Abigoliah: Hello, welcome to All British Comedy Explained, the podcast where I, Abigoliah, finally learn about all the British comedy I’ve been missing out on. And to guide us through this comedy labyrinth is my good friend Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello. Good to be here.
Abigoliah: Hello. How are you? How are you?
Tom: Good. Yes.
Abigoliah: Are you enjoying your summer?
Tom: I mean, no, it’s far too hot. I’m far too busy. But these things are sent to try us, and I have the pleasure of making this podcast with you to lift the burden.
Abigoliah: What I love about British people is when we have a cold, rainy summer, everyone’s like, “We don’t even get a summer here.” And we finally have the warmest summer ever and everyone’s like, “What’s going on?”
Tom: Now we’re discovering that the society is not set up for it in any way at all.
Abigoliah: No, no. Your houses are made to stay warm at all costs.
Tom: Exactly.
Abigoliah: No breeze. No breeze whatsoever.
Tom: Definitely no air conditioning.
Abigoliah: Well, now we are not on to our official season three yet, which will be coming out in September and is satire. Which, by the way, we should mention, we have a very special episode already planned for our satire season, our interview, our live show.
Tom: That’s not really part of the satire season, but yes, sure.
Abigoliah: Oh yeah. Oh, I guess it’s not.
Tom: But yes, we do have a very special episode planned. We are going to be doing our first live show at the London Podcast Festival. We’ll be interviewing Paul Whitehouse live on stage on Saturday the 12th of September at 7pm, and we will be recording an episode about The Fast Show before we do that. So, Abigoliah, you have some sense of who it is you’re talking to and why.
Abigoliah: I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve heard so much about The Fast Show, so I can’t wait to dig in. But until then, today we are doing another special episode. We are doing an Ask Us Anything episode.
Tom: We threw the doors open and comments came flooding in. As Jack Dee says, we’ve been inundated with a letter from Mrs Trellis.
Abigoliah: Yes, we have indeed. We reached out to our followers on social media and on our Patreon. And guys, I’ve gotta say, as always, great questions, great little community we’re building. And if you’re not on the Patreon yet, you should check it out. But shall we dive right in?
Tom: Let’s dive right in.
Abigoliah: Okay. Hold on, let me get to the first question. Best barbecue food. It is summer, after all.
Tom: I have a game changer.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Asparagus.
Abigoliah: What? You were supposed to say my brisket.
Tom: Ha! I haven’t seen your brisket cooked on a barbecue. You brought it over, yes, that’s true. But it was a done deal. It was delicious. But this is an absolute game changer. So it’s very, very simple to do. Asparagus spears. Olive oil. Salt and pepper. Lay them on the grill and just turn them a few times until they get nicely charred. They are so delicious. When we do barbecues here out on our patio, Deborah will eat the asparagus spears instead of fries to have with a burger. They are so, so good.
Abigoliah: You know what I’d like to do with that? Just change it up a little. Little lemon juice.
Tom: Would be very nice. Yes.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Brighten it up a bit.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: Very nice. I do love a grilled vegetable. Yeah. Definitely not my favourite barbecue food, though. My favourite barbecue food is brisket. Which, I mean, to be honest, I don’t have a barbecue at my house, so I do do it in a Crock-Pot, but it still counts. Just the slow-cooked brisket that you can tear apart. Oh, it’s so good. And I like a barbecue sauce. I don’t do a dry rub. I appreciate a dry rub, but the dry rub makes me nervous. Have you ever gotten down with a dry rub?
Tom: Yeah, I went through a phase, I think after we’d been to New Orleans, of doing blackened chicken on a griddle pan on a stovetop.
Abigoliah: I’m always afraid it’s gonna taste too dry. Like, I like a saucy – I like a sauce. I like –
Tom: You can always make a sauce on the side.
Abigoliah: I like a mess. That’s what I like. That’s what I like.
Tom: I’ve never done that slow-cooked, southern-style barbecue thing on a barbecue.
Abigoliah: Yeah. That takes some real time. Because I’ve never done it as well, but it is on my list of things to do. And I did go through a thing where I watched Barbecue Masters on Netflix, and now I’m like, oh, I need a slow cooker. When I get a garden, I’m getting a slow cooker. Or not a slow cooker, a smoker.
Tom: A smoker. Yeah. One of these days I’m going to do a Christmas turducken.
Abigoliah: I’ve had one of those.
Tom: Have you?
Abigoliah: Yeah. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. But an adventure. I think everyone should do a turducken once. And I did it once.
Tom: Did you make it?
Abigoliah: No, my stepmother did.
Tom: Oh, right.
Abigoliah: And it’s just – First of all, I really like turkey. A lot of people don’t. I love it. And then duck is gamey, and turkey has its own taste, and it’s just too much of heavy-flavoured birds for me.
Tom: Sure. And I get that.
Abigoliah: And it’s, like, stuffed in –
Tom: It, you –
Abigoliah: I mean, that’s how you know we’re monsters. We’re like, we’ll take a bird and we’ll stuff it in another bird, tear out the bones of all the birds and stuff it in there.
Tom: All right, let’s go on to question two, which is one that I’ll give you to start with. What are the biggest differences that you perceive in American comedy and British comedy? Do you know who sent these questions in, by the way?
Abigoliah: I didn’t write down their names. They’ll have to listen and go, “Ha, ha! That’s me.”
