HOW TO
IRRITATE
PEOPLE

In 1990, Castle Communications released the video How To Irritate People. The work of Paradine Productions (owned by executive producer David Frost), the show was recorded in 1968 and starred John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Tim Brooke Taylor, Connie Booth, Dick Vosburgh and Gillian Lind. It has since been rightly trumpeted as essential viewing for anyone calling themselves a comedy fan. But the background to the show remains a sod of a mystery.

We say 'show' rather than 'programme' because, in the UK at least, there is no record of How To Irritate People ever being broadcast. Data relating to it seems non-existent, and Python biographers (of whom there are too many these days) seem oblivious to its existence. The only lead we can find is in Robert Ross' Python Encyclopaedia (Batsford Film Books, 1998), which states that it was made with the intention of launching the cast's names in America. Frost himself apparently arranged for the show to be broadcast on the Westinghouse Network as part of a season showcasing UK comedy (a strand which also featured Tommy Cooper and Ronnie Barker). But why were British fans kept in the dark for so long?

How To Irritate People is shot, as per a TV show, in a studio set and on colour VT. Cleese is the anchor to a series of sketches on the theme of being irritating, addressing his be-suited links directly to camera. There is a studio audience, but they laugh uncertainly and only when they want to. The skits themselves are mostly very funny, and have more in common with the contemporaneous At Last The 1948 Show than with early Flying Circus, but the Python elements are very much to the fore: an explanation of the word 'Pepperpot' is given (complete with the screechy old ladies themselves), a sketch about a wily mechanic is undoubtedly a template for the 'Dead Parrot' sketch, a quiz show parody is clearly a prototype for 'Spot The Brain Cell', and one 'Job Interview' sketch ('Goodnight...ding ding ding ding') actually re-emerged in the team's first series virtually intact.

Some items are really superb - there's a great piece about mischievous airline pilots scaring their passengers ('I'll do the worrying walk now'), and a couple of 'parents vs returning sons' sketches, performed with a angsty verve that only recent experience can generate. Cleese's links are also amusing, and have a marked oddness about them which unsettles the audience slightly, particularly his claim that 'setting fire to Julie Andrews' is an unoriginal act ('It's irritating,' he admits. 'But it's obvious.').

A few things to note. The picture quality is a grade or two down from first-series Flying Circus (quality which, to the untrained eye, is more or less identical to VT these days), but it still looks (a) good enough to have originated from a master rather than a copy, and (b) like it has was recorded on British PAL videotape (and, hence, in a British studio), rather than smudgily converted from American NTSC. However, some sketches are poorer quality than others, which suggests that it has perhaps been cobbled together from more than one source - the 'Indian Restaurant' sketch is very muffled, for example, while the 'Mechanic' sketch seems to have a high-pitched whine on the soundtrack, not to mention a slightly washed-out, second generation appearance. The 'Job Interview' sketch also looks very odd: when Brooke Taylor enters the office, his body displays a 'funfair mirror' look, almost as if we are viewing a telerecording taken from a particularly bulbous TV set (the picture quality is too good for this to be the case, however). It is also difficult to say whether the titles and credits (which are displayed on a series of rostrum-viewed cards, and feature no BBC insignia) are original, or re-created for the video presentation. The freeze-frames at the end of some items must also be new, since primitive video technology did not yet allow for such a gimmick. And this throws up another theory - if the show was never broadcast, was it ever edited? Did it exist in rushes form in 1990? And does it exist in rushes form now?

Kim Howard Johnson, in his dumb, over-sized sans serif mess of a typeface, makes uninteresting reading on this. However, his dossier of the Python's pre and post achievements (Life Before And After Monty Python: The Solo Flights Of The Flying Circus, Godammit Press, 1994) is alone in recognising that the show exists. Roger Wilmut doesn't mention it in From Fringe To Flying Circus (the ultimate authority on 1960s/70s Oxbridge comedy), nor do any of the writers who Chinese-whispered his research over the years, confirming that, prior to the video's release, How To Irritate People was genuinely obscure. Johnson, meanwhile, in his interviews with Palin and Cleese, does clarify a few points. He confirms, for example, that the video was indeed a fresh edit - Palin talks of 'making a few cuts here and there' to maintain the standard. It also makes it clear that it was David Frost himself who wished to see the video released.

The story behind How To Irritate People remains...well, irritating. It is odd that a British TV channel would pass up the chance to screen it on the back of At Last The 1948 Show and Do Not Adjust Your Set (sessions for the latter were taking place at the same time, further confirming that How To Irritate People wasn't recorded in the USA or anywhere else ridiculous), and it is odder still that all involved appeared to forget about it until the advent of the VCR. However, we must be thankful (if not amazed) that the show not only survives but has also just been re-issued at the weirdly fantastic price of £3.99. Buy it, watch it...and then send us your own theories.

NOTE (1): Cleese didn't record all his anchor material in one go - he had to change costume for each sketch, then back into his suit for the next link. He thought this a stupid policy, but didn't like to say anything. To this day, he claims he has never seen the show.

NOTE (2): If you're American and you remember seeing How To Irritate People, please contact us. And while you're about it, tell us what it's like to live in America. Is it good or is it a load of old rubbish? Do you get murdered a lot? My friend says that you call chips French fries and drive on the pavement.

POST ARTICLE UPDATE: Simon Harries has sent us the following great observations -

'Having read the article on "How To Irritate People", I went out and bought it for £3.99, and I thought I'd pass on my comments now that I've seen it and re-read the article.

David Frost's involvement suggests to me it could have been made for LWT - this company was created by a partnership lead by Frost in 1968. The captions are on that orangey background similar to that of the first LWT colour idents. It would explain why there's no BBC caption at the end - it wasn't a BBC show. However, since it's never been transmitted, I wonder if the LWT library has the original footage in its archive?

I also wondered if the show was recorded as an experiment, using the new colour process, and was rejected for transmission because the technology wasn't quite up to it? An early LWT attempt at colour recording?

The technology might have improved sufficiently by 1969 to enable Monty Python series 1 to be made at the BBC, who were of course making high quality colour shows in 1968 - the Peter Cushing version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" for example, which I would give my right arm to see now!

Or, more likely, the original master - which could have been a high quality 625 line PAL - could have gone missing / wiped etc. and this production has been pulled together from U-matic viewing copies which Frost / Paradine / any of the Pythons might own. If the transfers were poorly made, that might account for the poor sound or bizarre picture quality.

Anyway, they're just my thoughts.

Simon Harries