Abigoliah: Welcome to All British Comedy Explained, a podcast where me and you, dear listener, learn about the history of the great comedies of the UK from days gone by. I am Abigoliah, and the person leading us through this adventure is Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there. Good to be back.
Abigoliah: It’s good to be back. So what are we gonna watch today?
Tom: We’re gonna watch a show called The Day Today.
Abigoliah: Okay. I have no knowledge of this other than one JPEG that you and I have passed back and forth for social media. Is it a fake news channel?
Tom: That’s a pretty good way of describing it.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So this is a spoof, a parody, which is not something we’ve encountered up till now.
Abigoliah: Okay, we’ve done sketch, we’ve done sitcoms. This is our first parody. Would we call The Office a parody?
Tom: It’s a mockumentary, so it has that element to it. But with The Office, the point is the life of David Brent and the other people in the office, and this is much more about what a news show looks like and why that’s ridiculous.
Abigoliah: Okay, tell me everything. I already have questions, but just start.
Tom: So first of all, the year: it’s early 1994. These are going out on BBC Two. 1994 is the year that Schindler’s List won Best Picture at the Oscars.
Abigoliah: So a great year for comedy.
Tom: It’s the year Finland joined the European Union. It’s the year the Channel Tunnel was opened and Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa.
Abigoliah: Okay. Big year.
Tom: That’s your context. I’m actually going to tell this story a little bit differently.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Because this is personal to me.
Abigoliah: Are you gonna pretend to be a newsreader? Do you want to hold this?
Tom: No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. Fun idea, but no. I actually told part of this story in our episode zero, which I hadn’t been planning to do, but here’s the rest of it.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So from 1970 to 1998, BBC Radio 4 aired a topical comedy programme called Weekending, and it ran about 40 weeks of the year. Everything in the show was written and recorded in the week of its transmission.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And it became a proving ground for new comedy writers, due at least in part to its open-door submission policy. So literally anybody could send the Weekending office a script knowing that it would be read, and if it was any good, it would get on the air and you would get paid.
Abigoliah: Oh, cool. So was Weekending like – was it basically all pilots, or no?
Tom: It was sketches.
Abigoliah: Oh.
Tom: Topical sketches about the week’s news.
Abigoliah: Oh, so it would be little one-liners, a little like comedy news headlines, and the rest of it would be comedy sketches?
Tom: And there’d be a small team, usually of four comedian impressionist actors, and then a long, long list of names of people who’d written sketches.
Abigoliah: So was the cast a core cast, though?
Tom: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And obviously over the 30-odd years that the show ran, that core cast changed. But some of them went on to big things. David Jason was in that cast, for example. He became the lead of Only Fools and Horses, which we’re definitely going to watch at some point. So I was a university student and I was aware of the reputation of this show. Lots of writers got their start there, including Andy Hamilton, Harry Hill, Newman and Baddiel, Stewart Lee, Al Murray. And I was very much aware of this, and I also knew if you sent material in and it got on the air on a regular basis, you might get asked to join the Wednesday meeting. And if you were really lucky, you got to join the even more prestigious Tuesday meeting because you’d be given a commission, which meant you were guaranteed to get paid for, let’s say, three minutes, even if you got nothing on the air.
Abigoliah: Oh, I think I might – I hope I know where this is going. Keep talking, Tom.
Tom: So I formed this little comedy group at university. We started sending material in, and over the course of about a year, as this quartet of writers, we became commissioned writers for BBC Radio 4’s Weekending.
Abigoliah: Congratulations.
Tom: So we were literally driving down – well, up – from Southampton to London and staying overnight in order to go to these comedy meetings.
Abigoliah: So you got into the Wednesday meetings?
Tom: Yeah, we got into the Tuesday meeting eventually.
Abigoliah: And the Tuesday meeting – was this your first professional writing job, by the way? Tom and I don’t talk too much about what we do now, but Tom is like a prolific comedy writer and writer of books, and you should go look at all the things he’s made. He’s written plays. Yes. Oh, this is amazing.
Tom: All the money we earned, we put towards an Edinburgh Fringe show, which ran for two weeks in 1992 and must have been seen by 40 people.
Abigoliah: As all Edinburgh shows are.