Tom: This is a very thoughtful question from whoever sent it in.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, you guys have sent in some really fun and thoughtful questions as we go through this. So biggest difference as we’ve watched stuff? I will say budget is really obvious. Like, again, I loved Fawlty Towers, but you look how those doors slam and the set wiggles. I actually think it adds to the comedy. But then we go back and watch something like I Love Lucy, which was made in the fifties, and nothing wiggles, you know, because they had that CBS money and that Philip Morris money, specifically because of ads.
And when we did our episode with The Comedy Bureau, I think it was Laura who really touched on the fact – and you’ve mentioned this as well – of how American comedies end with a happy ending, whereas British comedies are more happy to let you sit in the discomfort of it all.
Tom: And the disappointment.
Abigoliah: And the disappointment. And I see that more and more and more.
Tom: Just like with the British summer, disappointment is our natural state. Yeah. But there’s something else as well, which is that the BBC, which was at the vanguard of broadcasting, was formed out of government, and it had this mission. Lord Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, said that broadcasting’s purpose was to inform, educate and entertain. And I think very much he meant it in that order. Whereas American entertainment had always been about money. And so it was big sponsors, and it was about being as entertaining as possible to the largest number of people.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: And so that gives it that sunny optimism, which also kind of reflects the national character. But what I think I would say as well is that I think that used to be true. And what I see now when I look at modern American and British comedies, the thing I see most of is variety. Everybody’s trying different things on both sides of the Atlantic, and that’s really exciting.
Abigoliah: I’ve seen it too, especially in stand-up comedy. With the advent of streamers and people seeing stuff online, even people putting stuff up on YouTube, more people from opposite sides of the Atlantic are seeing each other’s comedies. And where I think British people have always known what’s going on in America, because I will die on this hill, entertainment is our greatest export.
Tom: Oh, 100%.
Abigoliah: It’s nothing else. What it is, is entertainment. However, I don’t think Americans have seen as much British comedy.
Tom: No.
Abigoliah: Me being the perfect example.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: And I’m seeing it a lot more in stand-up too. More Americans doing the storytelling show with the beginning, middle and end, where it dips more of like the Edinburgh hour. Whereas before that – and I remember when I first came over here, people were really shocked that I would just move from one joke to the next without a link. I was like, why does it need to link together? It’s just a bunch of jokes and end on the best one. And that’s what I learned here. But yeah, it’s fun to see the two different styles sort of meld and what people are being inspired by. I like it very much.
So my next question is mostly geared toward you, Tom. What other themed seasons do you have in mind? And will you put in any shows that Tom doesn’t much like, thinks are dull or actively hates? Now, I just want to say, Tom sets the themes and he chooses the episodes. Again, when you’re talking on social media, you are talking to me specifically. And although I hear your requests, I have no sway, and neither do you. But Tom –
Tom: You have influence, maybe.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah. And I tell you what’s going on. I’m like, by the way, Red Dwarf –
Tom: Well, if you want to know about Red Dwarf, you can read the book, but we’ll cover Red Dwarf eventually. I think you would find Red Dwarf really fun. I think you’d really like it. When we first started putting this together, I made a long list.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I remember that.
Tom: And potential episodes that could go in them. But already things are changing. So I had an idea for a season on sketch. The Fast Show was in that. That’s now had to come out because we’re doing a special episode on The Fast Show. So if we do do a season on sketch, I’ll have to put something else in that slot.
I wanted to do something on class, which is where potentially I thought we could put Only Fools and Horses, which we keep being asked about. I wanted to do one on – So now coming on to the other point, I wanted to do one on dinosaurs.
Abigoliah: Oh, everyone loves dinosaurs.
Tom: By which I mean shows that are past their sell-by date.
Abigoliah: Oh, so when you say sell-by date, like people have forgotten about them or they haven’t aged well?
Tom: They haven’t aged well.
Abigoliah: Oh, this is a fun idea.
Tom: I have another category I plan to do called something like “overlooked” or “obscurities” where I could put my beloved Nightingales, for example, and other shows that people have forgotten about, like Colin’s Sandwich, which nobody remembers, or The Strange World of Gurney Slade, like really bizarre stuff. I generally try and have one episode each season is for me.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: But dinosaurs would be interesting. So that’s where we might look at things like Benny Hill –
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: – who was huge. And then when alternative comedy came along, he was suddenly made to seem embarrassing and old-fashioned and repugnant, which a lot of people object to. Or, for example, Mrs Brown’s Boys.
Abigoliah: Which I have, funnily enough, seen a little bit of.
Tom: This is a modern sitcom which is simultaneously universally reviled and enormously popular. Figure that out.
Abigoliah: That’s The Big Bang Theory in America. I’ve personally never seen The Big Bang Theory, but it’s like a punchline.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: But it ran for so many seasons, won awards, made loads of money. They kept it on the air because people were watching it.
Tom: Because this podcast started as, “Oh my God, you have to see this,” which I think is valid. But it sort of began morphing quite quickly into a kind of comedy academy.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: A comedy university. And so there are things – The Goon Show is a good example of this – vastly important in the history of British comedy, not one of my personal favourites.
Abigoliah: Okay, so you’ve already thrown in some. Would you ever put in one that you really dislike?
Tom: I’d have to have a good reason for it.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Especially if I think you’re not gonna like it either. So I already put in things which I really like, but I wasn’t sure if you would. And The Goon Show, which I didn’t know if you’d like or not, but was meaningful to me. If I was going to put in something which I really did not like, I think probably I’d have to imagine that you would like it, and we’d get that conversation. Sort of the conversation with Jackass, which I didn’t hate, but I did say at the end, it’s not going on my shelf and I’m not going to watch any more.
