Frost on Sketch Shows

-Good evening. Your name, please.

-Good evening.

The first heat your chosen subject was answering questions

before they were asked.

This time you have chosen to answer the question before last each time.

-Is that correct?

-Charlie Smithers.

They just lifted off the page.

And flung itself at you.

Stephen Hawking. I ain't bothered.

People think that making people laugh is easy.

And if everyone had to get up and make people laugh,

they would realise it is actually quite difficult sometimes.

# We like trucking If you don't like trucking... #

They're a crucial part in the sort of shape and history of comedy.

Know what I mean? Oh-ho-ho. Really.

We would say, "Oh, here's a punchline coming."

Or we'd stand around and sort of say, "There's no punchline,

"who's got the punchline?" And silly things like that.

It's just so depressing. All right, so other men have got larger...

Plums?

Really without meaning to, we just lucked into television.

It just happened for us. And it was sketch comedy that did it.

Hello, good evening and welcome.

The first sketch show I ever saw was soon after the war

and it was performed by a concert party called the Fol De Rols

who toured the smaller south coast resorts.

Which in turn, underlines the fact that for over 60 years,

the sketch show has been at the heart of British comedy.

Countless stars made their debuts in sketches and skits

before moving on to greater things.

And many of the nation's favourite comedy shows

started life as short sketches.

The Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise, French and Saunders - all of them

built comedy careers which sprang from the sketch show format.

But over the years,

sketch shows have both waxed and waned in popularity.

And over the next hour,

we will be asking if in the era of the stand-up,

the sketch show can once again regain its special place

in the pantheon of British comedy.

The sketch show has been with us since the earliest days

of television but it was not invented by TV producers.

It was invented by the Victorian music hall.

The London Palladium was a place where Michael Grade

got his first taste of top-flight entertainment.

How old were you when you were first aware of theatres

and attending theatres and maybe glimpsing a sketch or something?

Well, I used to come to this very place

and sit just along there from where you are

from about the age of six or seven.

There was an opening night every week and I used to love the comedians,

the laughter, you know, the packed theatre.

The laughter rolling down here was amazing.

And sketches originated in the theatre really, then radio,

then television. It all began with the theatre, didn't it?

The business of sketches were a staple of the variety theatre

and if you got a great sketch, you could make a living just doing

that sketch 12 times a week, round and round the country forever,

which people like Rob Wilton did,

Lucan and McShane, Old Mother Riley, they had a sketch

and they played all over the country for 20 years doing that sketch.

The key thing was it was not used up or consumed by television

-when everybody saw it.

-Certainly not.

-They could go on doing that sketch.

-Yes.

During the Second World War,

performers moved from stage to microphone.

'Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats, please.

'I know who put that there.

'Yes, it is that man again!'

As BBC radio sketch shows were called into action to cheer up

a war-weary Britain.

But BBC TV shunned sketches as too lowbrow.

It took the launch of the independent television in 1955

to put variety on TV.

Michael Grade's uncle, Lew Grade, was very much a part of this

transformation. One of his first signings was Arthur Haynes.

The key figure in the transition from the music hall to television

-sketches, in my view, was Arthur Haynes.

-Why?

He was a real product of the music hall.

He did sketches and he did songs and jokes, a classically great

music hall performer, great face for TV and he adapted to television

and the Arthur Haynes Show which ran for years with Nicholas Parsons as

his stooge, that was the first time

that sketch shows really hit it very big on television.

LAUGHTER

SHE SCREAMS

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER

We came from different social backgrounds but we spoke the

same professional language and we had an intuitive professional rapport

It starts with a writer, Johnny Speight had some wonderful inventive

and creative sketches,

then you have a team that is in tune with the material

and in tune with each other and a producer who is in tune with

everybody and that is where the success comes from.

LAUGHTER

I say, would you sooner have cheese?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It was a sort of mini variety format.

Arthur had his start in variety and that is what he liked.

A quickie sketch, then a guest, a longer sketch, second-half another

quickie sketch and then another guest and then a major sketch.

-I say, a lovely fresh morning, isn't it?

-Very nice morning, yes.

Well, good morning.

Videotape had not even started until mid '60 and it came in

and then at the wrong time they could not edited so it was all live.

There will be a few broken legs and a few...

HE SCREAMS

Arthur would regularly dry up because he didn't learn the lines properly.

And we would ad-lib

and improvise our way out of it, which the audience loved.

-I thought you wanted a shave.

-I changed my mind.

-Have you?

-Yes.

-What? I must go...

I must go...

Arthur Haynes was a huge hit.

ITV had arrived with a bang and its mass appeal variety style

entertainment was stealing millions of viewers from the BBC.

But in 1960, BBC appointed a new director-general,

Sir Hugh Carleton Greene. He wanted to go on the offensive.

One of his decisions was to greenlight a new show that would use

songs and satirical sketches to hold public figures to account.

That Was The Week That Was was the first satirical sketch show.

# That Was The Week That Was

# The bunnies are here no doubt... #

Your policy, Henry Brooke, has been

one of trial and error. Their trials... your errors!

LAUGHTER

On behalf of us all, Henry Brooke,

and particularly of Dr Soblein and Chief Anaharo...

This Is Your Life.

And WAS theirs.

It just shows, if you're Home Secretary,

you can get away with murder.

