More talented and hard-working than most of their contemporaries by a mile, but oddly under-appreciated.
Lee and Herring's current activities in the world of comedy are more exclusively covered in Rob Sedgebeer's site which features contributions from the duo themselves and a pretty decent rundown of their careers. However it lacks the sort of intrusive speculative pondering that might piss them off. So we are proud to present ('cos, y'know, that's better in a way') an Edit News guide to 'The End Of The Roadshow's Lee and Herring, who were much better on the radio, the twats.
1.
Having contributed to Radio 4's Week Ending, helped shape On The Hour and presented two series of Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World on Radio 4, the duo put in for a Radio One series, to be entitled Fist Of Fun (a phrase which was first used in a flyer for the dum show, an Edinburgh offering which featured themselves, Simon Munnery, Patrick Marber and Steve Coogan). Sarah Smith, erstwhile producer of Week Ending and Lionel Nimrod, wrote the treatment for the proposed show:LEE AND HERRING'S FIST OF FUN
Written and performed by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Produced by Sarah Smith.
A tight fist of comedy for One FM.
Rich and Stew squint at life from their trademark "slightly unusual" angle ("On The Hour", "The Dum Show", "Lionel Nimrod") but without the restrictive format of Nimrod and completely aimed at a young, hip audience, not the old duffers who listen to Radio 4.
Hosted by Lee and Herring, and also concentrating on their relationship of ingrained knowledge and resentment of each other - plus of course deep respect and love. They'll discuss things of interest to themselves and other young people of Britain - which will also be illustrated by reports, interviews, unusual characters and realistic fly on the wall scenes.
The show will go out the same week it is recorded, so that it can cover prevailing trends - topical in the sense of "On The Hour", not "Weekending" (sic) - and it will be based more on social subjects than THE NEWS.
This fairly free format will be linked by the tone of the writing and performance - a different show than any we have done before, but taking elements from the others - irreverent, treating the weightiest of issues and most banal trivia with equal reverence, including the whole spectrum of emotions - though admittedly concentrating mainly on guilt and embarrassment.
Richard and Stewart have assembled descriptions of some of the potential elements (attached) and there are a couple of bits of Nimrod series 2 scripts which may give you an idea of the sort of stuff we could include.
I hope you can see the coherence within all this - it lies within the realtionship (sic) of all the best bits of what Richard and Stewart do which is a little difficult to explain without making you hear it all!
R & S's Nimrod scripts and performances have got better and better as the show has gone into the second series. We have loads of material already that would work in this new show and I think a programme designed with a Radio 1 feel and production style would be an ideal follow up to either actual repeats of, or just the interest shown in, Nimrod on 1.
A pilot should reveal its top cult potential!
Sarah
BUDGET: £2100
Sarah Smith suddenly remembering she’s left the iron
on...
Thus did Radio 1 assemble Lee and Herring's Fist Of Fun (12/10/93 - 17/11/93). The show kept to its topicality promises though the first show was recorded a few months previously at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (and presumably doubled as the pilot). As Sarah Smith's treatment suggests the series did re-use a bit of Lionel Nimrod material ('Dating Agency'; 'Naked Man and Naked Woman'), as well as developing a few On The Hour and dum show skits into extended routines.
The series went out in an 8:30pm timeslot for its first two episodes, but was moved to 9pm (on a different day) for the remaining four shows. It is not clear whether this was due to the ‘suitability’ of the material or simply inept scheduling.
2.
An incomplete script for Show 1 (rescued from Lee and Herring’s old office) reveals a number of cuts from the edited show:a) The duo's chat about being on Radio One features a few extra lines, presented here in square brackets (or whatever formatting Rob can be arsed with):
RICH
Stew! Don't slag off the BBC live on Radio One. Look what happened to Dave Lee Travis.STU What nothing at all interesting in his whole life ever?
[RICH No Stu, he was sacked, back in August remember?
STU Yes, it seems like only last week. Dave Lee Travis - he's the hairy cornflake isn't he?
RICH Yes Stu.
STU Well, he did very well though didn't he to maintain a radio career for 26 years when he is literally a small piece of corn-based cereal covered in hair. He should be grateful to the BBC for giving him a chance at all.]
b) After Rich reveals his plan to pass the show off as 'some arty retrospective Edinburgh Festival special' they hand over to Rebecca Front and Alistair McGowen who 'tell us about Edinburgh'. The edited broadcast cuts the handover and only features Rebecca's contribution. These are simply written as 'Fringe Joke' in the script so they would have been filled in on the day of recording. Producer Sarah Smith's scribbled notes simply allude to the music to be used for the backing (Arrested Development) and lots of fascinating legal information for PRS forms. Lovely.
Stewart Lee later explained his position as regards incidental music: 'They give you all these CDs for you to use (library music) but it all just sounds like machines, y'know. So I'd rather use something like the Orb or Orbital - even though it's essentially the same as some synth band who’ve got a contract to do it - at least it sounds like it's got some guts to it.'
c) Rich's announcement that, to sample the local culture, he 'went down the Edinburgh Virgin Megastore and bought a new Gameboy game' continues beyond the broadcast:
RICH
It's called Populous and it's really good. In it you play a sort of God controlling nature and that.STEW Mmm.
RICH And so actually this week I've learned some important things. I think now I might be able to believe in a God as the game has showed me that he might have to allow innocent people to die because sometimes his fight against evil necessitates sacrifice for the greater good. And also that there is a secret Morloi life egg by the cabbage on level 35, Stew.
STU Well done Rich. Two in one there. A theological justification of suffering and a computer game tip for small children.
RICH Oh yes.
[NOTE: A 'race of hairy mutants called the Morloi' was alluded to in Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World. The word is presumably an amalgam of 'Morloch' and 'Eloi', the two surviving post-nuclear races in HG Wells' The Time Machine]
d) A very noticeable snip occurs in Stewart Lee's speech about drinking:
STU
We all like a drink, don't we Rich. [I got so drunk last night at Marco's Leisure Centre that I found life almost bearable, and became a really interesting, witty and attractive person.] And drink leads us naturally to the other thing we've been thinking about a lot in Edinburgh...e) An entire sketch was snipped out and has never resurfaced in any of their subsequent work. It originally followed the 'Tortoise And The Man' sketch:
RICH
Y'know Stu it seems that every day there's news of a bizarre new religious cult taking over people's minds, doesn't it?STU No. But on the remote Scottish Isle of Arran is a strange spiritualist community, The Kind People, that has been branded by some as an evil, brainwashed coven. But Fist of Fun doesn't baulk (sic) from big issues, here to put their own side Andrew and Shona Abneat from the Isle of Arran's Kind People community.
SHONA AND ANDREW (FRIENDLY MIDDLE CLASS SCOTS I EXPECT) Hello, thanks for having us on the programme.
RICH Andrew, Shona, seeing you in the flesh seems to put the lie to the claims that you are the leaders of some sort of Satanic cult devoted to evil.