Abigoliah: But also, say for The Goon Show, which I didn’t particularly care for, I’m really glad I learned about it. And especially learning about Spike Milligan – which, by the way, I now have a Spike Milligan calendar on my wall, which I wouldn’t have picked up had I not really learned who he was. And learning where those actors started and who they all became, I found it to be fascinating.
Tom: Spike Milligan did a sitcom, I think in the seventies or possibly the early eighties, called Curry and Chips, in which he plays an Indian man.
Abigoliah: Oh yeah.
Tom: And I cannot think of a good reason why we should watch this.
Abigoliah: Yeah. There’s some stuff that it’s just like, why put ourselves through that? Why put us talking about it on the internet?
Tom: Actually, I think there’s a later question about this, so maybe I’ll save more commentary about that till later. But it’s an interesting area when you go back to look at these old shows and you have to make a choice about, are you judging them by the standards of the day, or are you judging them by the standards of today? I think both approaches are reasonable.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I agree. This next question, let’s ask this because I thought this was a really fun one.
Tom: If you were doing a British WandaVision, what trends or iconic shows would you use for each episode? First of all, I’m assuming you watched WandaVision.
Abigoliah: Yes.
Tom: Okay. Yes. That’s helpful. Otherwise this is going to be particularly confusing. We’ll have to now pause the podcast and watch ten episodes of WandaVision.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah. Which I wouldn’t be against.
Tom: Loved it. I loved it. It was so patient. And they did drop three episodes at once, which helped because those first two episodes tell you nothing.
Abigoliah: You’re like, what’s going on? I know. Yeah.
Tom: But it really built it up gradually. I just thought it was tremendous. And the idea of doing a British version is really interesting. So do you want to go first or shall I?
Abigoliah: I would say you have to put in The Good Life.
Tom: Yeah. It’s a very, very, very typical seventies domestic sitcom.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I think when I think of WandaVision, I’m like, okay, how did they – Because it’s a lot of, you know, it is that Dick Van Dyke and the happy couple stories that she was after. So I think The Good Life would be one that I’d put in. I also do think it would be fun to see her do Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV. Now, I haven’t seen Dinnerladies yet.
Tom: So this would be the obvious one to do.
Abigoliah: So I can’t comment on that, but I would love to see her do some Victoria Wood-esque stuff. And to round it all out, what does The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin look like in WandaVision?
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Because again, what she’s capturing is this happy couple thing that she wants with the robot guy, Vision.
Tom: Yeah. Vision. Hence –
Abigoliah: WandaVision. Oh, look at that. I learn something every time we do this podcast. I can’t believe I haven’t put that together till now. But yeah, I think that would be interesting. And to see Wanda as Reginald Perrin, not Vision.
Tom: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. When I thought about this, I wasn’t thinking so much about that family unit. I was just thinking about what are the sitcoms that defined that generation? So a lot of them are ones we’ve watched already. For the 1950s, Hancock. It was such a pioneer.
Abigoliah: That would be fun. Paul Bettany as Sid.
Tom: 1960s, I was thinking one we haven’t seen yet, but Steptoe and Son, which was the next big thing from the same writers, Galton and Simpson.
Abigoliah: That’s another one we get asked about a lot.
Tom: It’s another one in that big, big category of British sitcoms of two men who hate each other but can’t get away from each other. In this case because they’re father and son and their livelihood is this junk cart, this rag-and-bone trade. And then seventies has to be, for me, Fawlty Towers.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Cast such a long shadow.
Abigoliah: Oh, why didn’t I say Fawlty Towers?
Tom: Because you knew I would.
Abigoliah: Because I knew you would.
Tom: Eighties, obviously The Young Ones.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And nineties, I think for me, it’s probably I’m Alan Partridge, which again, we haven’t watched yet. You glimpsed Alan Partridge in The Day Today. He was then spun off to his own chat show, and then when that came back for a second series, rather than doing more of the chat show, it was following Alan’s life, now having split up from his wife and living in a Travelodge. It became much more like a sitcom.
Abigoliah: Oh, interesting. Okay. All right. I didn’t know that. I only knew it as the chat show. Okay, I like that.
Tom: That would be my list. Now this is a question that, as we go back and forth, is from me to you. But I did actually go back and check this. I don’t know if you did. The question is, how long was the period between the initial idea for All British Comedy Explained and the first recording?
Abigoliah: Yeah. So I don’t exactly know, but I’m not surprised you do because you’re the organised one. What I will say is it wasn’t that long. And as we’ve told you many a time, the way this podcast got started was over a poker game and me not having seen –
Tom: Not the Nine O’Clock News.
Abigoliah: Not the Nine O’Clock News, sorry. And I remember being here to record a Guilty Feminist episode, and you were upstairs and we were like, yeah, maybe we’ll do it. And, you know, so many times, because I am not an organised person and I work with not a lot of organised people, you’ll say you’ll do something and six months later maybe you’ll have a plan. And Tom rushed down with your list of themes like nine series long. You were ready to go.
Tom: Because for a while we were kind of going back and forth on, should we just informally swap DVDs or have you come over and watch stuff? But then we thought a podcast would be fun. Let’s share the joy with the world.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: So if you want chapter and verse, that poker game was on the 17th of July 2025.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Almost exactly a year ago as we record this. We had a meeting to discuss it, when we decided we were going to do it as a podcast – how would it work? That was on the 26th of August 2025, and then the first recording was the 10th of September 2025.