Tom: And we carried on writing. But not long after that, that group broke up, not least because we graduated and two of us didn’t. So that immediately created a schism. But I vividly recall one of the other three sitting us all down to listen to this amazing new radio comedy show called On the Hour.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Which is not only wildly funny with these amazing creative turns of phrase, brilliant characters, but in one episode they broadcast an absolutely savage takedown of Weekending. We looked at each other dismayed because in that instant we suddenly and horrifyingly knew we weren’t the future of British comedy. They were.
Abigoliah: So that’s when the band broke up?
Tom: Not quite. But it was a kind of indication that real comedy genius comes along infrequently. And that’s what we were listening to. So this was the first collaboration between Armando Iannucci, who I’ve mentioned a couple of times, and Chris Morris. Have you heard of Chris Morris?
Abigoliah: I mean, the name’s familiar, but Morris is just a name, isn’t it, that, you know – real quick, just a question about your own history. Your writing partners from those days, are they still writing?
Tom: I think that Nick is doing mainly corporate comedy. Aled got a job as a BBC radio producer, which we’ll come on to talk about next. And Rob, I don’t think… he’s still in a band. He would play music in our sketches. But I don’t think he does comedy anymore. I’m not really in touch with any of them. If you’re listening, boys – hey. So let’s just talk briefly about what BBC Radio Light Entertainment looked like and had looked like for many years. By the time we got there, there would be something like half a dozen producers employed full time, and each of them would be trying to get their own shows off the ground. But there were shows like Weekending, which you just had to do when it was your turn.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: And a lot–
Abigoliah: The Live at the Apollo of its day.
Tom: A lot of the producers weren’t that interested in Weekending, and it was like, “Oh, I have to do this in order to keep getting my pay cheque. We churn it out, and then I get to hand it on to the next person, and I go back to trying to get my pet project off the ground.” When we started coming to those regular meetings, we had just missed Armando Iannucci. Okay, but people would talk about how hard he worked to make this show that nobody cared about as good as it could possibly be, keeping people back late, way into the night, writing and rewriting and honing because he just wanted anything with his name on it to be as good as it could possibly be.
Abigoliah: So you’ve talked in previous episodes about amazing producers who pulled these shows out and got them on air, but we never have really talked about, like, the role of a producer. So talking about Armando – like, what was he doing that made him such a prolific producer? He was making people stay late…?
Tom: Yeah. He just had high standards. Yeah. So we use the word producer to cover multiple different roles. But the two key things that a producer does is: they are the artistic captain of the ship. They may or may not be doing a lot of the actual writing, but they are the shot-caller or the tastemaker. So everyone else is feeding ideas in, and the producer is the one who gets to say that idea gets into the show, and that idea doesn’t fit or isn’t good. And then, of course, the producer is also the one who gets it made. So after the writers have gone home, the producer works with the actors. After the actors have gone home, the producer works with the editors, sound mixers, other things besides in the TV world, and so on.
Abigoliah: Almost like a – what you’re describing to me sounds like what I think a director does.
Tom: So again, in TV, it’s often the case that–
Abigoliah: Or the showrunner.
Tom: Yeah, the director is responsible for getting this episode filmed, but the showrunner/producer/head writer is the one with the artistic vision. Yeah. And that’s – but sometimes with BBC sitcoms, the role is combined. So on Victoria Wood As Seen on TV, Geoff Posner was both director and producer, so he would have had all of those roles. He’s the one on the floor. He’s the one saying, “This camera will take this shot from this angle and then cut to this camera over here.” And he’s the one saying, “Vic, we need another song to go in here,” or “Let’s put that later in the schedule, in the running order.”
Abigoliah: For those of you listening, we had Geoff Posner on a very special episode where we talked to him about his role as a producer. So if you’d like to know more, check out that episode. It’s somewhere in your feed.
Tom: Now, Chris Morris, on the other hand – he was lucky to get a job on BBC radio at all. He was known as a maverick. He had been working on radio for a long time, but he would, for example, prank celebrities and then cut together the recordings – often, frankly, libellous recordings – for his local radio shows. He was suspended from BBC Radio 1 for ringing up public figures and asking them, “How would you react to the news of the death of Michael Heseltine?” Michael Heseltine was a prominent member of the Tory cabinet. But how would you react? So, in other words, putting the idea into their head that he’s died without ever actually saying that.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: Yeah. Yes.
Abigoliah: So he’s the Ashton Kutcher of his day. Just punking people right and left, punking celebrities.
