50 Years of BBC Two Comedy

This programme contains strong language and adult humour.

-JOANNA LUMLEY:

-As part of our 50th birthday celebrations,

we look back over some of the iconic comedy broadcast on BBC Two.

Impressed with my continuity announcing?

OK...on with the show.

Did you see that? Did you?

For the last 50 years, BBC Two has been the national

comedy channel,

broadcasting innovative, pioneering and laugh-out-loud comedy

to the nation.

-Remember me?

-He's not local.

BBC Two was a very good place to put weird comedy.

Welcome to BBC Two, the organisation that kills 99% of all known comics.

You would go to BBC Two to find out what the new, sort of,

edgy comedies were - where the new ideas were.

-Oh, you're my wife now!

-Oh, heck!

We were allowed to do whatever we wanted to do.

We'd have Griff Rhys Jones flicking a false hip down some stairs

and we'd just stand back...

"How did this come to be?!"

From the ridiculous to the sublime, and everything in between...

-Yes. It's an extender.

-Nice.

..we're going to revel in the ground-breaking shows which have

-become part of our comedy DNA.

-Resistance is useless.

My arse.

Probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened in my career

was getting our own sketch show on BBC Two.

-Who's going to watch that?

-Freaks.

People came up to me and said, "What are you guys on?"

I used to say, "BBC Two."

Since 1964, BBC Two has been

Britain's alternative comedy channel,

as well as the birthplace of our most loved classics.

-A good idea is a good idea for ever.

-Yeah.

I remember when we got BBC Two. I'm just a kid.

Never watched it. We never watched it...

..until Fawlty Towers came along!

So, put your feet up, relax and enjoy.

Over the next two hours, we're going to be laughing along

with some of the biggest names in the business,

while we look back at 50 years of BBC Two comedy.

-CHANTING:

-Bloody thing, won't work.

Bloody thing, and so on and so on.

Our romp through 50 years of hilarious TV

begins with comedy to the power of two,

as we take a look at the double act.

Er, one and a half, please.

The double act has been a winning formula since time immemorial

and BBC Two has broadcast some of the most

celebrated unions in comedy history.

This is brilliant!

Oh, it's brilliant, is it? I suppose it's GOOD television, is it?

Why does the double act work so well in comedy?

Two people fit very well on a TV screen.

Three people, it all becomes a bit messy.

Erm, four people - forget it.

I wouldn't do comedy if it wasn't for Bob.

There's more aspects of your characters that you can bring out

when there's two of you and it just, kind of, doubles the fun.

Making David laugh is the person I most want to make laugh.

A double act has to have that.

We are quite keen for each other's approval, very quietly.

I was just trying to think of some

historical ones, like Jesus Christ

-and John the...

-Peter.

-John the Baptist.

Well, Peter was funnier.

But who do you remember most?

About 2,000 years later, BBC Two gave forth

their own brand of divine comedy.

Is this heaven, Pete?

Bloody 'ell.

And in 1965, the first double act

to appear on the channel was Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Pete and Dud, Not Only...But Also, they were

absolutely terrific shows.

Wonderful, sort of, vehicles

for them, especially the Dagenham Monologues.

-All right, Pete, then, are you?

-Not too bad, you know.

-Cheers.

-Not too bad. Cheers.

Every time you run a clip of Pete and Dud -

and I bet it happens on this show -

but every time,

it's Dudley Moore in his pint, trying not to corpse.

I come in. I get into bed, you see, feeling quite sleepy.

SLURPING

-I can feel the lids of me eyes beginning to droop, you see?

-Yeah.

A bit of droop in the eyes.

I was just about to drop off, when, suddenly -

tap, tap, tap, at the bloody window pane.

I looked out. You know who it was?

Who?

Bloody Greta Garbo.

'I directed the second series of Not Only...But Also. You didn't know'

quite what they were going to do and they would very often corpse

and go away from the scripts, and I don't think

we ever had a written script for the Dud and Pete sketches.

It was, like, "This is the sketch. Boom."

Where...?

HE COUGHS, LAUGHTER

'People love it when things go wrong.'

You feel you're in on something special, which is great fun.

You enjoying that sandwich?

LAUGHTER

I'm so glad those sketches are like that.

You know, nowadays, we'd reshoot them

and you'd have a version where Dudley Moore didn't corpse

and the lines are just said and you only hear

the studio audience laughing and it wouldn't be nearly as good.

-It's hard to tell!

-I know, you've just seen the Leonardo da Vinci joke,

-have you?

-Yeah!

Often, in comedy,

history repeats itself, so when Beyond The Fringe finished,

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

found each other and went on to do Not Only...But Also.

When Not The Nine O'Clock News finished,

Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones suddenly paired up,

to do Alas Smith and Jones.

And they produced a new version

of a head-to-head sequence that was very like Pete and Dud's.

You want to know my idea of the ideal woman?

Yeah, go on, then.

-Marilyn Monroe.

-Oh, yeah! Marilyn.

-Big, busty, blonde, American and rich.

-Yeah.

Pity you married that scrawny redhead from Glasgow.

Some of the best things are versions of things that have been before

and there's nothing wrong with that. And their head-to-heads,

a lot of them written by Clive Anderson and others, were, you know,

right up there with Pete and Dud's.

-I can get programmes from all over the world.

-Do you?

-I do, yeah.

Yeah, I get them from, er...

Can you pick up BBC Two?

No, I can't, actually, as it happens.

-There's never anything on...

-That's right.

-..so it doesn't really matter.

You don't often get men-and-women double acts, do you? There's a thing.

DOORBELL RINGS

-Who is it?

-Dawn!

Dawn who?

Dawn French, your comedy partner!

Best double act? Probably French and Saunders.

And that's a man and a woman. Isn't it?

I know what's on her mind. She's thinking,

"I could have a bit of that!"

I'd never seen a female double act before.

It's nice when you see one funny lady on the telly,

but to see two, at the same time, was awesome.

-You know who's got it all, don't you?

-Who's that?

-Gerard Depardieu.

-Oh!

There's something about the persona that

Dawn and Jennifer have created that's, sort of time...

The timeless double act, isn't it?

You know who they are.

-I believe he's cunnilingual.

-Is he?

I loved when they did their, sort of, movie homage.

They just had an angle on everything that you weren't expecting.

Those film parodies...

I was just watching, going,

I mean, what have they spent on the... What? And fine,

cos it's just hilarious.

Fan-dabi-dozi!