APPLAUSE

# That Was The Week That Was

# It's over, let it go... #

The incredibly versatile Millicent Martin,

who opened each TW three with a song, but that was not all.

Audiences loved her virtuoso jazz performances and the programme

showed off her comic timing

and helped launch women into sketch shows.

-'Ere, Jimmy.

-What?

-Inch a bit close.

-What for?

Inch a bit close. I want to whisper something.

You don't have to whisper.

No, I don't want no-one to hear.

Nobody will hear. Nobody's listening.

-I don't want to say it out loud.

-Don't be daft.

-No, I don't want to!

-Come on, just say it out loud.

-No, I don't want to.

-Say it out loud.

Your flies are open!

But the show was always controversial

and after two series and with a general election looming,

the BBC decided it was too hot to handle.

But satire was soon back on the air with

Not So Much A Programme and The Frost Report which explored social

attitudes rather than politics.

Each programme was a series of sketches around a theme.

-It was live of course.

-Yes, it was.

That was... it didn't worry me so much, or Ron,

because we'd been used to it,

but poor old John used to suffer with... and no autocue or anything,

and you had autocue because it was all last minute.

-Continuing and developing.

-Monologue.

-Yes.

-CDM!

One sketch in particular became a comedy and satire classic.

I look down on him because I am upper-class.

I look up to him because he is upper-class.

But I look down on him because he is lower class.

I am middle-class.

I know my place!

I look up to them both.

But I don't look up to him as much as I look up to him!

Because he has got innate breeding.

I have got innate breeding but I have not got any money.

So sometimes I look up to him.

I still look up to him,

because although I have money, I am vulgar.

But I'm not as vulgar as him. So I still look down on him.

I know my place!

I look up to them both.

But while I am poor, I am industrious, honest and trustworthy.

Had I the inclination,

I could look down on them.

But I do not.

We all know our place, but what do we get out of it?

I get a feeling of superiority over them.

I get a feeling of inferiority from him.

But a feeling of superiority over him.

I get a pain in the back of my neck!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

With the success of The Frost Report, the BBC saw

the power of the sketch show and they looked for duos to front them.

You were really very much involved in getting

Morecambe and Wise their first break.

Well, Eric and Ernie had done a television series for the BBC

when they were very young

and Eric used to carry the review around in his pocket.

He said the critic in The Daily Express,

"Is that a television I see in the corner of my living room?

"No, it is the box the BBC buried Morecambe and Wise in last night."

And he used to carry that. And they swore off television,

said they would never do television again. It was an absolute disaster.

They changed agents and Billy Marsh, my mentor,

the great agent who discovered Eric and Ernie and Bruce Forsyth

and Norman Wisdom, he said you have got to do television

and he persuaded them to have one more go.

And he persuaded my uncle Lew at ATV to give them a shot.

And I was instrumental in moving them from my uncle Lew to the BBC.

I did that deal with Bill Cotton at the BBC.

APPLAUSE

Eric and Ernie had such a sketch shaped a bit in their show

but not in the way that Ron and I did definite little

sketches for the start and the beginning with that kind of tag.

Eric and Ernie worked together and of course they had guests on.

It was distinctly sketchy-feeling moments with certain people

like Andre Previn.

That was a sketch, but Ron and I, as you say, specialised in sketches,

-which we started, of course, with The Frost Report.

-Absolutely.

-And natural chemistry which flowed from that.

-Yes.

This is one of the first sketches together from The Frost Report

in 1966.

Well, when I say frigid,

-I mean in the same way that I find your sister frigid.

-30-40.

LAUGHTER

-Have you seen Margaret at all recently?

-Well...

-Very nice flat she's got.

-Oh, very nice flat.

-Very nice sofa.

-Deuce!

Talking of that sofa,

you didn't happen to find a pair of shoes of mine, did you?

First service.

They wouldn't be a pair of light mauve chukka boots, would they?

Yes, those are they, yes.

I think Margaret said something about throwing them in the garbage.

Advantage, Corbett.

-So you have seen Margaret recently?

-Yes, last week.

-Well yesterday, actually, for tea. Very good tea.

-Very good tea.

Damned good cedar cake.

-Damn good cedar cake.

-Damn good scones.

-Damn good scones.

-You get a damn good tea.

-Damn good tea.

-Bloody awful breakfast though.

-Game, set and match to Corbett.

-Chemistry is a very important part of sketches.

-Yes.

And the chemistry between you and Ronnie Barker

was instantly obvious, was instantly there.

-I don't know what it is, but...

-No.

What was the quality that made you hit it off so well together?

Well, I suppose, very similar attitudes to material

and the quality of material and the way it is written and a fondness for

that kind of writing style

and both being able to character act a bit.

I mean, Ron was a really rich character actor.

I could sort of pretend to be somebody for a minute or two

but he was, you know, enriching.

As well as great rapport, the Ronnies had great writers.

My name is Algernon Crust. Do you write limericks, I trust?

No, I'm only here for the beer. Just a joke. Just a rhyme and a joke.

I can't help it. I'm that sort of bloke.

Just a joke and a rhyme and a jolly good time.

-What I really came for was a...

-Smoke?

-No, I won't.

Please, don't think that I'm rude.

Smoking is fine if you're in the right mood. I smoke with my food.

