Thursday 30 July 2009

We Are Klang (BBC 3) : An Extensive Review

Well, it had some nice ideas. Plus, it mentioned (a) The Goodies, and (b) the fact one of the cast looks a bit like a fat Rik Mayall. But! We didn’t actually laugh once, and the musical number came over like Flight Of The Conchords without the production values. Pity, we were looking forward to it.

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Not that we’re a blog that dismisses an entire show based on the first episode. We’ll give it another go next week, if only because it’s nice to see a BBC Three comedy show making references to things from before 2003. That’s about as close to ‘off-message’ as a full series on that channel is likely to get*.

(*Discounting Family Guy.)
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Wednesday 29 July 2009

The World's Hamburger-Eatingest Clown

Can't sleep. Clown'll eat me.

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Sunday 26 July 2009

BrokenTV: 1, The Man: Nil (Agg score, BrokenTV: 1, The Man: 3,456)

Way back in 2006 we posted a few YouYube videos of Public Information Films starring the legendary Richard Massingham. All has been well since, with thousands of interested viewers dipping into the comedic genius-pool of Mr Massingham. They were so popular in fact, that even the blog of mighty New York radio station WFMU linked to a couple of them. A few months ago, we received this email from YouTube:

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Now, given the clips are more than fifty years old and as such have since passed into the public domain, this is clearly nonsense. We can only assume that, as part of the Coughs & Sneezes film was used in Victor Lewis-Smith’s Channel Four show TV Offal*, it was flagged up by some complicated digital fingerprinting doohickery.

(*Speaking of TV Offal, strange to think now that it was a Friday night comedy show on Channel Four. Little chance that sort of thing could happen now. Unless Zeppotron decide they want to do it, anyway. And yes, we realise that lots of actual clips from TV Offal still being on YouTube might destroy our theory.)

Anyway, we’ve whinged at YouTube about this, and in a MASSIVE U-TURN they’ve relented. The clip is back up. So here it is again:

And, now we've mentioned it, a clip of TV Offal:

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Wednesday 22 July 2009

Flaylist Update

The ‘Flaylist’ of course being our collaborative Spotify bad cover version playlist that anyone can add tracks to.  Here are today’s new tracks, forwarded by our excellent readers.

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Paul Anka – It’s A Sin

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of loungecore when handled correctly. This version of the Tennant/Lowe classic can probably be best described as ‘musically incorrect’. Worst bit: when Anka bursts into an instrumental break by crooning “such a sin!” in an alarming manner.

0.5/10

(The Flaylist also contains Anka’s version of Black Hole Sun, which isn’t quite as bad. But, if you want a much better lounge version of that song, search for the Steve Lawrence & Edie Gorme version on Dirty Edits Vol. 1 - A Collection Of Dirty Classics, It’s much, much better.)

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Gregorian Chants – The Power Of Love

Two things that we can be sure is on the playlist of every iPod in the fiery depths of hell: Gregorian Chants, and Celine Dion. And as it’s hell, it’ll be an iPod Mini. If anything, this song wins a bonus point for actually being a Jennifer Rush song that Celine Dion covered. It could so easily have been the version of My Heart Will Go On, which we imagine kickstarts the default playlist of our notional infernal iPod.

1.5/10

The Flaylist also contains the Gregorian Chants version of Love Me Do, by the Beatles. A better song, so we’d give it a whopping 2.5/10.

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The Allstars – The Riddle

Originally performed by Nik Kershaw, of course. This version features heavily vocodered vocals, as used on any single from the 1990s where the vocalist couldn’t sing for fupping toffee. cf. Adam Rickitt.

1/10

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Tiffany – Panic (Hang the DJ)

Speaking of electronically modified vocal tracks, here’s Tiffany performing a techno-tinged cover of the song by overrated Mancunian miserablists The Smiths. Do you know what, while it’s all a bit limp and flavourless, and Tiffers isn’t putting much energy into it, we quite like it. Maybe it’s because we’ve just been listening to the above three tracks in full.