Good morning.

-Good morning.

-Sit down, please.

What did The Krankies say to you?

They said, "Fan-dabi-dozi."

F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f!

In the late '80s and '90s, BBC Two had a whole range of double acts

with their own shows, all fighting for prominence.

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Remember those two lads?

They were around in the '80s

and one of them, Stephen Fry, pretended to be Michael Jackson once.

My fondest memories are always when Stephen Fry tried to dance.

I'd never seen anything that was so, at the same time, very silly.

-England and cream!

-Creamy old England!

-Custard cream!

-Strawberries and cream!

-Strawberries!

-English cream!

-Creamy England!

-England!

-Cream!

-Cream of old England!

-Ahh!

-Ooh!

-Oh, I say!

-Oh.

-Oh.

-Oh, dear.

And, er...

Eric Bristow steps onto the oche now.

But also very funny physical stuff, especially from Hugh.

Nobody falls over like Hugh Laurie.

Two of Fry and Laurie's most memorable characters

were those damn successful empire-builders, John and Peter.

Tell me what you see.

I see a car park.

Well, that's funny, John, because, you know, the last time you looked

out of that window, you saw an idea, don't you remember?

Yes, I remember thinking that would be a good place to put a car park.

They also had those, those vox pops. That that was their little, sort of,

holding thing that reminds you which show you're watching.

I was very shocked when my son told me

that his boyfriend was homosexual.

Is this one of them hidden camera things, is it?

No? Oh, well, because I was going to say,

it's not very well hidden, is it?

What do I think of John Major's leadership? I'd welcome it.

HE CACKLES

I remember Stephen as a, sort of, middle-class lady, saying,

"Those, Bernard Matthews drumsticks. They're so versatile.

"I've got one in at the moment."

One of the most successful double acts of recent years has been

Mitchell and Webb, who are inspired by more than just comedy on BBC Two.

If the snooker was on during the day when we were supposed to be writing,

not many sketches would get written,

because we both LOVED watching the snooker.

'We just started'

to talk as these two snooker-obsessed

characters, who would, basically, sit in their booth and drink.

That was, sort of, like BBC Two feeding itself.

We would watch the snooker on BBC Two, go and write a sketch

based on that, which would, then, later be televised on BBC Two.

Eight.

'When we got our own show'

on BBC Two, it was probably the most exciting thing

that's ever happened in my career. If you're a comedian, that's proper.

That's like having a yacht or a gold Rolls-Royce.

Richard Branson has got an island,

but he hasn't got a sketch show on BBC Two.

Neither have I, any more, and I haven't got an island.

But there WAS a time when I could look down on Richard Branson.

# Bring me sunshine, in your smile

# Bring me laughter All the while... #

When Britain's most-loved double act, Morecambe and Wise, rejoined

the BBC in 1968, it wasn't to get people laughing over their

Christmas pudding on BBC One, but to make comedy

in glorious colour on BBC Two.

# Make me happy... #

They wanted colour and proceeded just to wear beige and brown!

-Didn't you know I was that way inclined?

-I have heard rumours, yes.

But it never worries me, because I'm THAT way inclined.

I was born on the side of a hill.

They were interesting because they were never filthy.

They'd hardly do innuendo.

The whole family could watch and not feel embarrassed.

All men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty

like what I have got!

-You have a plan?

-Leave me alone.

-Leave me alone with him for five minutes.

-Five minutes?

Five minutes.

'Morecambe and Wise were'

the most influential double act in British history.

Be honest. Come on!

-TV:

-'You're watching 50 years of funny on BBC Two.

'And the next chapter in our birthday celebration

'is the comedy catch phrase.'

A catch phrase is not funny in itself.

Bugger.

But when you keep saying it over and over again

and people are laughing at it and the audience is waiting for it...

Suits you, sir.

And the whole audience erupts in laughter,

but catch phrases, in themselves, are not actually funny!

What a fucking liberty!

'You can't really go out'

to write a catch phrase, because it's not in your control

whether people repeat it.

The public make a catch phrase.

A-ha!

-Push down.

-I am smoking a fag.

-But they do, though, don't they, though?

-Milky milk.

What's the blandest thing on the menu?

-My arse!

-Don't mention the war.

-Cheque, please!

-Only me!

-Eranu!

-That's you, that is!

-Ooh! Where's me washboard, eh?

The comedy catch phrase has been with us since the days of music hall

and over BBC Two's 50-year history has fallen in and out of fashion.

The first comedian on Two to make full use of these comedy short cuts

was Dick Emery, back in the '60s.

We owe Dick Emery a debt of gratitude, because we borrowed

heavily from that format.

Oh, you are awful!

But I like you.

This is rubbish, this.

It's the biggest load of crap I've ever seen.

What's on the other side?

It's our television.

Harry Enfield revived the catch phrase.

I think each of his characters became stand-alone classics.

Do we have to move on to Harry Enfield?

I've been trying to get away from him for 20-odd years now,

but he's like a limpet, you know.

"Paul, Paul! I've got an idea!" "Oh, Gawd."

Yeah. It works both ways, though, really.

I love him, really. Well, I don't love him...

-There were the Slobs.

-Look sexy!

-There were the Old Gits.

Snivelling little git. Why can't you do it for nothing?

-There's Tim Nice-but-dim.

-Bloody nice bloke.

The characters resonated

with people and Smashie and Nicey was the knife going in, wasn't it?

It went to a whole, sort of, culture.

We did them as an affectionate, sort of, semi-affectionate portrayal

of some idiots that we used to listen to, you know?

And look where it's got them!

I love the Wombles! They really were great in a, sort of,

-"short programme before the news"-type way.

-They certainly were!

And I think we've all got a little bit of the Womble in us, haven't we?

I bet you've got a bit of the Womble in you, Nicey.

Well, er... Well, I do know the Pet Shop Boys, if that's what you mean.

At the time, they were dinosaurs, you know,

so we were mocking a generation that was just slipping away

and, ironically, Smashie and Nicey

are more relevant now than they were then...

"Great, mate."

HE GIGGLES

Oh, she's lovely.

All warm and wrinkly, like she's come out the oven.

I remember the first time we recorded one of the Slob sketches

and Harry hadn't seen Kathy in her full make-up

and she walked onto set and he just started laughing.

We want to call it "Frogmella".

Frogmella?!

What kind of a name's Frogmella?

Exotic. It's exotic.