Tom: So they came together and they assembled a really amazing team of writers and writer-performers. Writers included Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. But in a very complicated row, they fell out and all of their material was excised from the cassette tape releases of On the Hour.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: There’s a much longer version of that story, which I don’t think we have time for here, and also it’s widely disputed, but it seems as if several people didn’t give a very good account of themselves.
Abigoliah: Well, I know Richard. Let’s get him on the podcast and have a tell-all.
Tom: Okay.
Abigoliah: He won’t do that. He won’t do that. And we won’t have him do that.
Tom: Almost certainly not. The performing team was Chris Morris himself, who played the kind of anchor, plus Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Doon Mackichan, Patrick Marber and David Schneider. And they would also all improvise around the script. So a lot of material was created through improvisation. And the show, as we said, is a parody of news programmes with financial updates and weather reports and also some longer items like the behind-the-scenes on Weekending – or as the parody version was called, Thank God It’s Satire Day.
And the pace was just relentless and the audio texture was incredibly detailed. It ran for two series of six episodes each, and was required listening for young comedy fans such as 19-year-old Tom Salinsky. So a TV version seemed like the obvious next step. And the detailed radio soundscape was augmented now with brilliantly ridiculous visuals. Now, very few actual news presenters or even celebrities were parodied or impersonated, but it was kind of the shape of news and current affairs programmes that was being attacked and satirized, not the actual specific people involved. So The Day Today is very similar to On the Hour.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Much of the same people in front of the cameras. Lee and Herring replaced by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews on the writing side. We may meet them again further down the line. And even basically taking some favourite radio sketches and recreating them for the TV. But despite decent ratings and positive reviews, it did not come back for a second series. Now, I don’t think this is either because they said, “We’re doing six and that’s enough,” or because they were cancelled. I think it was partly because everybody in the team was going on to bigger and better things. And I also think they might have thought, after having done 12 On the Hours and six The Day Todays, they’d kind of mined that for as much as they could get out of it. But there are several things that came out of The Day Today slash On the Hour, so we’ll talk about afterwards.
Abigoliah: The Day Today ran for just six episodes?
Tom: Six episodes.
Abigoliah: So as I understand it, the writers-producers felt like they had done everything they could with this genre. So again, it’s the artist calling the shots of when it ends, not the channel.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Not the broadcaster.
Tom: I don’t know if the BBC was ever thrilled with it, if I’m absolutely honest. But they got more material out of the same team. And then, as we’ll come on to talk about, Chris Morris did a very similar show that was more like current affairs than news for Channel 4 called Brass Eye.
Abigoliah: I’ve seen Brass Eye.
Tom: You have seen Brass Eye?
Abigoliah: I have seen Brass Eye. Okay.
Tom: Oh, well, that’s a very clear way in to The Day Today. The Day Today is the precursor of Brass Eye. What have you seen of Brass Eye?
Abigoliah: So long ago. But it’s actually one of the few things that my partner Tom showed me of comedy. And I remember, like many things, I was like, “Wait, so, is it real or is it fake?”
Tom: That’s a question that’s going to come up on The Day Today as well. But similarly to what we were talking about with the way that people tuned into The Office and were confused, people would tune into it, especially On the Hour on the radio, and be confused. There’s a famous sketch they did about how one of the stations on the London Underground has slipped its moorings and slid round to the next stop, and people were genuinely ringing up Transport for London, saying, “What is happening on the Underground?”
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: With Brass Eye it was even worse. And we might cover Brass Eye at some point, or we might not. But there’s a famous episode of Brass Eye about a made-up drug called Cake.
Abigoliah: That’s the one. Okay. Now that you say that, that’s the one.
Tom: That questions were asked in the House of Commons about this quote-unquote made-up drug.
Abigoliah: Oh, that’s so funny.
Tom: That politician had a hard time living that down.
Abigoliah: Yeah, but if that had happened today, he would be Prime Minister.
Tom: Almost certainly.
Abigoliah: All right. I’m excited to see what this is. Is it time – time to go watch, or we have more?
Tom: I think it might be, yeah. So if you’ve seen Brass Eye, you’ve got some idea of the tone. But again, in ’94, particularly if you hadn’t heard On the Hour – and obviously things on radio get many fewer people listening than TV shows get people watching – it was very hard to be prepared for this. It was a genuinely brand new comic voice.