5.5/10

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Madonna – American Pie

No, our musical palate is still functioning correctly, as this is fucking painful to listen to. Genuinely, we think this is the worst record ever to get the number one in the UK. Yes, even worse than Mr Blobby. Even worse than No Doubt. Even worse than Wannabe by the Spice Girls (no, don’t pretend it was anything other than shit). Worse than Michael Jackson’s Earth Song. Worse than having a tramps cock in your ear, in fact.

0.0/10

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The Hit Crew – That’s Amore

The Hit Crew have literally hundreds of terrible cover albums available on Spotify, with them actually being culled from a huge pool of session musicians willing to lay down lame cover versions of songs to be sold in nickel and dime stores. This album is the very worst of the lot, which is quite an impressive boast. Just look at that cover. The Hit Crew have also recorded entire albums expressly designed for women whose only friends are their cats (yes, really), we can assure you, no irony was employed in the designing of this album cover.

Still, it’s not the worst album cover by The Hit Crew. There was also this:

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…but as it’s a spoken word album, it doesn’t count.

minus500/10

 

As so, as we weep softly while trying to find something a bit less traumatic to listen to, we implore you, yes you, to add more songs of woe to our Spotify bad cover version playlist. DO IT.

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Monday 20 July 2009

The BrokenTV Spotify Flaylist

We’re still hugely addicted to Spotify. So much so in fact, we’ve taken the rare step of unlocking the BrokenIndustries wallet and paying for a premium subscription to it. Shocking, we know. While there are thousands utterly brilliant things on there, a great deal of satisfaction can be gleaned from finding the most terrible songs possible. Here are a few we’ve found so far, along with the links to the albums they live on. Spotify required to play them, obviously.

They’re all cover versions, as opposed to this first one, which is a sort of semi-cover:

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The Wurzels with Tony Blackburn – I Am A Cider Drinker 2007

Knocking even their version of Babybird’s “You’re Gorgeous” into a distant second, this is the sort of re-release where no-one is coming out of the studio with a shred of dignity intact.

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The Piano Tribute Players – Womanizer

This starts off reasonably enough, with the Piano Tribute Players interpreting the electro fuzz intro of the original into a nice enough riff. Once the dementedly ace chorus kicks in however, things start to go awry, with the ‘Players desperately trying to battle the songsheets, and losing on penalties. Still, could be worse.

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The Piano Tribute Players – Fly On The Wall

Sadly, not a version of the Tatu future-classic (if they ever get around to releasing their final album outside of Russia, that is), but rather an insipid tribute to the surprisingly great Miley Cyrus version. Aaaand, there go our few remaining shreds of credibility. Seriously though, it’s really good. Listen to it. The PTP version completely fails to capture even a thimbleful of this magnificence.

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Earl Okin – Song 2

Does the world really need a Richard Cheese tribute act, when everyone realised that Richard Cheese’s stuff gets really old, really fast? Earl Okin seems to think so. It’s a ‘live’ version of the song. The crowd at this recording seem to be the same rentacrowd used for the ‘3’ comedy sponsor bumpers on Channel Four, as their insipid reaction seems very similar to that of the shit stand-up comedian making pedestrian observations about mobile phones. Footnote: we’ve a sneaking suspicion “Earl” “Okin” Googles his stage name quite often, and will eventually stumble over this paragraph. If so: you should be ashamed.

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Michael Pan – An English Gentleman (James Dean Brandfield)

At first glance, this seems like a relatively diverse compilation CD, taking in tracks from Avril Lavingne, Eels, Art Brut, M.I.A., Amy Winehouse, and this track from James Dean Brandfield. On closer inspection – much closer inspection – the entire 21-track album actually contains nothing more than the German equivalent of Paul Gambuccini waxing lyrical on the stories behind each of the songs in question. Not a single note of music is contained anywhere whatsoever on the album. So: what’s the point? Are German listeners supposed to listen to the commentary track at the same time as listening to the original versions of each of the songs, as opposed to, say, reading the liner notes for each of the songs? Or just looking at Wikipedia? Or is it, as we suspect, a cynical attempt to trick unobservant shoppers into buying a suspiciously cheap compilation disc for little Gunter’s birthday?

