In 1998 Radio 4 transmitted a series of hour-long discussion programmes presided over by Stephen Fry. Presented as a mixture of Late Review-style opinionated chat and Loose Ends- like chumminess, this series, though enjoyable in parts, was little more than another excuse for a Fry-held Oxbridge reunion, made all the worse for some appalling multi-tracked John Sessions sketches, pre-recorded as an obvious attempt to emulate the excitement of Victor Lewis Smith’s Loose Ends contributions but which generally tended to disappear up Sessions’ colon. The series was amusingly called Saturday Night Fry .
However, ten years previously, Radio 4 transmitted an earlier vehicle for Stephen Fry, also called Saturday Night Fry and this was a whole different different kettle of ball games. Criminally overlooked at the time, this short run of six half-hour comedy shows has influenced a lot of subsequent radio comedies and stands out as one of Fry’s finest achievements.
The pilot show was transmitted around Christmas 1987 and owed more to the audience-less comedies of The Burkiss Way than to the cheap-laff friendly Terry Ravenscroft-scripted yawns littering the radio schedules of the day. Its format was simple enough: Stephen Fry and friends introduce a radio show with some parodies, gentle satire and silly voices. Like the best of Stephen Fry’s work it’s littered with little personal obsessions and prejudices and a healthy intellectual regard for childish humour.
Co-written with Ian Brown and James Hendrie, and starring long-term Fry cohorts, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, the pilot (which was repeated the following year as Show 1 of the series proper) set the scene for what was to come. The show is presented almost as a candid rough-cut of the sort of serious shows broadcast on Radio 4. From the first candid conversation between Fry and his producer at the start of the show (‘We’ll just led it fade out after a while and then...then I’ll start speaking…’) to the introducing of the actors ('For this first show I managed to "track them down" and "catch up with them" ...at the place we arranged we would meet - the BBC Radio Rehearsal Rooms...'), everything is explained, suggesting that Fry's character, though enthusiastic, is somewhat perplexed by the notion of wireless.
FRY You'll forgive me for being formal, but, then, I like formality - wasn't it Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for sodomy? I don't know why I said that, I'm so sorry...
Fry, as always, plays up to his usual character expectations (‘It really does give me enormous pleasure – it’s almost indecent!’) and this erudite, absurdist style (which borrows equal parts from Wilde, Cook, Stanshall and anybody else he admired as a student) allows personal flights of fancy without becoming self-indulgent. The days of innocently silly character names in comedy sketches had yet to become an embarrassment to po-faced performers and monikers such as ‘Eugene Mothervest’, Frillidy Waistsplendour’ and ‘Heckity Carbide’ are beautifully uttered. One sketch exploits this gift to logical conclusions as a ‘silly name competition’ with entrants such as ‘Stank and Moulina Stopfroth’ and ‘Suckmaster Burstingfoam’ winning in laughs, if not prizes. ‘There can be no doubt that we British have a great sense of humour and like nothing more than to laugh at other people’ , explains Fry, tartily.
He also sends up the received view of his overt erudition, the best example being a running joke about ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, renamed ‘Stephen Will Do His Level Best To Comply With Your Wishes’ (a title which grows longer with each show). In any case, as the sketches prove, his level best is obviously not good enough, as in the case of the young fan who wishes to meet David Bowie. Following several unsuccessful attempts to unite the fan (played to perfection by Thompson as a surly couldn’t-care-either-way teen) with the man, several brush-offs and the clamping of Fry’s transport (‘But this is outrageous – we were recording a radio programme!’), the day ends in tragedy as Fry deliberately drives his car over her.
After a brief delivery of grapes to Great Ormand Street Hospital, Fry returns to the studio to cap the item:
FRY
(JOVIALLY) Well, after all that, we invited Jackie to come and join us in the studio today. But she refused. Which was very stupid of her because sitting next to me right now is David Bowie. Hello!BOWIE Hello.
FRY So, up yours, Jackie, with a wire brush!
Whether it’s the real David Bowie we hear is debatable (he gets a credit at the end of the show but it actually just sounds like Hugh Laurie slowed down) but there has of course been a fantastic history of comedy shows flying in special guest stars and deliberately underusing them. Kenny Everett springs to mind.
The show cheerfully twisted the arm of the duller aspects of the media, including the sort of twee overtly middle-class-pleasing stuff they were later led into.
Once sequence lays into E.M. Forster films with Emma Thompson juicily pastiching the sort of impenetrable nonsense which she would, in good time, play for real:
HELEN
(EMMA THOMPSON) Timothy, do you remember the Mossacio in the Prado?TIMOTHY (HUGH LAURIE) What?
HELEN Florence, Timothy, Florence – there was a painting there, in the Uffizi, a huge Modigliani. It spoke o…
TIMOTHY It spoke!?