I tell you what, he used to corpse all the time through the Slobs

and, in the end, he didn't bother hiding it. He'd go with it.

We'd start thinking, "You've to stop laughing, Harry!

-"Oh, it's quite sweet, really."

-Frogmella Slob...

Don't put it in the water!

Look what you're doing. You'll make her all soggy!

Hang about...

That's not Frogmella... That's a cake.

Well, where's the bloody baby, then?

You must have left it in the boot with the pizzas.

Pioneering comedy next,

with the first all-Asian cast in British comedy history.

-Ommmm...

-DOOR SLAMS

Bollocks.

They even had a catch phrase as their title.

-Goodness Gracious Me!

-Our flagship sketch was the Going For An English.

Could I just have the chicken curry, please?

MOANING

Nina, come on. It's an English.

You've got to have something English. No spicy shite.

Oh, Nitin, but I don't like anything too bland here.

Have something a little bland. Hey Jame-as, what have you got

that is not totally tasteless?

'I have heard that in restaurants - people going,'

"I'm ordering the blandest thing on the menu."

Steak and kiddly pee

and, er chips? Jah, jah?

24 plates of chips.

I think you might have ordered too much, sir.

-What?

-Oi! Clive of India, who bloody asked you, hey?!

Just bring us the bloody food or I'll do a moony!

COMMOTION

We had a character called Mr Everything Comes From India.

We all had relatives who, kind of, said, "Well, that's Indian."

You know, anything. "The space programme? Basically, it's Indian."

I love these old Cliff Richard films.

Of course you love Cliff Richard... because he's Indian!

-Cliff is Indian?

-Of course! Born in India, so Indian. Came from Lucknow.

Whether it was, you know, the entire royal family being Indian -

"Work for the family business - Indian."

Don't forget who wrote Richard III.

-Oh, don't tell me Shakespeare was Indian.

-Is the Pope Punjabi?

I'd meet people who would just point to something quite random

and say, "Indian!" and that would be it.

And so, the power of the catch phrase is not to be underestimated,

particularly with "Kiss my chuddies."

Oh, kiss my chuddies, man, I ain't got a problem.

-What's your problem?

-I ain't got a problem!

My biggest claim to fame is "chuddies" going into

the Oxford English Dictionary. You can use it in Scrabble now.

Scrabble - Indian game. Yeah.

-I see your sister today.

-Did you?

-She's had the baby.

-I know.

-She's had the baby.

-I know.

-Oh! Little girl.

-I know.

It's only a little dinky thing, like that.

Oh, little lot no bigger than that.

-Oh, she's letting me hold her. Have you seen it?

-Yeah.

-Have you seen it?

-Yeah.

-Have you seen it?

-Yeah.

Ain't it ugly?!

It isn't actually based on my own grandmother.

It's based on a collection of old ladies

that I've had the privilege of knowing.

Come on! I ain't never seen such an ugly child!

It's frightened the fucking life out of me.

Old people swearing?

I maintain it, it's one of the funniest things you'll see!

-Am I bovvered?

-What?

-Am I bovvered, though?

-I just don't feel...

-I'm not bovvered.

-I'm just really busy.

-Yeah, so am I. I'm not bovvered.

I think, with comedy, the good hooks are recognisable characters

and everyone knows a teenager and everyone's been a teenager.

All right?

-TOGETHER:

-All right.

The Lauren character was probably a bit of me when I was young.

-Do I look bovvered?

-Yeah.

-Is my face bovvered?

-No, but...

-Am I bovvered, though?

I just thought it was funny.

Do you think I'm bovvered? Ask me if I'm bovvered.

-Ask me if I'm bovvered.

-Are you bovvered?

-No, I ain't even bovvered.

But there was one sketch show which just about did away

with everything but the catch phrase itself.

We saw the first ever Fast Show. We watched it with them, didn't we?

And I remember you, specifically, thought it was awful.

-Do you remember that?

-What and you...

-I loved it.

I thought, "This is going to be a big hit."

And you were saying, "This show is terrible!"

Hardest game in the world.

-I will be mostly wearing nipple clamps.

-Which was nice.

What's a-comin'?

-Scorchio!

-Nice.

-Let's off-road!

The Fast Show must be the daddy of the catch phrases, which was nice.

Someone's sitting there, mate.

We didn't go for the lowest common denominator.

We didn't patronise our viewers with simple catchphrases

repeated endlessly.

Oh, we did! Oh, yeah.

Arse!

-Aren't old people brilliant?

-I'll get my coat.

HE SPEAKS GIBBERISH

..sausage factory.

And I was very, very drunk.

Although we did do quite a lot of short, sharp sketches,

some of the more memorable ones are very, you know,

like Ted and Ralph, which are very slow.

Ted, there's something I need to speak to you about.

-I nominate Mr Meyhew. Ha-ha-ha!

-I'm sorry?

-No, no, no!

-Forfeit, forfeit. You have to say "tomato".

You've got to put a vegetable in front of each word,

-in the right order.

-It's a drinking game, sir.

When we were editing the first series, we almost cut

Ted and Ralph out, because we just thought,

"Is anyone going to get this?"

Tomato...Ted, aubergine...your...

potato...wife's...turnip...dead.

-TV:

-'And now on BBC Two, time for some alternative comedy.'

Boom-boom!

-AUDIENCE:

-Out go the lights!

As the alternative channel, BBC Two

has often been the first to break new ground.

In 1980, it gave a bunch of unknowns their TV debuts

and introduced to Britain a new wave in comedy.

# Boom-boom! #

-AUDIENCE:

-Out go the lights!

Boom Boom...Out Go The Lights must have been

the first time that any of that comedy that was going on in the clubs

suddenly got out to a mainstream audience.

It was also the first time Britain got to see

a revolutionary people's poet, called Rik...

Shut up!

..and a hippy folk singer, called Neil.

I'm going to do a couple of numbers,

off an album that I'm hoping to do...

..called Despair.

'It created a stir'

and that's what made the BBC listen

when we came up with the scripts for The Young Ones.

The first time I saw The Young Ones, I couldn't believe my eyes or ears.

I'd never seen anything with such energy.

When that came on it was... There was no way you could miss it.

It was properly anarchic, in the sense that you didn't know

what was going to happen next.

There was cartoon violence...

God! God!

There were ridiculous characters...

'And you had moments where'

it broke the fourth wall and addressed you at home.

I'm so hungry I could eat my own earwax!

And we all know how horrid that tastes! Right, kids?