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Flaskkvartetten – I Am The Walrus

Spotify links this lot up with Kronos Quartet and Brian Eno in the ‘similar artists’ bit of the header. Presumably the reasoning behind that thinking came some time after this was released, as it isn’t very good. At all.

 

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The Buddha Lounge Ensemble – Back In Black

Yeah. Nothing conveys a spiritual sense of karmic wellbeing like a cover album of AC/DC songs, does it? It does however get worse.

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The Buddha Lounge Ensemble – Renditions of Evanescence

Yes, really. We strongly suspect statues of Buddha around the world started vomiting blood the very second this disc hit the record shops.

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Count Dee’s Dancesport Unlimited – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker

So painful, we’re actually on the verge of tears here. Some people say that hearing a terrible cover version of one of your all-time favourite songs is one of the worst musical experiences a music lover could suffer. We’d say that hearing a bad cover version of a song you already absolutely detest is much worse. Listening to this voluntarily is pretty much tantamount to handing your house keys over to an escaped mental patient who has promised to sneak in at night and keep prodding you in the eye with a shitty stick while you try to sleep. It’s that bad.

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Katie Price & Peter Andre – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Fuck. Ing. Hell.

 

With all of these songs in mind, we’ve decided to start a collaborative playlist on Spotify for Bad Cover Versions. As listening to each of these songs is akin to having all the skin whipped off your back with a barbed-wire cat o’ nine tails recently marinated in regurgitated vinegar and Jif Lemon, we’ve called it The BrokenTV Flaylist. If you’ve got any terrible cover versions that you’ve discovered, feel free to add them to the list.

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Sunday 19 July 2009

How To Be Afraid Of Everything

Not content with putting up as many as several updates a month (some of them not lazily-linked YouTube videos) to BrokenTV, we’ve started a new blog. How To Be Afraid Of Everything. Dot Com. A cheery glance at how modern events, objects and practices are all transpiring to destroy the comfortable world of crosswords, tea and cakes that we’re all perfectly happy with. We’ll be features editor of the Daily Express before you know it.

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Now, just because we’re splitting up into two blogs doesn’t mean we love you any less. In fact, due to ominously impending events, there are probably going to be more frequent updates than ever in the near future (see, the recession’s not all bad. Unless you’re someone we owe money to, anyway).

So, go there now, and read through each one of the one-and-a-half articles already up there. Whether there’ll be a fresh article on the horrendous faff that is ‘setting up a Wordpress blog on your own domain’, we cannot yet say.

http://howtobeafraidofeverything.com/

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Izzard in Brick Form

These are very nice indeed. Representations of classic Izzard routines, visualised through the medium of Lego.

Death Star Canteen



Cake or Death

(Pop fact! Lee "Some Velvet Morning" Hazlewood's final album, put together when he knew he was terminally ill, was named "Cake Or Death" after this routine.)



Do You Have a Flag?



Supermarkets and Trolleys



Late Night Petrol Station Shopping



The World of Technology



British Cinema vs US Cinema



There are loads more at YouTube, all by the excellent Thorn 2000. And yes, they're all over a year old, and possibly you all know about them already. But hey.
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Monday 13 July 2009

Next Time, The Winner Could Be: You

We’re going to spend too much time this week playing this:



(How we did - Q1: Wrong, Q2: Right, Q3: Realised we’d pressed the wrong button just after selecting ‘A’. We’ve got better at it since.)

1 vs 100 on Xbox Live. Massively multiplayer online quizzing fest, with UK-only and Europe-only flavours. It’s free to play if you’ve got an Xbox Live Gold account, and you can win prizes along the lines of Xbox Live Points, XBLA games (of Microsoft’s choosing, annoyingly) and if you’re really, really good at it – seriously, must-be-cheating-or-a-robot surely properly good – a car. There are even themed ‘matches’, like Extra Hard (which we scraped 59% at), Trivia (around 70%, we think) and Football (hasn’t happened yet, but we confidently predict at least 98%),

It’s really rather good, and hopefully all the creases will be ironed out later on. Such as?

