:55 | |
There were very few women doing that kind of performing comedy. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
We talked to Victoria Wood. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
We talked to Susan George, of all people, who wanted to be in the show. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
Allison Steadman we offered it to and didn't want to do it. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
It was very hard to find people. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
The funny woman they were looking for was making people laugh all over London. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
You just had to go to the right party. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:19 | |
For some reason I found myself invited to a Sunday afternoon party with some friends in London, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
telling silly stories in my broad Australian accent. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
Being whatever I was, 26, | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
I spent the entire party machinating to try to get introduced to this girl, | 0:24:33 | 0:24:37 | |
who was extraordinary. I mean, she was the most luminous person you've ever seen - | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
perfect figure and a fantastic smile. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
I saw her across the room and just worked my way around to her. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:47 | |
"Hello, would you like to be on television, my dear?" | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, he just wants to get in my pants." | 0:24:50 | 0:24:54 | |
And he asked me for my phone number and I gave him my phone number, | 0:24:54 | 0:24:59 | |
because I actually thought he was quite cute. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
Then he did, surprise, surprise, call me up about work and it was just work. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:05 | |
He called me into the BBC and I auditioned for him and Sean Hardie. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
Over the last 10 years, the Japanese have made huge strides | 0:25:09 | 0:25:14 | |
in micro-technology, leaving Europe far behind. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
That is, until now. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:21 | |
Because now a British company has come up with a micro-processor which is comparably effective. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:29 | |
The chip, which is derived from an American design, is silicone-based. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:37 | |
It represents the single greatest | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
British advance in micro-technology this century. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
But, you see, it's not as small as the Japanese model. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:49 | |
You know, the whole thing was a kind of junior common room student Oxbridgey type thing. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:55 | |
And actually having Pamela, who was very much not part of that world, | 0:25:55 | 0:25:59 | |
was a good thing and it made it much more contemporary and universal in its appeal. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:03 | |
# I was into yin and yang and healthy yoga | 0:26:03 | 0:26:07 | |
# Ginseng and caraway seeds and being a non smoker | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
# My cauliflower quiches were better than the bought ones | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
# And I walked bigger than two short ones... # | 0:26:15 | 0:26:19 | |
'When Pamela exploded onto the scene,' | 0:26:19 | 0:26:21 | |
she was very attractive. She was very sexy. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
And for the first time, you saw | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
'a sexy, attractive woman being funny.' | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
-# La-la la la -La-la-la-la la-la... # | 0:26:29 | 0:26:34 | |
Pamela had balls and so I started writing for her. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
She wasn't just 'the pretty one' - though she was! - | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
but she was really funny. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:43 | |
'She kind of broke the mould a bit of being really attractive, but she could do it.' | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
That is great. OK, OK, give me that one again. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:51 | |
Yeah. Oh, these are going to look really good. We're nearly there, OK? | 0:26:51 | 0:26:55 | |
OK, now give me that big one. Yeah, OK, got it, yeah. | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
The search was over. Here they were. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
It was all looking good. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:06 | |
Sort of. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:07 | |
We had this famous lunch | 0:27:08 | 0:27:10 | |
and I'm sitting there thinking, | 0:27:10 | 0:27:12 | |
"I can't imagine what I've done here, I've made the most horrible mistake." | 0:27:12 | 0:27:17 | |
At the lunch were Sean Hardie, a very bright current affairs director who'd never worked in comedy, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:23 | |
Rowan Atkinson, a painfully shy electronic engineer from Newcastle, hardly said a word through lunch, | 0:27:23 | 0:27:31 | |
Mel Smith, the man with the hedgey haircut, the strange haircut, | 0:27:31 | 0:27:36 | |
Chris Langham, this sort of haunted looking somebody who looked like he took a lot of stuff in the evenings, | 0:27:36 | 0:27:43 | |
and Pamela Stephenson, this kind of goddess, unbelievably pretty. And me. And I'm thinking, | 0:27:43 | 0:27:51 | |
"Apart from a skip out of the back of Madame Tussauds, | 0:27:51 | 0:27:53 | |
I can't think of a more weird collection. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
Just to look at them. It was the most uncomfortable lunch. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
We had absolutely nothing to say to each other. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
And rehearsals started a couple of days later. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
And it was very, very awkward, indeed. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
The oddball collection of people that was Not The Nine O'Clock News | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
hit our screens on October 16, 1979. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
I am God! | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
The Father Almighty! | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
Why don't you piss off! | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
What do you like doing in your spare time? | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
Screwing. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:33 | |
This is the biggest load of cock I've ever seen. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
Have you... Have you got something about... | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
about that long? | 0:28:44 | 0:28:46 | |
Sort of...that thick? | 0:28:48 | 0:28:50 | |
Made of wax? | 0:28:52 | 0:28:54 | |
-Yeah. -You'd better light it then - we're cutting your electricity off. | 0:28:54 | 0:29:01 | |
We had the most bizarre things in the first series. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:04 | |
Like we had four or five people sit inside a gigantic mouth. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
I remember that. I mean, why, I've got no idea. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
I think it was our way of doing topicality or something, what's on everyone's lips. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:16 | |
'They built this gigantic mouth with the four of us sitting in it, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
'trying to be satirical. It was appalling.' | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
Right, it's this big one at the front, is it? | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
Beats working for Linda Lovelace, eh? | 0:29:28 | 0:29:30 | |
Look, could we get on, please? | 0:29:33 | 0:29:35 | |
We must think of something to say. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
'It was a completely awful idea. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:38 | |
'But we tried not to be like The Two Ronnies.' | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
After two weeks we dropped it, burned the set and had two people | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
at a desk and it worked much better. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:46 | |
Back home again and Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, spent the weekend | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
quietly relaxing at Chequers and reading fan mail. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
The rail dispute - and in a magnificent show of defiance, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
British Rail chief, Sir Peter Parker, ignored an ASLEF picket line | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
yesterday and drove out a train himself. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
Behind a desk, you got a lot on your side. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:11 | |
You really have, it's like 'this is official'. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
No matter how daft the thing you are about to say is, it places it. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:18 | |
'Of course, that gave it its link back to what the real Nine O'Clock News would be like.' | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
Following his speech to the House of Commons | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
on the outcome of the embassy siege, Mr William Whitelaw has been admitted to hospital for medical checks. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:31 | |
Doctors are concerned about the size of his head. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
Pamela Stephenson had found her place in the show and never looked back. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:44 | |
'She was originally hired' | 0:30:44 | 0:30:45 | |
as just a cool actress. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
Then she started doing these weird voices and you'd think, "She is a bit nuts. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:54 | |
"What's that weird voice she's doing now as the newsreader?" | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
You think, "Where have I heard that before?" | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
You shut your eyes and, my God, it's Angela Rippon! | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
The West German Chancellor, Her-r-r Schmidt, has announced measures designed to bring full employment | 0:31:04 | 0:31:10 | |