My wife smokes in the nude. As long as it doesn't intrude.

Have you noticed that little blond tart?

-Oh, how pretty she is, bless her Aunt.

-She's a right little goer.

-How well do you know her?

-Well, she is not a real blonde for a start.

Just as in the old music halls, The Two Ronnies and

Morecambe and Wise still had variety acts between their sketches.

There is a direct line, I think, between The Two Ronnies

and Eric and Ernie, back to the music hall, really.

I think Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker might dispute that

but there is no question in my mind

that songs and sketches was a staple of the music hall.

The difference for television, you had to have a new set of material

every week, whereas in the music hall you have a lifetime career.

Your sketch was your pension.

With those looks, I don't think I'd quibble.

Sketch shows needed a constant supply of funny scripts

and that meant finding and developing new and talented writers.

Like Michael Palin and Terry Jones who wrote for The Frost Report

and then moved on to The Two Ronnies.

I remember the Hendon sketch that Terry and I wrote, about the party.

It was one of The Two Ronnies' party sketches and the man saying,

"Oh, where are you from?"

I live in a converted monastery in the Outer Hebrides.

I live in Hendon.

And it went on like this

and it was just this man couldn't get past this guy, Hendon,

"Oh, yes, we've had an exhibition of those in Hendon library."

And in the end the man gets really fed up and says, "Look, I'll tell you a thing..."

-Have you seen one of these before?

-No, I haven't.

-Do you know what it is?

-No, I don't.

-It is a Tibetan prayer shawl.

-Do you know how I got hold of it?

-No, I don't.

It was given to me by the chief slave girl

of the high commander of the Tibetan army.

She was a ravishing beauty with dark hair like a raven's wings.

During the feast of Rams Itarsi, the all-powerful God of love,

to whom they sacrifice 10,000 bullocks on the mountainside,

she crept into my tent, she filled it with a delicious fragrance,

her tribal rope slipped from her shoulder

and her dark hair cascaded over her pale skin

and she climbed into my bed.

Really?

She came from Hendon.

Having gained confidence writing for others, Palin and Jones

teamed up with John Cleese and his writing partner Graham Chapman.

Together with Eric Idle and animator Terry Gilliam,

they decided to do something completely different.

Monty Python's Flying Circus.

MUSIC: "The Liberty Bell" by John Philip Sousa

Was there one moment when you really made a decision you were going

to go for something that maybe wasn't yet called Monty Python?

A lot of you had known each other, worked together...

As you know, because we had all got to know each other

-on The Frost Report.

-That's right.

Which was a terrific recruiting vehicle for us all.

John said, "Why don't we get together and do a new kind of show?"

I don't think we had got

the actual shape or ethos of the show worked out.

It's just we all liked each other's sense of humour.

It was a great gamble - "Why don't we all come together? "Would it work?"

And we stayed very carefully in our writing partnerships -

Terry Jones and myself and John and Graham.

And it evolved over the first few writing sessions that we wouldn't...

We tried to do something that was different

so we wouldn't have a musical act in the middle, we wouldn't have

a guest star or have all these things that a lot of sketch shows...

That was a convention of sketch shows.

We'd just have bits and pieces and if sketches didn't work completely,

let's cut in the middle and go to something else.

Hello again. Now, here's a little sketch by two boys from London town.

They've been writing for three years and come up with a little number.

Here it is. It's called Restaurant Sketch.

-Aaargh!

-No, Mungo! Mungo, never kill a customer.

Solving the problem of a lack of punch line was

one of the things that you were given great credit for really

and it was years before people dared to do punch lines again.

Yes, I never thought of it like that.

Certainly we capitalised on our inability to finish a sketch.

Which was great because a few years before,

a sketch had to be finished and that was, you know,

what people remembered - The Two Ronnies' sketches

and all that had to really round themselves off.

And they were very skilfully done. You had to tell a little story

and it had to have a climax to the story.

But I remember Barry Cryer saying, you know, what did he call it?

PBTNT. Which was the stock ending at the end of a sketch.

-Pull back to reveal he has no trousers.

-That was it.

That was PBTRNT. I remember that.

SCREAMING

Lucky we didn't say anything about the dirty knife.

GROANING AND BOOING

No, no, no!

Well, there we are then. That was Restaurant Sketch.

A nice little number. A bit vicious in parts, but a lot of fun.

But how about that punch line, eh?

It's interesting that you were still working in pairs,

-you and Terry and...

-Yes. Yeah.

That was quite important because you felt that you had found

one other person who you could write with. It was kind of...

That was a rather delicate, rather special relationship.

You didn't know whether it would work with anybody else.

I mean, we did work with each other.

On Python I wrote with John a bit and all that

but I found it very different from writing with Terry.

A bit like going off in the afternoon and cheating on your wife, you know.

"I'm seeing another writer."

Oh, you know what I mean? Oh-ho-ho. Really.

In many ways, the beloved Pythons had reinvented sketch comedy

but in doing so they almost deconstructed it.

By mocking the key elements of any sketch -

the punch line, the catch phrase, even a natural conclusion -

they left behind a reduced comedy landscape which made

the later 1970s one of the lows for the sketch show.

It looked like sketch comedy was fading

but then a young radio producer

and a clutch of new talent were about to give it the kiss of life.