Abigoliah: We are the Richard Curtis of podcasting. Turn it around in a year.
Tom: Yeah, we get it done.
Abigoliah: Like The Vicar of Dibley. We had an idea and then we made it happen.
Tom: All right, next question is, which sitcom, British or US, is your go-to when you need cheering up?
Abigoliah: Okay, here is a big, big confession. I don’t watch comedies when I’m feeling low.
Tom: Bergman films?
Abigoliah: Yeah. I watch action films and I watch procedurals and dramas, because for me, it’s hard to unplug watching comedy because I’m always kind of thinking about how I would do it, or, oh, wouldn’t that be fun to be on? Or in this case, at this point in my career, it’s like, hey, I know that person. And so it’s a little hard to unplug.
The last time I was feeling – I had a little bit of a tummy ache, and because it’s summer, I watched the greatest summer blockbuster of all time, Independence Day, followed by Jurassic Park two and three. Not one, because I’ve seen it so many times. And another show that I watch a lot as a comfort show, which has funny elements but is definitely not a comedy, is Supernatural. Have you ever seen –
Tom: No, I haven’t.
Abigoliah: I love Supernatural. Supernatural might be my favourite show of all time.
Tom: Has it got shirtless brothers in it?
Abigoliah: Yes.
Tom: Yeah, I’ve heard people talking.
Abigoliah: They’re not always shirtless, but there’s a lot of fanfic out there about them. And there’s an angel named Castiel. But I’m all about Crowley. Oh, I love Crowley. He’s the demon king of hell. What about you? What are your go-tos?
Tom: With me, it doesn’t tend to be one show I’ll go back to. But if I’ve got, like, the DVD box set of Yes, Minister for the first time, I will just sit and luxuriate in those. And now, because we’re doing this show, sometimes I’ll have to get hold of The Vicar of Dibley box set, and before we record an episode of The Vicar of Dibley, make sure I’ve seen all of those so I can curate it as accurately as possible.
Without that, again, I’m more likely to go to movies for comfort watching if I’m home not feeling well. It might be a dumb action film, probably a new one rather than one I’ve seen before. Or if it’s nostalgia I’m after, it would be the Marx Brothers.
Abigoliah: Oh, that’s very Tom.
Tom: Or a musical. Possibly just one of the That’s Entertainment! films, of which there are four, if you include That’s Dancing!. So even though the clips are all quite familiar, there’s usually one I feel I haven’t seen for a while. And that’s just like all the best bits. There’s a problem with some of those MGM musicals: what you actually get is two amazing dance numbers in a sea of quite an interesting plot. Whereas That’s Entertainment! allows you to mainline the amazing song and dance.
Abigoliah: Just the hits.
Tom: Just the hits. All killer, no filler.
Abigoliah: Oh, you know what? I did sit down and watch one day off James Lance’s recommendation, which was The Book Group. Is that what it’s called? The sitcom he was in?
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: And that is lovely. Have you seen it?
Tom: I’ve never seen it.
Abigoliah: You know what, I’ll tell you, I watched the whole first season and pretty much most of the second, and the end of the first season has a dark turn I did not see coming.
Tom: Okay.
Abigoliah: For a sitcom. I was even texting James. I was like, “What the fuck?” And he’s like, “Yep, yep.” Because James Lance is now my best friend, and Trent Crimm is my boyfriend, even though he’s gay.
There’s a lot of casual racism, sexism and homophobia in old British comedy. Does this ever spoil it for you? Do you think trigger warnings or editing are good things? When you look at That Was the Week That Was, and if you get to it, Till Death Us Do Part, you will find depictions of racism that are clearly part of something meant to be anti-racist. Does this still work? Have you become too fearful of giving offence?
First of all, I think this question of, like, are there things you shouldn’t say in comedy, is a question that is happening online. It is not happening in comedy clubs. But over to you first. What’s your thoughts?
Tom: It’s a very complicated issue and I don’t want to give pat answers. I mean, we could do a whole probably hour-long conversation about this topic. I think first of all, it’s helpful to have the context of when was this made? What were the norms of the day? What are they trying to do? Are they using words for shock value?
Because sometimes – Actually, here’s an interesting example. You’ve seen Die Hard with a Vengeance?
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Early on, the bad guy makes Bruce Willis wander around Harlem in a sandwich board with a racial slur on it, which is going to obviously put him in danger. Samuel L Jackson comes out of his shop to help him, and that’s how they end up together. The TV people did not want to broadcast a version of that film with the N-word, so they digitally changed the sign so it reads, “I hate everyone.”
Abigoliah: Why not say, “I hate Black people”? Well, sorry. I mean, it shouldn’t. That’s not good. I’m not saying –
Tom: But you see, here’s what I mean. Here’s how that now plays on TV. Bruce Willis is walking around wearing a sign that reads, “I hate everyone.”
Abigoliah: Which, by the way, is a T-shirt.
Tom: And a group of Black youths decide to attack him for it. So –
Abigoliah: That’s comedy.
Tom: Well, that version is more racist.
Abigoliah: Yeah, actually. I didn’t think about it like that. That’s so true.
Tom: So you do have to be careful with this kind of thing. And just going through and sanitising doesn’t always help. But I think it is true that in the sixties, seventies, eighties, those kind of words were used more carelessly. So there is an example in That Was the Week That Was – more than one example, actually – where racial slurs are used in a way which is designed to be anti-racist, but to our ears those words just clang. And that’s something that’s very difficult to get away from.