to Europe, create closer ties between the Allies and provide a welcome slap in the face for Russian expansionism. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:16 | |
He's invaded Czechoslovakia. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
I was asked to be a generic newsreader. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
But I'd hardly heard any newsreaders. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
The only one I'd really heard was Angela Rippon, | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
so when I started doing a newsreader, it sounded like Angela. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:35 | |
'And then, we decided to really go for it and then I studied her | 0:31:35 | 0:31:40 | |
'and tried to make myself look like her.' | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
There! | 0:31:43 | 0:31:44 | |
After she has finished a sentence, | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
She looks down and she goes, "Foo", | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
then she goes, "dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah". | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
So, I just took it a little bit further. | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
So instead of guerrilla, it was ger-rilla. | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
Another of Mr Mugabe's ger-rilla commanders has been refused service | 0:32:00 | 0:32:07 | |
in a Salisbury hotel for not wearing a tie. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
The manager was later sacked for not wearing a head. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:15 | |
I loved the way that she would push her impersonations | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
to a slightly grotesque place. They were very funny. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
I think, didn't she hold Jan Leeming's hands like that? | 0:32:23 | 0:32:27 | |
She had the hands like that, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
and then earrings got bigger and bigger and bigger. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:33 | |
But the hands, I thought, "I don't sit like that." | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
Golf. And there was excitement | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
at the Harrogate and District Pro-Am tournament yesterday, | 0:32:40 | 0:32:44 | |
when a competitor insisted on playing the ball | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
after the umpire had declared it out of bounds. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
She got the overall impression. She got the hair, obviously, | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
and the earrings, well, that was a touch of genius. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
MUSIC AND LAUGHTER | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
Each week, the show took real TV news film - and ripped it apart. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:13 | |
It was then put back together to look like | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
no news you'd ever seen before. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
(Ahem. It's God bless America, Mr President.) | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
God bless America. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
VIOLIN SCREECHES | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
What I wanted to do was say to people, things are not always as they appear to be. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:47 | |
And that's why we messed with news film and things like that, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
to tell people just to look at things from another angle. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:55 | |
It was fun to think that nobody is that clever, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
nobody is that beyond criticism. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
DAVID DIMBLEBY: Lord Great Chamberlain | 0:34:00 | 0:34:03 | |
with his white staff... | 0:34:03 | 0:34:04 | |
gives the sign for the procession to turn | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
and for | 0:34:10 | 0:34:11 | |
the fanfare from the trumpeters. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
BIG BAND MUSIC | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
That's such an important part of what Not The Nine O'Clock News became, | 0:34:25 | 0:34:29 | |
that notion of funny things against real footage. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
People looked forward to those elements in the show every week. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
CREAKING | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
The first series was hit and miss and the TV critics didn't like it. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:48 | |
I remember reading reviews at the end of the first series, which said, "Nice try, but don't bother again". | 0:34:48 | 0:34:54 | |
"Several viewers who phoned the Mirror used the word, 'disgusting'." | 0:34:54 | 0:34:59 | |
"Rarely have I seen a programme containing so much violence and hatred towards society in general." | 0:34:59 | 0:35:05 | |
"It is the most obscene programme I have ever seen. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
"If the BBC want to corrupt the young, they're going the right way." | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
"Monday's offering was designed to offend almost everyone." | 0:35:11 | 0:35:16 | |
"I was utterly ashamed and disgusted by Not The Nine O'Clock News." | 0:35:16 | 0:35:22 | |
Firstly, Not The Nine O'Clock News never got above a million, never. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:26 | |
And was absolutely ripped to pieces | 0:35:26 | 0:35:29 | |
by everybody and anybody who wrote TV criticism. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:35 | |
Just in general, we were a disaster area. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:37 | |
Terrible, isn't it? | 0:35:39 | 0:35:40 | |
I've been on this programme 15 months. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
I've done every single programme. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
And I think it's awful. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
There was something not quite right with the show. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:59 | |
And the finger of blame was pointing at Chris Langham. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:03 | |
Sean and John came to see me one day in the office | 0:36:04 | 0:36:06 | |
to express their worries about Chris, in the sense that he | 0:36:06 | 0:36:12 | |
was a formidable character and he was disproportionately affecting | 0:36:12 | 0:36:16 | |
the balance of the comedic structure of the programme. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
Every day, Chris would say, | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
"Let's do this, let's do that, we can save that one, do this one." | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
The others just found themselves working on stuff they didn't like. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
He would go over the top because he had the confidence to do so. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
He'd been in it a much longer than any of us. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
Chris must have been five or six years older than us and had much, much more experience. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
But the wedge, I'm pretty certain, was between Chris and John Lloyd. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:46 | |
He was a difficult guy. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:48 | |
He was under the influence a good deal of the time and I can say this because he has been in AA for years. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:54 | |
He was a very manipulative person - his addictions produced | 0:36:54 | 0:36:59 | |
a kind of paranoia which enabled him to try and destabilise any situation he was in. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:04 | |
It was very hard working with him. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:06 | |
Do you find it risible... | 0:37:07 | 0:37:10 | |
..when I say the name... | 0:37:12 | 0:37:14 | |
..Biggus... Dickus? | 0:37:15 | 0:37:20 | |
< STIFLED LAUGHTER | 0:37:20 | 0:37:21 | |
Chris Langham's appearance in Monty Python's Life Of Brian, | 0:37:22 | 0:37:26 | |
-would unexpectedly bring the tension to crisis point. -Go away! | 0:37:26 | 0:37:29 | |
The film stirred up a huge controversy | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
and Not The Nine O'Clock News exploited the angry debate. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
Oh, come now, Bishop, the leading figure in this film - | 0:37:36 | 0:37:40 | |
what is it, Jesus Christ? - is quite clearly a lampoon of the Comic Messiah himself. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:47 | |
Our Lord, John Cleese. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:48 | |
Even the initials, JC, are exactly the same. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:54 | |
I remember the joy of discovering that Jesus Christ and John Cleese had the same initials | 0:37:54 | 0:37:58 | |
and, therefore, that can form the basis of an argument | 0:37:58 | 0:38:03 | |
that someone could put in a sketch. It was very pleasing. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
There had been his gloriously pompous debate between two of the Pythons | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
and Malcolm Muggeridge and a bishop, as to whether it was blasphemous. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
When I look at that figure, | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
I know you'll say, "It's Brian, not Jesus", but that's rubbish. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:19 | |
You keep making the basic assumption that we are ridiculing Christ | 0:38:19 | 0:38:23 | |
and Christ's teaching. And I say that we are not. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:27 | |
I know what you're saying. If I may say so, it's rubbish. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:30 | |
Chris was very unhappy with the Life Of Python sketch. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:34 | |
He felt it wasn't the kind of thing we should be doing, | 0:38:34 | 0:38:38 | |
that it was incestuous and it was kind of a very awkward moment | 0:38:38 | 0:38:44 | |
in the history of the programme - | 0:38:44 | 0:38:46 | |
that question of where we were going and what we could and couldn't do. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
-I must explain to you, the Christ figure is not Cleese. -Come on... | 0:38:51 | 0:38:55 | |
No, he's just an ordinary man who happens to have been born in Weston-super-Mare at the same time | 0:38:55 | 0:39:01 | |