HELEN Er, to me, it spoke, and to Aunt Jane, and I think to Dr Ford, it spoke to us about the inner life and the outer life, Timothy, there, in the Accademia, that week in Venice.
TIMOTHY You mean that big canvas of the fat pink woman and the cherub?
HELEN (SIGHS) It was a Madonna and Child, yes, by Medea. It had a rhythm. Something happened in that stuffy room in the Reichsmuseum. A Spanish boy came and whispered in my ear, do you remember?
TIMOTHY And then you fainted – I had him thrown out.
HELEN There was a fussy English scene – shouting and blaming, blaming and shouting, blouting and shaming… But something had happened, there, in front of that Manet in the Lourve, something had happened!
TIMOTHY I say! You don’t want me to buy the ruddy painting for you, do you?
Fry’s subtle changing of the names of the painting and gallery throughout the dialogue is a device he also used in the Fry & Laurie Australian soap opera pastiche (in the A Bit Of… pilot, also transmitted in late ’87). The subtext here being that when something is so unnaturally popular then the finer details are incidental. Way to go, Stephen.
Snooks are cocked all over the place at traditional Radio 4 procedure. The theme music is constantly introduced as if it's no more than part of the show's running schedule. Indeed, the sig tune is an inspired choice – an edit of Louis Jordan’s jazzy classic ‘Saturday Night Fish-Fry’.A silly satire on pedantic sig-tune choices, not to mention comically absurd and out of place for Fry who relishes its arrival with a gushing 'Please Mr Music, will you play...' or the somewhat raunchier 'Hit it, bitch...'
Guest cameos include soppy old Ned Sherrin who appears in an obvious send up of the pre-recorded reports on Loose Ends, making cameos as doormen and waiters in the piece before returning to the studio in lieu of Fy in an attempt to host the show itself (FRY: Wait just a cotton-picking minute - what the devil is he doing here? / SHERRIN: It's okay - that's Hugh. / FRY: Is it? Oh, I'm sorry...)
The best cameo however features Barry Cryer who manages to completely out-self-parody Fry in the culmination of a 'Jekyll & Hyde'-type sketch :
CRYER Don't underestimate me - I'm packed with strange powers. Amongst my supernatural ability I have the power to find something suggestive and naughty in anything you say!
THOMPSON But that's extraordinary.
CRYER Extraordinary? At my age, it's a miracle!
THOMPSON But it's horrifying!
CRYER It is horrifying, isn't it. I'll put it away. See? A lewd ambiguity for every occasion.
THOMPSON You're having me on.
CRYER No, but it's an idea!
THOMPSON You can keep this up indefinitely?
CRYER Are you sure you want me to answer that?
THOMPSON Alright, if you can twist any word I might say, try this... Um... 'Buttercup'.
CRYER Buttercup, buttock-down, buttock-up, buttock-down. And rest. Thank you, Madam!
THOMPSON Curses, that was too easy. Ummm. 'Anti-Tank Missile'.
CRYER You flatter me! But you should see it when it's angry!
THOMPSON I don't get it.
CRYER I'll soon put a stop to that !
THOMPSON My God, you have actually become Barry Cryer - your double-entendres are staggering!
CRYER Only when I cough!
THOMPSON Well if you really are Barry Cryer, would you mind signing this? It's for my children.
CRYER I don't remember ordering any children!
THOMPSON I can have them biked over to you by tomorrow. The youngest is allergic to eggs. Apart from that they should be no problem. Please sign - there's a dotted line on the bottom there.
CRYER There's a novelty!
THOMPSON Well, quite!
Each show is constructed as cleverly as the best Flying Circus , with characters and sketches ducking and diving throughout. A good example being in Show 3 when the supporting artistes, Laurie, Broadbent and Julia Hills, are left alone for a few minutes while Fry 'visits the little boy’s room' (that's what comes from having too many cups of tea during rehearsals'). In his absence the actors start behaving like a classroom of naughty tricksters and mix up the script pages for a laff. This ploy results in Fry firstly announcing the end of the show, then re-introducing a sketch they’ve already done (not to mention paying another visit to the little boy’s room, suggesting that even Fry's bladder is part of the script). The cruel stunt is eventually exposed as Hills accidentally re-reads the part of the script in which they planned the trick. Stephen gives her a smack by way of punishment, but by then the damage is done and the rest of the show suffers from continual mix-ups (and Hills receives several more smacks). Very cleverly written, not to mention a bit of post-modernism for a reason. To be funny, mainly.