It was a definite idea that things had got a bit predictable, if you like.

I know you had a lot to do with The Two Ronnies which,

again, as a young person I adulated and still do.

It's still one of the great shows, isn't it, the great sketch shows?

But, you know, The Two Ronnies represented a world which

people as we were in Not The Nine O'Clock News in our mid-20s

just simply didn't recognise.

You know, it was yokels in smocks with three Xs,

leaning on farm gates, it was people playing shove ha'penny in the pub

and guys in cravats and blazers at drinks parties.

None of us lived in that world.

We lived in the world where people wee-weed in the telephone boxes.

You know, where if you went to the pub,

you played Asteroids or Space Invaders, you know.

And as often in television,

television often falls behind what is actually happening in the street

and in popular culture and there was a definite...

It's one of the great things the BBC used to do -

it examined its own output and thought, "We can do better than this.

"We need a jump forward."

I used to hate Not The Nine O'Clock News

while I watched it because there was always 17 dodgy minutes

and maybe 10 good minutes and it was really interesting to me

cos all I would notice was the 17 dreadful minutes

and all anyone would talk about the next day were the three good sketches.

And so it is quite an interesting form in that you can get away

with a low percentage of excellence and still be thought excellent.

# I like trucking, I like trucking

# I like trucking and I like to truck

# I like trucking, I like trucking

# If you don't like trucking Tough luck

# On the road

# You must be brave and tireless

# On the road

# You can listen to the wireless

# On the road

# You eat cafe food with pride

# You can throw it up outside... #

We put out the first Not The Nine O'Clock News in '79

and Jimmy Gilbert called me into the office and he said,

"John, you jammed the BBC switchboard last night.

"It's a disgrace," he said, "30 telephone complaints.

"30 telephone complaints. Call yourself a satirist?

"It should have been 60. Get out!"

And that was the attitude, you know, which was, you know,

"We want something cutting edge."

It was a definite idea that things had got a bit

sort of predictable, if you like.

# I like trucking, I like trucking

# I like trucking and I like to truck

# I like trucking, I like trucking

# If you don't like trucking Tough luck... #

Not The Nine O'Clock News was a very profligate show in terms

of writers cos it was dominated by the producers not by the writers.

Python was dominated by the five guys who wrote it

but Not The Nine O'clock News, hundreds of people wrote.

To the top of that rose a bunch of people who consistently

wrote sketches and most of them

have gone on to produce other work that you know.

So Andy Hamilton did Outnumbered or David Renwick

did Jonathan Creek or I did Blackadder.

So it was a place where people got confident about their ability

to produce comedy and got known to people who could do comedy.

# We like trucking

# If you don't like trucking Tough luck. #

The '80s became a boom time for alternative comedy and sketch shows.

Smith and Jones, French and Saunders

and a couple of Cambridge students

whose Footlights Revue had gone down a storm at the Edinburgh Festival.

We did a pilot for Fry And Laurie, I think. We may have just done...

No, we did do a one-off Christmas special which started it

and this was 40 minutes, I think,

which included a parody of Neighbours,

which no-one had ever done before, cos Neighbours was just started.

-So you were in there first?

-We were in there first and it was largely

because we had been touring around England,

and living the life on tour is such that you watch daytime television.

We had been playing universities

and we had this kind of big encore which we couldn't film

which had gone surprisingly well with the audiences

and they where going, "More, more."

We were going, "We haven't got any more that's any good."

So one afternoon we just wrote this Neighbours sketch

and it went fantastically well because students, of course,

like us, watched television during the day.

They were the only people who did and they were astonished.

We just started by singing the theme tune and the place erupted.

It's a moment you can never recapture. Such a strange thing.

That is a strange thing.

I've been having an affair with you for some time now.

-What?

-It's true.

You bastard.

Look, mate, you had to find out sooner or later

and I'd just rather it came from me, that's all.

You mean we have been sleeping together all this time

behind my back?

I said I'm sorry. I don't know what else I can say.

The fact is that I was vulnerable and you were there.

-You leave me out of this.

-I said I'm sorry.

I just don't know what else I can say, mate.

-Why am I always the last one to know?

-It won't happen again, I promise.

I just wish that if you were going to sleep with me,

you could at least have done it to my face.

I'll bear that in mind for next time.

The truth is, mate, I was confused and slightly bewildered.

-I'd just discovered that Dernick isn't my real father.

-He isn't?

-Well, then, who is?

-I am.

-Then that must mean that you must be...

-Exactly.

Devlin's half-sister's wife's doctor's cousin's niece.

Well, then, who the hell am I?!

I don't know, mate - but it's your round!

The pilot was a success.

And a year later, they had their own series.

A Bit Of Fry & Laurie.

There were certain things that we thought needed satirising.

Not politicians in particular.

You see, there's this idea that topical comedy is satire.

I don't think it is. I think...

John Cleese once said that he'd had lunch with an old school friend

who was an accountant and, embarrassingly,

the day before he had lunch with him, the Monty Python

chartered accountant sketch was on air and he thought,

"Oh, hell, he'll be so annoyed." So he had lunch and the fellow said,

"I'm loving this Wilfred Peabody Flying Circus thing,

"it's marvellous." And John said, "Thank you very much.

"You saw it last night?" He said, "Yes, yes, hilarious."