'It was all of the things that are great about comedy,'

just spoken in a new voice.

It felt like punks had wandered into the BBC and accidentally wandered

into a studio, grabbed the equipment

and were just thrashing out this show.

'When the audience saw that, they thought,'

"We've got to see this, because this shouldn't be on.

"They shouldn't have allowed that."

The University Challenge episode of The Young Ones is still probably

the funniest half hour of British narrative comedy I've ever seen.

The world record for stuffing marshmallows up one single nostril?

604, Toxteth O'Grady, USA.

-Yeah.

-The world's stupidest bottom burp?

Vyvyan, Britain.

It says Rick, here.

We were fighting against, in the University Challenge,

Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Ben Elton.

The posh team. It's not bad, is it?

Ade kicked their heads in!

I'm completely bloody sick of this!

There was nothing like The Young Ones before on television.

Has there been anything like it since and should there be? Probably not.

The world's stupidest bottom burp?

BUZZER

Er, Rick, Britain.

Correct. Five points.

It is not!

Who's been tampering with my question cards?

It was me! It was me!

-BOOING

-Damn, damn!

Cop a load of this, matey.

When Rick and Vyvyan graduated from Scumbag College,

they changed their names to Richie and Eddie,

got a flat together, and made three series of Bottom.

Rick and Ade went on to finesse

that cartoon violence and make it their own.

It's particular to them and it's just brilliant.

Argh! Argh!

Rick and Ade are up there with Laurel and Hardy

for just being really violent to each other

and somehow it makes you laugh every time. It makes ME laugh every time.

ARGH!

From the alternative camp,

Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson provided extreme slapstick.

For comedy politically harder hitting, there was this man.

In the old days, people used to be named after what they made,

didn't they? Like Carter, if they made carts.

Cooper, if they made barrels.

Thatcher, if they made people SICK!

Alexei was the godfather, the self-appointed godfather, who remained alternative.

A conventional comic is a nasty bloke pretending to be nice.

How are you diddling?

Well, bloody sod you, then!

And what we were was nice people pretending to be nasty.

In central Europe in the late Middle Ages,

Transylvania cowered under the bloody reign of Vlad The Impaler.

Why was it that throughout this horrific cataclysm of blood,

Lambeth Social Services did nothing?

Obviously, we very much regret what happened in Transylvania in 1306

-but I don't really see how we could possibly have...

-Shut up!

People often misunderstand it as banging Social Services

and it's not. It's banging our blame culture.

Of course, we can't blame social workers for all society...

'..but this much is true. They're all a bunch of namby-pamby veget...'

Our next instalment of landmark BBC Two comedy is the spoof chat show.

While usually confined to warm and cosy chitchat with the stars,

in the hands of some of BBC Two's funniest comedy creations,

the celebrity interview is a much more hostile environment.

-You can

-BLEEP

-off.

The great thing about that format is it allows the host to be

as rude as they like because they're not a real person.

It's like Prime Minister's Question Time.

That's just a dream for someone like me. And you!

'You've got a get-out-of-jail card, basically,'

because if a joke doesn't work, that's OK,

because it's Keith saying it and you can make something out of that.

If you're being a little ruder than you intended, it doesn't matter because it's him.

Caroline Aherne doing Mrs Merton, I suppose,

just got it absolutely spot on.

But what first, Debbie, attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?

Caroline very cleverly designed Mrs Merton

that she was very much in control.

She had a specially invited audience

and it was her and them against this poor guest.

I once saw David Copperfield and he made the Statue of Liberty disappear

and I've seen your Paul do the same thing with the eight of clubs.

It's Caroline's warmth.

She had that lovely, populist touch

and she could be as rude as she liked.

Were you as surprised as we all were

when he came from behind and he licked you in the ring?

Were you surprised?

-Thank you, thank you. This is my mother.

-Oh, Mr Alda!

It's a great character and she's sort of raunchy. Randy.

Oh, I'm so happy to meet you. You are my favourite TV doctor.

Apart from George Clooney and Dick Van Dyke, of course.

The moment they came through the front door was the first time the guest saw the family

'and that moment when they got confronted by a granny,

'the look you got on their face was honest and open and genuine.

'She was a loose cannon.'

And the guests I don't think ever quite knew how to react to her.

You've got a very strong nose, haven't you, darling?

It's quite big, isn't it?

Is that the result of years of aristocratic inbreeding?

-Yes! In fact, it is, yes.

-All the better to sniff me with, eh?

'Then Tom Jones arrived.'

There's this great moment when she bear hugs him

and just holds him and it's just into awkwardness.

-Is everything all right?

-Oh, I'm fine.

It's a cross between a written show and a reality show

and you don't really know what's going to happen.

When you were little, you lost a beloved pet.

Tell us about it, but keep it light.

Sanjeev tries to be as cheeky as he can and so does everybody else.

He died from eating Chinese food.

Oh.

20 minutes later did he want to die again?

ALAN LAUGHS

# Knowing me, knowing you... #

A-ha!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But unlike Mrs Merton, Keith Barret and the Kumars,

this man wasn't allowed to be near real celebrities on his chat show.

Every time he comes out, he's thinking, "This week it'll be fine."

Tonight's show is - tss! - hot.

"I've put all of last week behind me.

"This week, nothing can go wrong."

To some women you can say, "That's a nice dress.

"Would you like to have dinner?"

With other women, you've got to keep your distance.

Best not get involved. Just be pleasant.

I'm talking about those women who until the last century

were confined to the island of Lesbos.

Alan is an appallingly rude man. He's got no social graces at all

and that's what's brilliant, comedically, because you then know exactly what he's thinking.

What's it like to be a lesbian?

You're asking us to sum up the experience

of millions of women in one media-friendly sound bite.

If you could?

Well, I can't.

You're going to have to, love, if you want to make it as a TV presenter.

If he was a better broadcaster it would be a very dull show.

# I'm nothing special

# In fact I'm a bit of a bore... #

'I think my favourite is the ABBA medley,'

possibly because it turns into light entertainment at that point.

# Take a chance-chance, take a chance

# Take-take a chance-chance, take-take a chance

# Take-take a chance-chance, take-take a chance... #

'Steve has got a very good voice.'

You can't actually tell because he's doing Alan doing singing

so I think Armando was quite keen

to have a bit of show biz brought into the show.

# ..Without a song or a dance what are we?

# So I say

DEEPER VOICE: # Thank you for the music

# For giving it to me

# Waterloo-oo-oo

# Knowing me, knowing yo-o-ou

BOTH: # A-ha! #

Alan's chat show only had one series because he shot a guy.