SHONA Yes, yes, the press have blown our humble community out of all proportion. We're just ordinary people like you. I run a mobile library delivering literature to the old and Andrew runs an animal sanctuary which cares for handicapped seals and lame otters.
ANDREW Yes and following the central tenets of the Kind People law, the island has become a cultural and social paradise.
SHONA Every one is equal. There is no greed or war or envy on the Isle of Arran. And the buses always run on time.
ANDREW Our television programmes appeal to the broad majority, without compromising artistic integrity and intelligent scheduling ensures that at no time does sport appear on all four channels at once.
SHONA In Arran newsagents, the hardest pornography is freely available to all and exploits and degrades men as well as women.
ANDREW Our takeaway food is usually nice. On the Isle of Arran, Jews and Arabs are friends and dance together to a peculiar Jewish-Arabic music.
SHONA Casual swearing is frowned upon but used in context, as a means of poetic expression, we positively encourage even the foulest language.
ANDREW The young give the old the respect that they truly deserve, whilst in turn the old realise that they are intrinsically worthless and consequently do no bother anyone with their stupid opinions.
SHONA Our system of meritocracy ensures that on the isle of Arran Stephen Fry would have to have the most talented actors in his films rather than just all his friends from Cambridge…especially Tony Slattery…
ANDREW There is no nasal hair. My Isle of Arran is literally, a Utopia.
STEW That sounds great, but let's get this straight. You do eat human babies don't you.
ANDREW Oh no, not that again.
SHONA The papers have seized upon the baby eating and stirred everything up as usual. What about all the peaceful and worthwhile aspects of community life?
STEW But you do don't you…eat babies.
ANDREW Well…yes, but eating babies is only a very small part of the Arran Isle community activities.
SHONA And we only eat the first born child of each family anyway. And only children from the island of Arran itself. We don't row silently across to the mainland under cover of the darkness of night and snatch small children from their cribs and then take them back to the isle of Arran and eat them in a bizarre ceremony involving the ancient celtic Wah-hey dance and the drinking of the juices of the turnip. And mango.
ANDREW No.
RICH So what part of the Kind People creed decrees that you must eat babies?
ANDREW I'm sorry?
RICH Well…there must be some sort of reason for it?
ANDREW No. No.
STEW But you know, your community seems so perfect and good in every other way. Why do you have to let your selves down by eating all those babies?
ANDREW Well, Stew, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, eh?
STEW But if you didn't eat the babies, right, then maybe the press and the police would leave you alone, eh?
SHONA Ooooh! You're just like all the others, you said you were going to give us a fair hearing.
ANDREW Yes. Fascists! Come on Shona, we're leaving.
STEW Shona and Andrew Abneat there.
f) After another Edinburgh fact, another unbroadcast section:
RICH
Well as we're up in the Edinburgh Fringe we thought we'd jump on the bandwagon and have our own Fist of Fun Fringe Awards.STEW And the Fist of Fun award for best publicity goes to the Loughborough University Student players for their clever publicity stunt of standing outside the Fringe office in identical green t shirts and silly wigs, blowing kazoos in people's faces.
RICH Who's that aimed at then Stew?
STEW It's aimed at all those people who like kazoos being blown in their faces when they're not expecting it as they're walking along the street. It is a coup de theatre…
RICH The Fist of Fun award for…
STEW The Fist of Fun award for…
(The above were left blank, presumably to stick in topical crowd-pleasers on the day of recording)
RICH The award for worst critic on the Fringe goes to Stephen Chester of the List magazine. He is complete rubbish. He knows nothing.
STEW Stephen Chester, Rich, didn't he give you a bad review for your solo show?
RICH That is just a coincidence Stew. The Fist of Fun judge felt Stephen Chester's reviews were shoddy across the board and also that he was a twat.
STEW The Fist of Fun judge Rich, you mean you?
RICH Let's see my notes ah, yes, in this particular category I was the judge, yes.
And the script ends there, the rest no doubt re-cycled by the duo to type rough drafts of future Edinburgh scripts on. Hey ho.
[NOTE:
The script gives us pause for thought - although, as mentioned, bits are left blank to be filled in by performers on the day, it reads almost like a transcript of the session rather than a script to be performed (unless they followed it to the letter, something which Lee and Herring certainly don't do these days). Sarah Smith has crossed out the chunks of script due to be edited so it's likely that the pages were sent over to Lee and Herring for their approval before she got the big scissors out of the secret place.]3.
At least one of Stewart Lee's 'True Fables' (fairy tales retold logically without recourse to anthropomorphizing animals as characters - 'Goldilocks and the Three Men'; 'The Tortoise and the Man', etc) didn't make it to broadcast. This was 'Snow White and the Seven Men', possibly recorded for Show 5, part of which is reproduced here:GRAMS: FABLE INTRO MUSIC (UNDER)
REB (Rebecca Front, for it is she) Stewart Lee's true fables.
STEW This week Snow White and the Seven Men.
GRAMS OUT
STEW Once upon a time when the world was young, there lived a beautiful teenage woman called Snow White.
GRAMS: ELEGANT MUSIC
STEW And seven men!
MEN Hello!
GRAMS: SNOW WHITE MUSIC (UNDER)
STEW Now Snow White had been arguing with her step mother. Even amongst blood relations the mother/teenage daughter is a difficult one. The mother finds it hard to accept her daughter has grown up and may be jealous of her blossoming womanhood, whilst the girl feels she is fully mature without being aware of her naivety in certain areas and is desperate to assert her individualism. This can lead to selfish and anti-social behaviour making sharing a home with the youngster testing to say the least. With a step mother who has taken the place of a beloved mother this tension can only be heightened. Snow White decided she must leave home and ran away into the woods. She soon came upon the house of the seven men, who like the men in the Goldilocks story all lived together in a big cottage. But again there was nothing funny about them. They were simply bachelors who wished to keep their living expenses down by sharing the day to day expenses. Snow White knocked upon the door.
Doc is a doctor at the local hospital
Sleepy….we call him Sleepy because he is always asleep…why are you always asleep…I suffer from narcolepsy….really, you should have come down the…
Well, the pages seem to end there. Whether or not the sketch was actually performed in front of an audience (and whatever the outcome for Snow White and her wicked step mother), the main bulk of the sketch was later rewritten for a mock documentary about 'The Real Seven Dwarfs' (or the 'Eight Harries Brothers' as they were known) in Lee and Herring's first eponymous Radio One series the following year. The latter sketch was presented as a candid interview with the dwarves (whose life story had been purloined by Disney) who explained their traits logically ('Happy' was actually autistic; 'Doc' was a doctor, etc).
The Eight Harris Brothers - Original Radio Script
[NOTE:
The 'eighth' dwarf's character was the first of many allusions to newly acquired enemy Patrick Marber (see EDIT NEWS / ON THE HOUR for the full story) and was filled with in-jokes which won't be explained here.]4.