-as Mr Cleese. -Jonathan, you know as well as I do... | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
He is mistaken for the Comic Messiah by vast crowds of people who follow him about, doing silly walks, | 0:39:05 | 0:39:12 | |
shouting, "No, no, not the comfy chair!" | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
Alexander, the final scene has attracted the most attention. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
Here, I think we have the ultimate blasphemy. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
It is set in a hotel, in Torquay, where, literally, hundreds | 0:39:22 | 0:39:27 | |
of Spanish waiters are being clipped about the ear by this Jesus. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
It is obviously a lampoon of the Comic Messiah's greatest half-hour. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
It's not at all... It's Torbay. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:38 | |
Come on! Torbay, Torquay. We're quibbling over... | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
Bishop, Alexander Walker, thank you both. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:43 | |
Life Of Python, it suddenly started to gel. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:48 | |
You could see there was respect between the actors, respect of the actors for the writers | 0:39:48 | 0:39:53 | |
and an ability to let the production go to the producers. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:58 | |
We started to believe in each other and this chemistry happened. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
It was very, very exciting and different. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
None of us could think of any sketch that had ever been quite like it. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:08 | |
Chris was resentful. I think he thought he'd lost control at that point. And he had. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:14 | |
A defining moment in the story of Not The 9 O'Clock News had been reached. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
Something had to be done. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
It was a period of his own life | 0:40:21 | 0:40:23 | |
where he was in a bit of a mess, anyway, which didn't help. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:29 | |
There was a fair amount of drink and drugs going on, which didn't help matters. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
We could never make up our minds whether to keep him in the cast or not. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
John and I would agonise about it for ages and ages. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
In the end, we were told to get rid of him. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
I didn't know what I was supposed to do and I didn't want to sack him. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
That's the thing. I let it drift and I let it drift | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
and then he just wasn't asked back. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
That wasn't a good thing at all. I'm not in the least bit proud. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
So, we were cowardly and...did it badly. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:59 | |
The only man brave enough to give Langham the bad news was the BBC's head of comedy, John Howard Davies. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:07 | |
He came in and sat down on the sofa and I said, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:10 | |
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave the series." | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
And he said, "Why?" And I explained, as best I could, without actually offending him. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:19 | |
I think Chris was in some doubt as to what had happened, | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
whether he was being praised or fired. In fact, it was the latter. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:29 | |
Not The Nine O'Clock News now turned to the man who had just been a bit-part player in series one. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:37 | |
He had everything they were looking for. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
He was young and funny. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:41 | |
He had been in the Cambridge Footlights. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
He had three names. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:45 | |
He was Griff Rhys Jones. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:49 | |
Hello. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
Griff was obviously going to be famous, from the first day I knew him. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:56 | |
From the first day I saw him, I thought, "This guy is going to be so famous." | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
Long before I'd seen him as a student actor, I saw him in a play. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:04 | |
I remember being quite jealous of Griff, | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
because, Griff had this ability to make John absolutely pee himself | 0:42:08 | 0:42:13 | |
with laughter by his facial expressions. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:17 | |
Griff would, kind of, tense up all his muscles and make this face | 0:42:17 | 0:42:21 | |
and I remember a lot of the rehearsals were spent with John | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
absolutely just dying with laughter. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
Me and my mates, we went down Brighton the weekend, right? | 0:42:30 | 0:42:34 | |
And we met mods down there, right? | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
And I hate mods, cos they make me puke, right? | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
I goes down there with my mate and old Les, he got a pickaxe handle | 0:42:38 | 0:42:43 | |
and I've got the old bicycle chain, right? | 0:42:43 | 0:42:45 | |
Like that. So, we start doing them, you know? | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
These two other ones, they got me down an alley way. I'd an old fork | 0:42:48 | 0:42:53 | |
stuffed up my pullover, you know? And I really done 'em! | 0:42:53 | 0:42:56 | |
With Griff Rhys Jones in place, they were finally ready for take-off. | 0:42:56 | 0:43:03 | |
I remember Griff doing formal impressions of famous people, | 0:43:03 | 0:43:07 | |
which he started doing with his Donald Sinden impression in series one. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:11 | |
Then, he discovered this amazing gift for it. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
Good evening, I'm a famous English actor. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:18 | |
I've come here tonight to this...church. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
Finally, were the Lambeth Poisoners, the Lambeth Poisoners | 0:43:23 | 0:43:29 | |
also responsible for a string of bank raids in July 1979? | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
No. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:35 | |
I can give you some help here - nice hotel in Rio, change of identity, | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
protection, 60,000 in a secret bank account. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
Yep, yeah. They did it, yeah. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
Cyril... | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
I'm indebted to a gentleman from Swansea, | 0:43:46 | 0:43:50 | |
who wrote to tell me that his television entertainment | 0:43:50 | 0:43:54 | |
is constantly ruined by the appearance of a camp old twat, | 0:43:54 | 0:44:01 | |
who continuously reads his appalling drivel over the air. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:06 | |
I think a lot of Griff's comedic charm | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
was his boyishness, his pudginess. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:14 | |
He was a bit like me - he'd do anything for a laugh. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
-Don't slurp your orange juice. -What did you say? | 0:44:17 | 0:44:20 | |
I told you before not to slurp your orange juice. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:25 | |
You cannot be serious?! | 0:44:26 | 0:44:27 | |
You cannot be serious! | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
I did not slurp my orange juice! | 0:44:33 | 0:44:35 | |
I did not slurp my drink! I did not slurp! | 0:44:35 | 0:44:37 | |
Did you hear a sound? Did you hear a sound? Tell me! | 0:44:37 | 0:44:40 | |
It was quite a classic sketch at the time, McEnroe having breakfast. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
"I cannot believe it! You cannot be serious!" | 0:44:44 | 0:44:48 | |
For a very learned man, a very wise man, a man you can't get to shut up | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
about stuff a lot of the time, because he knows so much about everything, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:56 | |
he played 'moron' very, very well. Half of his characters seem to be... | 0:44:56 | 0:45:01 | |
That. That was a Griff Rhys Jones acting masterclass. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:07 | |
That was a large part of it. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:11 | |
Some of these cases are just plain stupid. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
"Looking at me in a funny way." | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
-Is this some kind of joke, Savage? -No, sir. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
And we have some more here. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:26 | |
"Walking on the cracks in the pavement." | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
"Walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area... | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
"..during the hours of darkness." | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
And "Walking around with an offensive wife." | 0:45:40 | 0:45:44 | |
Savage was a corker, yeah. It was great. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
Very good at (PUTS ON DOPEY ACCENT) being a bit like that. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
Rowan was brilliant. It was a great idea. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:56 | |
Savage, why do you keep arresting this man? | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
He's a villain, sir. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:03 | |
-"A villain". -And a jailbird, sir. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
I know he's a jailbird, Savage. He's down in the cells now! | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
We're holding him on a charge of "Possession of curly, black hair and thick lips." | 0:46:09 | 0:46:16 | |
Well... | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