Abigoliah: Okay. All right, let’s check this out.
Tom: Let’s give it a watch.
Abigoliah: All right.
Tom: That was The Day Today. Abigoliah Schamaun speaks now.
Abigoliah: I loved that. I can’t believe they only made six episodes.
Tom: Like I said, there’s 12 more audio versions and there’s some overlap of material. Yeah, but it’s one of those occasions where I think the audio version is the more innovative. It all starts there. And if you’ve already heard the audio version, maybe you’d feel like the video version is going over some of the same ground. But the video version is better because there’s all sorts of jokes they can do with old footage, with those insane graphics, and a lot of it is just the little looks – the little kind of weird micro-expressions that some of the presenters will do, especially Chris Morris himself.
Abigoliah: First of all, I wrote down, “What’s real and what’s not?” Because they had so much, like, B-roll and background footage that I was like, how did they – how did they get this? How are they allowed to use that? I mean, there’s just one where it was the footballer John Fashanu.
Tom: Fashanu?
Abigoliah: Yes, Fashanu. And it was just clips of him over and over again. And I was like, are they allowed to do this?
Tom: And this is one of advantages, I think, of being the BBC, that they’ll have access to this huge library of pre-cleared footage, and they’ll just be able to do whatever they want with it.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I guess.
Tom: And this was pioneered by Not the Nine O’Clock News – or maybe not completely pioneered, but they were one of the first to take bits of old footage out of context and use it to make jokes. But they weren’t integrating it into this patchwork where, as you say, you can never be sure what is real, what’s real out of context, what’s been made to look real, what clearly isn’t real. It all just melds into this sea of visual overload.
Abigoliah: Well, and like you were saying, like the man-on-the-street stuff were actual people.
Tom: I’m pretty sure. Yes.
Abigoliah: So when they had that MP in that – he – what’s his name – walked off. Yes. Set up. I was like, is that a real MP? And you were like, no.
Tom: I actually know who that actor is because I’ve seen him in other stuff.
Abigoliah: Okay. ’Cause I was like, are you sure that’s not a real…?
Tom: He’s called Harry Towb. I know exactly who that is. But that’s – you know, I’m sure the joke isn’t lost on you, but you’ve had before occasions where particularly politicians have walked out of interviews. And there was a very, very famous example of that in the early 80s when the Defence Secretary, John Nott, walked out of an interview. And that action of kind of taking the mic off and throwing it down. So reversing it and having it be the interviewer who walks off, leaving the politician stranded in the studio, which then gets dismantled around him, is a brilliant joke.
Abigoliah: I loved it. And also, I’ve got to say, the acting in this was fantastic.
Tom: You can see why everybody in the show has gone on to have huge careers, can’t you?
Abigoliah: I mean, to just play it so damn straight – like, no winking. I mean, it was just so good.
Tom: And even when he’s playing a complete grotesque, like Steve Coogan as the security guard at the swimming pool–
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: He never winks at the audience.
Abigoliah: No. When they’re in the office and they’re doing that workshop, and just like how straight they all play it – it was – I just – I thought it was great. Richard Branson was a real left turn.
Tom: Yeah. So that’s definitely fake because the dentist is John Thompson–
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Who is an actor and comedian. If you’ve ever seen The Fast Show, he’s one of that gang. And when Steve Coogan won the Perrier, it was a two-person show. So Coogan would appear as various characters – Paul Calf, Duncan Thickett, Alan Partridge. But to give him time to do costume changes, John Thompson would come in between as Bernard Righton.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Who was a take-off of Bernard Manning, but who would tell very “right-on” jokes. So it’d be things like, “Did you hear about this Jewish fella, this Pakistani man and this Muslim all went down the pub and had a lovely time. What a beautiful example of an integrated racial community.” Stuff like that.
Abigoliah: Okay. Did they have a lot of cameos like that where…?
Tom: Well, John Thompson would be at the beginning of his career.
Abigoliah: No, no, no, no, no. Like Richard Branson.
Tom: That’s the only one I can think of. But I didn’t review all six before watching this. The two bits I wanted to include were Steve Coogan as the pool attendant and one of the, I think, two or three appearances of Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan, who is one of my absolute favourites. He was the reporter who is verbally attacked by Chris Morris for getting his sums wrong.
Abigoliah: That was really fun. “Hold it up.”
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: “No, show it to me.”