The Radio 1 repeats of Lee & Herring’s Fist Of Fun (January 1994) did not feature the original end credits. Instead, Mark Radcliffe (whose show followed the broadcast) read them out. Why this was necessary remains a mystery. Radcliffe waited until the entire show had finished before reading - this meant there was about thirty ‘clean’ seconds of the signature tune and audience applause, over which the credits had originally appeared. Two hypotheses are possible here - either the credits were dubbed on in post production (unusual for a radio recording of this type) and the original, pre-dubbed version still existed (unusual, since it’s the BBC we’re talking about here), or the music and applause were pasted over the top (unlikely, as such a re-structuring process would not normally involve so much ‘dead air’).[NOTE: These repeats featured shows 1, 2 and 3 before jumping straight onto 6. Presumably, Radio 1 had not planned ahead sufficiently, and realised they required the schedules for something else. Doing a volte-face, they then realised they could accommodate one more repeat and decided to broadcast show 5. Show 4, meanwhile, was ignored completely.]
5.
Lee and Herring’s first eponymous series for Radio 1 (seven shows, broadcast 18/7/94 - 29/8/94) utilised a mixture of pre-recorded and live studio material. Each show was given an hour-long slot and was once again produced by Sarah Smith. This series was one of the first Radio 1 shows to mix comedy and music in a DJ format, the station having deliberately dropped the half-hour 'live' comedy slot they did so well (e.g. The Mary Whitehouse Experience; Loose Talk and Fist Of Fun). Rumours abound that such comedy was dropped for being 'too popular' but surely that can't be right… Lee and Herring were at least disciplined and inventive enough to cope with this format (unlike Alan Davies who wasn't) and used the hour-long broadcast creatively (unlike Alan Davies who didn't).[NOTE: To avoid continually using the phrase 'Lee & Herring's eponymous hour-long shows for Radio One' we will simply refer to the show by its official listings title which was Lee and Herring (although Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq continued to refer to it as 'Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun' during the Evening session which preceded the broadcasts).]
6.
An idea rejected by On The Hour finally surfaced in the first Lee & Herring Radio 1 series. Following on from OTH's 'Sports Desk', 'Prayer Desk' and 'Green Desk', writers Lee and Herring had suggested 'Ian Desk', a minority news insert for people called Ian. This became 'I Am Called Ian I Am', Ian-based news reports (culled from genuine news stories) introduced by two Ians.[NOTE: Another Lee and Herring item rejected by On The Hour was 'Desk Desk'. This may have become the Listings idea 'Desk World' (a fun day out hosted by one Ian Desk)]
[NOTE (2): 'Ian News' also resurfaced in the second series of Fist Of Fun on BBC2. The original intention was to end each show with a post-credits 'Ian News' slot (and these were continually alluded to in the Radio Times listings for the series). Due to time constrictions only two of the sketches were broadcast. And one of those was highly suspect.]
7.
In the final Lee & Herring show of the first series (Radio 1 29/8/94), Herring used the phrase ‘spunked up’ and the word ‘twat’, both of which caused Stewart Lee to panic - Sarah Smith, under pressure from above to pre-record as much of the show as possible and to splice out any profanities before broadcast, had given them vicarious instructions to curb their language, and Lee feared for the repercussions if it was discovered that such undisciplined sections of the show were going out beyond her editorial control.
Why Not
Try...Going To Prison - a photostrip guide to incarceration
featuring Al Murray, never re-used since the TV pilot…
8.
The TV pilot of Fist Of Fun was recorded in May 1994. All the pre-recorded sketches were eventually used in the series the following year (with the exception of a short piece about going to prison), although some small changes were made - the ‘Pestilence’ sketch was originally on normal video but converted to a field-removed format for the series, and the ‘Dating Agency’ sketch originally had a brief OB introduction by Herring (culminating in his idiotic grin before he enters the agency).
It also included (the arguably more effective) Katrina And The Waves’ ‘Walking On Sunshine’ as the incidental music rather than Take That’s ‘Could It Be Magic?’.
Some studio footage was also seamlessly edited into the series. Show 1's 'Gall-ery' sequence was first presented (without the onscreen caption) in the pilot* as was the chat with Sue Perkins (as an audience member) talking about imaginary friends from Show 3. Ben Moor, who also appeared in the pilot version, re-recorded his section. Amusingly, Danny O’Brien, a friend of the team, is sitting near Moor and Perkins respectively in both recordings of the sketch, and this allowed Lee and Herring to put a wry caption on the screen alerting viewers to the break in continuity.
* Shows 1 and 2 of Series 1 were recorded at the same session so it probably made more sense to simply re-use the ‘Gall-ery’ sequence from the pilot rather than rearranging the set. Quite apart from anything else the pilot ‘Gall-ery’ is very funny.
The titles were also re-shot for the series: in the pilot, they look a little stilted and are presented in normal video (as opposed to the series titles which were field-removed and given a fake letterbox effect. The little boxing girl (Lucy Edis) also announces the show as ‘Lee and Herring’s Fist Of Fun!’, as per the radio version.
[NOTE: The titles of the second series were re-edited from the same sessions as the first series.]
The ‘Ice T’ routine – No development
between the pilot and the series.
9.
The ‘Jesus Came Knocking’ sketch (Series 1, Show 2) suffered at the hands of BBC censors who believed that people could lose their jobs if it went out uncut. The unedited version climaxed with Alistair McGowen’s ‘Jesus’ getting a well-deserved slap from Stewart Lee’s ‘Good Man’ for messing him about all evening. This provoked a cheer from the studio audience on the night but this, the slap and the whole point of the sketch were removed for transmission.
‘Aaaah!’ ‘No, not aaaah!’ – Jesus and The Good Man argue the toss.
The show in question also went out during Easter week which must further have worried the BBC.
[NOTE (1): A version of the sketch had already been broadcast by the BBC uncut in the Lee and Herring Radio One series (Series 2, Show 1). Nobody lost their jobs then. This version of the sketch was practically identical to the TV version except that Alistair McGowen got to show off his David Baddiel impression (as the spokesperson for the group of dispossessed visitors who all turn out to be Jesus in disguise). In the TV version, Annabel Giles appeared instead]
[NOTE (2): In the last show of the first series of Fist Of Fun, Lee and Herring did their live favourite ‘Jesus Behind You’ (a pantomimetic charade featuring the Lord flicking the V’s behind Stewart Lee’s secular meanderings). They offered this role to Alistair McGowen but he turned it down as he apparently didn’t wish to be on the receiving end of accusations that he had anything personal against Jesus. (see NOTE (4)) The part was instead taken by Kevin Eldon who mugged his merry way through the skit perfectly.]
[NOTE (3): Lee and Herring reprised the idea of people taking Jesus to task over his teachings in the second series of This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Despite receiving a fair number of complaints, the BBC made no attempts to censor the material.]