He said, "Oh, I thought you might be a bit offended."

"Offended, why?"

"Well, going on about how boring it is to be a chartered accountant,

"how chartered accountant is the most boring, tedious, wearisome

"thing in the world." And the friend said, "Oh, a misunderstanding.

"I'm not a chartered accountant, I'm a certified accountant!"

And as Cleese said, unless you write someone's name, address

and postcode on the screen, it's always them

who are being satired, never you, you know?

Do you like it straight up?

-What?

-Or with ice?

-Ice.

-Right-o.

-Cocktail onion?

-No, thanks.

She takes no interest in my friends. She laughs at my...

-Peanuts?

-..hobbies.

She doesn't even value my...

Crinkle-cut cheesy Wotsits?

..career. You know, it was just so depressing.

-All right, so other men have got larger...

-Plums?

There's an advantage if you're writing sketches

for the two of you, two of you writing sketches for the two of you.

Like with writing for yourself, writing for the twosome

equally was potent and really worked in that case, with you and Hugh.

Yes. I mean, if we had said, "We are funny people, please write us

"some sketches," why would anybody want to do that?

You'd have to be as good as Rowan Atkinson to get someone

to write for you, and I never felt I was good as Rowan Atkinson.

I'll never feel that. But I knew what I could do.

I knew my limits and I could write for them.

And Hugh's limits are wider than mine because he can

sing and move and do all kinds of other things I can't do.

But nonetheless, that's the huge advantage of writing for yourself.

I don't know why I bother with women.

-I'd be better off being a...

-Fruit?

..monk or a hermit or something.

-At least if I was a...

-Fag?

At least if I was a monk, I wouldn't have two put up with women

going on and on, they can talk the hind leg off a...

-Camel?

-..donkey. Trouble is, I couldn't live without women.

In a monastery, the best you can hope for is a bit of...

Chocolate Hobnob?

..peace and spirituality.

Let's face it, we haven't slept together for years.

The best I can hope for is a bit of...

Savoury finger?

But one of the things that Python discovered,

and this was from you, you were the influence here, I think,

and the Two Ronnies, who also flowed out of your talent stream -

your talent pond, your spawning pond -

is that, when you have a flow of disconnected sketches,

you need a desk. You need an anchor.

You were anchor for TW3 and, funnily enough, in sketch comedy,

there's something goes wrong if you just have a stream of sketches

without some regular place to return to, and the Python's first joke

of that was they would have a desk, but they had the desk on a beach,

in which Cleese would say,

"And now for something completely different..."

They would actually take the metaphor of the desk and make it

real and put it somewhere surreal, which was a very Python thing to do.

And that's one of the things we missed - we didn't have a desk.

In the last series, we kind of had one,

we had a little sort of conversation lounge where we'd sit.

So we did these vox pops instead where Hugh and I would dress up

as members of the street and say,

as if being interviewed about certain things,

rather like the people Esther Rantzen interviewed...

And naturally, she won't let me give her so much as a...

Good juicy tongue in the back passage.

..a peck on the cheek.

I tell you, I tell you...

The trouble with that woman is that she's a...

Rather disgusting looking tart that should've been disposed of ages ago?

Writing is the most agonising thing in the world to do,

in sketch comedy, is - it's just awful.

You just want to stab yourself, you meet every day, you try

and cheer yourselves up, end up watching some horseracing then go,

"Oh," and you start and you say, "I started something,"

and Hugh will have a look at it and go, "I'll add it...

"Look what I've started, it's terrible." And you just...

"Oh!" But you have to keep at it.

It sounds awfully complaining, but it is really difficult.

So the answer to that is to develop a series of characters

that you can repeat.

The 1990s saw a series of shows use the technique that Stephen

just mentioned there.

To devastating effect, what's more. Both Harry Enfield

and then The Fast Show had the same cast of characters each week.

And, of course, each character had their own catchphrase.

In particular, in The Fast Show, you essentially got nothing new,

the same characters, which were brilliant.

The coughing guy, who just couldn't help coughing.

The country gent who was in love with his farmer.

And the guy who opened his shed and said,

"This day, I've been mostly..." - something or other silly.

And they were just... the same running gag every week.

This was nothing new, though.

The catchphrase had dominated radio shows during and after the war.

There was Rob Wilson's "The day war work broke out,"

and Ken Platt with, "Daft as a brush!"

and Al Read with, "I thought right, monkey."

But coming up with a successful catchphrase is not as easy

as it might seem.

The thing about a catchphrase, which Bruce Forsyth will tell you,

is you don't know you've said it.

-It's the public that decide what is a catchphrase...

-Absolutely.

And "I'm in charge," which was Bruce's Sunday Night At The Palladium

catchphrase, it came out of his mouth - he had no idea what he'd said

and his postbag the next week, there was sacks of mail delivered to

Bruce "I'm in charge" Forsyth and he realised he had a catchphrase.

I was always astonished when "Hello, good evening

"and welcome" became a catchphrase, because it was the sort of thing

you'd say when you walk into a room, normally, you know?

-But once you've said it, no-one else can say it.

-That's right.

I don't think you can sit down and write a catchphrase.

I think you can try and, I guess from a marketing point of view,

people do, in terms of commercials and stuff. But no, the only...

time I thought about the "Am I bovvered?" was, I was doing it...

