It;s not a new direction, he was just doing a guest DJ slot. It wasn't supposed to be a 'new project'.

Stop trying to be deliberately controversial.

I'm not, but everything he does nowadays has to be surrounded by this ambient shit. Chris Morris was not put on this earth to spin tracks, that's what Mancs are for.

Where was the ambient stuff in his playlist then?

Oh and I have been known to 'spin tunes', and I'm not a manc.

Pardon me if I've got my musical terms wrong. Whatever you call that stuff he plays inbetween (and often over) his sketches, (lets just say atmospheric). But enough of music, back to comedy. I'm sure your a great fan of Chris Morris, so am I. It's just, apart from occasional snippets, I've been largely unimpressed by his work since Brass Eye. Apologies if you think I'm deliberately trying to stir it without justification, I'm not. I just want explained to me, from people who like this stuff, what's so great about it?

Let me explain my dissapointment. Radio One tell us Chris Morris is going to be on Breezeblock. They don't tell us what he's going to do, and when he does appear, its to do guest DJ-ing. Sorry, a lot of us tuned in for hoping for a laugh. Or is that asking too much?

Mary Anne Hobbs' show is not for you. All right?

I like it, you don't. It's as simple as that.

Nobody needs to be justifying anything to each other.

And when I said there was no ambient stuff, I was referring to the Breezeblock.

>Pardon me if I've got my musical terms wrong. Whatever you call that stuff he plays inbetween (and often over) his sketches, (lets just say atmospheric). But enough of music, back to comedy. I'm sure your a great fan of Chris Morris, so am I. It's just, apart from occasional snippets, I've been largely unimpressed by his work since Brass Eye. Apologies if you think I'm deliberately trying to stir it without justification, I'm not. I just want explained to me, from people who like this stuff, what's so great about it?
>
I love Blue Jam, find it sometimes uneven, but better that than the diminishing returns of taking the piss out of vox-pops or doing spoof news AGAIN. Morris knew there'd probably be a hunger for such things, so moved on (I think). I sometimes regard the way I react to Blue Jam as the way you react to a novel that has quirky elements that somehow make you laugh even though you're not quite sure why. The monologues work particularly well in this respect.

>Let me explain my dissapointment. Radio One tell us Chris Morris is going to be on Breezeblock. They don't tell us what he's going to do, and when he does appear, its to do guest DJ-ing.

I would blame Radio 1 for lack of information there. Presumably the mix was already recorded.

Morris is a big music fan, and five minutes of listening to any of his past radio projects will bear this out (especially his Radio 1 series in 1994 where he played a range of great music - Parliament, Public Enemy, Stereolab, Gil Scott-Heron, Beck (at a time when absolutely no-one was playing him on the radio etc)...

>Sorry, a lot of us tuned in for hoping for a laugh. Or is that asking too much?

Morris has just released a brilliant new album, so why shouldn't he be given the same credence as the DJs and musicians who usually turn up and do sets on Breezeblock?
Mind you, as I said somewhere else, Mary Ann Hobbs's intro was guff.

Good grief, it's just like when loads of people bought The Orb's "Pomme Fritz" because they'd liked "Little Fluffy Clouds" and then instantly gave it away because they couldn't understand it.

Or is that too much of an "ambient music" reference...?

"Kid A"

Did he ever have it?

>"Kid A"

Or, as stated earlier, Jazz Oddysey.

I always saw 'Blue Jam' as Morris pissing about in his lunch hour, filling in time before he did a proper new project. Its consequent elevation onto a pedestal, however, does him or the show no favours whatsoever.

Morris is, at heart, an amiable bloke who loves silly radio. Only cunts and journalists press the 'dark' angle. In reality, he's a lovely fey, curly-haired chap who touches you on the shoulder when he gets excited.

My only objection is that Morris used always to be one step ahead of his audience; nowadays, he pretty much gives them exactly what they're expecting.

someone is sending me Blue Jam , aren't they?
Ooh question anyone heard of Foley and McColl
yes I know it is irrelevent

>I always saw 'Blue Jam' as Morris pissing about in his lunch hour, filling in time before he did a proper new project.

Then you really weren't paying any fucking attention.

*touches Mr Correct on the shoulder*

>Then you really weren't paying any fucking attention.

It's the po-faced reverential attitude towards Blue Jam/Jam that irriates me, and it's only something fans infer from the show. For the most part, both shows seem to be mocking the audience anyway.

Chris Morris came to me in a dream and said that, although he was proud of most of jam/Blue Jam, some of it was indeed put in to test whether the audience would accept it or not.