Well, there you are, sir. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:22 | |
-You arrested him, Savage! -Thank you, sir. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
# Let's spend our... # | 0:46:27 | 0:46:28 | |
Griff's arrival as a full-time member of the team luckily coincided | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
with the weird goings-on in pop music videos. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
It was the New Romantic movement. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
"Nice Video, Shame About The Song" sums up the song. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:41 | |
The video itself became a mammoth industry. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:45 | |
All sorts of directors started making their name | 0:46:45 | 0:46:49 | |
producing this flamboyant crap. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
The videos themselves that we were parodying, were already almost beyond parody. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:58 | |
Actually, to show people we were making fun of it and not just doing another one, was the task. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:03 | |
# The devil's lunar craft makes swathes in time | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
# My Asian brother says | 0:47:10 | 0:47:14 | |
"Spare me a dime" | 0:47:14 | 0:47:15 | |
# Nice video | 0:47:17 | 0:47:19 | |
# Shame about the song | 0:47:19 | 0:47:21 | |
# Nice video | 0:47:23 | 0:47:24 | |
# Shame about the song... # | 0:47:24 | 0:47:26 | |
I think the session where Griff put the vocal on was one of the funniest three hours of my life. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:33 | |
# The cruel sea | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
# Of the heartless earth | 0:47:36 | 0:47:39 | |
'Something about his innocence of singing badly | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
'on the middle of that track and the madness of the video' | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
makes it I think very funny. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:48 | |
I thought I sung it quite well. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:50 | |
# Nice video | 0:47:50 | 0:47:52 | |
# Shame about the song | 0:47:52 | 0:47:54 | |
# Nice video, shame about the song... # | 0:47:56 | 0:48:00 | |
The songs came thick and fast. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:03 | |
I Like Trucking was another one that hit the right spot. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
Good news for Rowan - bad news for hedgehogs. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:12 | |
# I like trucking, I like trucking | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
# I like trucking and I like to truck... # | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
'Rowan absolutely loved it, because he got to drive an HGV. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:21 | |
'He's the only comic, that I'm aware of, who has got' | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
an HGV licence. It was absolutely fantastic for Rowan, brilliant. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:28 | |
You couldn't get him out of the bloody lorry, I tell you. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
# I like truckin' I like truckin'... # | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
'I can't remember whether it was because they knew I had' | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
an HGV licence or because I made the suggestion myself, | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
that the I Like Trucking song was contrived. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:43 | |
'It was thoroughly enjoyable.' | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
-# -On the road -You must be tough and ruthless... # | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
'It was a rather jolly tune. It was very funny.' | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
It had no real point other than that they ran over hedgehogs! | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
On screen, it was clear the programme had a winning formula, | 0:48:59 | 0:49:03 | |
but it was off-screen, with the release of the records and books | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
which confirmed that the show was now big news. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:08 | |
A Not The Nine O'Clock News book came out. | 0:49:10 | 0:49:12 | |
We went to Oxford to sign it in the Penguin bookshop. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
The queue for people who had come to get their copy of this book, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:21 | |
stretched all the way down Oxford High Street. | 0:49:21 | 0:49:26 | |
We just sat there going like this, signing these ruddy books one after the other. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:30 | |
People filed past all morning, buying these books. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
They had to send off to London for lorry-loads more books to be delivered, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
so that we could sign for this massive crowd that had appeared. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:42 | |
Your album's gone double platinum and you've knocked Queen off the top of the charts! | 0:49:42 | 0:49:47 | |
You kind of go, "Good Lord!" | 0:49:47 | 0:49:48 | |
You mean, 600,000 people last week bought the album? | 0:49:48 | 0:49:53 | |
That album's success gave us a cheque each that was, | 0:49:53 | 0:49:57 | |
in those days, beyond the dreams of Croesus. | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
I think we got something like 25 grand each. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:03 | |
I'd rang up my parents and say, | 0:50:03 | 0:50:05 | |
"Hey, guess what? I just got a cheque for this, that or the other." | 0:50:05 | 0:50:09 | |
They couldn't believe it. I couldn't either. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
Suddenly, the royalties started to come in, because the record sales were quite bizarrely large. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:18 | |
My predominant thought was probably, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
"Which model of Aston Martin will this buy me?" | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
I suspect that was my priority when looking at a large cheque. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
It was always, immediately, cars that flashed into my head. Thinking, "I can just about run to the V8." | 0:50:28 | 0:50:35 | |
It was quite a staggering sum of money. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
I remember going to see my agent. He said to me, | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
"They've asked if you want to do another one of those record things. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:45 | |
"Are you interested in doing that? Because you did the first one before you joined me?" | 0:50:45 | 0:50:51 | |
And I said, "Yes". | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
He said, "Did you make any money?" | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
"Yes, well, about £30,000." | 0:50:56 | 0:50:58 | |
And he fell off his chair. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:00 | |
I'd never seen anybody actually do that. I'd never seen anybody go... Whoa! | 0:51:03 | 0:51:07 | |
# Super duper, super duper | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
# Super duper, super doo... # | 0:51:11 | 0:51:15 | |
The show was now at the peak of its popularity | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
and the hits just kept on coming. Everything was Super Duper. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:22 | |
# One of us is ugly One of us is cute | 0:51:23 | 0:51:27 | |
# One of us you'd like to see in her birthday suit | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
Two of us write music Two of we are sung | 0:51:30 | 0:51:34 | |
# Sorry, in translation that line come out wrong | 0:51:34 | 0:51:38 | |
# But still, super duper It's super duper | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
# That we're number one again | 0:51:42 | 0:51:45 | |
# Singing super duper duper | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
# Makes a super-duper refrain... # | 0:51:49 | 0:51:51 | |
The pressure and the agony and the struggle and all the difficulty | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
is repaid by ludicrous success. I mean, fantastic acclaim. | 0:51:55 | 0:52:00 | |
Their figures, I don't know what they were, but I guess they were in the very high millions - | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
up to eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14 million - which are now unthinkable figures. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:10 | |
Not The Nine O'Clock News was the hit comedy show of the day. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
The books and records were flying off the shelves | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
and the awards piled up for the whole team, | 0:52:17 | 0:52:19 | |
especially for the star of the show, Rowan Atkinson. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
Most of the last year of my life has been spent working on | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
a notorious programme called Not The Nine O'Clock News. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
And I'd really like to devote this award, as much to myself, | 0:52:30 | 0:52:34 | |
as to Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones and Pamela Stephenson. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:38 | |
And to our two producers, our two relatively unsung heroes, John Lloyd and Sean Hardie, | 0:52:38 | 0:52:44 | |
without whose extraordinary producing talents, the programme would never have happened. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:49 | |
Earlier today, we at Game For A Laugh came round to his house and cut his wife's head off. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:54 | |
I hear through my ears that Geoffrey is just coming round the corner. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
Let's see if Geoffrey Lewis is Game For A Laugh. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:05 | |
SCREAMING FROM HOUSE | 0:53:07 | 0:53:10 | |
Yes, yes, I think he's found her. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:12 | |
Let's go and see if Jeffrey Lewis is Game For A Laugh. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:14 | |
Hello, Geoffrey. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
Oh, God! Oh, God! | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
Geoffrey, can I ask you, why you're looking so perturbed? | 0:53:20 | 0:53:23 | |
My wife! | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
Her head! | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
Right... | 0:53:28 | 0:53:29 | |