Before we filmed the sketches,

once they'd all been written, um, before I filmed them,

I used to try them out in small theatres like the Soho Theatre or

the Latchmere and places like that

and I'm pretty sure it was at the Latchmere Theatre with, you know,

in front of about 30 people, nobody knew who I was at all...

And I started doing this "Am I bovvered?" thing

and said it the first time, that was it,

and then... I hadn't written it in the sketch, it wasn't

a repetition thing, it wasn't a riff thing and the riff thing came

by trying it out in front of an audience because I heard them

sort of pick up on it and I thought in the moment,

"Oh, shall I push that a little bit?" And I did.

And then they picked up on it again

and it really came quite organically out of the audience's reaction.

-That's absolutely true, absolutely vital, isn't it?

-Yeah.

You can't create catchphrases, they are created for you by the audience.

Absolutely. And, as they were going out, we heard a few people say,

"Am I bovvered, am I bovvered?" And you thought, "Oh...

"Maybe that will... Maybe we should...

"Maybe I should do that in the actual TV show."

But it absolutely wasn't my intention.

We get sent a lot of stuff...

A couple of weeks after a programme is transmitted, people think,

"I think I'll sit down and write something."

And as Little Britain was on the air,

I used to get lots of sketches sent to me

by the public with the most extraordinary catchphrases like,

"Are you going out?" Now, obviously somebody thought,

"Are you going out?" is a great catchphrase,

people will say that left, right and centre, they're going to go

down the shops and people are going to fall over with laughter.

Well, it's not the phrase itself.

It's where the phrase comes from and how it's said

and when it's said.

During this catchphrase mania,

one group of women stood out at the very end of the 1990s.

As the world knows,

Smack The Pony was of course an all-women enterprise.

How did that change things from when you had done things

before that - The Mary Whitehouse Experience, and so on -

that were not different?

We decided, when we got together,

to sort of write it

and collate material, that we weren't going to do anything about

diets, sexual politics, periods, or anything to do with women's issues.

We were just going to do women being funny.

We just strayed into a different sort of material.

Because we didn't repeat characters, like normal sketch shows would have,

and gone, "Oh, I want to see those two,"

we had no repeat characters, which made material incredibly hard to keep

fresh and keep writing because we just came up with different people

all the time.

Smack The Pony stood out from the crowd in more ways than one

when it picked up Emmys for the first two series.

-I'm glad I waxed my bikini line.

-Ha! I don't need to bother.

-I do.

Right... Ooh!

They loved the fact that we were like sassy women.

They liked the fact that we were strong...women who didn't care...

I mean, they showed the sketch of me with the enormous merkin,

bikini, hair coming out of my bikini line, swimming pool sketch,

to complete silence in the American audience.

You are actually quite, quite hairy down there, aren't you?

-What?

-A little bit hairy down there.

I don't think anyone's going to notice a few little wisps.

'I received the award'

and said something like,

"You'll be pleased to know I have shaved tonight," and not a single...

And I think they found us quite outrageous and bold

because they hadn't seen women do... Now you've got Bridesmaids

and women going further with more sort of slapstick and toilet humour.

But I think we were...

pretty progressive in our days and they liked the fact that...

I think the fact that we just looked like normal women.

But soon, characters

and catchphrases were back with a bang, with shows like

Little Britain and Catherine Tate.

Catherine had earlier appeared in a number of sketch shows,

but only as a straight man or woman.

In 2001, my agent said,

"I think you need to step out of the shadow a little bit and do

"your own stuff." And I had absolutely no interest

-in doing that whatsoever.

-Really?

-No! No, no. Because I...

I'd trained as an actor, and I hadn't intended to

particularly do comedy. You know...

I mean, I loved doing comedy, but I certainly hadn't intended

to write my own or perform sketches or particularly anything like that.

'94, I think, I left drama college because I just thought I'd go in

and get jobs doing theatre work, but all the reps had gone, that was it.

Anyway, in 2001, I wrote my own Edinburgh show,

-doing characters.

-Several characters?

Several characters - a couple of them went on to the TV show.

But because I didn't want to do monologues,

and this is the difference, I don't particularly like doing monologues.

I think monologues is hard for...

They're hard for the performer, very hard on an audience, though.

There's a lot of pressure on an audience when a character,

when one person comes out and starts speaking, you know.

So I thought... But actually, all I had was sort of monologues, really,

I had these ideas for characters.

But I thought, "What I'll do, I'll make them scenes

"and I'll get somebody else to be in the show with me.

And that's when I started, I suppose, writing sketches.

Because it was almost like that thing, the venue had been booked,

the poster had been printed.

You know, the advert had gone out in the Fringe brochure.

I had to do this show.

-And I then found I very much liked it.

-Oh, really?

-Instant?

-Yes, I did find it very...

Because, you know, perfect sketches which give you such great enjoyment

are like a mini play, you know, even if they are only 30 seconds long,

they've got a beginning, a middle and an end.

And there's a tiny little narrative and, um, if you can get

something people can engage with, brilliant,

and a big laugh at the end.

-It's... Really, what's not to like?

-Yes, absolutely.

-Are you Stephen Hawking?

-No.

-Are you Stephen Hawking, sir?

-No.