Now can you both love each other, please?

No reverence, I just like it.

blue jam wasn't cm pissing about in his lunch hour, for god's sake. that's an absurd thing to say. it was cm trying something else. if he just did the same thing again and again, he'd turn into richard curtis. and surely no-one would prefer that?

j xxx

I agree - Morris' determination to try something new (even Brass Eye was markedly different from The Day Today) is one of his strongest characteristics). But why am I even posting on this thread? It was started by someone who had the arrogance to demand that anyone who likes post-Brass Eye material should have to justify themselves. Why?

Why not?

>Chris Morris came to me in a dream and said that, although he was proud of most of jam/Blue Jam, some of it was indeed put in to test whether the audience would accept it or not.
>

I resent being Chris Morris's guineapig.

Do I detect the faintest imaginable whiff of Corpse about Mr Correct's postings?

Certainly seems to be a bit of a necrophile. But really, to dismiss 'Blue Jam' as simply puerile or aimless shock tactics is to completely miss the point. Sure, it had its puerile moments, its shocking moments and its downright silly moments. (And I'm not sure why I find myself having to justify their existence in a comedy show...)

But if you genuinely can't find any merit in the monologues, or any penetrating observations in items like "Cunts Of Gold" (I'm sure that's not its real title, but it's how we all know and love it) or "Unnecessary Operations", and just think it's being unpleasant for its own sake, then either (a) you are indeed a Corpse and I claim my five pounds, or (b) maybe it's genuinely beyond you. You don't get what's supposed to be "funny" or "clever" about this kind of material, but feel so defensive about this that you accuse anyone who does enjoy it of being "reverential". I don't know, maybe you yourself are too reverential towards Brass Eye.

There would certainly be no point in making any more Brass Eyes now: not only has the news media shifted ever closer to the once-savage parodies, but there is now a constant stream of limp and embarrassing B/E imitators on TV. Trying to compete with them, no matter how superior the end result, would be pointless and would look rather sad; an unnecessary attempt at self-justification. Better for Chris to move on to something completely different, even if it means leaving a few baffled and uncomprehending political satire fans bobbing about in his wake. (And anyway, they'll always have Mark Thomas...)

I'm not too keen on Blue Jam, I don't like all that atmospheric music stuff, and it just obscures the sketches in my view. I did like Jam better because there wasn't about 10 minutes of monged music between all the sketches, but I do prefer Morris' previous kind of stuff, I'm just glad he moved on and left it to his inferiors to pick up the pieces he had left of the news satirisms and miserably failed in being original or actually funny - 11 o clock show et al. But I do hope he goes and does something else now.

Wow. Totally agree with Mogwai there. You can borrow my legs whenever you want.

hear, hear, mog. my legs are up for grabs.

j xxx

I thought the whole failing of Jam (as opposed to its Blue friend) was the absence of music. The sketches in Jam came as a beautiful, bonged-out bonus, swimming up to you unexpectedly out of the music mix, like a dolphin in soup. They were then free to surprise, amuse, delight, shock etc on their own terms, rather than having to be, oh I don't know, funnier than the "Four Candles" sketch from the Two Ronnies.
It was a whole new way of presenting comedy: sly, knowing, soft, "feminine". Jam lost that deftness of touch, leaving the sketches to stand alone, alongside other, more aggressive sketch shows. In that unfamiliar environment, their passivity, their deliciously supine structure made them look a little weak and unstructured.
They looked, shall we say, a bit lonely...
And, let's not forget, the music KICKED AMBIENT ARSE!

Yes.
Those monologues were some of the funniest things about Blue Jam. Jam just isn't funny. It's pointless shock tactics in a world where they no longer shock. Largely due to Morris' previous work. Even the sketches I liked on radio don't amuse transferred to TV. I agree he couldn't keep doing fake news programmes. That doesn't stop his recent output being utter shit.

Similar to Derek And Clive, in that the sketches were more nightmarish and amusing when you had to guess what the people in them looked like, rather than sitting there thinking "oh look, it's CM dressed as a Dutch porn star" (or indeed, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore dressed as themselves).

I've returned to my Blue Jam tapes recently, having not heard most of them for quite some time. Series 2 is its zenith, with the first series being a little thin on material, and the third starting to repeat itself. I agree that the music plays a significant part of what makes Blue Jam work - it was designed to be listened to (I think, anyway) as something to be half-asleep to. The often difficult/unsettling/ profane material was there, not solely because of its controversial nature, but because of how censorship in dreams is near-impossible. That is what Morris may have been trying to replicate. Put such things on TV at half-past ten (as Jam) and, obviously, things like the Porn sketch are bound to look like shock tactics and nothing more.

