Category: British

  • Oh What The Hell
    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
    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
    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
    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
    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,…

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  • Nineteen 90s Shows
    Nineteen 90s Shows

    I wrote another book about television. I like television. I like television so much that the first thing I modelled and printed on my new 3d printer was this … I made some more after that too. There’s a few more, including TVS, ATV, and HTV, but I bought you here to talk about my…

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  • Re-Casting Keanu
    Re-Casting Keanu

    Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him eight years older than Clive Dunn was when he was first cast in Dad’s Army. But don’t panic, Clive Dunn was always playing much older characters than his own age. Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him seven years older than Stephanie Cole was when she was first…

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