  • - Not giving you a rundown of your performance at the end of the quiz
  • - Not allowing you to see a list of your previous scores, even though they are recorded to get your lifetime score
  • - Only putting you in a group with people on your friends list if you’re really lucky, and then probably only one of them
  • - Not telling you your overall rank
  • - Stupid, clearly wrong multiple choice options (genuine example: “Which member of the Monty Python team played the King in the Shrek movies? John Cheese, John Cleese, or John Squeeze?”)

If you see BrokenTV on there (that’s our gamertag, not just us talking in the third person due to an increasingly tired running joke), do say hello. Or indeed, add us to your friends list, as long as you don’t expect us to play Left 4 Dead or anything. We’re quizzers, not fighters..

Earlier this evening, the random-groups-of-four-o-mizer has put us up against Brig of the spiffing Bother’s Bar for a couple of games. Aggregate score of what we’ve decided to call The Grand 1vs100 Xbox Live TV Blog Classic: Bother’s Bar – 1, BrokenTV – 1. Will 1 vs 100 give us the chance to claim the overall (imaginary) crown? Keep tuned to this station.

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Sunday 12 July 2009

KNEEL BEFORE 4OD

Well, you try coming up with a workable pun from the name of Channel Four’s streaming video service. We haven’t even seen Superman II in about fifteen years, we’re taking that reference from the kitchen advert in Newstopia. ANYWAY, much of Channel Four’s archive programming is now available in streaming form, without the need to install a really annoying custom app, or pay for stuff. Here are some of the brilliant things we’ve noticed so far, with links to them. Sorry non-UK people, you may not be able to see the shows in question. Unless you’re adept at using proxy servers.

 

“You’re so goddamn dopey.” (The Adam & Joe Show)

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The Adam & Joe Show, in full. A delight to see again after the compilation VHS and DVD releases. Still hugely enjoyable too, apart from the ‘People Place’ bits in the final series which dragged on a bit. If only Channel Four’s Friday night output could be anywhere near as great as this nowadays.

Series One | Series Two | Series Three | Series Four

 

“Right, we’ve proven that you’re not the television.” (Absolutely)

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This hugely underrated sketch show has recently been made available on DVD, and if you’ve an ounce of integrity in your body you’ll either already own it, or have stopped reading this sentence to go and buy it from Play.com. If you’re not already aware of the show, 4OD give all of it away, for free. If only Channel Four’s Friday night output could be anywhere near as great as this nowadays.

Series One | Series Two | Series Three | Series Four

 

“Ladies and Germany.” (Vic Reeves Big Night Out)

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Groundbreaking comedy, of course. Commendably, 4OD include the New Year’s Eve special, which was missing from the Big Night Out DVD. It doesn’t seem to include the pop-up Channel Four clock that tells everyone when it’s actually midnight, as – despite the show being on air during the transition from 31/12/1990 to 1/1/1991, it was pre-recorded. We’re not even going to get sniffy about the New Year’s Eve show being incorrectly listed as “Series 2, Episode 9”, when it actually arrived between series’ one and two. If only Channel Four’s Friday night output could be anywhere near as great as this nowadays.

Series One | Series Two

 

“Japanese Businessman Finds Golf Course in Boot of Car” (Paul Merton: The Series)

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While it may have been shown at 11pm on Friday nights, most of this wonderful sketch show would have been equally at home amongst the likes of Marty Feldman at a more reasonable hour during the1970s. That’s not to put the show down, but rather a mark of how good it is, as fresh viewings of the show on 4OD prove. If only Channel Four’s Friday night output could be anywhere near as great as this nowadays.

Series One | Series Two

 

“Now You’ve Given Me That Firm But Friendly Clip ‘Round Me Lug ‘Ole, I’m A Completely Reformed Character“ (Norbert Smith, A Life)

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Maybe this is the nicest find of them all. Unavailable on DVD and not released on VHS since 1991, this one-off show saw Harry Enfield doing everything he does best, playing an elderly actor looking back over his career with the help of Melvyn Bragg. It takes in near-perfect parodies of more genres than you could shake Leslie Halliwell at, detailed in this splendid Wikipedia entry. If only Channel Four’s Friday night output could be anywhere near as great as this nowadays. And yes, we’ve checked, it went out on Friday 3rd November 1989. Pity, we were hoping to go out on a deflation gag.

