Category: British
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The Brit Pack
It’s always fun watching local papers find a way to make stories about less local things. Take this article for example, from the Birmingham Sunday Mercury on 2nd June 1991. It’s ostensibly about some local actors who have been making Hollywood films, including Rik Mayall and Lenny Henry. There’s a brief mention that Ben Elton…
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They Watched Ghostwatch
The myths that have grown up around Ghostwatch speak both to the excellent execution of the show, as well as to word of mouth and folk memory. So I thought I’d have a quick, cursory look at the newspaper coverage that was being printed at the time. The show was clearly part of the Screen…
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Ben Elton Live
Just a few weeks after the Daily Mirror had declared Ben Elton a Not in its daft Hot Or Not column, they turned to the man and commissioned him to write a weekly column for the paper. Ben took them up on their offer, and this is the first of those columns, which appeared on…
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Rik Tells A Joke In Poor Taste
Here’s a little slice of comedy history lost to time. It’s 1990, and Rik Mayall’s winter tour with Andy De La Tour in 1989 has now spilled over into the new year. Here’s how tickets were being sold in the local press, in this instance the Bracknell Times on Thursday 18th January. As the winter…
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The Common Pursuit
Rik Mayall and Stephen Fry, alongside John Sessions and John Gordon Sinclair, all starred in the revival of Simon Gray’s play The Common Pursuit. It was previewed in Watford in March of 1988, before it moved to the Phoenix in the West End in April. Here’s the cast on Wogan, on the 28th March. And…
