After a hard day’s work at the factory, there was nothing Eddie liked more than sitting down in his favourite armchair and watching whatever happened to be on the television. He’d flick from one channel to another as each programme ended, slowly eating his way through the huge portion of fish and chips he habitually bought on the way home from work.
For Eddie, the television was a window onto the rest of the world.
Thanks to the television, Eddie thought, I’m in touch with what’s going on on the planet.
Eddie even had his favourite type of programme – documentaries. Not the ones in which the eating, drinking, mating and sleeping habits of some animal or other were shown, but the ones that showed real people in real situations – the ones Eddie called ‘True Life Dramas’.
The best example of this, Eddie felt, was the ‘drama’ in which someone got wrongfully imprisoned, whereupon a research team would be galvanized into finding evidence which would prove the someone’s innocence. Read more…
R J Dent says: ‘I wrote The Host after listening to a popular host being interviewed. The host said he never watched the television, but that without his television programme, he would not know what to do to keep himself occupied. This, combined with my interpretation of Harlan Ellison’s notion of television as a ‘glass teat’ suckling the world, gave me the story’s central metaphor.’
It’s a fantastically funny series. If you like Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Flight of the Conchords, Black Books, The Comic Strip Presents…, Extras, The Office, then you’ll like Green Wing.
The Comic Strip is a loose-knit group of British comedians, known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents…. The core members are Peter Richardson, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Jennifer Saunders, with frequent appearances by Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane, Daniel Peacock and Alexei Sayle.
Originally broadcast on Channel 4, the episodes were
Title: Broadcast Date:
Five Go Mad In Dorset
2/11/1982
War
3/1/1983
The Beat Generation
7/1/1983
Bad News Tour
24/1/1983
Summer School
31/1/1983
Five Go Mad On Mescalin
2/11/1983
Dirty Movie
7/1/1984
Susie
14/1/1984
A Fistful Of Traveller’s Cheques
21/1/1984
Gino – Full Story And Pics
28/1/1984
Eddie Monsoon – A Life?
4/2/1984
Slags
11/2/1984
The Bullshitters
3/11/1984
The Supergrass
Movie – 1985
Consuela
1/1/1986
Private Enterprise
2/1/1986
The Strike
20/2/1988
More Bad News
27/2/1988
Mr Jolly Lives Next Door
5/3/1988
The Yob
12/3/1988
Didn’t You Kill My Brother
19/3/1988
Funseekers
26/3/1988
South Atlantic Raiders
1/2/1990
South Atlantic Raiders Part 2
8/2/1990
GLC
15/2/1990
Oxford
22/2/1990
Spaghetti Hoops
1/3/1990
Les Dogs
8/3/1990
Red Nose Of Courage
9/3/1992
The Crying Game
5/5/1992
Wild Turkey
24/12/1992
Detectives On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown
22/4/1993
Space Virgins From The Planet Sex
29/4/1993
Queen Of The Wild Frontier
6/5/1993
Gregory – Diary Of A Nutcase
13/5/1993
Demonella
20/5/1993
Jealousy
27/5/1993
Four Men In A Car
12/4/1998
Four Men In A Plane
4/1/2000
The very first Comic Strip Presents… was Five Go Mad in Dorset, which was a parody of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. Next was War, followed by The Beat Generation, then the classic heavy metal parody Bad News Tour and then the brilliantly observed Summer School. The first three films were written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens. Bad News Tour was by Adrian Edmondson and Summer School was written by Dawn French.
The second series started with Five Go Mad on Mescalin. Second was Dirty Movie, a brilliant visual comedy from Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall which works well with Rod Melvin’s organ accompaniment. Susie is by Richardson and Richens. A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques has Rik Mayall collaborating with the core writing team to create a perfect pastiche of the Leone ‘Dollars’ trilogy. Gino is a brilliant film with Keith Allen in the lead. Edmondson’s Eddie Monsoon and Jennifer Saunders Slags close the second series.
The Bullshitters is a parody of the seventies TV detectives The Professionals. Other stand alone episodes at this time were Edmondson’s Private Enterprise and Consuela, a French and Saunders parody of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.
The next film was The Sugergrass, which was Peter Richardson’s directing debut. Then came The Strike, which was the first of many films to parody Hollywood through films within films of very English political films, in this case a sexing up of the miners’ strike. Next was More Bad News which continues in a similar vein as its predecessor.
Edmondson’s and Mayall’s Mr Jolly Lives Next Door is a prototype of the duo’s sitcom Bottom. Next is Keith Allen’s The Yob which mocks Allen’s own football yob persona and parodies David Cronenberg’s The Fly. This is followed by Alexei Sayle’s Didn’t you Kill my Brother? and Nigel Planer’s Funseekers.
The fourth series saw a move to the BBC and a return to the half hour format. The full ensemble appeared in the two-part South Atlantic Raiders. GLC was a sequel to The Strike with Robbie Coltrane playing Charles Bronson as Ken Livingstone in a story of the abolition of the Greater London Council. Oxford features special guests Lenny Henry and Leslie Philips. Spaghetti Hoops and Les Dogs were next, with the latter been a surreal piece featuring Kate Bush.