“Yes, the doctor told me I had to avoid all beers, wines and spirits. Sherry?”

 

Many, many Channel Four shows still are missing, though. Possibly due to the fact that loads of C4 output over the years have been through production companies that don’t exist in the same forms any more, meaning that broadcast-quality copies of some of these may not even exist any more. Anyway, here’s a quick wishlist:

The Weekenders: Vic and Bob go off in this Bunch Of Five pilot show. Much better than Catterick turned out to be.

Mr Don and Mr George: Lovely Absolutely spin-off from Docherty and Hunter. “I’m a butler. This is my… buttling bag.”

Arthur and Phil Go Off: Arthur Smith and Phil Nice wax comical in a series of travelogues, including a journey in search of the end of the M1.

Packet Of Three / Packing Them In: Early stand-up showcase, based loosely around the premise of a theatre-based sitcom. Essentially The Muppet Show with less felt and more cock jokes. First series starred Henry Normal, Jenny Eclair and Frank Skinner, the second series with Kevin Eldon and Roger Mann replacing Henry Normal. All a bit uneven, but we’ll like to see it again.

The Management: Proof that Hale & Pace were once good.

Viva Cabaret: Alternative cabaret show that we really liked.

Saturday Zoo: Ill-judged but interesting attempt to remake The Steve Allen Show, with added swearing. Hosted by Jonathan Ross and a series of guest presenters, and featured Steve Coogan’s Paul and Pauline Carr.

The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller: The duo’s attempt to make it big in the UK, including guest appearances from John Cleese, Alexei Sayle, Christopher Reeve and Stephen “No, I want my watch, not that piece of Japanese… shit” Fry. We don’t think this has ever been repeated, mores the pity.

The Groovy Fellas: Jools Holland (as Jools Holland) and Roland Rivron (as a nude alien) travel around Britain and get into scrapes.

Dick Spanner P.I.: Moderately disturbing but relentlessly entertaining animated Network 7 spin-off.

Network 7: Hey, why not?

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Friday 10 July 2009

Yes, We (s)Can Part II: "The New Richard Digance"

Our trawl through the big plastic tub of 90s ephemera continues with a few choice cuts from the criminally not-quite-popular-enough-to-be-commercially-viable TV magazine The Box.



We've mentioned that magazine before on here, but as the images from that earlier update don't work any more, here they are again. Also, stick around for the greatest pop video about carrots you're likely to experience all week.



First up, it's an early meeting with Bill Bailey. Could he really be the next Richard Digance?



From the same "going to be big soon, just you wait" section, a meeting with Jon Stewart, "the next Jonathan Ross". We really, really want to see Stewart's BBC Two show "Where's Elvis This Week?" again. Come on, the BitTorrent community. You give us Eurovision 1981 when you could be giving us that? C'mooooon.



Next, an interview with imperial phase Jerry Seinfeld, back in the days when it was one of Sky One's big hitters and even BBC Two gave it the occasional run-out before midnight.

Right, time for some music. Courtesy of the ace MonicaBambiKatz, here's a song about the versatility of carrots. Really quite remarkable.



Is it meant to be a Tim & Eric-style joke? Is it on the level? It seems to be part of a longer promotional video for carrots - is the remainder of that online anywhere? The intriguingly named everythingisiterrible.com website doesn't actually seem to exist, so we may never show. Bah.

[edit] Ah, that link on the YouTube page for Carrot Highway was wrong. Here's the proper link. It seems pretty damn good, too. Maybe we should just remove the references to it, and then nick all their jokes. Hmm.
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Tuesday 7 July 2009

Yes, We (s)Can.

More jpegged gems from the archive, this time from the first issue of short-lived Comedy Review magazine. All from March 1996.