-Do you wish you were Stephen Hawking?

-No.

When you are at home, right, when you're at home,

-do you pretend to be Stephen Hawking?

-No.

-Have you got a funny little voice box?

-No.

-Do you bowl about in a little wheelchair?

-That is unacceptable.

-Stop doing it, then.

-That... That is enough.

What I love about sketches, if you go to see a sketch show,

if you don't like the one you are watching,

-pretty soon, there will be another one coming up.

-Exactly.

That's the great thing about sketches.

That is why they always talk about the hit-and-miss ratio.

Obviously, there are fewer women starring in review

or sketches, all of that, than men.

-Is that an advantage?

-I think I found it was...

-of benefit to me.

-Right.

I don't necessarily say it was easier, but I think it's probably...

you are more noticeable if there are less of you, for sure.

But on the other side of the coin,

you can get that label of being funny "for a woman".

-Yes.

-As if comedy is gender specific.

So you are funny for a woman, which is a terrible thing.

Having said that, of course, to balance it up, I think

it was a great advantage to me that there hadn't been

dozens and dozens of female comics.

You're lucky I am one of the more reasonable teachers in the school,

otherwise you would be in a lot of trouble.

As it is, I'll give you a second chance.

-F.

-Face.

-No.

-Bothered?

I ain't even bothered. Look at my face.

-Look...

-I ain't even bothered. Look at my face, periodic table,

I ain't even bothered. Are you looking at my face? Look, bothered?

-Bunsen burner, I ain't even bothered.

-I am trying...

Albert Einstein, ain't even bothered.

Stephen Hawking, "I...ain't...bothered."

Am I bothered? Look, face, bothered? Bunsen burner.

Do you go hiking? I ain't...bothered!

I would stand by my show, my sketch show, as the thing I'm most proud of,

because it's...you know, it's the thing I most love.

And it was fantastic to do.

And also, to get out on stage and make people laugh

is...intoxicatingly wonderful.

As you know.

The downside of it is that sometimes, it's considered...

It's considered very lowbrow.

Making people laugh is not considered in any way an artform.

It's not considered intellectual.

Because you're making someone laugh, people think it's easy.

I think people think making people laugh is easy.

And if everyone had to go off and make people laugh,

they'd realise it's actually quite difficult sometimes!

Two hit sketch series -

Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show -

signed off back in 2006 and 2007, respectively.

And most of the performers and writers we've talked to

felt there's been a dearth of big-impact sketch shows since then.

Time to reflect perhaps on what makes a great sketch?

The thing about sketch comedy is,

it has to make its mark in three minutes.

You have to tell the story, you have to set up who it is, you have

to have a few jokes in the middle

and at some point very near, you have to signal the fact

that you're coming to the end of the sketch.

Of course, as we know, somebody once said,

"No sketch should last more than 3.5 minutes."

So in that 3.5 minutes,

you had to create the whole of the idea about that sketch.

What is the key to the success of a good sketch?

-Well, it's...

-It's got to be funny, I suppose.

Yes, like so much comedy, the best comedy is based on character.

-What is palaeontology?

-Yes, absolutely correct.

What's the name of the directory that lists members of the peerage?

A Study Of Old Fossils.

Correct.

Can you tell when you read a sketch whether it is going to work?

Yes, the stand-out ones.

I was looking for some this morning, you know.

Ronnie sitting at a desk,

with a notice on the wall saying The Hearing Aid Centre.

-Is this The Hearing Aid Centre?

-Pardon?

I said, "Is this the hearing aid centre?" "Yes, that's right."

-I've come to be fitted for a hearing aid.

-Pardon?

Oh, it's immediately funny. I said, "I've come for a hearing aid."

"Oh, right, do sit down. I'll just take a few details."

-Name?

-Pardon?

-Name?

-Crampton.

-Pardon?

-Crampton.

-Oh, Crampton.

-Pardon?

-I said Crampton.

-Yes.

-A hearing aid, why don't you try one?

-No, I've got one.

-Pardon?

-Pardon?

-I said pardon.

-No, I said pardon.

Oh, forget it, I'll get a set of new teeth.

And I walk out! It's a good tag.

-That's a good tag. That would work.

-That's right.

SHOP BELL RINGS

Fork handles.

Four candles.

If you look at the construction of something like Four Candles,

which is the classic Two Ronnies sketch, you have a bit of business

at the beginning, establishing exactly who the characters are.

The rest of the sketch is playing around with the words,

and then very clearly, the end is signalled.

So it's the perfect structure of a sketch.

Here you are, four candles.

No, fork handles.

Well, there you are, four candles.

No, fork handles. Handles for forks.

LAUGHTER

Of course, Four Candles is historically memorable.

-And who wrote that?

-That is Gerald Wiley.

-Was it, really?

-Yes.

And, um...he had a letter from a hardware man

because the first part of the joke

actually happened to the hardware man.

A man came in and said he wanted four candles. Handles for forks.

And that's where it started.

And from that one chance error, Ronnie developed the whole sketch.

No, Os.

Hose? Well, that's...

Oh, you mean pantyhose? Pantyhose.

No, no, Os, Os for the gate, Mon Repose. Os.

-Letter Os.

-Letter Os.

LAUGHTER

Some belters from the past. But what of the future?

Why aren't there more sketch shows around at the moment?

