I just stumbled across this sketch from the 2003 Comic Relief, and it’s a work of wonder.
You should recognise every single face in it, though at the time of broadcast, that may not have been the case.
That’s quite a lineup. Me and Kevin Cecil were slightly involved in it – it was very much Peter’s baby, but we were asked to spend a couple of hours throwing in a few extra ideas. Hard to be precise which ones 10 years on, but I’m pretty certain we wrote a lot of the bad tempered exchanges between Martin Freeman’s Johnny Rotten and Simon Pegg’s Freddie Starr.
It feels like a long time ago now for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this cast wasn’t all that famous when this was broadcast. Little Britain wouldn’t appear on the TV until later in 2003. Shaun of the Dead premiered in 2004. That’s why this stellar lineup was tucked away quite late in the evening of Red Nose Day. And because it was quite late, it was allowed to be quite weird. The words “yellow reggae” cracked me up at the time, and still make me laugh now.
Andy Riley
Andy Riley’s whole blog about it is well worth a read here.
I like the myriad of different references, from Rotten’s famous interview quotes, to Frost’s Rushden impression. It’s a little gem of a sketch, in the spirit of Look Around You, with all of that show’s attention to detail.