[Update: Picture hosting now moved to xs.to, hopefully removing the chance of images sometimes redirecting to porn sites instead. Erm, sorry about that. ImageVenue clearly sucks ass. On a live-streaming ass-sucking website.]



Some guys called 'Matt Lucas' and 'David Walliams'. They sure seem like quite an inventive duo. Not for them the tedium of relentlessly trotting out the same five tired half-jokes on... er, oh.



Richard Herring's photo tour of his home town, Cheddar. That's more like it. Sorry about the quality of some of these scans. We don't want to bugger up our magazine by forcing it flat onto the scanner too hard, you see.



A reprint of a classic Bill Hicks interview. Also includes a transcript of his banned Letterman appearance. If Comedy Review was published nowadays, there'd probably be an episode guide of "forgotten gem Meet Ricky Gervais" or something, where they try to pretend it was anything other than terrible.



A couple of shows called Sinfeild and Father Fred, or something.



A great big post-Bruges Stephen Fry interview. Well worth a gander.



Lastly, the excellent Peter Baynham column, the thing we miss most about Comedy Review. Here, Peter attacks lazy, generic comedy. Now, admittedly, it didn't have much of an impact (c.f. BBC Three) but a nice piece nonetheless.
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Monday 6 July 2009

The Michael McIntyre Appeal 2009

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"Hey! Y'know when you're not wearing a watch, and someone asks you the time, and you look where your watch would be!!!? Eh!!!? Don't we all just do that!!!?" NO, WE HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER DO THAT. WE KNOW WHEN WE ARE AND WHEN WE ARE NOT WEARING A WATCH, AND NO-ONE EVER ASKS US WHAT THE TIME IS, THEY CAN JUST LOOK AT THEIR MOBILE PHONE IF THEY DON'T HAVE A WATCH THEMSELVES. Interestingly however, when we aren’t wearing a watch, we can see where we've had the words "Michael McIntyre is an exceptionally unfunny human being" tattooed on our wrists .

Michael McIntyre is currently the 'darling' of BBC One's comedy output. While he may be an unexceptional stand-up comedian, he's doing very well for himself, what with his prime-time Saturday night comedy vehicle, and him appearing on Top Gear earlier tonight. While Channel Four have got their own pet comedian – Jimmy Carr – BBC One have adopted McIntyre as their own Official Jester to the Nation. You might snicker at the concept, but this time next year we’ll all be sat in front of Michael McIntyre’s House Party, and who’ll be laughing then?

No-one. No-one will be laughing. No, we don’t care that we’ve borrowed that gag from Bob Monkhouse.

If there’s anything positive to say about this, it’s probably that McIntyre is an inspiration to all the sub-par gagsmiths out there peddling routines about the fundamental differences between men and women, those infernal ‘mobile’ ‘phones’ and hey! What would it be like if Gordon Brown got stoned, eh? All those open mic night boo-magnets could actually make it big after all, and better yet, they won’t even have to improve their material. All they need to do is concentrate on not being threatening to Marie Clare readers, and pulling a smug face like a toddler who’d just made potty on their own for the first time after every punchline, and a spot next to Jason Manford on Eight Out Of Ten Cats is in the bag!

In reality though, McIntyre’s not going to go away. And, if he’s not going to bugger off of our screens any time soon, well, we’ll just have to try and make him funny. So, how do we propose to achieve this form of light-ent alchemy? Craig Ferguson may have the answer.

Throughout the 1980s, Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson was moderately well-known, but never really made it to Division One (it being the 1980s, and the Premiership not having been invented yet), despite there being many more TV opportunities for new comedians at the time. You could probably argue that performing under the stage name Bing Hitler probably had a lot to do with that, but hey, that’s what early-era Channel Four was for.

Instead, he made do with the occasional guest appearance, in shows like Red Dwarf (as Lister’s confidence made flesh), Chelmsford 123 and festive Meldrum epic One Foot In The Algarve. At one point, he landed a broadcast pilot for ITV, with a single episode of The Craig Ferguson Show going out in the Spitting Image/Hot Metal/Hale & Pace Sunday night pre-Bragg slot. Despite input from Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and Helen Atkinson-Wood, the show wasn’t picked up for a series, which is fairly damning given Hale & Pace were given ten series (10!) in the same slot.