[NOTE (4): One of the TMWRNJ sketches involved Jesus (Stewart Lee) being tempted in the desert by Satan (Richard Herring). Whether they were aware of this or not, the premise of the sketch (Satan tempting Jesus with mundane things) had already been used and performed before in a show called 'It's A Mad World World World World' (the broadcast TV pilot of Radio 4's 'And Now In Colour' ). On that occasion, Satan was played by the vastly underrated (and genuinely sexy) William Vandyck. Jesus meanwhile was played by one Alistair McGowen…]
10.
A sketch satirising the beauty industry (in which supermodels are idolised on account of their ailments - an item which featured Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins) was recorded and shown to the audience at the session for Show 3. Lee and Herring told the audience they were unsure about the sketch, and asked for their opinion - the audience gave it a thumbs down, and the sketch was dropped. However, this wasn’t before two snippets from the sketch (one with Giedroyc saying ‘I specialise in sebaceous cysts’ the other featuring the diseased models on a catwalk) were used in trailers.
[NOTE: This sketch had been performed without repercussions in the third episode of their first eponymous Radio 1 series (1/8/94), and the premise originated from item in Armando Iannucci’s Radio 1 series concerning tall supermodels.]
[NOTE (2): The satirical impact of the sketch would surely have been lost on television anyway as the audience would be too busy going 'eeuuuurrgggh' at the cysts and scabs on display. It is of course a perfect sketch for radio. Peter Baynham, talking about the shortfalls of the 'On The Hour' TV pilot in 1994 illustrated the point perfectly by alluding to the scene in the Chris Morris Radio 1 series in which he and Morris smash a live tortoise to pieces on air. The ridiculousness of the idea is funny but if they were to do it on television it would just look horrific and non-comedic.]
11.
In the Fist Of Fun sketch about Pestilence from the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse being a milkman (Series 1, Show 4), Rebecca Front had what was arguably the best line in the series: ‘I know a few people who’d like to get their hands on his extra pinta, if you know what I mean,’ she said, before pausing and adding ‘I mean his cock’. It is likely that this punchline (or something equally naughty) was recorded for the version of the sketch performed in Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World (27/8/93) but censored for transmission: there is an audible edit which suggests this.
[NOTE: Edits are particularly noticeable in Lionel Nimrod. For instance, in the same episode, there is a huge, ugly one during a scene with Armando Iannucci as the ‘professor of urine from De Montfort University’. Describing how he had filled a vat with human urine, he said: ‘There’s nothing funny about it. I don’t swim about in it naked while my wife dances to erotic music’. There was a nasty cut between ‘wife’ and ‘dances’.]
[NOTE (2): When the 'Pestilence' sketch was shown to the studio audience the music which accompanies Pestilence's milk float was missing from the soundtrack. The music, taken from the famous 'dancing milk bottles' advert of the time, was reinstated for broadcast.]
Eldon and Herring circa
1995
12.
Simon Quinlank’s ‘Egg Smashing’ hobby (Series 1, Show 6) - which climaxed with Quinlank breaking into a fertility unit and smashing test tubes containing human ova - was received so uncomfortably by the BBC that Lee claims that this sketch will never be repeated. Not that the BBC are overkeen to repeat any of Fist Of Fun, but we digress…13.
The double-CD/cassette release of Radio One's Fist Of Fun features four compilations from the series. With a running time of 35-38 minutes for each selection and only six half-hour shows to plunder, most of the series is accounted for. In fact, if it had been a cassette-only release, it is likely that - legal problems aside - the series would have been presented in its entirety.The 'legal problems' are purely PRS-based. For example, the final show of the series involved an item where John Thomson announced ‘People of Britain, become gay now - it’s better than being heterosexual, easily!’, which was cut for the 1995 CD/cassette release - not for sinister reasons, but because The Village People’s ‘In The Navy’ (which was the item’s underscore) couldn’t be cleared for copyright. Other incidental music was also removed or replaced throughout the release.
The original signature tune was nicked from Ice T, but - when the series was released on CD/cassette in 1995 - the theme music from the TV series (performed by Globo) was pasted in in its place. The TV Fist Of Fun's original trailers did however feature the Ice T 'Attention…' intro. Stewart Lee: 'You can use a piece of music about three times, and just pay the normal PRS on it - any more than that and it starts to be seen as, like, a 'signature tune' and you have to go through the publishers properly'.
14.
So far, Lee & Herring Live (BBCV 5721), recorded at London’s Cochrane Theatre on 26/9/95, is the duo’s only video-release, and sadly remains the only official record of the Peter Baynham/Kevin Eldon-era live shows of 1994/95. It has since been disowned by the pair, and its poor sales (Herring’s joke on the video about the viewer buying the tape ‘for 49p in 1998’ seemed to have tempted fate slightly) have meant that television cameras have been notably absent from subsequent tours. However, the video’s main fault lies in the fact that Lee and Herring were specifically requested not to deviate from the main script (as is their normal practice) to ‘make it easier to edit’. The disciplined atmosphere, in which the audience sit and laugh politely in the right places, is also unrepresentative of their live shows at the time: most took place in student venues, where the laughter was as messy and whimsical as the performances themselves.[NOTE (1): ‘Hardly any of it was on the telly’ boasted the video’s sleeve, telling us that ‘it’s not like all the other rip-off comedy videos you can buy’. Unfortunately, this left the show looking positively anaemic: gone was the strong material and all that was left was under-written meanderings about lookalikes and joyless ‘experimental’ solo stand-up from Lee. In fact, the production values are so poor that we return to the duo after a sting only to see Lee still holding his policeman’s hat (from the cut ‘Getting stopped by the police’ sketch).]
[NOTE (2): There is an edit during Quinlank’s routine, where it cuts to a close-up. This was presumably a technical necessity; Eldon’s fluff elsewhere in the sketch apparently wasn’t considered worth re-taking.]
[NOTE (3): Dull power-struggles between the BBC and Avalon concerning ownership of the title ‘Fist Of Fun’ led to the video featuring ‘Lee and Herring from Fist Of Fun due to legal difficulties’.]
[NOTE (4): Richard Herring maintains that the main problem with the video is the way it was mixed for stereo - putting the audience in pure stereo meant that people with mono videos only experienced a compressed distant audio of the responses. Having watched the video on a stereo player we have to conclude that this is the least of its problems…]
[NOTE (5): A pre-release mock-up of the video sleeve gives the show a '15' certificate. By the time the video was released this was amended to '18'. The original cover also features non-performance shots of Lee and Herring on the back.]
15.