Be careful with that.

SCREAMING

Oh, my God!

What happens now?

He then came back three or four years later

as someone who was born to be on television not on the telly.

# Put up a parking lot... #

That was Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell,

a song in which Joni complains

that they paved paradise to put up a parking lot,

a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion

on the outskirts of paradise,

something which Joni singularly fails to point out,

perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in

with her blinkered view of the world. Nevertheless, nice song.

It's for 4.35am. You're listening to Up With The Partridge.

Taking that hopeless character and taking him away

from his family to live in a motel and then the in a caravan,

you know, he's a displaced character.

-So depressing, isn't it?

-Aye.

-Have you ever thought that suicide might be the answer?

-Well, sometimes.

Really? When?

-When I've seen you looking all depressed and that.

-Not me!

'As a character we've charted his fall'

and his greater fall, really.

I was a bit bored so I dismantled my Corby trouser press.

'From his chat show, which was incredible,'

to Alan Partridge staying in the Travel Tavern,

to then living in a caravan doing his house,

to now, Mid Morning Matters, and the film.

You've upset half the farmers. You alienate everybody you come across,

including, I gather, your wife, which is why you live like some bloody tramp in a lay-by.

It's a Travel Tavern.

It's so perfect. It's so perfect.

I feel like I know him better than I know some of my friends.

You farmers, you don't like outsiders, do you?

-Like to stick to your own.

-What do you mean by that?

-I've seen the big-eared boys on farms.

-For goodness' sake.

If you see a lovely field with a family having a picnic

and there's a pond in it, you fill in the pond with concrete,

you plough the family into the field, you blow up the tree

and use the leaves to make a dress for your wife who's also your brother.

You have big sheds but nobody's allowed in

and inside these big sheds are 20-foot high chickens.

Our tour through the 50-year history of BBC Two comedy continues

with the sillier side of the funny business.

In this section, we look at the men and women who have given us shows

with a more left-field, surreal twist.

Good evening, ham sandwich. Bucket and water, plastic rubber fisheries underwear.

Maximises press-insulating devilment grunting sapphire clubs, incidentally.

Good surreal comedy makes you laugh without you quite knowing why you're laughing.

If you could see the expression on their little friendly faces

as you pull them out of the water, it makes it all worthwhile.

'Spike Milligan was given a home on BBC Two'

and it was the only place he could possibly have been.

Well, the show starts here and it goes like this. Good evening.

It seems to be going all right so far...

He's here!

They shouldn't put chickens on drugs.

He was a true original, very inventive.

BELL RINGS

BELL DONGS

THUD!

'I just love the kind of sustained madness of it.'

CLANGING

And also the genuine glee

with which he seemed to be carrying out these sketches.

Almost to the point of, "I can't believe I'm getting away with this."

Sir, you're standing on my hole.

-You must be a funny shape.

-That's why I wear a mask.

Who's a-sayin' so?

Matt Dillon, Marshal of Dodge City,

Royal And Ancient Country Club. No Jews.

I'm giving you five minutes to get your balls off my green.

'All the labels'

from the wardrobe department,

because normally if a label is spotted on a costume,

that's somebody fired, and Spike loved the idea

so everybody had labels on them as soon as they came on.

I think everyone remembers fondly how much he would crack up

whilst he was still doing a sketch.

It's something that ever since we've always happily left in shows

because we remember the joy it used to give us seeing Spike genuinely laughing.

Do you...?

Do you look like ein police?

No. I look like Winston Churchill.

Argh!

'When we were writing Python,'

Q5 came up and we thought, "Oh, no, he's done everything!"

He was moving scenery, segueing into another sketch.

"Oh, no! The bastard!"

He didn't have a beginning, a middle and an end to a sketch.

He just went on from one sketch to another.

Oh, he's going to send him off.

And good heavens, there's an elephant on the pitch.

-ALL:

-What are we going to do now?

I adopted that idea and I rang Mike up and Terry Gilliam up

and said, "We should do what Spike's doing."

-And now...

-It's...

But surprisingly, Monty Python was on BBC One, not BBC Two.

Was it BBC One? Oh, good Lord.

Honestly, hand on heart, to me, it's a BBC Two show.

I bet most people, including me, until I came here,

would think Python was on BBC Two.

BBC Two was always alternative and a little bit different

so I think that's probably why people think it was that.

While Monty Python wasn't originally a BBC Two show,

everything they did immediately after was.

I had all this material and all these ideas that had been held back a little

in the general trades union bargaining of Python.

And John Cleese had said Rutland Weekend Television once

and I'd laughed and gave him a pound for that title, which he took, of course, being John!

And so I liked the concept of doing a TV station.

RUNNING WATER

Cue.

'So we made a TV show live from Rutland.'

What they would do if they had a TV station.

But now here's Joe

with a new way to cook eggs.

Capture a dozen eggs.

When you've captured them, take them outside and shoot them.

Rutland Weekend Television, we all cheered.

"Hurrah! Python is dead but long live not-quite-Python."

But I can't remember any of it.

We suspected, of course, at first, that we were suffering from hippies.

So, what did you do?

We put flame-throwers in and my husband laid rat poison.

The real joke was that Rutland, being a tiny little county,

had drama but it was like War And Peace done by four people on location, you know?

-I just wound him, Ke-mo sah-bee.

-Fine, Tonto.

SHE GROANS

Oh, dear, missed.

It definitely had its own particular character, Rutland Weekend,

and, of course, the special he made about the Beatles,

the Rutles, I thought was superb.

BEATLES-STYLE SINGING

'Neil Innes sent me a song and I thought it was so Beatles-y

'I wrote this joke about the interviewer.'

I wrote about what he's doing about.

"The Rutles came from... Dirk, Nasty, Stig, from these streets."

From these streets, very close to the Cavern Rutland,

came the fabulous Rutland sound created by the Fab Four,

Dirk, Nasty, Stig and Barry,

who have created a musical legend that will last a lunchtime.

Graham Chapman had a one-off sketch show in 1976 called Out Of The Trees.

-What's this, then?

-A peony.

But as the title suggests, it proved to be

a little too weird even for Python fans.

-Send for reinforcements.

-There's been a peony severance in Southwood Lane.

BELL RINGS

-They have severed the peony!

-They have severed the peony!

John Cleese knocked out a couple of series of this.

