Category: British
-

Oh What The Hell
Some day there will be complete archive of all the corporate and training videos that Video Arts ever made. The company was co-founded by John Cleese, and their output features almost every comedy actor and comedian you might think of. One such title is Oh What The Hell, from 1984, which teaches the dangers of…
-

Girls On Top
As early as 1985, Jennifer Saunders was starring in not one, but two prime time sitcoms on the main channels. On BBC One, she played multiple characters in Ben Elton’s Happy Families, and during the same few weeks, she was over on ITV in Girls On Top. Here’s Tony Pratt’s patronising preview write up in…
-

Ade’s Lego Voices
Here’s a lovely advert from 1985, featuring the voice skills of Adrian Edmondson, as he plays with a Lego Castle set. I particularly like his rather accurate impression of Kevin Turvey at the end.
-

Alexei Sayle Was Nearly In A Kick Up The Eighties
In his book Rik Mayall: Bigger Than Hitler Better Than Christ, Rik tells the rather remarkable story of how he came up with the character of Kevin Turvey. Someone had asked me to an audition … I didn’t realise that you were supposed to have prepared something to perform so they could see if you…
-

Loadsaharry
Where did Harry Enfield come from? By that I mean, he mostly just seemed to arrive in the public conciousness in 1986, fully-formed, seemingly out of nowhere. He began writing gags for Week Ending, and moved to Spitting Image in 1985, where he was also doing voices. He was an impressionist on the live circuit,…