Will the sketch show, for instance,

be deemed by nervous programme commissioners

to be too risky?

You dress somebody up, you build a set for them,

you go to a location for something that lasts 3.5 minutes

and the sketch show has possibly ten of those kind of situations.

So inevitably, they are one of the most expensive areas of television.

Nowadays, people expect, for example, prosthetics on their characters.

It's not enough to have a little moustache,

you have to build a whole face, you have to build a whole body.

I'm pretty sure that they are not extinct. I'm sure they are not.

I do think things come in and out of fashion, unfortunately.

I just think that's the way it is.

I think there will be a life expectancy, though,

if people don't stick to what they believe is funny

and believe is true and believe the audiences will like.

Because if you keep trying to find a new thing, I think

that's where we all run into trouble.

Trying to be too different from something else,

we don't want to be the same as someone else.

If you are funny, you are funny, and people, I'm sure, will come to you.

People do seem to think sketch comedy has come to a sort of end.

-I'm sure it's not an end.

-No, it may...

-A lacuna.

A lacuna. A turning, perhaps, a bend in the river.

It's a young person's game, comedy,

and I think more people are drawn to stand-up than they are to review.

But even as I speak, there will be

a group of people who've met at university or college,

somewhere, who'll be planning to go to Edinburgh this year

who will be noticed, get an award and maybe get, you know,

like The League Of Gentlemen, there have been so many others,

Mitchell And Webb. A lot of them double acts

more specifically, but that's still sketch comedy.

The trend today is stand-up. That's the new rock 'n' roll.

People are filling the O2, single comedians standing there

with a microphone filling the O2 Stadium is extraordinary.

It's a shame, I really miss sketches.

There is a hunger for a new sketch show,

but it does need performers who have that all-round ability

to act totally different characters one after another,

make it believable and make it funny.

The sketch show is vital, really.

I think the sketch show

is at the heart of the culture in a very important way,

much more important than just having a few laughs on a Friday night.

And it is this, and I have been fortunate enough to be

involved in two of these kind of shows.

There needs to be a comedy show that tells 15-year-old boys

and girls what to think.

You did it with TW3, I think.

There is a whole generation of people

who learned about politics through Spitting Image.

If you look at Jon Stewart and the Daily Show,

Stephen Colbert in the States, it's the same thing.

American kids get their politics from a comedy show.

They get it accurate, they get it perceptive and they get it funny.

And that's the thing, that's the sketch show that's really missing,

the kind of stuff you and I used to do.

One of the things that really is happening

is that kids are starting to watch sketches online.

I do find that. Basically, my 11-year-old and my nine-year-old are

always dragging me in the direction of something they found online.

Often, it's a cat fighting a dog.

But sometimes, it is a, you know,

funny little sketch from an American and suddenly, they'll find a sketch

about an American having an argument about some milk in a fridge

and then they'll find out that guy's done ten sketches,

then show me his best sketches,

and the next thing you know, that person has become famous.

So I've got a feeling that because sketches are the same

length as pop songs, they may fit perfectly into the Internet.

-Comedy goes in sort of fashion.

-Yes.

And I think there's a big fashion for mockumentaries now.

Some of the funniest things I've seen recently have been

The Thick Of It and 2012, things like that,

which are marvellously done, but they are acute observation of real life.

And I think probably there will come a time

when people get bored of that and will want something else.

You think the sketch show will come back eventually?

-It hasn't been that far away.

-There's a rhythm in all things.

People often talk about the golden age of comedy

and then you go back there and realise

there were only two good shows at that time

and then there were two good shows three years later, and later.

Monty Python was a reaction to That Was The Week That Was, which was

very intelligent, very satirical, very based in the real world.

Then Python did something which was

completely surreal and stupid and chaotic.

Then, when we came to Not The Nine O'Clock News,

we did that extremely realistically, based on news, a parody

of television, because no-one wanted to go down the Monty Python route.

So I think there's a kind of rhythm to things.

Somebody will do a really good satirical show soon,

and then that'll be followed by a big stupid show with

lots of people dressed as bananas.

Well, whatever the shape or form they take, I think most of us

would agree that sketch shows

are too valuable a form of TV to disappear.

We need them. And the new talent needs them to cut their teeth on.

At that point, it's goodnight from me and it's goodnight from them.

-What do people kneel on in church?

-The Right Reverend Robert Runcie.

-Correct. What do tarantulas prey on?

-Hassocks.

Correct. What would you use a ripcord to pull open?

-Large flies.

-Correct.

-What sort of a person lived in Bedlam?

-A parachute.

-Correct. What is a jock strap?

-A nutcase.

For what purpose would a decorator use methylene chlorides?

-A form of athletic sport.

-Correct.

What did Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec do?

Paint strippers.

Correct. Who is Dean Martin?

He's a kind of artist.

-Yes, what sort of artist?

-Um...

-Pass.

-That's near enough.

-What make of vehicle is the standard London bus?

-A singer.

Correct.

In 1892, Brandon Thomas wrote a famous long-running English farce,

-what was it?

-British Leyland.

Correct. Complete the following quotation...

-BUZZER

-I've started, so I'll finish.

..about Mrs Thatcher, "Her heart may be in the right place, but her..."

-Charlie's aunt.

-Correct...