-You knew? -Yes, Geoffrey, we knew, | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
but what you didn't know was that a couple of weeks ago | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
your wife rang us up and said you'd be the sort of fellow | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
who was...Game For A Laugh! | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
Oh, I don't believe it! | 0:53:43 | 0:53:47 | |
Oh, great! | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
This is unbelievable! You mean, you guys cut her head off? | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
That's right. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:55 | |
And I came out and you're... | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
-What a bunch of loonies. -Great. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
It was the most successful comedy show in years. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
But keeping it going put more pressure on some than others. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:10 | |
It was a nightmare of overwork. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:12 | |
Everything was stressful. We were green with exhaustion. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
We were within an ace of disaster more less every week. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
I thought it was very disorganised. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:21 | |
We were making it up as we went along. | 0:54:21 | 0:54:23 | |
We did this insane weekly turnaround. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:25 | |
The show would go out on a Monday night and on Tuesday we'd have the script meeting. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:30 | |
Within a week, you've started from no script to a recorded edited programme and a transmission, in a single week. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:37 | |
The Not The Nine O'Clock News was in a real, um... | 0:54:37 | 0:54:41 | |
A vortex of filth. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:42 | |
And greyness. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:44 | |
And teacups and men who hadn't shaved. It wasn't beautiful, | 0:54:44 | 0:54:48 | |
the way you see these sexy offices and people coming down with trays of things. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:54 | |
I don't remember eating. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:55 | |
It was like being in a boys' dorm. | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
My major memory of the show is sitting in a basement in Camden Town | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
writing lots and lots. Sometimes you'd watch a show and there would be almost nothing by you. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:08 | |
It is miraculous what we did and we were only able to do it by basically going without sleep for three months. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:15 | |
For the actors, it was a very nice job. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
My job I always felt was quite straightforward. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
I just turned up and learnt the scripts and turned up | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
on the Sunday and recorded them. It seemed like a very simple job. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
There was always work going on, because there would be a series of sketches that needed to be done. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:33 | |
And...John would want to rehearse something with whoever was in it | 0:55:35 | 0:55:40 | |
and the rest of us would read the newspapers | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
and fiddle around with scripts that we were trying to work on. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
Or play pinball. A lot of pinball. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:51 | |
It was partly the joy of having a big, flashing | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
colourful thing that you knew nobody else had. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:02 | |
The Roy Castle Special certainly didn't have a pinball machine. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:07 | |
It was amazing, the energy and the fire and the creative enthusiasm | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
when they were playing pinball. | 0:56:11 | 0:56:13 | |
Then they'd say, "We better go back to the sketches." | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
And everybody would go, "Oh." Just waiting for something funny to be said. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:21 | |
COMMENTATOR: And a very good evening to you. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:24 | |
You join us during the final stages of this truly titanic struggle, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:29 | |
between Dai "Fat Belly" Gutbucket... | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
..and the English champion, Tommy "Even Fatter Belly" Belcher. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:38 | |
It's all down now to this last leg and it's Fat Belly on the oche. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:45 | |
Game on. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:47 | |
So, it's Fat Belly to go first. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:51 | |
And it's a good start. | 0:56:52 | 0:56:53 | |
Double vodka. | 0:56:55 | 0:56:57 | |
Single pint. | 0:56:59 | 0:57:01 | |
Another double vodka. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:09 | |
100 milligrams! | 0:57:09 | 0:57:12 | |
100 milligrams. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:14 | |
That's a good start for Fat Belly. | 0:57:16 | 0:57:19 | |
The writers kept the flow of good ideas coming, | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
but in the cut and thrust of the script meetings, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
some of the best ones nearly didn't make it. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:28 | |
I remember John saying, when I handed in the bit of paper saying, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
"Rowan walks along the street, sees a camera and hits a lamp-post" | 0:57:33 | 0:57:37 | |
saying, "One, it's not funny. Two, you don't expect me to pay you for that?" | 0:57:37 | 0:57:42 | |
I turned over the page, there was an interesting set up. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:46 | |
"What's the joke?" He said, "That's the joke." | 0:57:46 | 0:57:48 | |
I said, I don't know why you... | 0:57:48 | 0:57:53 | |
I probably got a bit cross, because we were all under such pressure | 0:57:53 | 0:57:56 | |
all the time, you think, "What the hell is this, Richard? | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
"There's no joke in it." He said, "No, please, please. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:02 | |
"Can we try it? Rowan was very keen. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:04 | |
It was just something that felt funny - | 0:58:04 | 0:58:08 | |
a sort of gimpish self-consciousness. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:12 | |
And the minute you see it on camera, you go, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
'"What a fool!" Of course, it's brilliant.' | 0:58:19 | 0:58:21 | |
'You know, this sweet reaction' | 0:58:23 | 0:58:25 | |
of the self-conscious man, who has no performing talent per se. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:30 | |
It's just, what you do if you notice someone. | 0:58:30 | 0:58:34 | |
You know, | 0:58:34 | 0:58:36 | |
I'm not sure where to put myself and so, inevitably, | 0:58:36 | 0:58:39 | |
you're going to hit something eventually. | 0:58:39 | 0:58:41 | |
It's not about bumping into the tree. | 0:58:41 | 0:58:43 | |
It's about the vanity of looking into the camera and then | 0:58:43 | 0:58:47 | |
you don't pay attention because you think, "Oh, I'm being filmed." | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 | |
It's absolutely charming and probably the most famous Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch there is. | 0:58:50 | 0:58:55 | |
So, bully for me. Just shows how useless I was. | 0:58:55 | 0:58:58 | |
We tried to work out things which were odd and which Rowan and I'd sort of do more on stage, | 0:59:17 | 0:59:24 | |
rather than writing satirical things about trade unions or train timetables or stuff like that. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:31 | |
Good evening, sir, May I take your coat for you? | 0:59:31 | 0:59:35 | |
Please, yes. | 0:59:35 | 0:59:37 | |
Would you like me to take your jacket for you? | 0:59:44 | 0:59:46 | |
Yes, please. | 0:59:46 | 0:59:47 | |
Rowan is a complete performer. I mean, everything's important. | 0:59:54 | 0:59:58 | |
The size of the shot, the body position, | 0:59:58 | 1:00:01 | |
tiny little tweaks of the face, the timbre of the voice, the pauses... | 1:00:01 | 1:00:06 | |
You know, everything. The lines, as we know, Rowan can do an awful lot | 1:00:06 | 1:00:10 | |
of things just by going "um" several times | 1:00:10 | 1:00:13 | |
or going "Bob". Or "gram-o-phone". | 1:00:13 | 1:00:17 | |
-Ahem, excuse me. -Yeah? | 1:00:17 | 1:00:18 | |
I want to buy a gramophone. | 1:00:18 | 1:00:21 | |
-A what? -A gramophone. | 1:00:21 | 1:00:24 | |
Gram-o-phone? | 1:00:24 | 1:00:26 | |
A gramophone, yes. | 1:00:26 | 1:00:28 | |
I don't think we've got any gram-o-phones here, granddad. | 1:00:28 | 1:00:32 | |
'Yes, his comedy seems to come from' | 1:00:32 | 1:00:35 | |
his physical presence - his body, his face, his limbs and his voice. | 1:00:35 | 1:00:39 | |
So, you've got your deck, do you want a Dolby with it? | 1:00:39 | 1:00:43 | |
Er, yes please. | 1:00:43 | 1:00:44 | |
GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY | 1:00:44 | 1:00:46 | |
You only get Dolby with tape recorders, chief, all right? | 1:00:46 | 1:00:49 | |
-Do you want an amp? -No, I won't bother with... | 1:00:49 | 1:00:52 | |
GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY | 1:00:52 | 1:00:53 | |
You won't hear anything without one. | 1:00:53 | 1:00:55 | |
Oh, sorry, of course. Yes, I want an amp, yes, an amp. | 1:00:55 | 1:00:58 | |
What sort of output are you wanting? | 1:00:58 | 1:01:00 | |
What sort have you got? | 1:01:00 | 1:01:02 | |
Ah... No, no clues. | 1:01:02 | 1:01:05 | |
About medium. | 1:01:08 | 1:01:09 | |
How many watts, exactly? | 1:01:10 | 1:01:12 | |
I should think about, erm, about three. | 1:01:12 | 1:01:15 | |
GRIFF LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY | 1:01:15 | 1:01:17 | |
No, 2000. | 1:01:17 | 1:01:18 | |
500? | 1:01:20 | 1:01:21 | |
-30? -30? -30. | 1:01:21 | 1:01:23 | |
30. So, you know all about it now, then, do you? | 1:01:23 | 1:01:26 | |
You want a 30 watt amp? | 1:01:26 | 1:01:27 | |
-A 30 watt amp. -Do you want speakers? | 1:01:27 | 1:01:29 | |
-Yes. -Do you want rumble filters? -Yes. | 1:01:29 | 1:01:32 | |
-Do you want a bag on your head? -Yes. | 1:01:32 | 1:01:34 | |