Ferguson did land a full series on BBC2 in 1993, called The Ferguson Theory. Despite imdb claiming two series existed, we’re fairly sure it only lasted for one, and that we only managed to catch the last episode of it. If it’s the show we’re thinking of, it ended with a musical montage of clips, followed by the exchange “That’s your party tape?” “Aye. The party’s crap.” We may be wrong, there.

In 1994, Ferguson moved to the USA, taking in a few small parts in sitcoms before landing a key role in what we’ll forever refer to as The Criminally Underrated Drew Carey Show. Despite putting on what he gleefully admits to being a terrible English accent throughout much of the shows eight seasons, he was a hit, and was soon a minor darling of the talk show circuit, occasionally standing in as guest host (for Craig Kilborn) on post-Letterman jabberfest The Late Late Show.

In December 2004, Ferguson became the full-time host of The Late Late Show, replacing a Hollywood bound Kilborn. And do you know what? He’s bloody good at it. The Late Late Show is (we think) the only one of the big US chatshows not to make it to air over here (with Leno and Carson appearing on CNBC, and Letterman on whichever channel’s turn it is to try and make him popular over here), so it’s not easy to see Ferguson at his best. However, thanks to YouTube we can check out how Craig Ferguson will happily open shows by miming to They Might Be Giants records, by calling non-voters morons, or (and this is an important bit) by performing one of the greatest opening monologues ever:

 

That embedded video right there is the reason we’ve got a huge amount of time for Craig Ferguson. That and the fact he still avoids pronouncing his first name as “Creg” to try and fit in with the US audience (seriously, we’d have expected it to be one of the conditions of his US citizenship). So, compare Michael McIntyre's stand-up to, say, Craig Ferguson's. Now, Ferguson has gone through a history of cocaine, heroine and alcohol abuse, followed by a planned suicide attempt and eventually rehabilitation. He dips into his past experiences when he goes into his routines, and it undoubtedly make a huge difference to the quality of his act.

So: here’s the plan. Turn Michael McIntyre into an addict. And, of course, then into rehab, and then back onto our screens. With him being able to dip into his own harrowing experiences, he’ll have a lot more source material to put through his “unique” comedic filter. No more three minute bits about how you can never find a biro that works when you need to write down a phone number, because he’s too busy telling the story of the time he shared a needle with an ex-lapdancer from Swansea.

Reckon it’ll work? We’re saying: it’s worth a try. Here’s our totaliser:

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As you can see, we’re already off to a cracking start, with enough raised to get him a packet of Lemsip. Keep an eye out for our special BrokenTV Bring & Buy sales, where you can bring in your old Jim Davidson’s Snooker Balls-Ups and Chubby Brown videos for us to sell. With luck on our side, we could be up to Wkd Blue by the end of the month!

POSTSCRIPT.

When Graham Norton dies and arrives at the pearly gates, St Peter will look him up (in his Big Book O'Lifetimes) and say "Oh dear. Oh deary dear. Look at your life’s work, Mr Norton. Years upon years of sniggering at strange American people’s homepages whilst sitting next to ‘cult’ celebrities on television, and Totally Saturday was absolutely inexcusable... BUT, you did do that One Foot In The Grave quip at the Baftas, so... yeah, fair enough. In you go."

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Sunday 5 July 2009

"Bob's deodorant smells of suet." (Some old scanned articles.)

We haven't done this for a while. Here are a few scanned articles from Loaded circa 1997. Despite the magazine currently being "Soft Pornography-Lite For People Too Scared To Actually Buy Actual Pornography", it used to be a worthwhile read. Click the images for larger versions.



Soccer AM, from when it was any good. Note that Tim Lovejoy didn't seem to know much about the football club he claims to love, even then.



Vic and Bob and brass, promoting their disappointing Viz Top Tips video.



A look at Peter Bagge's 'Hate' comic, along with an interview.



Sir Uncle Clive, not really saying much in a short interview.



Frank Skinner on 'be'ing Elvis.
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