Tom: “Hold it up and keep it up.”
Abigoliah: I think of all the stuff we’ve watched, that’s the one I’ve laughed out loud the most. And like I’ve said before, we record these kind of early in the day, so, like, you’re not in a laugh-out-loud mood all the time. And this one definitely made me laugh the hardest. I can’t believe they only made six because – I mean, of course this – I’ve only watched two, but I’m like, but there’s so much you could do with this. And so I can’t believe they stopped. Like, I want this show now. I think Britain would be better if we had a show like this exact show just now. Yes, because it’s all spoofing, like, the news of the day and stuff. I mean–
Tom: And so interesting question, because I talked at length about Weekending, which was a very specific satire show. That was its remit. This is more interested in satirising the idea of a news programme than any specific event. It doesn’t have a point of view in terms of politics. Is it satire? It’s satirical. Is it satire?
Abigoliah: Well–
Tom: It’s not the satire that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and co. were doing in Beyond the Fringe, for example.
Abigoliah: Right. Well, the one thing that British people like to tell me as an American comedian who lives in the UK is that Americans don’t understand satire or sarcasm. And we do. So I might be the wrong person to ask, but, like, I think it does satirise the news.
Tom: But it’s satirizing the idea of a news programme rather than, as I said, it doesn’t – it’s not taking a political stance. And when we get to Yes, Minister–
Abigoliah: And by the way, the stuff about the royal family is freaking amazing. Yeah. It’s just like–
Tom: You laughed a lot at the idea of the royal family culling 40 members of staff.
Abigoliah: Well, I think like a few years ago, though, they did, like, unceremoniously fire, like, loads of people who worked in the palace and it did make the news. And so in my head I was like, that’s not – that’s not untrue. But even like the fistfight with the Queen and John Major, and they’re like, “There she is getting ready to go on Number 10,” and it shows her in the royal carriage.
Tom: Yes. It’s just – there’s the Queen in a cart. They’re so, so good. And this is something where Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris’s sense of humour overlap. They’re so, so good at putting exactly the wrong word at the end of the sentence. Yeah, I can’t remember – it was at the end of that last one. “And so-and-so buried in cress.” Cress. So exactly the wrong word. Yeah. The word that you absolutely don’t expect and therefore it’s exactly the right word.
Abigoliah: It’s just – I thought it was so fun and I mean, do you think it’s satire?
Tom: I think it’s–
Abigoliah: Does satire have to be, like, satirising current events and politicians, or can satire be satirizing a structure that is like, such as news programmes?
Tom: I think satire implies a more strict point of view than this has. I think what this is saying is news programmes border on the ridiculous. Yeah. Wouldn’t it be fun if we pushed them a little bit further in that direction? Whereas I think The Thick of It or Yes, Minister do have a satirical point to make because they’re about the way in which the machinery of government functions or doesn’t, and in whose interest it functions. So that to me is more satirical. Well, I’m planning on showing you Yes, Minister next season.
Abigoliah: Okay. By the way, please like, subscribe, comment.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Keep us going. Yeah, yeah. I want to watch more of it. But you mentioned before we started that this is a hard one to find.
Tom: I think you can find some on YouTube.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I mean, there’s not much to find. I’ve already watched a third. A third of it.
Tom: Exactly. But then out of this come many other things, like Brass Eye, of which there are six plus one special. Okay. And then Alan Partridge. And shall I tell you a little bit more about what happened?
Abigoliah: Yeah. Tell me, tell me what happens.
Tom: Because this is, again, not one of those ones where I think you could predict.
Abigoliah: I do have a couple predictions.
Tom: Give me your predictions first, in that case.
Abigoliah: Okay. So, like many things that satirise the news, sometimes they get it right historically. So do they have – it seems like they always do something about the royal family.
Tom: Frequently. I wouldn’t say always, but–
Abigoliah: Okay, well, in a third of the episodes they do. Do they have something about Prince Andrew like having like a harem of women or anything like that?
Tom: I don’t remember Prince Andrew being all that interesting in the 90s. I’m trying to remember what Spitting Image was doing with him. I think he just – he was known as being a shagger and then went–
Abigoliah: Okay, maybe that’s too spot on.
Tom: Once he married Sarah Ferguson, it was sort of less interesting to portray him that way.