More of Watery Fowls later in the show.

But continuing the post-Python BBC Two run

were Michael Palin and Terry Jones, who created Ripping Yarns.

The thing about Ripping Yarns was that they were different stories,

each week completely different stories

with, apart from me, a completely different cast.

As soon as I raised an interesting topic,

me mum would always find something else to do or she'd be too busy.

It was the same with me dad.

He'd pretend to be French when he came in,

hoping I wouldn't talk to him.

Ah, quelle journee au bas de la terre!

'Mike and I wrote Ripping Yarns.'

I read through all the scripts today

and I was surprised how funny they are, really.

I was...really surprised.

Guess who's got a new shovel then?

Oh, shut up, you boring little tit!

I think the opening of Tomkinson's Schooldays

is pretty good in terms of just gags.

There was also the compulsory fight

with the grizzly bear which all new boys had to go through.

COMMOTION

It's great that people are still interested, want to see them again,

remember them with great affection,

'because they were made with affection, really.'

What is that, Tomkinson?

It's a model icebreaker, sir.

It was lovely to develop that range of characters

and for people to remember Eric Olthwaite and Golden Gordon as though they were just still around.

SMASHING CROCKERY

8-1.

8-bloody-1!

'In fact, there are, I think, six Barnstoneworth United'

football teams still working somewhere in the world.

That's good enough for me.

STEAM HISSES

-And now for something completely...

-Push off.

Kids' programme!

Contemporaries of Python, equally surreal,

but unfairly considered to be more for kids than adults,

were Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie.

# Goodies

# Goodie-goodie-yum-yum. #

Boom.

It was a shaggy-dog story where there were three blokes,

you didn't know what was going to happen.

They'd do all the studio stuff with the exposition

and then cut to a load of Marx Brothers jokes.

Ting!

'Really, the big-selling point'

was the fact that it was so visual and so big.

You know, it was a pretty grand scale.

Money was on the screen, there was no doubt about that.

It wasn't on us!

This is day two of Twinkle's occupation of the city of London.

-We had to price jokes.

-Yes, we did!

Whacking great table and they would say,

"Well, you can have two £10 ones or one £20 one."

And we would have to make a decision like that.

Sometimes we watched it and thought, "Gosh, that really isn't very good."

But it was a lot better than anything else that had gone before.

BEEP-BEEP

# We're the Goodies!

# Yes, the Goodies! #

There were people who decided there was a sort of Python-Goodies battle

and, if you were a Python person, you were really clever,

and if you were Goodies person, you were just a child.

-Yes, where are they now?

-Anyone booked the O2 for us yet?

Moving into more recent times,

one surreal BBC Two show certainly NOT suitable for kids was Big Train.

Where are my Batman pants?!

I've got this and this, and I'm just going to push them together.

# Big train. #

Fight! Fight! COMMOTION

-QUACKING

-Oi. What's going on here?

HE BARKS

GUNSHOTS

It had a very kind of BBC Two sensibility.

Quirky, weird, surreal comedy that somehow,

because it's quite authentically filmed, you buy.

'Because they prefer the weeds of the plain,

'the jockeys spend long periods in the open,

'risking attack from hunters

'like the artist formerly known as Prince.'

It was just bonkers,

but with a cast of fantastic comedy performers.

Catherine Tate and Julia Davis,

Simon Pegg and Mark Heap, and the amazing Kevin Eldon.

-Right, you. I want a word with you.

-What?

-You!

-What?

-Now! A word. Come on.

We played it really, really straight

so, no matter how odd the situation was,

the unspoken rules were no gurning, no comedy acting.

We really did keep it really low and naturalistic.

It's been coming a long time, really. Just a bit of a blow-up.

Told him what I thought. He gave me the sack.

But there's one partnership which has been delivering

its own unique comedy on BBC Two for over 20 years.

Reeves and Mortimer!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

When we first went to the BBC, we were called into Jim Moir's office,

who was the boss at the BBC, and he sat us down and said,

"See those slippers there? They're Ronnie Corbett's. They could be yours."

# I love the smell of freshly pickled and bottled Mortimer

# So, come on, let's have a look at it

# Come along now, let's have a sniff at it

# Come along now, let's have a little bit more! #

What they thought was normal was not what anyone else thought was normal.

Are you brutally pounding that man in the face

-with an iron pan?

-Yes.

-Are you aware

-that such behaviour could lead to permanent damage?

-No.

Well, it can. Just look at the state of that pan. It's ruined!

Mulligan and O'Hare doing some avant-garde music

was the way forward for comedy.

Often with our characters we'd find a look and think,

"What would this person be like?"

I think we wanted...

You know that way... # That people sing?

# I am me, and you are you. #

I call it "gladiatorial".

I think it's how gladiators would sing.

# But somebody obscures my view of you

# Really? Who?

# Gerard Depardieu!

# Oh, dearie me

# I'm going to be stabbed to death! #

We used to interview people as Donald and Davey Stott.

# We ask the questions

# We ask the questions

# We ask the questions... #

-We had Sting on who ran away with your suit.

-Nicked my suit.

Thank you, Sting(!)

Now, Sting, if you've got an itchy bottom at night, right?

Would you rub it on your wife's chin?

Would you put your bottom out of the window to blow it off with the breeze?

Or would you pick at it with your fingers?

One of our small successes has been creating that atmosphere

where people kind of believe we're making it up

and that we're finding it funny as well.

It's two people mucking about on a grand scale

and in a way that has been rehearsed down to the last full stop.

Did you let off a little tommy squeaker?

I generally do when I throw something.

'That being said,'

Vic and Bob did then become quite lazy,

which was one of the reasons they liked doing Shooting Stars

because they didn't have to write very much script for that!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the celebrity TV quiz Shooting Stars!

It was very much a comedy show, not a panel show.

There were very limited contributions from the guests.

The entertainment came out of watching these people sitting there thinking,

"What is this? What am I doing here?"

-You know what I mean?

-Harry Lagman.

-Yes.

Imagine that, lag-man. A lagging specialist from Dallas.

They used to think, "Oh, I don't want to go in there

"because you'll play an awful trick on us." And we did.

-Larry? Larry, are you all right?

-Yes, thank you.

Look, it's a parsnip.

I remember wondering if we'd crossed the line

when we had Lisa Stansfield with celery stuck in her arse.

I'm just inserting celery, Lisa. If you could clench.

That's it. We're off. Here we go. She's gone for the hummus.