There we are, have a bag on your head. | 1:01:34 | 1:01:36 | |
There was nothing like him on the television at the time. | 1:01:37 | 1:01:41 | |
There was no one as funny bones, no one as innate, no one as just, you cannot take your eyes off him, | 1:01:41 | 1:01:48 | |
because he will do that dopey face, that thing and you will want to watch that. | 1:01:48 | 1:01:56 | |
A flash bulb suspended | 1:01:56 | 1:01:58 | |
here, to be connected to an aerial receiver, here. | 1:01:58 | 1:02:04 | |
So now, when this discreet accessory is worn, | 1:02:04 | 1:02:08 | |
even a deaf person knows when the phone is ringing. | 1:02:08 | 1:02:13 | |
PHONE RINGS | 1:02:13 | 1:02:16 | |
'Hello. Hello? | 1:02:22 | 1:02:24 | |
'Is anyone there? | 1:02:26 | 1:02:27 | |
'Hello?.. Hello?' | 1:02:28 | 1:02:30 | |
'I remember practising in front of a mirror. | 1:02:30 | 1:02:33 | |
'I remember when, I sort of, first discovered, you know, | 1:02:33 | 1:02:36 | |
how extreme my facial expressions could be for comic effect. | 1:02:36 | 1:02:40 | |
And practising them and thinking, "Gosh, that looks pretty funny. | 1:02:40 | 1:02:43 | |
"I think I'll try that tomorrow night | 1:02:43 | 1:02:45 | |
"in front of a paying audience and see how they react." | 1:02:45 | 1:02:50 | |
A runny nose cannot be prevented but it can now be cured. | 1:02:51 | 1:02:56 | |
Contac 1200. | 1:02:56 | 1:02:58 | |
For fast, effective, painful relief. | 1:02:58 | 1:03:02 | |
Rowan, Mel, Pamela and Griff, were now television stars and their lives were changing fast. | 1:03:08 | 1:03:14 | |
They were young and funny and now they were also rich and famous. | 1:03:14 | 1:03:19 | |
It's wonderful to have the wind in your sails, you know? It's wonderful. | 1:03:19 | 1:03:24 | |
And you think, "Yeah, why not, actually? Why not? Yep." | 1:03:24 | 1:03:27 | |
There's nothing better than being 26, 27 | 1:03:27 | 1:03:31 | |
and being able to walk into a room | 1:03:31 | 1:03:34 | |
and everybody turns around and goes, "There he is. Look who it is." | 1:03:34 | 1:03:38 | |
Good evening, smarm, smarm, very good to be here with you again and tonight I am grovelling | 1:03:40 | 1:03:45 | |
to one of the most extraordinary, how should I put it, smarm, smarm, performers of our generation. | 1:03:45 | 1:03:50 | |
Tonight, I'm grovelling to Billy Connolly. | 1:03:50 | 1:03:53 | |
The appearance on the show of the very famous Billy Connolly | 1:03:54 | 1:03:57 | |
started off as a day of mutual admiration between showbiz chums. | 1:03:57 | 1:04:01 | |
It soon turned into a major, life-changing event. | 1:04:01 | 1:04:04 | |
Scotsmen, drunk Scotsmen, especially drunk Glaswegians, | 1:04:04 | 1:04:09 | |
walk with one leg like that. | 1:04:09 | 1:04:11 | |
And they ask everybody if they're all right, all the time. | 1:04:22 | 1:04:26 | |
"You a' right?" | 1:04:26 | 1:04:28 | |
Billy was a phenomenon in those days. | 1:04:30 | 1:04:32 | |
Billy was the only... | 1:04:32 | 1:04:34 | |
I mean, now we're used to the idea of stand-up comedians traipsing around England and filling halls. | 1:04:34 | 1:04:41 | |
Billy was the only person who did it. | 1:04:41 | 1:04:43 | |
He would go around Britain, like a rock star, | 1:04:43 | 1:04:45 | |
playing these massive halls to huge acclaim, | 1:04:45 | 1:04:49 | |
as, principally, the only stand-up comedian of his kind in the country. | 1:04:49 | 1:04:56 | |
And so, we were in awe of him, we worshipped him. | 1:04:56 | 1:04:59 | |
One of the first things I did was with Rowan Atkinson. | 1:04:59 | 1:05:01 | |
He interviewed me like a Parkinson kind of guy, | 1:05:01 | 1:05:05 | |
but the whole theme was that I was working class and interesting | 1:05:05 | 1:05:11 | |
and he was a toff and deeply patronising. | 1:05:11 | 1:05:15 | |
You know, I remember him, he said, | 1:05:15 | 1:05:18 | |
"Grovel, grovel" he kept saying, "grovel". | 1:05:18 | 1:05:21 | |
And then he said, "And you come from Glasgow?" And I said, "Yeah." | 1:05:21 | 1:05:24 | |
And he said, "Oh, Glasgow, Gorbals, Gorbals, grovel, grovel." | 1:05:24 | 1:05:28 | |
Let's get down to you. | 1:05:28 | 1:05:29 | |
Apparently, you were born on your kitchen floor? How interesting. | 1:05:29 | 1:05:33 | |
-We'd just moved to the Gorbals... -Oh, grovel, Gorbal, grovel. | 1:05:33 | 1:05:36 | |
But I had a hugely high opinion of them and they were flying, they were rock and roll. | 1:05:36 | 1:05:42 | |
When they did private appearances, the streets were jammed with people. | 1:05:42 | 1:05:47 | |
So they were big, big news. | 1:05:47 | 1:05:51 | |
We asked Billy Connolly to be on the show because I really wanted him | 1:05:56 | 1:06:00 | |
to get married to Pamela. I'll say no more about that. | 1:06:00 | 1:06:03 | |
Well, I didn't really know who Billy was. | 1:06:03 | 1:06:06 | |
Because I was just this young Australian. | 1:06:06 | 1:06:10 | |
I hadn't really seen him - at all. I'd actually never seen him. | 1:06:10 | 1:06:13 | |
Yeah, you. | 1:06:16 | 1:06:17 | |
-Aye. -Has Jimmy "Chainsaw" McPhee been in here tonight? | 1:06:17 | 1:06:22 | |
No. | 1:06:22 | 1:06:24 | |
What about Big Jock, "The Knee Cruncher"? | 1:06:25 | 1:06:27 | |
No. | 1:06:28 | 1:06:30 | |
ROWAN WHISPERS | 1:06:30 | 1:06:32 | |
What about "Stick The Boot In His Head And Ask Questions Later" McDonald? | 1:06:32 | 1:06:36 | |
No. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:40 | |
"Hacksaw" Haggerty, the hen choker? | 1:06:40 | 1:06:41 | |
No. | 1:06:42 | 1:06:43 | |
Phew! Can I have a Campari and soda, please? | 1:06:45 | 1:06:48 | |
We got to the rehearsal room and I saw... | 1:06:49 | 1:06:52 | |
I was in a corridor and they were in a room, | 1:06:52 | 1:06:55 | |
they'd been rehearsing for a while when I arrived. | 1:06:55 | 1:06:58 | |
And there was a doorway and Pamela came past the door | 1:06:58 | 1:07:02 | |
on a tea trolley, like Superman, horizontal on the top! | 1:07:02 | 1:07:08 | |
And I thought, "This is different!" | 1:07:09 | 1:07:11 | |
I mean he was just this huge, Scottish beast. | 1:07:11 | 1:07:17 | |
I mean, I thought he was some kind of animal. | 1:07:17 | 1:07:19 | |
And he ate his meal, the fish meal, with his hands. | 1:07:22 | 1:07:25 | |
He didn't pick up a knife and fork at any point. | 1:07:25 | 1:07:29 | |
And, actually, I thought that was rather attractive. | 1:07:29 | 1:07:33 | |
Well, hello, and tonight I'm talking to Billy Connolly, | 1:07:33 | 1:07:38 | |
a well-known Scottish comedian. | 1:07:38 | 1:07:41 | |
He was absolutely brilliant and you could see there was a chemistry | 1:07:41 | 1:07:45 | |
with him and Pamela straight away. The swine(!) | 1:07:45 | 1:07:47 | |
When I look at that sketch, the Janet Street-Porter one, | 1:07:47 | 1:07:51 | |
I can definitely see a spark between us, that was more than just a comic spark. | 1:07:51 | 1:07:57 | |
It was a love affair made in the Not The Nine O'Clock News studio. | 1:07:58 | 1:08:02 | |
Billy, I understand that when you first came to England, | 1:08:04 | 1:08:09 | |
people had a lot of trouble understanding your accent. | 1:08:09 | 1:08:12 | |
LAUGHTER | 1:08:12 | 1:08:15 | |
Is that right? | 1:08:15 | 1:08:16 | |
Sorry? | 1:08:16 | 1:08:17 | |
The affair with Billy Connolly made Pamela Stephenson | 1:08:20 | 1:08:23 | |
even more famous than she was before. Now, Pamela was a news story herself. | 1:08:23 | 1:08:27 | |
Pamela went through, as you know, a sort of astral fame phase where she was probably the most famous | 1:08:28 | 1:08:33 | |
woman in the country, along with Princess Diana, with whom she was quite friendly. | 1:08:33 | 1:08:38 | |
And she was on the front page of the paper more or less every day. | 1:08:38 | 1:08:41 | |
Pam became a very big star, very quickly. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:45 | |
And often for... because she was a pretty woman, | 1:08:45 | 1:08:49 | |
apart from being a very good performer. | 1:08:49 | 1:08:51 | |
So, she was very high profile in the tabloids and all the rest of it. | 1:08:51 | 1:08:56 | |
And so she was caught between being very famous, by that stage, and also having to try to draw | 1:08:56 | 1:09:02 | |
the borderline between that and what was going on in her private life. | 1:09:02 | 1:09:05 | |
So, she was under a lot of pressure in that way, much more pressure than the boys were, really. | 1:09:05 | 1:09:10 | |
Pamela said to me once, "The first six months of being famous is like | 1:09:12 | 1:09:16 | |
"being totally high, like being on drugs on a skiing holiday. | 1:09:16 | 1:09:19 | |
"And the rest of it is just rubbish. It's awful." | 1:09:19 | 1:09:22 | |
Let me see your tongue, that's right. That looks nice. | 1:09:22 | 1:09:25 | |
'It was definitely quite overwhelming, everything.' | 1:09:25 | 1:09:28 | |
I remember feeling very out of control. | 1:09:28 | 1:09:31 | |
Pamela Stephenson. | 1:09:32 | 1:09:33 | |
APPLAUSE | 1:09:33 | 1:09:35 | |
'Parky invited me to go on with Reggie Bosanquet.' | 1:09:35 | 1:09:38 | |
And I seem to remember, sort of, | 1:09:38 | 1:09:42 | |
I don't know, climbing on top of him at one point. | 1:09:42 | 1:09:44 | |
I think I did something really... pretty out there. | 1:09:44 | 1:09:47 | |
Stand up for me. | 1:09:47 | 1:09:49 | |
I mean, if I was sort of... | 1:09:51 | 1:09:52 | |
Michael! | 1:09:52 | 1:09:53 | |
Oh, my God! | 1:09:59 | 1:10:00 | |
'I remember his toupee taking a full 360 turn at the time.' | 1:10:01 | 1:10:05 | |
And, yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. | 1:10:05 | 1:10:10 | |
Michael, I didn't realise it was this kind of show. | 1:10:10 | 1:10:14 | |
She was always getting into trouble | 1:10:16 | 1:10:18 | |
by doing untoward things on Parkinson | 1:10:18 | 1:10:21 | |
and slightly ill-judged piece of bad luck, but again, | 1:10:21 | 1:10:25 | |
it was a lark and what would have been very larky | 1:10:25 | 1:10:28 | |
with your friends on a stag night or something, | 1:10:28 | 1:10:31 | |
not necessarily acceptable at ten o'clock on BBC One. | 1:10:31 | 1:10:36 | |
Pamela wasn't the only wild thing on TV in 1979. | 1:10:38 | 1:10:42 | |
There was also David Attenborough's encounter with a gorilla on Life On Earth, | 1:10:42 | 1:10:48 | |
which inspired a much weirder encounter on Not The Nine O'Clock News. | 1:10:48 | 1:10:52 | |
Professor. Can Gerald really speak as we would understand it? | 1:10:53 | 1:10:57 | |
Oh yes, yes, yes. He can speak a few actual words. | 1:10:57 | 1:11:00 | |
Of course it was extremely difficult to get him even to this stage. | 1:11:00 | 1:11:03 | |
When I first captured Gerald in the Congo, '67 I think it was... | 1:11:03 | 1:11:10 | |
GORILLA: '68. | 1:11:10 | 1:11:12 | |
We had a kind of strange, kind of, off-key notion of a man who's been trying to raise a gorilla | 1:11:13 | 1:11:19 | |
and has become obsessed and is clearly in love with this gorilla, but daren't say it. | 1:11:19 | 1:11:26 | |
Yes, I was going to ask you actually, Gerald, do you have a mate? | 1:11:26 | 1:11:30 | |
Yeah, I've got lots of mates. | 1:11:30 | 1:11:32 | |
There's the professor, his son, Toby, there's Raymond next door... | 1:11:32 | 1:11:37 | |
No, actually, what... | 1:11:37 | 1:11:39 | |
Oh, I see, I see what you mean. Er, crumpet, crumpet. | 1:11:39 | 1:11:42 | |