The fourth episode of the third Lee & Herring Radio 1 series (15/11/95 - 20/12/95) contained an item about Anthony Hopkins writing obscene letters to his co-starring actresses. Each letter ended with the phrase ‘PS - I am wanking as I write this’. Although broadcast in a 9pm slot, the word ‘wanking’ was bleeped by producer Kathy Smith, much to Lee & Herring’s surprise (‘Ah, our producer wimped out there’ bemoaned Herring, who had evidently not had time to check the tape before broadcast, before superseding the censorship by adding ‘It was funnier when he said wanking’.). However, when the sketch was tagged the following week, the word was not bleeped, and the two writers’ joy was made very obvious. It suggests, if not proves, that issues of taste and language are very much at the discretion of individual producers, and that Radio 1 has no consistent policy on such matters.[NOTE (1): When the sketch was later performed on television as part of This Morning With Richard Not Judy (15/2/98 - 5/4/98), the offending word was bleeped out for the 12:15pm Sunday edition, but left unbleeped for the late-night Friday edited repeat (albeit with slightly different sound-mixing, suggesting it had been reinstated awkwardly). However, the phrase ‘I like old books too, as you know by now after thirty pissing years’ went unbleeped in both editions, to the surprise of both the studio audience and to Stewart Lee, who later expressed concern over the word’s impact on his hypothetical children.]
[NOTE (2) The rushes of the TV voice-over session reveal that Jo Unwin got a terrific attack of the giggles while trying to impersonate Emma Thompson. To try and focus her mind, she tried the actor’s trick of whispering ‘Mother’s just died and so’s my little boy’. This only brought forth further giggles.]
16.
The second series of Fist Of Fun (16/2/96 - 22/3/96) was publicised on the Carlton comedy-preview series Funny Business, with presenter JoJo Smith’s interview with Lee, Herring and Baynham intercut with clips from the series. Because Fist Of Fun was recorded the night before transmission, the only material that could be shown was the pre-recorded inserts - however, these themselves had been released to Funny Business before post-production had been completed. As such, the sketches shown (the first ‘Teachers’ sketch, Simon Quinlank’s ‘Old Man Collecting’ hobby, The ‘Wedding Service’ sketch and the ‘Prodigal Son’ parable) were not only absent of audience laughter, they also lacked their finishing touches: the material had not yet been converted from videotape to a field-removed format, and the Quinlank sketch did not feature the over-dubbed Vera Lynn music (effectively removing the comedy from the clip). Meanwhile, camcorder footage showing the ‘making of’ two sketches (‘Shrewsbury Pie Pie Pie’ and ‘York City Are Magic’) was also shown, although the source of this was not disclosed.17.
The series ran into copyright problems when the BBC insisted that Globo's ('alienating and youth-orientated') signature tune was revamped for the second series. Jonathan Whitehead was drafted in to overdub a friendlier melody over the original drum track, and Globo were not amused - especially since, due to a memory-lapse by producer Sarah Smith, they were not informed of the change beforehand, or credited in the programme. They complained, and a credit appeared in the remaining episodes.18.
In the fifth show of the second series (15/3/96), Kevin Eldon played the part of a man who considered himself ‘The Tenth Beatle’. This script was, however, rushed to him at the eleventh hour: Lee and Herring had intended to do a sketch about mass murder, but the Dunblane Massacre (13/3/96) made this unsuitable. After the sketch, Stewart Lee asked the audience to applaud Eldon’s professionalism.Here is the script for the ‘Mass murder’ sketch. Eldon would have played William, Ronnie Ancona would have played Veronica.
HERRING
I’m with William and Veronica Ankmore from East Anglia..WILLIAM AND VERONICA Hello.
HERRING You’re suing Oliver Stone, I understand?
WILLIAM That’s right. Back in January we were an ordinary married couple. Very happy.
VERONICA Then William rented Natural Born Killers from the Blockbusters.
WILLIAM We didn’t really like it. It was disjointed.
VERONICA Oliver stone’s satire was clumsy and heavy-handed.
WILLIAM Robert Downey Jnr was terrible in it...embarrassing. But we did find that we were quite taken with the senseless killings perpetrated by the central characters, Mickey and Mallory.
VERONICA Overnight we changed from law-abiding citizens into Natural Born Killers, literally.
HERRING So how many victims have you notched up in your spree of senseless killings?
WILLIAM Well, none so far. The film had the wide open spaces of America’s route 66, but...
VERONICA The A140 through East Anglia doesn't really present the same opportunities for romantic multiple murder. But I tell you...
WILLIAM We blinking well might kill someone soon and it’ll all be Oliver Stone’s fault.
VERONICA We nearly killed an old man in the Red Lodge Cafe near Bury St Edmunds.
WILLIAM Yeah , I got a butter knife and threatened him with it and said ‘Do you want to die today?’
VERONICA And the man went No.
WILLIAM He looked quite scared. I felt guilty for frightening him. The thing is, murder looks exciting on the telly, but it is hard to overcome the moral repugnance that comes when contemplating taking another life. But now I have to live with the fact that I could kill someone at any second. (To bloke next to him) Woooh! Nah!
VERONICA All thanks to bloody Oliver Stone.
[NOTE (1): The edit of the ‘Tenth Beatle’ sketch was made up of three takes. His line ‘Here we go again...I’ve told this story so many times’ (which was actually in the script) is taken from the third take, and gets a knowing laugh from the audience for this reason.]
[NOTE (1b): THE JODY ROOKE REFERENCE - EXPLAINED! In all three takes of 'Tenth Beatle', Eldon referred to a person called 'Jody Rooke'. Some sort of in-joke? Eldon: 'Jody Rooke is a mate who was in the sixth form with me and used to roadie for Virginia Doesn't (Eldon's old pop combo). He is six foot three inches tall. Me and Martin, guitarist, used to unsubtly mock his height and he used to exact terrible revenge on us. We'd be turned into giggling little girls as we ran away from him. Basically I can't do an old private joke justice here but we'd very quietly raise our forfingers and waggle them (he used to do this) and say words in a certain voice like fifffty bop. He would then smile a terrible smile and then really damage us. Once he jumped up and down on me on a setee for ten minutes. Another time he hung Martin up on a coat hanger. He was the first person in our year to buy God Save The Queen and such was the zeitgeist in a world of Supertramp and Hall & Oates that he actually kept in secret and finally admitted it shamefacedly. He is very happy about musical developments in the last three years. He is married with a kid and one on the way and is completely bald. A good man.' ]
[NOTE (2): Although a last minute sketch-substitute for the Fist Of Fun show in question, the 'Tenth Beatle' was intended to be used in the series anyway and is alluded to in the original press release:
"For the new series, Lee and Herring will be introducing some new elements into their unique comedy world. The show will be recorded 24hrs prior to transmission, so there'll be the chance to take a broadly topical look at some of the happenings in the world from their Lee and Herring trademark, "slightly unusual angle". There will be a whole new range of studio guests, such as The Tenth Beatle (who is kicking himself for missing the chance to be in the greatest band of all time and is sure he would have been if only he hadn't been born five years after they split up); The Man Who Is Influenced By All Films - even the Sound Of Music; an Arts Critic who judges cultural events by price of drinks at arts venues across the country; plus experts and celebrities who can shed some remarkable light on the truth behind the news.