>I resent being Chris Morris's guineapig.

Better than his gerbil. Noworramene?

No. Worra u mene?

I saw Brass Eye for the first time yesterday and it is fcking brilliant. Much better than 'It Ain't Half Hot, Mum' which is my current swain. And it was definitely Bernard Manning's finest hour. He was absolutely hilarious in the drug ep. It's so rich in content though it's so hard to take it all in when viewing it in a marathon. Certainly there were a few precedents set for Morris to persue his Blue Jam rag-bag. In fact there were more obscure sketches starring the chosen Morrisons than I was expecting.

Also I do think the impact of it all was slightly diluted by the tacky Talkback spin-offs. Chris' scales of approval for example have been outright nicked by Peter Piper on the 11OCS. And the Morris vernacular does it has to be said seem something of a pastiche of Charlie Brooker's own unique style.

Still, it's damn funny.

>And the Morris vernacular does it has to be said seem something of a pastiche of Charlie Brooker's own unique style.

Chris was already conversing quite happily in his "vernacular" in 1990, when Charlie Brooker was still swapping football stickers in the playground. The Morris/Iannucci style wordplay has influenced the current wave of topical comedy gimps enormously, possibly even too much...

A major influence on Chris's verbal style was Viv Stanshall, and even he wasn't nearly as cheerfully corrosive.

Brooker influencing Morris... Ha!

>>And the Morris vernacular does it has to be said seem something of a pastiche of Charlie Brooker's own unique style.
>
>Chris was already conversing quite happily in his "vernacular" in 1990, when Charlie Brooker was still swapping football stickers in the playground. The Morris/Iannucci style wordplay has influenced the current wave of topical comedy gimps enormously, possibly even too much...
>
>A major influence on Chris's verbal style was Viv Stanshall, and even he wasn't nearly as cheerfully corrosive.
>
>Brooker influencing Morris... Ha!

And surely it's gold for Surprise this time as she hoists the sarcasm way over the head of the Mogwai, surely the judges are going to be pleased with that effort.

Chris.

*watches Kinder whoosh past overhead*

You mean I may have accidentally implied that I thought she was capable of genuinely posting something so daft? Shite! Better scarper before she lands, or it'll be a proper bastard hiding for me!

*flees*

KS: Which way did he go?

ME: I'm saying nothing

(points helpfully)

I'm interested to know - those on this thread who have said either post-Brass Eye he's not so great any more, or those who have said he's not one step ahead of his audience any more - how do you rate the Richard Geefe columns?......

(embarrassed) I've never read the actual columns... I can't be bothered.

>I'm interested to know - those on this thread who have said either post-Brass Eye he's not so great any more, or those who have said he's not one step ahead of his audience any more - how do you rate the Richard Geefe columns?......


Not his greatest work ever, but diverting and entertaining in the main. With Geefe, the concept rather than the content was important. And admit it, it fooled you all.

I remember reading the second (?) column, the one about getting locked out of your front door, and thought it was pretty funny. However, I just asumed it was indeed written by someone called Richard Geefe, who was just a typical 90s egotist who's watched too many Tarantino movies. I never would have thought it was Morris, simply because it was so low key.

Of course, the later columns darkened it up a bit...

>admit it, it fooled you all.

I wish. Thing is, I never read them at the time, but a couple of my friends - and my mum, actually - told me about them. I told all of them that it sounded remarkably like the Blue Jam monologue. They all told me that I listen to too much Chris Morris, and went about their day. They may have been right, but so was I...

>You mean I may have accidentally implied that I thought she was capable of genuinely posting something so daft?

>Shite! Better scarper before she lands, or it'll be a proper bastard hiding for me!

No need to worry Mog, I haven't nearly the capabilities or indeed the camouflage to hide such a bastard - regardless of how much more aesthetically pleasing the world would be if I had.

The world is a much better place whenever kinder is around.

Where does she go during the intervals?

What's Chris Morris's project? Heard he was going to abandon Jam/Blue Jam, or is that bollocks?

TEST

THIS IS A TEST. YOU HAVE 30 MINUTES.

1. Write an essay on one of the following:

a) "Why Chris Morris has lost it"
b) "Chris Morris is still pushing back the braintanglia of rudemath"

Use no more than 3,000,000 words.

2. Write a one-line joke about Iain Lee. Include at least two news stories from last year.

3. Er...

4. That's it.

Can we do EITHER question 1 OR question 2?

I'll try the essay then...

Do what you like, I've just about lost my will to live hanging around here...