Friday 28 November 2008

Kashing In On Kristmas

That's it. It is now officially Almost Christmas. How can we tell? Why, the annual Peter Kay DVD Featuring Absolutely No New Content Whatsoever is in the shops, that's why. If you hold the DVD case up to your ear really, really closely, you can almost hear the sound of distant sleighbells and people in bad knitwear clinking together glasses of QC sherry.



This year's offering is "Special Kay", a compilation of what the back cover describes as "a golden cluster of the finest and funniest comedy moments that have made Peter Kay one of the UK's favourite comedians". Further down the blurb, this is revealed to actually mean "from early appearances on Granada's The Last Laugh Show to cameos in Coronation Street; uproarious banter with Parkinson and Jonathan Ross; scintillating stand-up on Children In Need and Comic Relief, the hugely popular and award-winning John Smiths ads and so much more!"



Now, just before any Peter Kay fans reading this rush off to Amazon to write a review of the disc including the word "dissapointment" (sic), just hold on a moment. While it may seem that repackaging your performances in charity shows and selling them on for your own personal profit may *seem* wrong, it... erm, we can't think of a proper ending for this sentence. Put it this way: if The Flaming Lips or The White Stripes or a similar band put out a rareties compilation disc, including live appearances on their local TV news show "KBBXLTV37 Action Eye Live At 6 News", not many of their fans would be registering their displeasure via the medium of smiley-strewn missives on the Digitial Spy forum, would they? Well, why should Peter Kay be any different?



And it's not as if - chuckle - the people behind this compilation will be scraping the barrel so hard they'll be dredging up Peter Kay dying on his arse at Live 8, is it? Eh? Of course not! The thing is, were someone to put out a compilation like this, compiling guest appearances, chat show outings and adverts featuring Morecambe and Wise, Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, Kenneth Williams, or Mayall and Edmondson, it'd be a genuinely essential purchase. Just because it's Peter "Three Hour Prime Time Advert For Cash-in Single On Channel Four" Kay, does that really make it any different? Plus, much of the material on offer is from when Peter Kay was still funny - surely that has to count for a lot?



It really does appear that he is repackaging his performances for charity shows and selling them on for his own personal profit, though.

Well, we're conflicted. There's only one way to sort this out. Stopwatches and spreadsheets will show us the way in our special Peter Kay's Special Kay Obsessive Compulsive Breakdown Special! Erm, which we would have done here, but it took so long to put together the fake DVD covers, we really can't face it right now.




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Mike Landers said...

The John Smiths adverts?

Effectively the punters are paying to watch adverts.

I wonder whether the other people in the adverts will be getting royalties. If it is anything like the approach used in Phoenix Nights, I suspect not.

Simon said...

I quite fancy seeing his Children In Need turn, actually, as it's never turned up on YouTube and it came while he was doing The Sunday Show.

Anonymous said...

The sad part is, this is going to sell bucketloads - bought by people who don't know any better, to give to people who will only be disappointed.

Louis Barfe said...

Notice how they've avoided passing off rather cleverly by nicking a Kellogg's brand, but designing the cover to look like Weetabix.

Stipey Sullivan said...

Garlic... bread?

Garlic... bread?

Eh Eh? Eh? O, please yourself.

Personally I was worried this was going to be a post about Tim Kash the man who helped Andi Peters to destroy Top of The Pops. So it was a relief not to see his shiny teeth and empty hopeless eyes. No disrespect Tim, I hope you're enjoying life now you're no longer on the telly. I expect you've got a nice job, probably work for Whittards or something

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