And then, presenting it to a dog to lick it off!

Do you think we crossed the line, then?

I think, maybe, that's the one! That's the one!

And now a look at the cream of US comedy.

Some of the funniest American shows ever made have been on BBC Two,

but with over 250 episodes,

this is the channel's longest-running sitcom of all time.

For me, M*A*S*H is simply one of the greatest programmes

ever made in the history of television.

A lot of it was down to casting,

and particularly Alan Alda who played Hawkeye.

I don't think I should be here, Hawkeye.

War's a dirty business, Lieutenant, none of us should be here.

-I mean in your tent.

-My tent's a dirty business, too,

but much more fun than the war.

'One of the things we were aware of was that it was played on BBC'

without a laugh track, which we all really loved.

It always seemed so stupid to be in a tent

with people laughing. Where were they?

-What are you doing here?

-I have a stethoscope fetish.

This is the only place I can wear one without attracting attention.

It's amazing how the British people know when to laugh

and the Americans don't!

They need a signal.

"Ha-ha! Hear them laughing. It must be time for me."

The one thing that they always managed to do

was they earned their funny lines

by not letting us forget that war is fundamentally frightening,

terrifying and obscene.

Don't reach for your appendix, kid, it's gone. How do you feel?

Ready to go out and kill me some more gooks, sir.

Wendell, another word for "gooks" is "people".

With M*A*S*H...

I saw that comedy could be serious as well, you know?

You love these characters and they drop these little philosophy bombs.

We were trying to do stories about real people

that were usually funny

but we were free to tell serious stories as well.

-I'm a Marine. We're the best.

-I'm a coward. We're the worst.

Every one of M*A*S*H's 252 episodes was shown on BBC Two

including the final two-hour special

which, in America, over 125 million people tuned in to watch,

and in typical M*A*S*H style, it delivered more than just laughter.

The idea was it would be interesting to send everybody home from this war

wounded in some way.

Winchester loses music.

Mulcahy, the priest, lost his hearing.

HORN HONKS Hey, wake up, will you?

Hawkeye went crazy for a while.

Hawkeye has a breakdown when a squawking chicken is killed

to stop the enemy from finding their hiding place

but he has problems recalling what actually happened.

Keep that damn chicken quiet!

-What happened next?

-She killed it.

She killed it!

She killed the chicken?

Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Hawkeye felt responsible.

What he remembered was the death of a chicken

because he couldn't tolerate the fact

that he'd been party to the death of a baby.

And when it finally came to his consciousness,

it was devastating for him.

That programme has made me reflect,

it's made me roll around on the floor laughing, and it's made me weep.

To do that in 27-28 minutes of TV time, is no mean feat.

And then to do it over 11 seasons...

What was nice about that last shot was that at the end

"goodbye" is spelled out in big letters made of rocks.

It was goodbye to a lot of stuff.

It was goodbye to the experience of doing the show,

which was the greatest theatrical experience probably any of us

had in our lives up until then, and in many ways, even after.

Coming up at the end of the show,

we'll be showing you the best of British sitcoms.

Go and get the guitar.

But now, on BBC Two, it's time to get a little satirical.

Welcome.

Satire is basically pointing a big finger

at a social situation or an accepted political norm

and saying in a loud, confident voice,

"This is nuts!"

-The history books now will have to be rewritten.

-What will they say?

They'll quite simply say, "John Major punched the Queen."

Everything else will be a footnote.

Good satire, I think, when you watch it,

makes you breathe a sigh of relief and you think,

"Someone else is seeing the world like that!"

What the best satire does is to make you laugh

and then make you think again.

Well, Opposition's about asking awkward questions.

And Government is about not answering them.

Satire, in its purest sense, is something that has

an approach or an attitude.

There's something distinctive about how it analyses

what on earth's going on.

-Can you sum it up in a word?

-No.

-A sound?

-Wah-ahh.

Basically, it's a more vital social function

than firefighting or nursing,

by a factor of about 50.

When the channel began broadcasting in 1964,

Britain was in the midst of the modern satire boom.

I think Beyond The Fringe

is where the modern satirical wave starts.

Beyond The Fringe joined together the most talented Oxford Revue

performers with the cream of Cambridge Footlights.

From Oxford came Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore.

And from Cambridge, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook.

Peter Cook said, "This is the best thing I ever wrote."

You know, he was 24 or 25, something like that,

but he knew it, and the material in it is fantastically good.

And while Beyond The Fringe had been running in the West End

and on Broadway for several years,

it was BBC Two which broadcast the show for the first time in 1964.

However, we have here with us in the studio this evening

the Deputy Head of New Scotland Yard, Sir Arthur Gappy.

Good evening.

The Great Train Robbery is a fabulous sketch,

which sends up, really, the way the police operate.

You could run that sketch now!

So, you feel that thieves are responsible?

Good heavens, no. I feel that thieves are totally irresponsible.

Ghastly people who go around snatching your money.

They were brilliantly sending up their own world.

It was the establishment taking itself on from the inside,

which is sort of what British satire does.

Jonathan Miller and myself come from good families

and have had the benefits of a public school education,

whereas the other two members of the cast have worked their way up

from working-class origins.

Yet Jonathan and I are working together with them in the show,

treating them as equals.

I suppose we are working class.

I wonder how many of these people have realised that

Jonathan Miller's a Jew.

In fact I'm not really a Jew, just Jew-ish - not the whole hog.

But just think of the awful situation

if you were working class AND a Jew.

There's always somebody worse off than yourself.

'And that set the tone for all writers and performers.

'I mean, they want to be Beyond The Fringe.

'I don't want to make it sound too earnest because, you know,'

Beyond The Fringe was, above all else,

incredibly funny and often very silly.

The one-legged Tarzan sketch -

Pete and Dud at their most surreal.

Your right leg, I like.

I like your right leg.

It's a lovely leg for the role.

A lovely leg for the role.

I've got nothing against your right leg.

The trouble is, neither have you.

I always feel that satire goes in waves.

The '80s - it was Thatcherism,

it was a polarised political system,

and satire came back.

Somebody very senior in the BBC, in 1979, I think, went to the

Light Entertainment department and said, "The last time we did anything

"really ground-breaking was Monty Python, which was ten years ago.

"Where are the new kids on the block?"

BELCH!

What Not The Nine O'Clock News did is it didn't take

politics on head-on.

It did sketches about police racism, for example.

Savage, why do you keep arresting this man?

He's a villain, sir.

-A villain.