Abigoliah: Yeah. And then, okay, so maybe I’m wrong on that, especially if he was known as a shagger back then. Then it’s like – then you’re just saying – yeah. Like it’s ridiculous to think the Queen and John Major would get in a fistfight. It’s less ridiculous to think they’d cull–
Tom: There’s a famous episode which I nearly showed you, where not only has about half the episode devoted to war, it’s absolutely explicit that it’s Chris Morris as the anchor who has goaded the two nations into war.
Abigoliah: That’s amazing. So and then my other prediction is, if the weather is always presented in this weird, avant-garde way. So first we have the face paint, then we have the pinball machine. Does he do the weather as Pac-Man?
Tom: I don’t remember. I don’t think so. Oh, yes, you are right. I think that is in every episode. And yes, it’s always something visually bizarre.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Okay. All right. Those were my two predictions. Now tell me what – tell me what happened.
Tom: Everyone just went on to incredible things as a result of this. Most of all, Armando Iannucci. I think he is today one of the most powerful, influential, successful producers and writers. The Thick of It and Veep. As we discussed at the beginning of the season, he wrote and directed the film The Death of Stalin.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And the 2019 David Copperfield adaptation starring Dev Patel.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: He’s worked with Stewart Lee. He’s presented his own peculiar satire shows. So he’s also not afraid to be in front of the camera. And he partnered with Sean Foley to bring Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War comedy Dr Strangelove to the West End, starring Steve Coogan.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: I might save my views about that till another day.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: That’s the subject of another podcast altogether. David Schneider made a lot of film and TV appearances. Doon Mackichan was one third of the television sketch group Smack the Pony. Rebecca Front – oh, we just talked about this on the sofa – she was the lead in the comedy series Psychobitches, and she won a BAFTA for her performance in The Thick of It. Patrick Marber became a hugely successful playwright and theatre director.
Abigoliah: Which one was he?
Tom: So he is Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan. Okay. And he is the – in The Office – he’s the American coach. Yeah, yeah, he’s Chapman Baxter being executed.
Abigoliah: He – when he was dressed as the American coach he looked exactly like – and now I forget his name, but he’s on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Tom: Andy Samberg. Yes, he does look a bit like Andy Samberg.
Abigoliah: Andy Samberg.
Tom: Yeah, he’s got the same kind of jaw.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: He won an Olivier for his play Closer. He earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for the film Notes on a Scandal and a Tony.
Abigoliah: He wrote Notes on a Scandal.
Tom: He wrote the screenplay, and he won a Tony for directing Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt.
Abigoliah: Wow. He’s quite prolific.
Tom: He’s incredible. He really is. Chris Morris did Brass Eye, as we talked about. He wrote and directed his own feature film, Four Lions.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And he starred in the first series of The IT Crowd. And he also made his own bizarre sketch show, Jam, which is very disturbing.
Abigoliah: Like in a fun way or in a I-don’t-know-if-I-like-this way?
Tom: I don’t know if you like Jam. One sketch features, for example, a man who keeps climbing up a flight of stairs to throw himself out of a first-storey window, then going back again, and people begin to speculate that maybe he wanted to take his own life, but didn’t want to commit to throwing himself out of a 20th-storey window. So instead, he’s going to throw himself out of the first-storey window 20 times, and no one wants to intervene. But he just – eventually they have to help him up the stairs because he’s so bruised and battered and weakened.
Abigoliah: I like that idea. I like stuff like that. I don’t like really gross humour.
Tom: No, it’s not.
Abigoliah: Disturbed in, like, that sort of–
Tom: Way. Or the other one that springs to mind–
Abigoliah: That being said, there’s one show that is quite gross that I love, which is – I’m not telling you, because if we ever do a – if we ever do a Patreon and I get to show you a switcheroo, that’s the one that I’m not – you’re gonna be surprised.
Tom: The other Jam sketch I remember is the plumber who’s called to this woman’s home, and when he gets there she says, “Yeah, will you just go upstairs and look at the baby?” “I thought you said boiler.” “No, no, no, baby. He just stopped moving.” “But it’s all just pipes, isn’t it?” “I don’t know if I could.” “I’m sure you could have a look for £1,000 an hour.”
Abigoliah: I think I like this. Oh, okay. What’s it called? Jam.