I don’t think censoring is the solution in most cases, but I will say there is a difference between putting something out as a DVD box set and saying, this is a movie from the 1930s, and it’s going to be bought by people who understand what that means, and maybe a warning at the beginning if that seems appropriate, and broadcasting. Because when you’re broadcasting, you’re just invading people’s homes.
So as another example, slightly bizarrely, in the very brilliant but rather genteel comedy from the Ealing Studios, Kind Hearts and Coronets, which has come up a few times, one of the characters chants a nursery rhyme to try and clue in that she understands what’s really going on. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a – ”
Abigoliah: Tiger. Oh, not tiger.
Tom: – by the toe. And it just sounds bizarre for this well-spoken Englishwoman to use that word. What’s even more bizarre is, in 1948 when this film was made, they shot an alternative version of that scene for the American market without the racial slur. And I cannot understand why the American version is not the one which is in ordinary distribution today. Because you watch it today, it goes out on Channel 4, there is a warning, and I saw somebody online getting all bent out of shape – “Just because the guy kills people? It’s a black comedy. Have we all become such snowflakes?” No, it’s because you don’t want to be sitting watching a black-and-white British film from the 1940s and suddenly have a racial slur come at you without warning.
Abigoliah: I agree with you on all fronts. First of all, trigger warnings at the beginning of stuff – and I’ve done that, we’ve done them on this podcast, I’ve asked you to put them in – are also, to be honest, I think a lot of times to protect a network or a company more than it is actually to warn the audience. Like, for instance, when Disney put out some of their old cartoons that are quite racist, it’s like, “These are of a time. This does not reflect the views of the company,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don’t think things should be censored. I think it should go out as it was. And as far as does it offend me personally? No, not really. Sometimes it shocks me. Especially, I remember one time being home with family and we were watching – it’s called The Holiday, that old black-and-white film. And there’s a whole scene where they do blackface.
Tom: Oh yes, I know what you mean. It’s not called The Holiday. That’s the Kate Winslet –
Abigoliah: No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holiday Inn.
Tom: Holiday Inn, yes.
Abigoliah: Where they –
Tom: Oh, there’s loads of blackface. Yeah. Yeah.
Abigoliah: Well, what was so funny is at one point, is it Bing Crosby? He’s like, “Hey, maybe we should do that blackface number again.” And it was just –
Tom: Just a thing that people did.
Abigoliah: It’s a thing that people did. But what I thought was interesting is my brother Abe was like, “He actually said it.” And I’m like, that’s what it was called, because I went to school for theatre and all this stuff. I know a little bit more about it than he did. Abe couldn’t even believe they called it that back then.
But my thing is, if the intent of the original material was to be racist, I take offence at that. If there is stuff that hasn’t aged well, I pretty easily can be like, whoa, it was the eighties. What are you gonna do? It’s the sixties. What are you gonna do? It doesn’t make me clutch my pearls that hard.
I would have more trouble – Something I’ve grappled with is with doing the Patreon All-American Comedy Explained. Would I ever show you The Cosby Show?
Tom: Oh yes. And that’s a similar problem with showing you Father Ted.
Abigoliah: See, and here’s my thought on stuff. If you, as a viewer, want to watch something, I don’t care what you do. If you want to watch Father Ted, watch Father Ted. If you want to watch The Cosby Show, watch The Cosby Show.
Tom: We’re not the boss of you.
Abigoliah: I’m not the boss of you. But now the idea of watching The Cosby Show, even though it was funny and it was a huge moment in American television, doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel icky.
Tom: I was the world’s biggest Louis C.K. fan. I thought he was par excellence. I thought he was picking up the baton that Bill Hicks dropped as the defining American male stand-up comedian of his generation.
Abigoliah: Can I be honest? After he got cancelled, I never said it because you just sound like, “I didn’t like him anyways,” but I never cared.
Tom: Oh.
Abigoliah: I thought it was good, don’t get me wrong. I thought it was good. But yeah.
Tom: The other thing I’d like to say about this is that pushing the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope, I think is no longer something which needs to be done. When Lenny Bruce was in his prime, he was being arrested on stage in comedy clubs for talking about oral sex. There were literally things you could not say and that needed to change. That was unjust. It was inappropriate. It stifled creativity. There was no reason for it. Today, you can say pretty much anything on any stage, any way you like. You just have to have a reason for saying it.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I get tired of people being like, “Oh, you can’t say anything,” and then they say something, and it’s like, you know what would be really thought-provoking and revolutionary? Just to be like, “Hey, man, be kind to people.” You know, that is the thing that people aren’t saying.
Tom: Yes. The fight for free speech has been won, so nobody needs to relitigate that, as far as I’m concerned.
Abigoliah: I agree. I agree.
Tom: All right. Outside of the comedy superpowers of the UK and US, are there any notable comedy TV or radio shows from the English-speaking or Commonwealth world that you might consider an episode on?
Abigoliah: See, this is something we could actually do on the Patreon. So it has crossed my mind. And I look towards Canada and Kids in the Hall –
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: – which is a sketch show. That was great. I’m pretty sure that went out on MTV or Comedy Central in America.
Tom: Grew out of Keith Johnstone’s Loose Moose, which obviously is hugely important to me. Keith Johnstone-style improviser.
Abigoliah: Yeah. And Second City Television, which gave the start to Catherine O’Hara and Rick Moranis and Paul Shaffer. So many people.
If I did a real curveball – and I don’t know much about this genre, I’m not actually going to do it – but this got me thinking. I was like, well, what if I do an anime?