-And a jail bird, sir.

I know he's a jail bird, Savage! He's down in the cells now!

We're holding him on a charge of possession

of curly, black hair and thick lips.

Television, particularly in comedy,

had started lagging behind what was actually going on in the world.

The basic idea behind Not The Nine O'Clock News

was it had this instant "oomph",

like this is...this feels real,

it feels absolutely contemporary

and a little bit dangerous.

Conservatives are back in power.

APPLAUSE

Now, a lot of immigrants are Indians and Pakistanis,

for instance, and...

I LIKE curry, I do...

But now that we've got the recipes...

..is there really any need for them to stay?

Originally to be called Sacred Cows,

Not The Nine O'Clock News's targets

were not just politicians and newsreaders.

I love The Two Ronnies.

I have always thought it's one of the best programmes on telly.

But it portrayed a world

that neither I nor any of the cast recognised.

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

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

but in a packed programme tonight, you'll be reassured to know

we'll be using exactly the same sort of material...

..as we've used for the last 20 years.

I got a letter saying, you know, "Not The Nine O'Clock News often

"goes too far, but it's absolutely disgraceful

"when it comes to making fun of The Two Ronnies.

"The Prime Minister's fine, the Queen Mother, absolutely,

"but The Two Ronnies? What are you thinking of?"

# Spent all day just crawling through the grass

# Thistles in me hair and bracken up my... #

After four series, Not The Nine O'Clock News came to an end

in 1982 and, typically, even their parting shot courted controversy.

Famously, the cunnilingus song.

# Goodbye is the hardest word to say

# So let's just say

# Kinda lingers... #

When that went up the line to John Howard Davies,

the poor man was in agony.

He said, "John you can't...you just can't do this on television.

"You cannot do a song called this."

I said, "It's called Kinda Lingers John. The memory kinda lingers.

"What's wrong with that?"

# So, we sing kinda lingers

# But what's done is done. #

It went out and we didn't get a single complaint. Extraordinary.

The particular programmes that always

get my respect are the ones where you watch them on telly

and you go out into the street and the world looks different.

Now, with the rest of today's news, Chris. Thanks. It's eight o'clock.

This is The Day Today.

The Day Today comes along and you think,

"Oh, of course. Current affairs is ludicrous."

NATO annulled after delegate swallows treaty.

"I'm so sorry," yells exploding cleaner.

And bearded cleric in oily chin insertion.

The Day Today. Because fact into doubt won't go.

I just wanted to make a sketch show

that didn't feel like a sketch show.

So, the best form of reality, you know, we thought, was the news.

Coming up - new explosive sus laws

mean any domestic dog is now a potential hazard.

Although The Day Today was a parody of TV, it was also

our very first television.

So, we were learning how to make television in order to work out

how to pull it apart.

The four homes exploded in central London without warning.

For many like Tory whip Peter Goodright,

the time for calm words is over.

In my considered opinion, they are...

EXPLOSION

Within five minutes of episode one, you're thinking,

"This is a classic programme."

It was kind of like being deprogrammed from a cult

in some way cos it immediately made the news look preposterous.

Sinn Fein have so far denied they are backing the campaign.

Earlier today I spoke to their Deputy Leader, Rory O'Connor,

who, under broadcasting restrictions, must inhale helium

to subtract credibility from his statements.

It was just that brilliant thing of taking each aspect of genuine news

presentation and then just extruding it enough to make it ridiculous.

HIGH VOICE: Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party.

Which supports terrorist action!

Your tone is antagonistic and you're making me very angry.

There was something about Chris Morris doing The Day Today

which was very sort of "Essence of Paxman".

You spoke to him about the technicalities of the deal in German?

-Yes.

-So, what's the German for "30%"?

-Trenta percenta.

-Dreissig prozent.

-Yes.

We thought it might inject an element of soap opera

into the proceedings if we actually see how

Christopher Morris interacts with the other correspondents.

Now, I'm going to ask you a question.

Did you speak to the German Finance Minister

-about the new deal this afternoon?

-No.

-And what was his reaction?

-I don't know.

-Peter, thank you.

There had come a shift in terms of comedy tone and actually realism

and naturalism seemed funnier than caricature and exaggeration.

Preparations for the connubial killing will start at 11am,

when Charlene Grey will walk down the aisle

and straight into a sit-down reception.

I remember it because it was very, very painful

trying not to laugh during it.

But when we were doing one of the Barbara Wintergreen segments,

Steve Coogan was playing a sort of American pastor.

Did you try to counsel the bride?

Yes ma'am. She...she's sure pretty.

And then as the cameras were running up to speed,

he just suddenly said, "I might do this thing with my eye".

And he'd... I can't do it, but he did this thing where one eye

just turned in and I went, "Are you going to do that?"

And he went, "Yeah. And this with my mouth."

She gon' die like a dog.

He just at that minute decided to do it and I just had to try

and interview him while absolutely falling about laughing, just

trying to be Barbara Wintergreen and be very professional.

You may kiss your bride. Clear the area!

Barbara Wintergreen, CBN News, Milwaukee State Penitentiary.

It's packaged as a current affairs programme,

but there were whole sections where it would rip the piss out of soaps.

Oi! What's going on here?

-Just a little misunder...

-Shut it!

-Why?

-Because.

Because I'm gay?

It would just pull apart all soap operas in 15 seconds.

What about the horse? How's that handling?

Err, well, he wasn't doing too well...

And it was the first time this character was

allowed on our TV screens.

Well, let me tell you, if you've any more problems with him

-you can ride me round the paddock.

-Thank you.

I watch news a lot on telly and every now and then I'll watch

a particular segment and just think,

"OK, so, either they didn't see

"The Day Today or they did see it

"and thought that it was a training video."

That's The Day Today on the day that Boris Yeltsin told the world

-how he milked Mrs Thatcher.

-..out of her flabby breasts.

Good night.

More recently on BBC Two, the hardest-hitting satirical show

comes from the underground bunker of Charlie Brooker.

What Charlie Brooker does is almost a media studies course with jokes.

Human Pob, and Education Minister Michael Gove has been under attack.

Critics say he's been giving jobs to his friends,

which isn't mathematically possible.

I mean, he's telling you why certain things are happening

on your screen and how you're ingesting this material

and then making you laugh at yourself.

Back home, mechanical Prime Mini-droid David Camera-bot stood in

the factory that made him to deliver an inspiring message of hope,

with a slightly distracting glistening chin,