SOTCAA

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

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

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

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

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

Kim 'Howard' Johnson, in his dumb, over-sized sans serif mess of a typeface, makes uninteresting reading on this. However, his dossier of the Python's pre and post achievements (Life Before And After Monty Python: The Solo Flights Of The Flying Circus, Godammit Press, 1994) is one of the few to recognise that the show exists. John O. Thompson's Monty Python's Complete And Utter Theory Of The Grotesque (Eccentric Academia Press) carries a listing for the show in its 'Pythonography' section, albeit without a transmission date. Roger Wilmut doesn't mention it in From Fringe To Flying Circus (the ultimate authority on 1960s/70s Oxbridge comedy), nor do any of the writers who Chinese-whispered his research over the years, suggesting that, prior to the video's release, How To Irritate People was genuinely obscure. Johnson, meanwhile, in his interviews with Palin and Cleese, does clarify a few points. He confirms, for example, that the video was indeed a fresh edit - Palin talks of 'making a few cuts here and there' to maintain the standard. It also makes it clear that it was David Frost himself who wished to see the video released.

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

NOTE (1): Cleese didn't record all his anchor material in one go - he had to change costume for each sketch, then back into his suit for the next link. He thought this a stupid policy, but didn't like to say anything. To this day, he claims he has never seen the show.
NOTE (2): If you're American and you remember seeing How To Irritate People, please contact us. And while you're about it, tell us what it's like to live in America. Is it good or is it a load of old rubbish? Do you get murdered a lot? My friend says that you call chips French fries and drive on the pavement.

THEORIES AND PONDERENCES:

(from Simon Harries)
"Having read the article on "How To Irritate People", I went out and bought it for £3.99, and I thought I'd pass on my comments now that I've seen it and re-read the article.
David Frost's involvement suggests to me it could have been made for LWT - this company was created by a partnership lead by Frost in 1968. The captions are on that orangey background similar to that of the first LWT colour idents. It would explain why there's no BBC caption at the end - it wasn't a BBC show. However, since it's never been transmitted, I wonder if the LWT library has the original footage in its archive?
I also wondered if the show was recorded as an experiment, using the new colour process, and was rejected for transmission because the technology wasn't quite up to it? An early LWT attempt at colour recording?
The technology might have improved sufficiently by 1969 to enable Monty Python series 1 to be made at the BBC, who were of course making high quality colour shows in 1968 - the Peter Cushing version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" for example, which I would give my right arm to see now!
Or, more likely, the original master - which could have been a high quality 625 line PAL - could have gone missing / wiped etc. and this production has been pulled together from U-matic viewing copies which Frost / Paradine / any of the Pythons might own. If the transfers were poorly made, that might account for the poor sound or bizarre picture quality.
Anyway, they're just my thoughts."

(from Gareth Randall)
"Your feature on this video made me finally buy it after years of picking it up, reading the Godawful blurb on the back, shuddering, and then and putting it down again on the shelves of HMV.
As invited, I thought I'd weigh in with some opinions about its history. The first thing to note is that it's 100% *definitely* a conversion from NTSC; it's full of classic cross-conversion motion artefacts and it's also firmly stuck in the NTSC colour gamut (i.e. it's got that slightly washed-out, pastelly appearance). Just to confirm this, I showed it to some of the VT engineers at work, and they all immediately said "NTSC conversion".
It's also not been sourced from a full broadcast-quality master; somewhere down the line, it's been dubbed onto U-matic (there's a very characteristic look to U-matic video).
Given that David Frost sold it to the Westinghouse network, I'd posit that it was a privately-funded enterprise that probably made use of an independent studio. While it was most likely recorded and edited on 2" PAL video, I would guess that Frost took a standards-converted U-matic version to America to punt around (one hell of a lot easier to transport than a 2" quad spool, and easily playable in executive offices), and it wouldn't surprise me at all if this is the only version still in existence - hence why it looks the way it does.
It's also just possible that, in order to keep costs down, it was recorded direct to U-matic. Unless a quad master ever appears, we'll probably never know. It's certainly clear that they were trying to keep other costs to an absolute bare minimum, as evidenced by the captions and the almost total lack of audio post-production - notice how Cleese's voiceover in the pepperpots cinema sketch is being played in "live" from quarter-inch tape, relayed over the studio speakers (to give the performers their cues) and re-recorded by the microphones. Even back in 1968 you'd expect that to be redubbed in post to make it less muffled and roomy.
If it *was* recorded at LWT I'll be able to find out (I work there), but you'll have to wait, as I'm about to go on holiday. BTW, Simon Harries' theory about it being an experimental colour recording is almost certainly off-beam; LWT's colour equipment was top-notch from the word go, and their earliest colour shows still look utterly gorgeous. The dodgy picture quality in How To Irritate People is definitely down to it being an NTSC conversion, although why the odd sketch (e.g. the car mechanic one) looks noticeably worse than the others is something of a mystery - it's possibly down to them being lower-generation dubs."