Tom: Oh.
Abigoliah: There is an anime that Tom has watched. Ergo, I have watched through osmosis, called One-Punch Man. And it is a spoof on animes. And the idea is he’s the strongest man in the world, but he doesn’t look it. And he got to be the strongest man in the world by doing, I think, 50 push-ups every day, 50 sit-ups and running 15K every day.
Tom: And that does sound tiring.
Abigoliah: Although Tom said that, and I was like, I could do that. And he’s like, “Every day, even when you’re tired?” I’m like, give me a year. Anyways, that was a year ago. I still haven’t done it. But something like that. But in order to do that, I’d have to bring on Tom because I just don’t know anime and manga that well. But yeah. What about you?
Tom: I thought about Australia.
Abigoliah: Okay. See, I can’t even come up with anything from Australia.
Tom: A couple of things. One is a pair called Clarke and Dawe, who are doing satire, and their act was kind of nicked by John Fortune and John Bird, who were the Two Johns opposite Rory Bremner. So they would do these long, slightly improvised political interviews, but they were used to satirise events of the day, and they were very, very sharp.
And the other one is a guy called Shaun Micallef, who is kind of brilliant. If you want a good time, I might even put this in the show notes. He did a series of sketches in which the first one is he’s the husband coming home late at night drunk.
And actually, I’m not going to say too much more about that. I might just show this to you or put it in the show notes, because the gimmick they use to give you the sensation of what it feels like to be staggering around your own home drunk is incredible. It’s also clear they’re doing it in front of an audience, which is amazing.
Abigoliah: So was this a sketch show that he had?
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: And it was called –
Tom: I think it was just called Shaun Micallef’s Show.
Abigoliah: Okay, cool, cool, cool. When did it come out?
Tom: This would be eighties, I think.
Abigoliah: Okay, awesome. I like that you pulled from Australia because I was like, I’ve been to Australia. I can’t think of one Australian show.
Tom: Paul Hogan was the big Australian export. He had a sketch show back in the seventies or early eighties, and then obviously worldwide fame with Crocodile Dundee.
Abigoliah: Okay. That’s who that is. Would you ever do Crocodile Dundee?
Tom: No, no, no. I did not like Crocodile Dundee.
Abigoliah: Fair. Fair.
All right. My next question to you. The sad death of Penelope Keith, who embodied two terrific sitcom characters, made me remember how three-dimensional she made Margo. I loved all four of them at the Christmas party. Penelope Keith is hilarious, but also really tugs at the heartstrings as Margo. An excellent performance that has stayed with me. Who is your favourite sitcom character?
Tom: A couple leap to mind immediately, both ones that we did last season. Humphrey Appleby.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Yeah. Just peerless, incredible blend of writing and performance. And similarly Reginald Perrin.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: That combination of furious indignation and anger at the absurdity of the world and that same kind of helplessness in the face of it. It’s very complicated.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: For a silly sitcom about catchphrases and hippos.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Yeah. It’s brilliant. I would say Margo really stole my heart when you showed me Team Margo.
Tom: Yeah. Team Margo all the way.
Abigoliah: I still need to get the T-shirt made. She was lovely. If I had to pick favourite sitcom characters, I’m gonna go with American sitcoms just because that’s how I grew up. I would say Jack from Will & Grace. Jack and Karen as a duo was so perfect. I loved them so, so much. Just absolutely smitten. Obviously Lucille Ball, or Lucy Ricardo as her character is known, and Steve Urkel from Family Matters was – I mean, really, just took my breath away as a child. I would say those are some standouts in my life.
Tom: Actually, I might go for Rimmer in Red Dwarf as well.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: As a character who was written initially as being just like the antagonist, but turned out to have much more psychological depth than the person he was supposedly antagonising.
Abigoliah: Oh, interesting. I like that. I like it when someone looks like a dummy, but they’re actually a genius, that sort of thing. Is that –
Tom: Not quite.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: It’s more like – I’ll give you one example. So in the show, Rimmer is a hologram recreation of someone who is now dead.
Abigoliah: Is he the one who mentions Felicity Kendal’s rear?
Tom: That’s not that character, but it is that show.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: And in the last episode of the first series, he is able to eke a little bit more power out of the ship’s computer in order to create a second hologram, so there can be more than two people on this ship.
Abigoliah: What a fancy man.
Tom: He elects to create a hologram of himself.
Abigoliah: What a vain man.
Tom: But he is such an obnoxious personality that he manages to drive himself crazy.
Abigoliah: That sounds like a Rick and Morty episode.
Tom: It is very Rick and Morty. I would lay money that many of the Rick and Morty writers are fans of Red Dwarf. There’s so much DNA in common. So eventually Lister, who’s the other main character, has to flip a coin to decide which of the holograms gets turned off.
Abigoliah: Oh. What a hard choice to make.
Tom: All right. What are some of the shows you’ve seen thus far which you would say have been a big influence on you? For me, our questioner says, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has been a big component of my conversational humour. PS love the show. Look forward to your return. That’s lovely.
Abigoliah: Thank you.
Tom: So of the shows we’ve seen, what has influenced you?
Abigoliah: I mean, I keep banging on about her, but Victoria Wood did that thing. So when I started comedy, and when a lot of people start doing comedy, you just watch everything. You and I, as I’ve said before, have gotten away from that, but you really watch stuff and find inspiration and learn by watching. You go watch live comedy. You watch comedy specials, you watch sitcoms, you watch sketch.