And the show becomes fully interactive, with the chance for the public to join in with the fun by taking part in various Fist Of Fun pointless campaigns. Help Lee and Herring reward the mediocre in Hearts Of Paper, seek out the country's least successful fund-raising events each week, collect matches to warm the show's small orphan and generally spread confusion throughout the British Isles."
Hold on, am I going mad or did we include a production date for the Dunblane Massacre earlier?]
[NOTE (3): Peter Baynham played the 'Tenth Beatle' in the original radio version of the sketch (Lee and Herring, Series 3, Show 2, Radio One). On that occasion Kevin Eldon was relegated to the parts of a man 'born and bred in Liverpool but never knew any of the Beatles' and later as 'The Man Who Turned Down The Beatles' (for a night out rather than a record contract).]
19.
Fist Of Fun Series 2 was to feature Simon Quinlank doing the hobby of ‘Church-crawling’ (in which the obsessive hobby-king attempts to attend as many Eucharist ceremonies as possible in one morning and calculate how much of Christ’s body he has consumed - ‘To date, I have eaten nine whole Jesuses and one of Jesus’s legs...’), but this was banned even before they had a chance to film it. The BBC deemed it ‘unbroadcastable’ (despite the fact that, again, a version of it had already been broadcast on the Radio 1 series, and the premise had been explained fully in the (BBC Worldwide) Fist Of Fun spin-off book). The sketch-ban provided Lee and Herring with a few chat show anecdotes (‘The sketch they tried to ban - successfully, as it turned out...’), but it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they’d stood their ground over the issue.[NOTE: Or indeed not. Lee and Herring attempted to use the premise of the sketch in the second series of This Morning With Richard Not Judy (with Herring rather than Quinlank describing the hobby in the opening studio banter), but, again, it was refused by executive producer Jon Plowman. The series itself featured running sketches about Jesus and his disciples which, it could be argued were more likely to offend the BBC than Church Crawling yet these were all passed uncut. Plowman was actually only responsible for vetting studio scripts and not pre-recorded material (of which the 'Sunday Heroes' sketches were a part). It could also be suggested that the banning of 'Church Crawling' in This Morning…was simply a case of a BBC producer standing his ground over an issue rather than any genuine worry from the department.]
Two early designs for the Fist Of Fun
book
[NOTE (2): Despite containing ‘Church-crawling’, the Fist Of Fun book (BBC Worldwide, 1995) was victim to stringent censorship. The publishers insisted that it should be suitable for younger readers, meaning that phrases like ‘Suck my cock’ (on the ‘Graffiti’ page) was censored. Lee and Herring usually referred to such instances via hand-written annotations.]
alternatives...
20. Many other pre-filmed sketches for Fist Of Fun series 2 never made the final edit and were never heard from again. But here's a nice selection in original script form:
- a nightmare view of middle-classnessBeard - Richard Herring battles with his masculinity
The Scraggies - motorway madness
Middle Aged People And The Mediteranean Condition - no idea
The Boy Who Cried Wolf - full sketch with never-broadcast recap
One of the 'Driving Instructor' sketches also has a large chunk removed which features all the instructors channel hopping via a Sweeney car chase, a Grand Prix and a sci-fi spaceship crashing and exploding ('Ha ha - he can't even drive!').
21.
Improvising around their pre-ordained script has often caused Lee and Herring’s producers post-production headaches. To illustrate: during the second show of the second series of Fist Of Fun (recorded on 22/2/96 for transmission the following night), the pair discussed the merits of pancake day:LEE
Pancake Tuesday was invented in 1978, right, by the pancake industry fatcats, in a cynical attempt to make gullible people like you eat more of the pancakes.HERRING
That is not true, Stew. As every schoolboy knows, Pancake Day is a holy festival, invented by Satan in AD33, when he tempted Jesus in the desert.LEE
He tempted him in the desert, did he? With what?HERRING
With a pancake!LEE
Well he should have tempted him with something nice, shouldn’t he? Like a steak and kidney pie or a packet of cigarettes, something like that maybe...HERRING
No, that wouldn’t have been fair. That would have been too tempting. Lent wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if he’d done that. The Devil’s a fair man, and by tempting him with a pancake the Lent could last forty days, which is a good length for a religious festival.
The routine had only partially been written at script stage, and several takes later (for wild shots, fluffed lines and so on), the sketch deviated beyond recognition:
LEE
Well he should have tempted him with something nice, shouldn’t he? Like a steak and kidney pie or a packet of cigarettes...HERRING
That would have been too tempting, Stew. The Devil is nothing if not a fair man. Lent wouldn’t have lasted five minutes then. At least with a pancake, Jesus could resist it for the full forty days making it a reasonable holy festival. And you’ve got to think of the church services in that. There’s four Sundays in that. In your idea, there’s none!LEE
What - just five minutes?HERRING
Yeah, five minutes - there’s no Sunday Is there? It’s Tuesday - five minutes in Tuesday. The Devil’s thinking, ‘Well, let’s give them something to celebrate!’LEE
What? It’s against his interests!HERRING
He’s a nice bloke! He’s trying to get in with them again!LEE
It doesn’t make any sense, your plan.HERRING
Well what is Satan doing? He’s joining in with God’s plan anyway, isn’t he? By being evil. If he was really evil, he’d be good.LEE
Well, Rich, now you’ve opened up a whole debate on predeterminism that we can’t really go into at this stage, y’know.HERRING
Well, I think he’s good. I think he’s better than Jesus.In the same show, an exchange between Peter Baynham’s ‘Peter’ character and Richard Herring opens up another debate. Baynham, in mid routine, is holding ‘Alan Milk Carton Body’, a toy made out of a milk carton with an Action Man’s head and condoms for limbs:
BAYNHAM
And this morning I invented a game based on I-Spy, called ‘I Cry’. (To Herring) I cry with my little eye about something beginning with E.HERRING
Is it an elbow in the testicles, Pete?They are then asked to do a re-take:
HERRING
Can I not say ‘testicles’?FLOOR MANAGER
(JEMMA RODGERS, OFF) No.HERRING
What do you mean ‘no’?! We’ve got a bloody thing made out of condoms over there! Ten o’clock at night and I’m not allowed to say ‘testicles’!BAYNHAM
(Still in character) It’s not made out of Concorde. Its balloons!On vicarious advice from Rodgers (who has producer Sarah Smith barking through her earpiece) and Stewart Lee (whose mother and grandmother are sitting in the front row of the audience), Herring agrees not to say ‘testicles’ and they go for another take:
BAYNHAM
I cry with my little eye about something beginning with E.HERRING
Is it an elbow in the bollocks, Pete?Cue a huge audience laugh, sinking embarrassment from Lee, and sly indignancy from Herring. He is then told that, in fact, he can use the word ‘bollocks’ and stages a walk-out (‘‘Testicles’ is the correct anatomical name for them - I shouldn’t be allowed to say ‘bollocks’!).