(posted to Roobarb's Forum by Matthew K.Sharp - reproduced with permission)
"How To Irritate People was recorded in 1968, and almost certainly never broadcast in the UK. It was, however, screened in the United States, as demonstrated by this extract from Variety magazine, 29 January 1969:
HOW TO IRRITATE PEOPLE
With David Frost, John Cleese, Graham Chapman
Exec. Producer: Frost
Writers: Cleese, Chapman
Director: Ian Fordyce
60 Mins., Tues., 7:30pm.
KYW-TV, Philadelphia
An inversion of the old how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people theme was the gimmick for this Westinghouse comedy special. In a somewhat strained opening, host Frost explains that irritating people is much more rewarding than trying to get along with them. To illustrate, co-writer Cleese presents a number of skits in which characters are slowly or rapidly driven mad. Though uneven in quality the weaker bits manage to come off through superior acting.
For openers, there were two restaurant scenes, both variants on the killing-with-kindess bit. In the first, an over-solicitous man sent his date screaming from the room after an interminable series of attempts to make her more comfortable. The second found a fawning waiter being ignored by diners as he did everything from breastbeating at the sight of an upside-down menu to licking the chair seats clean. Best routine had Cleese portraying a bored airline pilot sending gratuitous messages back to the passengers ("there is absolutely no cause for alarm") and instructing the steward to do his "worried walk." Stalest entry was a rehash of the cloying mother and desperate son dialog. Hour was filled out with several successful tv spoofs and intermittent monologs from Frost and Cleese. Quick pacing and smooth transitions helped the show generally. Employing minimal sets, productions moved swiftly, burying tired lines with fresh material. Cleese was versatile and convincing in his numerous roles and was aided by flawless support. Frost, curiously, seems least at ease, like an emcee trying to become a standup comic and not quite making it. The show taped in London had lines obviously aimed at a British audience, but most of the humour survived the trans-Atlantic crossing. "How to Irritate People" shapes as a bright, fairly original entry, handled in broad appeal style with situations just slipping over the border from reality into zaniness.
The transmisson date could be either 21 or 28 January 1969; given that Variety was published on a Wednesday. It depends whether a review for a show on Tuesday night would make it in time to be published the following day. Myself, I would plump for 21 Jan 1969.
Note that the show was not networked; the above refers to a screening in Philadelphia. New York viewers had to wait until 4th May 1969, when the show was broadcast at 7pm on WNEW-5. The listing in the New York Times reads:
SPECIAL: David Frost Presents � How To Irritate People How to harrass, bother and get under the skin of people, mainly by kindess, politeness, consideration, even by telling jokes.
There are two interesting points in all this:
1) David Frost? Variety clearly states that Frost appears in the show, and the NYT listing implies it. It would seem logical that Frost would be seen on screen, since he was somewhat of a known name on US TV at the time. But in the video version, there is no Frost footage.
2) Both transmissions noted here are billed for a 60 minute slot. The video release runs around 65 minutes, and that without ad breaks. Could it be that the video release is in fact taken from an unedited studio recording or initial edit? The disparity in running lengths suggests that the video contains more than was transmitted in the USA; and that's even without the putative Frost links.
As always, it seems that when you research something, it raises more questions than it answers.
In addition to the cast and production crew (and the reuse of some material), there is another obvious link to At Last The 1948 Show; the music over the end titles, which was also used on ALT48S. The music, incidentally, is taken from a KPM Production Music disc KPM 1008. It is called "Barrel Organ Waltz" and in total runs 1:28."