Tom: Jam. The radio version was called Blue Jam, and there are two different versions: one which has got a very ambient soundtrack and one which dials that back a little bit. It’s all very kind of weird. But nobody did better out of The Day Today than Steve Coogan. Even aside from Alan Partridge, he’s had an astonishing career. He played Stan Laurel in Stan and Ollie. He played Jimmy Savile in a TV series called The Reckoning. He won six BAFTAs, including for writing the screenplay of Philomena, in which he starred opposite Judi Dench.
Abigoliah: Did I know he wrote Philomena? I must have known and forgotten. I’ve seen that. And he’s very–
Tom: Good. He’s played Alan Partridge for 25 years on TV, on podcasts, on the radio, in films. He is one of the most iconic comedy creations of my lifetime. And if we carry on doing this, I think we’ll see a bit more of him.
Abigoliah: I’ve seen The Trip. Yes. And that was my personal introduction to Steve Coogan. What I think is really special about him is he’s really, really famous for one character, Alan Partridge. Really famous. But he’s also gotten to do so many other cool things around it, where so many people who are really famous for one thing only ever have gotten to do that one thing. And maybe they do some other stuff, but it never gets big. Whereas he’s had a whole career plus an iconic role, and there’s not a lot of people who pull that off.
Tom: That’s a pretty, pretty nice way to live your life. Yeah. And I think – well, there was a time when he wasn’t doing Alan Partridge at all. There was a rights issue, which held things up for a while. And then when that was resolved – well, he did do a tour which I remember, I think, in the late 90s, don’t quote me on that. But he did a tour at one point called Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters. But he’s found two new writers, these two guys called Rob and Neil Gibbons.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Sent him an Alan Partridge spec script, and he’s written every Alan Partridge incarnation since then with them.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: For ten years, I think. So the recent series, which is available now on iPlayer, which is Alan Partridge looking into mental health – yeah, that was written by Steve Coogan and Rob and Neil Gibbons.
Abigoliah: Wow. And they just sent him blind a spec script?
Tom: And reignited his own enthusiasm for the character, apart from anything else. I remember seeing–
Abigoliah: Hey, kids, take big swings. Take big swings.
Tom: I saw an interview with Armando Iannucci, who said that he was getting fed up with Alan Partridge because he’d worked on those Alan Partridge sitcoms we touched on. And he said part of the problem is the way to write an Alan Partridge series is to sit in a room with Steve Coogan improvising as Alan Partridge, which effectively means sitting in a room for eight hours a day with Alan Partridge. And that’s kind of wearing. Yeah, that’s grating after a bit.
Abigoliah: I feel like for the first half hour you’d be like, this is fun. And then it’s like… by lunchtime…
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: You could come out of character and we could just talk. We could just talk structure. And then he stays in it the whole time.
Tom: And round about that same time that I saw Alexei Sayle’s stuff being recorded, I also saw one of the Alan Partridge chat shows being recorded.
Abigoliah: And what was that like?
Tom: Amazing, because they filmed for about an hour, and basically it was like being the audience for a chat show because they didn’t do any retakes. Steve Coogan never came out of character as Alan Partridge, and the whole thing was done pretty much seamlessly. Their only concession to the fact that it was being shot for TV was they shot more material than they needed. And so we saw a 31-minute version go out, but they shot for nearly an hour, and I think there might have been a couple of little pick-ups, but it was done seamlessly. It was very, very impressive. This was when I was a student, and going to see TV recordings is a cheap – for which read free – way of entertaining yourself for an evening.
Abigoliah: Yeah, but also, like, what a great way to entertain yourself because then you’re like, “Oh, you know, what did you do?” “I went to go see, like, icons make iconic television,” because it was free.
Tom: It’s a good deal.
Abigoliah: Yeah, because it was free. That’s – oh, wow. That’s really cool. I loved it.
Tom: So the shelf of fame is starting to get quite crowded.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Question one: is The Day Today going on the shelf of fame?
Abigoliah: Now, here’s the thing. I am torn because we watched Victoria Wood As Seen on TV. And I left this podcast studio slash your house playing the music. I went to a music shop to try to find the piano music for the “Count Your Blessings” song. Fun fact – can’t find it. And just – I just laughed so much. And this is great. But this one – I laughed out loud. Loud. More so. I – it’s like, I think I got to move it to number one.
Tom: Oh, really?