-Well... -You didn't tell me you were friendly with Raymond. | 1:11:42 | 1:11:46 | |
Do I have to tell you everything? | 1:11:46 | 1:11:48 | |
'It's brilliant teamwork between the three of them because' | 1:11:48 | 1:11:52 | |
Mel is playing a fantastic straight performer and Pamela is brilliant, I mean, that's wonderful acting. | 1:11:52 | 1:11:59 | |
Those flat looks she gives as the interviewer. | 1:11:59 | 1:12:02 | |
You can just see her brain going, "This is going horribly wrong. | 1:12:02 | 1:12:06 | |
"My television career is over." | 1:12:06 | 1:12:07 | |
You can almost hear the producer, in her ear, shouting, "Get them off, get them off!" | 1:12:07 | 1:12:12 | |
There was a lot of work, it was slow and difficult. | 1:12:13 | 1:12:16 | |
I had to do a lot of work on a one-to-one basis... | 1:12:16 | 1:12:19 | |
Yes, if I might just butt in at this point, Tim, | 1:12:19 | 1:12:21 | |
I think I should point out that I have done a considerable amount of work | 1:12:21 | 1:12:25 | |
on this project myself and if I may say so, you're teaching methods leave a bit to be desired. | 1:12:25 | 1:12:30 | |
-That's a bit ungrateful, isn't it? -And your diction, for instance, is not really... | 1:12:30 | 1:12:35 | |
I'm sorry, can I put this into some sort of perspective, when I CAUGHT Gerald in '68... | 1:12:35 | 1:12:39 | |
he was completely wild. | 1:12:39 | 1:12:41 | |
Wild?! I was absolutely livid! | 1:12:41 | 1:12:43 | |
God knows how you make that terrible gorilla costume look funny. | 1:12:43 | 1:12:47 | |
Because it's, you know, | 1:12:47 | 1:12:49 | |
not wanting to knock what we could afford as a costume, | 1:12:49 | 1:12:52 | |
but it really doesn't stand up as anything like the Planet of the Apes, does it? | 1:12:52 | 1:12:57 | |
But there was something in the body attitude that was perfectly possible | 1:12:57 | 1:13:01 | |
to convey while in a gorilla suit and it was nice to discover that, | 1:13:01 | 1:13:07 | |
you know, the body language could be...heard. | 1:13:07 | 1:13:12 | |
I know you've never got on with my mother... | 1:13:12 | 1:13:14 | |
She didn't exactly like me, did she? | 1:13:14 | 1:13:17 | |
She got on perfectly well with David Attenborough. | 1:13:17 | 1:13:19 | |
David Attenborough! All I ever hear is David bloody Attenborough! | 1:13:19 | 1:13:23 | |
-Leave Dave out of this. -Shut up and have a banana. | 1:13:23 | 1:13:25 | |
'I remember that I couldn't see the plate,' | 1:13:25 | 1:13:29 | |
and I couldn't feel my mouth. It was very difficult physically, very challenging sketch. | 1:13:29 | 1:13:35 | |
The programme had gained a reputation for being edgy and outrageous. | 1:13:35 | 1:13:39 | |
Every week, they were accused of going too far. | 1:13:39 | 1:13:42 | |
But when complaints started coming from other comedians, it was time to fight back. | 1:13:42 | 1:13:48 | |
There were a lot of snide remarks that used to go on | 1:13:48 | 1:13:51 | |
about how Not The Nine O'clock News was rude and juvenile, | 1:13:51 | 1:13:54 | |
and how pathetic it was | 1:13:54 | 1:13:55 | |
and shouldn't be allowed, and I think Ronnie Barker was not averse to dropping those sort of remarks. | 1:13:55 | 1:14:02 | |
A tragic accident has ended the career of Plastex, the amazing plastic man. | 1:14:02 | 1:14:06 | |
He sat on a radiator today and made a complete pool of himself. | 1:14:06 | 1:14:10 | |
LAUGHTER | 1:14:10 | 1:14:11 | |
I went through a whole episode of the Two Ronnies, | 1:14:11 | 1:14:14 | |
counting all the rude jokes, and there were 54 in half an hour. | 1:14:14 | 1:14:18 | |
They were just unbelievably smutty. | 1:14:18 | 1:14:20 | |
But they posed as this thing, that they weren't rude, because they disguised it, and we were rude | 1:14:20 | 1:14:25 | |
because we actually said bloody rather than ruddy. | 1:14:25 | 1:14:28 | |
# I had a nice little donkey | 1:14:28 | 1:14:30 | |
# I fed it on nettles and grass | 1:14:30 | 1:14:33 | |
# One day my donkey went wonky | 1:14:33 | 1:14:35 | |
# And now I can't sit on my ass... # | 1:14:35 | 1:14:38 | |
I mean, we were all sick of old-school comedians | 1:14:39 | 1:14:43 | |
pretending to almost say a rude word and then not saying it. | 1:14:43 | 1:14:46 | |
And, you know, while Ronnie Barker is a legend, | 1:14:46 | 1:14:51 | |
it's not the greatest comedy device in the world to ALMOST say, "Poo." | 1:14:51 | 1:14:58 | |
The Not The Nine O'Clock News team didn't have to wait long before a chance came | 1:14:59 | 1:15:04 | |
to show Ronnie Barker just how far the rudeness envelope could be pushed. | 1:15:04 | 1:15:08 | |
Good evening, it's wonderful to be with you again, isn't it, Ronnie? | 1:15:08 | 1:15:11 | |
No. It's a bleeding pain in the arse, frankly. | 1:15:11 | 1:15:14 | |
But, you will be reassured to know we'll be using exactly | 1:15:14 | 1:15:17 | |
-the same sort of material... -As we've used for the last 20 years. | 1:15:17 | 1:15:20 | |
In the fourth series, we had this brilliant sketch from a guy | 1:15:20 | 1:15:24 | |
who was a disaffected Two Ronnies writer. | 1:15:24 | 1:15:27 | |
And it was an absolute assassination thing, which is to say, when he says | 1:15:27 | 1:15:31 | |
cobblers, I mean testicles, and so on. | 1:15:31 | 1:15:33 | |
And it was a brilliant destruction of the Two Ronnies. | 1:15:33 | 1:15:36 | |
Later in the show, I shall be implying, through smutty innuendo... | 1:15:36 | 1:15:39 | |
-..that I have a very small part... -And I have an enormous penis. | 1:15:39 | 1:15:42 | |
They basically called the bluff of innuendo and the Two Ronnies chose to be very offended by this. | 1:15:42 | 1:15:47 | |
What we did was just to say, "This is what it would sound like | 1:15:47 | 1:15:51 | |
"if they actually said what they were pretending to say." | 1:15:51 | 1:15:54 | |
And all the way through the show, I shall frequently cry... | 1:15:54 | 1:15:57 | |
-Spectacles... -Meaning testicles. | 1:15:57 | 1:15:59 | |
-Cobblers... -By which he means testicles. | 1:15:59 | 1:16:01 | |
-Didgeridoos... -By which he means penises. | 1:16:01 | 1:16:03 | |
-Water melons. -Breasts. | 1:16:03 | 1:16:05 | |
-Articles. -Testicles again. -Bristols. -Breasts again. | 1:16:05 | 1:16:08 | |
-And bouncers. -Breasts or testicles. | 1:16:08 | 1:16:12 | |
I mean, the Two Ronnies always ended with a big musical number where they | 1:16:12 | 1:16:16 | |
basically sort of marked time and did sort of silly rhymes marching up and down upon the spot, spot, spot. | 1:16:16 | 1:16:23 | |
You see, I used to love the show. | 1:16:23 | 1:16:25 | |
It's just a bit old-fashioned and, in the way that young people, | 1:16:25 | 1:16:30 | |
as we were in those days, have to, you know, slag those things off, and so we did. Slag them, we did. | 1:16:30 | 1:16:36 | |
# We like birds We're ornithologists | 1:16:38 | 1:16:41 | |
# Orni-porno-thologists | 1:16:41 | 1:16:43 | |
# I've got a nice pair of binacu-nocul-arse | 1:16:43 | 1:16:46 | |
# You can stick them up on your tripod... # | 1:16:46 | 1:16:49 | |
It was quite malicious, actually. It was quite funny. | 1:16:49 | 1:16:53 | |
It was about the choreography, "We're marching up and down upon the spot, spot, spot. | 1:16:53 | 1:16:57 | |
"Cos the sodding choreographer's a twat, twat, twat." | 1:16:57 | 1:17:01 | |
# And I couldn't care a jot if we're military men or not | 1:17:01 | 1:17:03 | |
-# With a bum... -Tit | 1:17:03 | 1:17:05 | |
-# How's your father -Oops! -A-diddly-ay-do... | 1:17:05 | 1:17:08 | |
# ..Just crawling through the grass Thistles in me hair | 1:17:08 | 1:17:11 | |
# And bracken up me anus | 1:17:11 | 1:17:13 | |
# Thrilled to bits if I see a pair of tits | 1:17:13 | 1:17:15 | |
# And I love to watch the sun go down | 1:17:15 | 1:17:18 | |
# Oh, vagina, oh, vagina Over Chinatown... # | 1:17:18 | 1:17:21 | |
Poor old Ronnie Barker saw this and thought, "OK, what bastards." | 1:17:21 | 1:17:26 | |
I mean, he hated it. And he was what they call in the BBC, | 1:17:26 | 1:17:30 | |
there's always, at any time, the BBC have a thing called the guv'nor. | 1:17:30 | 1:17:34 | |
Well, he was the guv'nor in those days. | 1:17:36 | 1:17:39 | |
And he had a lot of clout. | 1:17:39 | 1:17:41 | |
Although, all power to everyone's elbow, it went out and that was it. | 1:17:41 | 1:17:46 | |
Sorry if it offends you but there you go. | 1:17:46 | 1:17:49 | |
Ronnie Corbett loved it. | 1:17:49 | 1:17:51 | |
# J Arthur Rank and the titty bum Urals | 1:17:51 | 1:17:53 | |
# Nippling away with a pain in the Balkans | 1:17:53 | 1:17:55 | |
# Spotty botty wee-wee piddling about | 1:17:55 | 1:17:57 | |
# In the Jimmy Riddle camiknicker orchestra | 1:17:57 | 1:17:59 | |
# Knickers up and down to me willy bum gooly | 1:17:59 | 1:18:00 | |
# Knockers to the mammary Nympho beaver | 1:18:00 | 1:18:02 | |
# Knackers in the Baltic clappering away | 1:18:02 | 1:18:04 | |
# So we knicker and we knacker and we knocker all day | 1:18:04 | 1:18:05 | |
# Knickers up and down to me willy bum gooly | 1:18:05 | 1:18:07 | |
# Knockers to the mammary nympho beaver | 1:18:07 | 1:18:09 | |
# Knackers in the Baltic clappering away | 1:18:09 | 1:18:10 | |
# So we knicker and we knacker and we knocker | 1:18:10 | 1:18:12 | |
# And we knacker and we knocker all day! # | 1:18:12 | 1:18:14 | |
I didn't want to do it at the time, anyway. | 1:18:14 | 1:18:16 | |
Not because, not because... | 1:18:16 | 1:18:18 | |
I just didn't see what the big satirical edge was in having a go at The Two Ronnies. | 1:18:18 | 1:18:24 | |
Griff, I think, met Ronnie Corbett at a party and he said, | 1:18:24 | 1:18:27 | |
"We shouldn't make jokes about Ronnie Corbett. He's very nice." | 1:18:27 | 1:18:30 | |
And I thought that's when I knew I'd lost everybody, you know? | 1:18:30 | 1:18:33 | |
That you are...that the famous are different from us. | 1:18:33 | 1:18:37 | |
The Fab Four had gone from a tight-knit team of unknowns | 1:18:39 | 1:18:43 | |
to a collection of ambitious stars with big career plans. | 1:18:43 | 1:18:47 | |
Rowan, who was the only real technologist amongst us said, | 1:18:47 | 1:18:50 | |
"We really ought to do a video from this." | 1:18:50 | 1:18:52 | |
So he said, "I'll get some video time and I'll cut together a 90-minute special from all the best sketches." | 1:18:52 | 1:18:59 | |
So he took months doing this and eventually called me and said, "Would you have a look? | 1:18:59 | 1:19:03 | |
"What do you think? I'm quite pleased." | 1:19:03 | 1:19:05 | |
So I went and saw this 90-minute video and I watched it | 1:19:05 | 1:19:08 | |
right the way through and I said, "Rowan, where's Pamela?" He said, "Pamela?" | 1:19:08 | 1:19:14 | |
I said, "Yes. She doesn't appear to be in it at all. | 1:19:14 | 1:19:18 | |
"You've managed to take out every frame of Pamela. | 1:19:18 | 1:19:21 | |
"There wasn't one sketch or song with her in it?" I said. | 1:19:21 | 1:19:24 | |
He said, "Do you know, I never really thought she was that funny." | 1:19:24 | 1:19:28 | |
I said, "Yes, but, Rowan, | 1:19:28 | 1:19:30 | |
"She's one of four people." So that never saw the light of day. | 1:19:30 | 1:19:33 | |
But that was how strongly he felt, I think. | 1:19:33 | 1:19:36 | |
There wasn't a lot of love lost between them towards the end. | 1:19:36 | 1:19:39 | |