Three specials then came from The Comic Strip Presents stable: The Red Nose of Courage, which parodied British politics, with Adrian Edmondson playing John Major. The Crying Game was another Allen/Richardson collaboration which put some spin on the Paul Gascoigne story. Wild Turkey was a Christmas special.
The fifth series started strongly with Allen and Richardson’s Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown expanding the premise of The Bullshitters to parody all TV detectives with a few song and dance numbers. Space Virgins from Planet Sex was a b-movie pastiche that blended science fiction and James Bond in a way only the Comic Strip team could pull off. Queen of the Wild Frontier saw Richens and Richardson start the move towards straight films. Gregory was a parody of The Silence of the Lambs, whilst Demonella and Jealousy intimated that The Comic Strip Presents had perhaps run its course.
The original cast re-assembled on Channel Four for Four Man in a Car, the success of which was repeated with Four Men in a Plane.
Peter Richardson
You can now get The Comic Strip Presents…The Complete Collection on DVD, although the DVD was released before the last Comic Strip Presents… film Sex Actually was produced. Also missing is Eat the Rich and The Pope Must Die. Perhaps they could be included on the next DVD release of The Comic Strip Presents… The Complete Collection.
Despite the temporary misnomer, and although the bonus documentaries offer very little in the way of insight, one thing that very quickly becomes glaringly obvious is Peter Richardson’s vast – yet somehow still under-rated – talent as an actor, writer and director. The Comic Strip Presents… is clearly his creation. Finally, Julian Temple’s film of the initial stage revue does at least fill in some of the gaps. All in all, this is a nearly-complete, brilliant box set of a truly innovative and very funny TV show.
Here’s a clip of The Comic Strip Presents… team in action:
He’s a comedian/ actor/ TV and radio presenter-host/ author/ columnist, and he’s one of England’s funniest men. He is, of course, Russell Brand.
Here he is performing a Tamara Beckwith routine on his live DVD:
and an Ian Huntley/Sun newspaper routine at The Secret Policeman’s Ball . He was – and is – hilarious.
Since then I’ve watched his stand-up (live and on DVD); I’ve watched all available episodes of RE-Brand; I’ve also watched (and loved both series of) Ponderland; and I’ve read My Booky Wook and Articles of Faith – and I’ve just finished reading Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal.
I enjoyed St. Trinians (a little). Here’s the trailer:
I enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a lot). Here’s the trailer:
and Bedtime Stories (a little). Here’s the trailer:
and I’m looking forward to him playing Arthur in Arthur. Here’s the Arthur trailer:
and to him playing Trinculo in Julie Taymar’s version of The Tempest. (Note for trivialists – in the BBC version of The Tempest, Trinculo was played by Andrew Sachs). Here’s the trailer to The Tempest:
I’m also looking forward to Hop. Here’s a Hop promo trailer:
And here’s the trailer for Get Him to the Greek (a sequel of sorts to Forgetting Sarah Marshall):
He’s recently been in (with Alec Baldwin) the film version of Rock of Ages:
He also voiced Dr Nefario in Despicable Me:
I’ve watched everything he’s in on Youtube; and I’ve listened to him on TalkSport, and to every podcast of his Radio 2 Russell BrandShow (Saturday 21-23.00), a show I enjoyed very much.
What I like about Brand is his intelligence, his wit, his use of language to make valid points about us and our world, his (former) use of a camp persona as a strategy to seduce women, and his unflinching use of his own (often painful) experiences for his comedy.
Many don’t care about his seedy past; hopefully he does. He must realize that the moment he stopped the drugs/alcohol, his career sky-rocketed and he became world-famous.
His acting/film career is blossoming; hosting the controversial (2008) and relatively incident-free (2009) MTV VMAs raised his profile; his television career in the US and the UK is going from strength to strength; he’s just signed a very lucrative book deal; the podcasts of his TalkSport radio show attract million of listeners, as do his BBC radio show podcasts; his newspaper football column is popular and widely read; his stand-up shows sell out – not bad for someone who could be described as a self-obsessed introverted extrovert from Essex.
As Russell Brand thrives on controversy, it looks as though he is going to have a long and successful career – and as long as he stays funny, I’ll continue watching him and listening to him.
Here’s a clip from the 2009 DVD Russell Brand in New York. It’s a perfect example of Russell Brand’s intelligence at work, particularly towards the end of the clip (at 6.20) where Brand makes a reference to Michel Foucault’s refutation of the ‘repressive hypothesis’; a theory Brand uses in relation to the media image of the Jonas Brothers.
And here’s Russell Brand being interviewed (in 2010) by Jeremy Paxman:
And here’s Russell Brand offering his thoughts on politics after guest-editing The New Statesman in 2013. Here he talks again to Jeremy Paxman:
It seems that there’s more to Russell Brand than just being a clown.
Enjoy.
Russell Brand: self-obsessed introverted extrovert?
R J Dent 