And continually we get Stephen Fry sending himself up something rotten while ironically setting up and ossifying his public character-persona for future comedians or impressionists to satirise. In one scene, a character drinks some suspect tea:
BATHURST
Ah, that’s not tea, that’s a magic potion which turns you into a parody of Stephen Fry.BROADBENT Oh! Pox and sevenpence! So it does. Well isn’t that a turn up…
FRY …for the trousers. En passent, it is an important and worthy observation that the word ‘trousers…’
FX: TAPE SPOOLS OFF
Guest performers throughout the series also included Jim Broadbent, Robert Bathurst, Alison Steadman and Thompson’s mother, Phillida Law. The latter appeared in the last two shows, alongside her daughter who refused to acknowledge her parentage (‘I’m sorry, Stephen, but we’re just not speaking…’).
The actors demonstrate a great ability in underplaying their roles (both in and out of character as it were) with only Alison Steadman sounding a little forced in places. But then again, since we rarely see or hear Steadman not playing some grotesquery or other, maybe it was harder for her to fit in.
Possibly the funniest item in the entire series is Show 3’s lesson in how to speak Stromm (a fictional language which had previously appeared in Granada's There’s Nothing To Worry About and later in A Bit Of Fry & Laurie’s ‘Interpreter’ sketch). The following transcript is purely phonetic:
HILLS
Manda grillion besavie Stromm.BROADBENT ‘It’s Easy To Talk Stromm’.
HILLS Manda grillion besavie Stromm.
BROADBENT Morvil handipoke stin-stin stain.
HILLS ‘Welcome’.
BROADBENT (SLOWER) Morvil handipoke stin-stin stain.
HILLS Welcome to ‘It’s Easy To Talk Stromm. Last week we went to the post office, but if you enjoy a stay in Stromm, it is likely that at one time or another you will want to enjoy one or two of the famous Stromm restaurants, or, ‘marry-bantasoups’.
BROADBENT Marri-bantasoup.
HILLS ‘Restaurant’.
BROADBENT (SLOWER) Marri-bantasoup.
HILLS So, let’s join Mark and Geoffrey as they enter a small, typically friendly marri-bantasoup in Central Stromm.
FRY Slip-writer crant cant crothfall.
LAURIE Midleforch crispence.
HILLS Harkley trinth?
FRY (PAUSE) Slip-writer crant crant crothfall.
BROADBENT ‘Let’s go in here’.
LAURIE Midleforch crispence.
BROADBENT ‘Yes – it looks nice’.
HILLS Harkley trinth?
BROADBENT ‘Good morning to you gentlemen, is there any way at all in which I can serve you?’ If you wanted to say ‘Good morning, ladies’, you would of course say ‘Karkley’. And ‘trinth’ – ‘is there any way in which I can serve you’. If there was just one person, you would of course say ‘tronth’.
HILLS Let’s try that again. We’ll say the English, you say the Stromm with us.
After a quick recap, ensuring that everybody understands, we continue as ‘Mark and Geoffrey’ order their food:
FRY
Holliberth, moiling frulebine, mazeddi mazoddi mazuddi.LAURIE Aplast, crantoplasty.
HILLS havanude moilingfruck pinty-panty.
FRY (PAUSE) ‘Holliberth, moiling frulebine, mazeddi mazoddi mazuddi’ – ‘rather, my fine waitress, I should like a bowl of freshly-prepared leather-goods, please. And a glass of toast on the side.
LAURIE ‘Aplast, crantoplasty’ – the same for me, you pleasant waitress from the South of our country’.
HILLS ‘Havanude moilingfruck pinty-panty’ – ‘Coming right up, boys, one of whom is taller than the other’.
BROADBENT If the other one had been the taller, it would of course have been ‘Moilingfruck panty-pinty’.
LAURIE And if it had been ‘one of whom is shorter than the other’, it would of course have been ‘silmm’. ‘Silmm’.
HILLS So, until next week, Bartide Hipswelling!
FRY Natherly natherly munn.
BROADBENT Slit!
Oh to hear the out-takes from that session…
Saturday Night Fry was a delightful series, unhampered by the sort of committee meetings and edicts that force today’s radio comedy writers to produce such crap. It was also made at a time when Fry and co weren’t that well-known and could basically be themselves (or a close approximation thereof) instead of attempting to conform to what the public expected of them. Plus of course, it was only radio. So they had nothing to lose.
FRY I wonder if it would surprise you if I said 'Boo!' (Chuckles) No, no, Stephen. You're over-excited, you've started to get silly and that's a pity...
A second series was hinted at during the tearful goodbyes at the end of the final show, but this never occured. By this time the first series of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie was being transmitted on BBC2 and there was no looking back.
Saturday Night Fry has been a clear influence on some of the better comedy generations which were lucky enough to catch it, in particular Chris Morris and On The Hour - indeed a prototype OTH-type sketch satirising over-positive news presentation features in the show. Fry's candid references to The Bonzos and Vivian Stanshall also pleased the student Morris who enthuses about the series to anybody who will listen even today.
Saturday Night Fry has never been released on CD.