Another re-take is ordered, during which Herring invites suggestions for an alternate line, resulting in more profanities and Herring’s interpretation of what is going on at that moment in some obscure BBC office (‘Hello? Swearing department...’).
[NOTE: ‘Fuck’ was bleeped from the first ‘Teachers’ sketch in Show 4 (8/3/96). At this point, a subliminal notice flashed up thus: ‘The ‘F’ word was censored out of this film by the BBC Swearing Department despite the fact that it has extra attention drawn to it by bleeping it out anyway. If you would like to be sent a photo of Stu with a false beard drawn on him and a speech bubble of the ‘F’ word coming out of his mouth, write to us and we’ll post you one at the BBC’s expense.’]
22.
A slightly misjudged TV adaptation of the ‘Bootleg Bootleg Beatles’ sketch was cut from show 2 of the second series. The original radio version of the sketch (22/11/95) had been a throwaway piece of whimsy and hilarious. The TV version featured a full cast in Beatles costumes delivering ill-prepared lines and culminating in an unfocussed, PRS-friendly Beatles parody. Even edited (as it has been by Rob Sedgebeer and his special wires), the sketch is long and unexciting - particularly galling is the forced, we’d-better-stress-it-in-case-the-plebs-don’t-get-it repetition of the ‘Bootleg bootleg’ joke itself. It did, however, feature the first use of the catchphrase ‘You want the moon on a stick’.
[NOTE:
Sessions for Fist Of Fun often yielded about ten minutes more material than was needed for each show. Sometimes this material was held for inclusion in future programmes, but most pieces never saw the light of day. The reasons for this ranged from disagreements between the pair and producer Sarah Smith to budget problems and time constraints. Other sketches simply didn’t get the laughs they required.A TV version of ‘Goldilocks And The Three Men’ was held back from the first series, although an attempt was made to slip the pre-recorded sketch (with its first series audience responses) into the final show of the second series. The intro to the sketch was a studio routine concerning Richard Herring stealing BBC shirts but, when finally broadcast, the intro was relegated to an on-screen blipvert and 'Goldilocks' was once more cut from the show.]
[NOTE (2): Richard Herring has often stated that he'd like there to be a video release of Fist Of Fun which reinstates all the cut material. This doesn't seem a likely scenario although there's no reason why Avalon can't do a deal with the BBC and release it themselves (as has been the case with a lot of BBC productions - with independent video companies acquiring the distribution rights to classic shows). They won't though.
23.
One sketch from Series 2, Show 2 had to be re-taken because producer Sarah Smith had spotted an unwanted ladder in the background of the set. Stewart Lee said this wasn’t a problem, and suggested that a ‘Spot The Ladder’ type joke could be flashed up on the screen during the sequence. This would have been a perfectly acceptable and funny thing to do (the series was known for its subliminal on-screen annotations which popped up mid-sketch), but Smith - arguably keen to maintain her own self-serving professionalism - insisted that the sketch be re-performed.
24.
Other snips throughout this show include a quick ad from Peter's 'Maston News' sponsor (which continues references to the 'Recola' advert throughout the show) and a neat little interview with two hippies (Kevin Eldon and Sally Phillips) in the Shrewsbury Pie Pie sketch ('It's a free country - well it used to be!'). Eldon's hippy can still be seen puking his ring up in the final hospital scene of the sketch.
The opening intro to the show was performed twice (including the titles on VT). The first take went like this:
LEE Yes, welcome to 'The Fist Of Fun' in a week where a menacing presence we'd thought we'd seen the back of has returned, playing God and choosing victims irrespective of their race.
HERRING That's right - Michael Jackson is back in town.
There followed a re-take (for separate shots) which came out like this:
LEE Yes, welcome to 'The Fist Of Fun' in a week where a menacing presence we'd thought we'd seen the back of has returned, playing God and choosing victims irrespective of their race.
HERRING That's right…
FLOOR MANAGER (OFF) That's fine, thank you.
HERRING …the IRA have been bombing us! Not a joke there.
LEE That's right - welcome to 'The News'. With our new set!
Other between-takes amusement featured Lee and Herring psyching themselves up for a take and delivering a stripped-down basic version of their character arguments:
HERRING
I disagree with you.LEE Well I disagree with you!
On advice from a fan (present at the recording) they performed this aside for real in Show 6, embellishing it with a Python-like 'That's not a viable argument - you've just taken what I've just said and delivered it in a different way'. Sadly the exchange was cut out of the finished show (although the real Rod Hull can be seen recapping the joke at the end of the show, the audience applauding the back reference).
And a final little observation on the subject: our source material for all this is an off-line VHS of the whole session. An audience-shot never intended for broadcast reveals the familiar features of Armando Iannucci. Since this show also featured a pre-recorded cameo from Rebecca Front, the tape must surely be hailed as a Lionel Nimrod reunion. Sort of.
[NOTE: Sitting in front of Iannucci are two girls, one of whom is wearing a home-made Richard Herring T-shirt. Richard Herring notes this during the show with bemusement. 'Where did you get that? That girl is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of me obviously pissed out of my mind. Oh dear. We never thought it would get this far. We never thought people would take us seriously...'). If you recognise yourself from the above picture why not contact us and we'll send you a copy of the tape. A nice souvenir from one night four years hence...]
THIS MORNING WITH RICHARD NOT JUDY
25.
The ‘pilot’ for This Morning With Richard Not Judy was recorded on 9/2/98. Since the series was scheduled to start six days later, it was essentially a dress rehearsal/tech run rather than a pilot in the true sense, but it gave Lee and Herring a chance to experience the pressures of the format, with the show being performed in real time. It was a joyless experience, however, and the time of recording (a Monday evening) meant the programme did not have quite the right atmosphere. Footage of the pilot (Lee saying ‘Go to bed!’) was used in one of the trailers.26.
Unused scripts, longer edits and general interestingness re: TMWRNJ are discussed more fully in Rob Sedgebeer's Lee and Herring site which saves us the bother. Yo, Brother Robert, stick that link in. http://www.leeandherring.com/
Richard
Herring is attacked by production assistant Kate Rea at the BBC
after a TMWRNJ session for making one 'cunt' joke too
many
27.
The 30-minute repeats of the original 45-minute shows were generally not edited with much care, and entire sketches tended to be dropped in favour of splicing out sections within sketches. One exception was during the first ‘Listings’ feature, where the camera had caught Jo Unwin (in character) looking confused and disgusted by The Actor Kevin Eldon’s last item, before immediately bursting into life and doing her piece to camera. In the repeat, her confusion and disgust were edited out, meaning there was an awkward jump in the musical underscore. The reasons for this are not known; perhaps the producer felt it was too unsubtle...although this seems unlikely, considering other lines in the series that were even more guilty of that charge.28.