There were rumours of various misunderstandings, shall we put it, | 1:19:39 | 1:19:44 | |
between the female and male members of the cast. | 1:19:44 | 1:19:47 | |
And I think they became | 1:19:47 | 1:19:50 | |
a bit of a more formidable problem as time went on. | 1:19:50 | 1:19:54 | |
I think there was a lot of strain in there as well. | 1:19:54 | 1:19:57 | |
There was a lot of stress and strain between people, individuals. | 1:19:57 | 1:20:01 | |
You know, bits of jealousy | 1:20:01 | 1:20:04 | |
and all that crap that goes on in shows like that. | 1:20:04 | 1:20:08 | |
I was always a bit too much of a sexpot or something. | 1:20:08 | 1:20:12 | |
I was always sort of interested in being attractive. | 1:20:12 | 1:20:15 | |
And you have to kind of drop that | 1:20:15 | 1:20:17 | |
if you want to be matey with the boys and get on with them. | 1:20:17 | 1:20:20 | |
I think they were, understandably, a bit wary of me. | 1:20:20 | 1:20:23 | |
I think it was a bit... | 1:20:23 | 1:20:26 | |
electric in there. | 1:20:26 | 1:20:28 | |
Even when I was working with them, you could see the shape of it. | 1:20:28 | 1:20:32 | |
You know, the way they hung out, physically. | 1:20:32 | 1:20:36 | |
They were there and he was there and she was there. | 1:20:36 | 1:20:38 | |
You could see the shape of it all. | 1:20:38 | 1:20:40 | |
It happens with bands, it happens with most performing teams | 1:20:40 | 1:20:44 | |
that it starts off tentatively, you get a period of time... | 1:20:44 | 1:20:48 | |
It's only a matter of time where it's all gelling | 1:20:48 | 1:20:52 | |
and then things start breaking down. | 1:20:52 | 1:20:55 | |
Dennis, wilt thou leave this woman who is thy wedded wife? | 1:20:55 | 1:21:01 | |
Dost thou dislike her, despise her, hate the sight of the moth-eaten Snoopy doll she's had since college, | 1:21:01 | 1:21:08 | |
and despise her brother, the chartered surveyor | 1:21:08 | 1:21:12 | |
who invites himself for dinner and drinks thy scotch after ye have gone to bed? | 1:21:12 | 1:21:17 | |
Dost thou dislike her mother, hate her cooking, get irritated that she picks at her toenails in bed | 1:21:17 | 1:21:25 | |
and that the clippings somehow find their way into that little crack in the side of the duvet? | 1:21:25 | 1:21:30 | |
And wilt thou forsake her for as long as ye both shall live? | 1:21:30 | 1:21:33 | |
I will. | 1:21:33 | 1:21:35 | |
Muriel, wilt thou leave this drunken shit who is thy wedded husband? | 1:21:35 | 1:21:40 | |
Not The Nine O'Clock News had reached the top of the comedy hill. | 1:21:40 | 1:21:46 | |
They were now faced with a big decision - take it to the next level or quit while they were ahead. | 1:21:46 | 1:21:52 | |
We had an empire, we had a franchise. | 1:21:52 | 1:21:55 | |
And what I wanted to do was break into America and I wanted to do movies. | 1:21:55 | 1:22:00 | |
And I, you know, I wanted to... | 1:22:00 | 1:22:02 | |
..to make something that would last forever. | 1:22:03 | 1:22:06 | |
Sean and I asked the cast, the full cast, to dinner. | 1:22:06 | 1:22:09 | |
And the proposal that we were going to make was that we were going to do exactly what the Pythons had done, | 1:22:09 | 1:22:14 | |
which was they started Monty Python Productions and then we would go on doing as we had done. | 1:22:14 | 1:22:18 | |
Very successful books. One of the books sold a million copies. | 1:22:18 | 1:22:22 | |
The Not The Nine O'Clock News books were very successful in their own right. | 1:22:22 | 1:22:25 | |
And Rowan said... These were not his words, they were the words of Richard Armitage, his agent, | 1:22:25 | 1:22:30 | |
of whom I spoke earlier, the man with the huge cigar, who said, | 1:22:30 | 1:22:34 | |
"I don't think you should play with the second 11 any more." | 1:22:34 | 1:22:38 | |
And that's what Rowan passed on to us. | 1:22:38 | 1:22:40 | |
He said, "My agent thinks I shouldn't play with the second 11 any more." | 1:22:40 | 1:22:44 | |
And he prefaced it by saying, "You're all very nice people | 1:22:44 | 1:22:47 | |
"and I like you a great deal and you are all very talented." | 1:22:47 | 1:22:50 | |
I remember thinking, "Gosh... | 1:22:50 | 1:22:52 | |
"There are people here | 1:22:56 | 1:22:59 | |
"with stronger ambitions to be these big international stars than I." | 1:22:59 | 1:23:04 | |
Rowan then left the restaurant and everybody else got fantastically drunk | 1:23:04 | 1:23:08 | |
because we all thought, "That's the end of our career, basically." | 1:23:08 | 1:23:12 | |
And had to go in the next day and be polite to each other in rehearsal, which was pretty tricky. | 1:23:12 | 1:23:17 | |
It was rather weird when it all finished. | 1:23:17 | 1:23:20 | |
It was sort of, "Oh, right. | 1:23:20 | 1:23:22 | |
"What do we do now?" I'd left the BBC and didn't have a job. | 1:23:22 | 1:23:25 | |
I seriously did not know what I was supposed to do. | 1:23:25 | 1:23:29 | |
Retrospectively, I'd like to apologise | 1:23:29 | 1:23:31 | |
for my high-handed attitude towards the whole thing. | 1:23:31 | 1:23:35 | |
You know, you won't get Rowan being rude to people. | 1:23:35 | 1:23:38 | |
He doesn't do, "rude to people." | 1:23:38 | 1:23:39 | |
He was passing on a remark from somebody else. | 1:23:39 | 1:23:43 | |
It would have been an odd thing had he stayed in a topical weekly TV show forever. | 1:23:43 | 1:23:50 | |
It would just have been odd. | 1:23:50 | 1:23:51 | |
You're talking much more kind of Chaplin, Jacques Tati-type character and that... | 1:23:51 | 1:23:57 | |
that would have needed to find a bigger, wider stage to play on. | 1:23:57 | 1:24:01 | |
And, boy, did he find a wider stage to play on! | 1:24:01 | 1:24:05 | |
That's the end of this series. | 1:24:05 | 1:24:07 | |
It looks as though we're all going our separate ways now. | 1:24:07 | 1:24:11 | |
We've had some good times and some bad times, haven't we, Mel? | 1:24:11 | 1:24:15 | |
Yes, Rowan, we have. | 1:24:15 | 1:24:17 | |
It's easy to be glib, when you're in the middle of that | 1:24:17 | 1:24:20 | |
and it's been successful and you just go, "Do you know something? I think I'll move on." | 1:24:20 | 1:24:24 | |
It never makes sense to the public, does it, that kind of thing, ever? | 1:24:24 | 1:24:28 | |
But I remember it was more of a relief to her than a heartbreak, when it ended. | 1:24:28 | 1:24:33 | |
But that's been my experience of people in shows like that. | 1:24:33 | 1:24:36 | |
People in television shows, when it ends, often there's a great relief to everybody. | 1:24:36 | 1:24:42 | |
Sometimes it isn't later on, but with Pamela, it was. | 1:24:42 | 1:24:45 | |
It's continued to be a relief. I think she was glad to see the back of it. | 1:24:45 | 1:24:49 | |
I think I was ready to move on by the time I heard that it was over. | 1:24:49 | 1:24:54 | |
I mean, people were going their different ways. We were all tired. | 1:24:54 | 1:24:59 | |
I think it stopped at the right time. If you're going to carry on with that idea, | 1:24:59 | 1:25:03 | |
you have to do something different - bring new people in or lose some people or both | 1:25:03 | 1:25:08 | |
or take it in a different direction or try and do something different. | 1:25:08 | 1:25:11 | |
Not The Nine O'Clock News had come to an end. | 1:25:13 | 1:25:17 | |
The cast would perform together for one last time at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. | 1:25:17 | 1:25:23 | |
When they walked off stage on the final night, it was all over. | 1:25:23 | 1:25:28 | |
But Not The Nine O'Clock News had left its mark and no-one would ever forget it. | 1:25:28 | 1:25:33 | |
My hope is that when people watch it | 1:25:36 | 1:25:39 | |
they are surprised by how funny it is and that their memory, when they did watch it, was that it was funny. | 1:25:39 | 1:25:45 | |
And I hope it's still... Some of it holds up. | 1:25:45 | 1:25:48 | |
Wild? I was absolutely livid! | 1:25:48 | 1:25:51 | |
BILLY CONNOLLY: The show is as much part of me as it is of Pamela, although she was the show | 1:25:51 | 1:25:56 | |
and I was only a wee guest but, without the show, my life wouldn't have changed so radically. | 1:25:56 | 1:26:02 | |
It's a hugely important part of my life. | 1:26:02 | 1:26:08 | |
Ah! Ah! Ah! | 1:26:08 | 1:26:10 | |
It seems like, kind of, I went out on a long bender, you know? | 1:26:10 | 1:26:15 | |
It was a glorious bender I went out on, 30 years ago. | 1:26:15 | 1:26:18 | |
As a producer, I try not to have any ego about my own work. | 1:26:19 | 1:26:23 | |
Of course, it's fantastically flawed. | 1:26:23 | 1:26:25 | |
You probably couldn't watch a whole episode without cringing with embarrassment. | 1:26:25 | 1:26:30 | |
But there's enough in it to say, | 1:26:30 | 1:26:33 | |
"Yeah, pretty damn good." | 1:26:33 | 1:26:35 | |
I look back on it with great affection. | 1:26:35 | 1:26:37 | |
It was an innocent time and a carefree time. It was the fact that, | 1:26:37 | 1:26:42 | |
you know, that's what I liked most, really, was the fact that, creatively, | 1:26:42 | 1:26:48 | |
there were many, many different styles and tones of comedy in there and I enjoyed them all. | 1:26:48 | 1:26:53 | |
I don't think we realised just how good it was at the time. | 1:26:53 | 1:26:57 | |
We knew we were successful, | 1:26:57 | 1:26:59 | |
but did we think we would be talking about it 30 years later? | 1:26:59 | 1:27:03 | |
Absolutely not. | 1:27:03 | 1:27:04 | |
It was the show you wanted to watch. | 1:27:04 | 1:27:06 | |
It was a great, funny show and it was iconoclastic and all the rest of it. | 1:27:06 | 1:27:11 | |
And satirical and, I mean, it was great. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:13 | |
And to be part of it was the best time to be alive ever. | 1:27:13 | 1:27:18 | |
I know that, looking back now, if I watch an old sketch or a bunch of old sketches, I know that I think | 1:27:21 | 1:27:27 | |
it's a very good programme, which is something one should be very careful about thinking. | 1:27:27 | 1:27:31 | |
But I think it was brilliant. | 1:27:31 | 1:27:34 | |
You know, we all have our moment in the sun, I think. | 1:27:34 | 1:27:37 | |
And we had one, that's for sure. | 1:27:37 | 1:27:39 | |
# I never thought it would come to this | 1:27:39 | 1:27:42 | |
# Saying cunnilingus and then walking away | 1:27:42 | 1:27:47 | |
# But at least it's better than saying goodbye | 1:27:47 | 1:27:51 | |
# Cos goodbye is the hardest word to say | 1:27:51 | 1:27:57 | |
# So we sing cunnilingus | 1:27:57 | 1:27:59 | |
# We've had some fun | 1:27:59 | 1:28:02 | |
-# Cunnilingus -But what's done is done | 1:28:02 | 1:28:05 | |
# Cunnilingus | 1:28:05 | 1:28:07 | |
# You'll soon find someone new who'll never say cunnilingus to you | 1:28:07 | 1:28:13 | |
# Cunnilingus... # | 1:28:13 | 1:28:15 | |
Cunnilingus, Mel. | 1:28:15 | 1:28:18 | |
# Cunnilingus... # | 1:28:18 | 1:28:19 | |
Cunnilingus, me old mate. | 1:28:19 | 1:28:22 | |
# Cunnilingus... # | 1:28:22 | 1:28:23 | |
-Cunnilingus, Pam. -Oh, Griff! | 1:28:23 | 1:28:27 | |
# Even seeing cunnilingus brings a tear to my eye | 1:28:28 | 1:28:34 | |
# But at least we never said... # | 1:28:34 | 1:28:36 | |
-Goodbye. -Goodbye. -Goodbye. | 1:28:36 | 1:28:39 |