Abigoliah: But I feel like I might change my mind and put Victoria Wood back at number one. I’m trying to go back to how I felt as I saw them all initially. But maybe I want to put it at number two. This one’s really hard. Okay. You know what we’re gonna do? We’re going to put The Day Today at number one right now. Okay. Now, between now and then, I’m going to go watch more Victoria Wood. So check back in with me, which we will do. The shelf of fame, and maybe it will be moved. But then I also – this is already getting hard because then I’m like, no, but not only – but also made you feel so good. So maybe, maybe not. The Day Today shouldn’t be before “Not Only, But Also.” Maybe The Day Today should be number three. But this is – we’re not even full–
Tom: Yeah. Imagine what happens when we have to start throwing stuff off the shelf of fame to make room.
Abigoliah: I don’t know if I can handle it. We might have to just end the podcast. All right? We’re gonna – no, no, I’ve changed my mind. I changed my mind. I can’t take it. I can’t take it. I’m gonna put it number two, okay? I’m gonna put it at number two. Because now I’m thinking back to the sketches of Victoria Wood. It’s at number two. Victoria – what is number one? What has been put in the bargain bin is Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Goon Show.
Tom: Exactly right.
Abigoliah: So what I think we’re figuring out that I like is ensemble casts. But if the ensemble is all men, it goes in the bin.
Tom: And the surrealism of Monty Python’s Flying Circus was off-putting. Yeah, but the surrealism of The Day Today less so.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: And I think one of the reasons for that might be that there’s a framework that the surrealism of The Day Today sits inside of. Monty Python and The Goon Show – it can go anywhere. But you always know what a news programme looks like, and it’s the fact that you have these absurd ideas – you have a headline like “Headmaster Fired for Using Big-Faced Child as Satellite Dish” – kind of pinging off the walls of a news programme. Yeah. But The Goon Show and Monty Python don’t have those walls.
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: And actually, I’m like you. I like my surrealism to sit inside some kind of context. So again, we haven’t got to these shows yet, and they’re not even anywhere in my planning at the moment, but Vic and Bob – I never really liked Vic Reeves Big Night Out. I didn’t get it. But I loved Shooting Stars, which is the same nonsense in the context of a quiz show. And then when I went back and I watched more of Vic Reeves Big Night Out, I was like, “Oh, now I get it.”
Abigoliah: Yeah, okay. Yeah, maybe we’re similar in that way. It’s like, the absurdity has to be – I like it to be absurd, but with structure. Thank you very much.
Tom: Abigoliah, we are very nearly at the end of our season on landmarks. Oh my God, one show to go.
Abigoliah: Wow, this has gone quick. What is the last show we’ll be watching?
Tom: I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
Abigoliah: It’s okay, but you’ll come up with something. It’s still funny. We did it in the first episode, you see? So I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Is it TV or is it radio?
Tom: Radio.
Abigoliah: I will bring a little project to do.
Tom: Some crochet or some knitting or something. So you have something to do with your hands. And it’s very long-running.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: It started in 1972 and it’s still on the air.
Abigoliah: This is the one we talked about watching three episodes for because it’s so full-on.
Tom: What I think I’ll do: I have curated three episodes. So basically we’ll go into much more detail about this next time. Basically one very early one where it’s not absolutely just begun, where it’s found its feet, but it’s early days; one when it’s in its pomp; and one from 2025, if having heard the first two you want to hear a third one.
Abigoliah: Okay. All right. I’m excited about this. Guys, yet again, thank you so much for listening to All British Comedy Explained. If you like the podcast, please rate and review it on your podcatcher app. Tell a friend about it. Word of mouth with a new podcast is the best way for us to find new people to listen to it. So please tell your friends if you enjoy it. And anything else?
Tom: Yeah. How do you like your surrealism? Are you like us, in that – to quote a certain iconic comedy character – rules control the fun? Or do you prefer things to be more free-flowing? Have we done Monty Python and The Goon Show a disservice? And not to mention Vic Reeves Big Night Out. Or does this make it more palatable? What’s your taste? Let us know.
Abigoliah: Let us know. Comment on our social media or write into our email at–
Tom: allbritishcomedy@gmail.com. Or leave a message on, for example, our Substack. Yeah, well, there’ll be an essay to accompany this episode coming out in a few days’ time.
Abigoliah: Please do. Until next time, I’m Abigoliah.
Tom: And I’m Tom Salinsky. Thank you very much for listening. And goodbye.
Abigoliah: Goodbye.