The death of (the real) Rod Hull on 18/3/99 meant that three ‘Out And About With Rod Hull’ sketches (three of which had already been filmed and one completed) were now unbroadcastable. This didn't stop Executive producer Jon Plowman 'looking into the idea of broadcasting them' (to claw something back from the money spent on the filming sessions).
Artwork for the title sequence of ‘Out And About With Rod Hull’
– never
used…
29.
The ‘Lazy Comedian Slags’ title-sequence originally featured Adam Bloom, but this was removed for fear of upsetting him. A hastily drawn picture of Richard Herring was pasted in his place.
[NOTE:
The other comedy slags are Lee Hurst, Iain Lee, Dan Gastor and Paul Powell. Stewart Lee had stipulated that (aside from Lee Hurst) the comedians should look 'a bit generic'. The artist evidently considered the results the next best thing. Paul Putner's suggestion of Fogwell Flax wasn't considered.]30.
Adam Bloom isn't the only comedian who escaped TMWRNJ mockery at the eleventh hour. Series 2's 'History Of Alternative Comedy' sketches had originally included a dig at Ben Elton. However, having met Mr Elton, presumably at the 'Debt Wish' show, Lee and Herring discarded the sketch as they became convinced he would be genuinely upset by the parody. The sketch (which had actually been filmed - with Paul Putner as 'Eltham Geoffreys') was replaced by a 'Lettuce Family' escalation.
Here then is the sketch which would have reduced top Jew Ben Elton to tears. (Don't worry - he doesn't use the internet. He prefers libraries or something.)
MAN ON STAGE 1979, UNSHAVEN, GLASSES, SHINY JACKET. COCKNEY VOICE. DEGRADED FILM COMEDY (sic - 'quality'?)
CAPTION: ELTHAM GEOFFREYS. ALTERNATIVE LAUGHTER, BBC2 1979
ELTHAM Can you imagine, can you imagine though, if they were allowed to advertise Tampons…oh, I said it, the big T word, …if they were allowed to advertise Tampons on television. Ladies! Suffering from a particularly heavy period this month? Why not try……..Tampons!
CUT TO ELTHAM TODAY. OLDER. FILMED AGAINST VENETIAN BLINDS. HE IS DRINKING A CUP OF COFFEE OUT OF AN SDP MUG. POSH VOICE.
ELTHAM It was an amazing time for comedy. The tampon bit! Yeah! People were disgusted by it. No-one had ever talked about tampons on stage before. "Its just not what one does my boy!" Of course now people do it all the time, but I was the first to do it, I even did it before any of the so-called 'feminist' women. Of course the irony is, nowdays they actually do advertise tampons on television! With wings! What's all that about? I mean, they can't fly can they? I reckon I must be owed a few quid somewhere along the line for that, don't you? Incredible times though.
STILL, GOES SOFT FOCUS AND FADES…
[NOTE: Ben and the duo had crossed swords before, at least in print: Time Out once isolated a comment they had made about not wanting to 'end up like Ben Elton doing stuff about how the chocolate machines don't work on the tube despite not having travelled by tube for years'. This prompted Ben Elton to write a letter claiming a) ignorance of Lee & Herring's work, b) that he couldn’t remember ever having written such a routine, and c) that he travels by tube every day.
The little sister of one of this website's authors can at least confirm the latter claim as she distinctly remembers him sitting opposite her on an underground train, indignantly taking up all of the double seat. He then spilt milk all over himself, had terrible trouble finding his ticket and appeared to have some spunk up his arse (which was dying). Then, to make matters worse, Captain Paranoia sat down next to him and whispered 'Ooooh - wouldn't it be terrible if you wrote a musical with Andrew Lloyd Webber? You'd have to kill yourself!'.]
[NOTE (2): Stewart Lee's lecture about why American sit-coms are better than ours (see COMMENT / STEWART LEE IS WRONG) contained an unforgivable reference to Ben Elton's entire life's work having 'no value'. Boo, hiss.]
[NOTE (3): On the subject of the 'Alternative Comedy' sketches, the script for the Will Durst parody, which featured David Baddiel sending himself up as a fan of American stand-ups, lists the speaker as 'ROB', presumably a jokey reference to Baddiel's erstwhile comedy partner Rob Newman.]
Original
designs for Histor and Pliny
31.
The first seven minutes of TMWRNJ Series 2 Show 2 (28/3/99) had to be re-performed because the BBC forgot to record it. The re-recording was presumably only undertaken because the footage was needed for the edited repeat later that week. In fact, the edited repeat was cancelled due to a tennis match.32.
The intro and outro to the fourth show (18/4/99) was re-performed for the edited repeat due to technical problems - the duo stumbled badly over their lines in one instance (clearly confused by instructions coming through on their earpieces) and, in another, a loud, inexplicable discord was heard as a bit of VT was rewound (The official explanation being ‘noise-spillage’). Fake laughter was also dubbed onto two sections: a joke about Posh Spice and David Beckham (which had brought forth no laughter whatsoever on the original transmission), and Herring’s line ‘They’re all hump-back whales by the time I’ve finished with them’ (this latter line did, in fact, get a substantial laugh, but it was looped several times to wash over and disguise the re-performance). Lee’s allusion to Kevin Eldon sitting in the audience (‘The Actor Kevin Eldon, you’re embarrassed aren’t you?’ he had asked, to which Eldon nodded and said ‘Well, yeah...’) was mysteriously cut, although a brief shot of Eldon was used as a cutaway to disguise it.[NOTE: A section in which Herring verbally abused a cut-out of ‘homophobic’ Baroness Young was cut from the repeat after it was revealed that they had attacked the wrong Baroness Young. (Herring can be seen holding the cut out as we join him on his line ‘All MPs are gay’.) The mistake was referred to in the following show, Lee pointing out that the Baroness they’d referred to held non-homophobic views and was also on the board of directors at the BBC. The duo then did an amusing joke about Herring being handed his P45.]
[The following is from Herring’s behind the scenes diary on Sedgebeer’s site:]
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH TMWRNJ - SHOW 5
Baroness Young -
the nice one, who's picture we wrongly used wrote to us after show 5
to say:
Dear Lee and Herring,
Thanks for the absolutely
hilarious correction today for last week's confusion over a surfeit
of Lady Youngs. I shall forever cherish that I am "the Good
Baroness Young" in the Ying and Yang of Young.
Many thanks
Yours sincerely
BARONESS
YOUNG OF OLD SCONE
(The Good One - who happens to be Vice-Chairman of the BBC!)
[NOTE: Private Eye recently made the same error as regards the surfeit of Baroness Youngs and once again the Baroness sent a gracious letter, correcting the error.]
33.
The BBC has apparently already lost three shows from the second series of TMWRNJ. About three months after the series ended, Stewart Lee went to the archives to request a copy of Show 10 (as he wished to compile a showcase tape for American companies and include the Jesus/Alternative comedy sketch). It was nowhere to be found. Why doesn't this surprise us?
Pull your fucking finger out, Avalon…