And the thing about Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV is it’s the first time in a long time that I have seen something and gone, oh, it could be this. This is an option. So I would say, for me, Victoria Wood. Now, have I implemented any of her skills? No. But –
Tom: One thing you’re talking about is her economy of joke writing.
Abigoliah: Yeah. One thing I’m really working on and struggling with, but I feel like I’m on the edge of a breakthrough, is her economy of language within her stand-up and how sharp her stand-up is.
Tom: Did you watch An Audience with Victoria Wood yet?
Abigoliah: Not yet.
Tom: You’ve got to watch An Audience with Victoria Wood.
Abigoliah: I finally bought a DVD player.
Tom: Right.
Abigoliah: But yeah.
Tom: We’ll reconvene when you watch that.
Abigoliah: Okay. Cool, cool, cool.
Tom: Of the ones we’ve watched, definitely Fawlty Towers, Yes, Minister. Yes, Minister for the attitudes and the language, Fawlty Towers for the plot construction. The show we haven’t watched yet which was a huge influence on me, but we probably will watch at some point, is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Have you read any of those books?
Abigoliah: No, I haven’t. It’s on my essential reading list now that I’m back to reading books again.
Tom: It’s a complicated story because it was a radio series originally. The radio series was adapted into novels, but the novel doesn’t follow exactly the same storyline. And then there’s a TV series, which is essentially the first six episodes of the radio series, but with a few changes, and then video game, towel and anything else you want. But there is no one consistent, coherent version. There are just different options.
Abigoliah: What do you think is the best version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide? Because I thought it started as a book.
Tom: Most people do. The radio series has a purity to it, but you can also see there are a few things which get changed from the radio series and then stay changed when it’s remade. There’s also a very bad film, which we needn’t worry about. If I was going to do it for this show, I’d probably show you the first two episodes of the TV series. That’s the most accessible. That’s how I first encountered it. We aren’t going to do a book on this show. I mean, there’s nothing, I suppose, stopping you doing a podcast book club, but that’s not what we’re doing. And your antipathy towards radio is a matter of record.
Abigoliah: Excuse me. I will point out I really liked I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
Tom: True, true.
Abigoliah: And that’s the first thing we watched that made me go, I want to be on this. Which you can, because it still exists out there.
Tom: But the interesting thing about the TV series is the radio show has got an awful lot of narration, linking bits of story together and giving you the backstory, which you’d think would be the hardest thing to adapt for the TV version. But actually, the solution that Douglas Adams found means that that element of the TV show is one of the things that everybody remembers as being its greatest success.
Abigoliah: Is it narration over B-roll?
Tom: My lips are sealed.
Abigoliah: Okay, okay. I can’t wait to find out.
Okay. Another listener question. What is your favourite TV show – I loved this question, by the way – what is your favourite TV show adapted from an original film? And what is your favourite film adapted from a TV show?
Tom: Favourite TV show adapted from a film is also my candidate for best American sitcom of all time: MASH.
Abigoliah: I knew you were gonna say MASH.
Tom: MASH is incredible. And the way they’re able to take that film – itself adapted from a book – and make that show out of it is extraordinary. And that show ran forever. Famously, it ran longer than the war it depicted, in terms of years. And the finale broke records for viewing figures in America. I mean, everybody watched the last episode of MASH.
Abigoliah: Now, I have a question for you because on the Patreon, I was thinking about doing MASH, but you’re such a purist about me having not seen the British show. Would you like an episode on MASH?
Tom: Sure. I’m sure there’s stuff I can find out about MASH that I didn’t already know.
Abigoliah: Or you can sit here and correct me.
Tom: I think you’ll find the other way around is less common. I think we talked about the fact that films made out of TV shows – there was a craze for them in the seventies and eighties. It tended to be all of the characters go on holiday together, which The League of Gentlemen spoofed in their movie. The League of Gentlemen movie is kind of a mess, but there are some really interesting things in there.
If we’re going to go America again, do you count Fargo?
Abigoliah: Yeah, we can count Fargo.
Tom: The series are inconsistent, but the best ones – I can’t remember which ones they are now – but the most recent one I thought was incredibly good. The first one I thought was fabulous. Some have worked better than others, but that was an idea I just thought was such a bad idea, because Fargo is such a perfect film. Why would anyone want to mess with that? And actually the solution they found works brilliantly.
Abigoliah: I haven’t seen the Fargo TV show. Part of me was like, did I try to dip into it? But no, I didn’t see it. But everyone says it’s great.
Tom: Yeah. And because it’s anthological, if that’s a word, you can watch any series you like.
Abigoliah: There is a thing going on right now where they’re starting to do this again. And I have not watched it yet, but I am curious. There is now a Legally Blonde TV show.
Tom: There’s a Blade Runner TV show about to start because everyone loves IP.
Abigoliah: Yeah. That’s so true. There was a couple of years ago, not necessarily a comedy, but A League of Their Own, which is an amazing film.
Tom: Yeah. They turned this –
Abigoliah: I think Prime turned it into a TV show and the fans loved it. They cancelled it and everyone went nuts.
Tom: I believe that was the second attempt to turn it into a TV show.
Abigoliah: Oh, really?
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: It’s hard. I mean –
Tom: L.A. Confidential, which is, for my money, the best American film of the nineties, was turned into a TV show that ran, like, eight episodes, and everybody forgot about it.
Abigoliah: Well, they tried to do it in the nineties with Clueless. I don’t know if you remember that. That was a bad idea. And also they didn’t have Alicia Silverstone.
Tom: You never get the star back.
Abigoliah: And they did it with My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Tom: Oh, that’s right, they did. Yes.
Abigoliah: And that one, they had almost everyone but the love interest, who’s Aidan in –
Tom: John Corbett.
Abigoliah: Yeah. John Corbett. She did it, but it didn’t last. But it’s such a good movie.
Tom: It’s a brilliant movie.
Abigoliah: It’s a brilliant movie. And that one, you could really see, like, oh, this could be a sitcom. Crazy family. I mean, it is a sitcom set-up.
For me, TV show adapted from an original film: What We Do in the Shadows.
Tom: Oh, that’s right. Yes. That was a film originally.
Abigoliah: And I actually like the TV show more. The film is great, but I love the TV show and I just adore it so much. I don’t think they have a new season coming out anytime soon, but that’s an interesting one to watch because, again, how I tell you it’s hard to unplug when I watch TV. As it gets later – The first season I didn’t know anyone in it, but now I’m like, oh, I remember her. Oh yeah, we used to do open mics together. Oh, I remember when she had a show at the PIT.
TV show that adapted into a film: I mean, let’s remember Jackass.
Tom: Oh, yeah.
Abigoliah: Five films.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: Three series. But not exactly a TV show, but within a TV show, The Blues Brothers.
Tom: Oh, yes.
Abigoliah: Which started as an SNL sketch.
Tom: And it’s still probably the most successful, certainly the most beloved SNL movie spin-off.
Abigoliah: I mean, I think that’s the one where they were like, we’re on to something. And then they just did it too much. And then they made Pat and everyone was like, what did we do? Who hurt you, Lorne Michaels? Who hurt you?
But The Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers 2000, I thought were great.
Tom: I’ve never seen Blues Brothers 2000. It was not well reviewed.
Abigoliah: No, it wasn’t. But I mean, here’s the thing. You might hate it because, as we just did a podcast about films, what it does is not – The whole premise of The Blues Brothers is, we’re putting the band back together, here’s a bunch of famous people singing famous songs. That’s what Blues Brothers 2000 is. Except because John Belushi has passed, they get in –
Tom: John Goodman.
Abigoliah: John Goodman, who is great in it, by the way. Sensational, by the way. As I get older, John Goodman, I totally would. When I look at John Goodman when he was younger – So when I was younger, he was too old, but when I look at John Goodman as my age now, when he was in his forties, I’m like, this guy’s got something.
Tom: He’s very charming.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I would recommend Blues Brothers 2000 as a fun watch. It’s not a deep premise. In fact, I don’t even remember why they’re putting the band back together. But Aretha Franklin shows back up. Paul Shaffer is in it. It’s great. They have a wonderful song that John Goodman does, “I’m Looking for a Fox”. It’s great. Highly, highly recommend.
Tom: All right, so again, from the shows we’ve covered, favourite joke. One favourite joke.
Abigoliah: “Alan-a-Dale.”
Abigoliah: I listened to it so many times it now shows up on my – Like, if I just let my YouTube Music go, it’ll be like, remember you like this song?
Tom: It’s the little details. It’s the face and the hope slowly draining out of his eyes that this song is ever going to resolve. And just Dudley Moore’s consistent enthusiasm for another chorus.
Abigoliah: Exactly. And his hat just being way too long. I loved it so much.
Tom: For me, I think the Seven Deadly Sins is going to take some beating. I think you and I laughed for about a week when that –
Abigoliah: Oh, yes.
Tom: Yeah. Yes, Minister. It was so out of the blue. That’s the beauty of that show being so dry, that you’re never given any advance warning. Roger Moore, of all people, talking about the fact that the way he saw the difference between his interpretation of Bond and Sean Connery’s was Sean Connery’s quips came out of thin air, whereas he says, “I’ll tend to let you know: joke coming.”
Abigoliah: Okay. Why do you think there aren’t many British-based comedy movies anymore? This one’s for you because I don’t really have an answer other than watching the whole film industry crumble.
Tom: I mean, yeah, there aren’t many comedy movies anymore.
Abigoliah: Yeah, that’s a big thing. Where has the romcom gone?
Tom: Yeah. Because the problem with the romcom, like the same as with the adult drama – which I don’t mean porn, I mean drama for grown-ups – there is a market and a route to profitability for $150 million action film based on IP. You can make that and it will make $1 billion if you get it right.
There is a market for a horror film made for $500,000, which, apart from anything else, if it flops, you’ve only lost $500,000. It’s a rounding error on these big studios’ balance sheets. But if it hits, it might make 100 times the investment. So these are both good risks.
Who is funding a $20 to $50 million movie? Almost nobody. Because it’s not giving you the guarantee of success that you get with those great big franchise tentpoles, nor is it kind of de-risked the way that half-million-dollar horror film would be. But British film has never been about huge budgets anyway. So there have been some nice – and often they are straight to streaming.
I think the movie I would single out that says that it hasn’t gone away altogether – I appreciate what you’re saying, you’re not wrong – but The Ballad of Wallis Island was a big hit for Tim Key and Tom Basden. It’s a great film. They made a short film version of it something like eight years ago and finally were able to kind of stitch together the funding to make the feature. It’s brilliant. It’s really, really good. And you’re looking at me like, I’ve never heard of this film.
Abigoliah: No, I haven’t.
Tom: You should seek it out.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: It’s about a lonely man living on an island, played by Tim Key, who’s a big fan of this folk duo who have now split up, and separately engages each of them to come to the island where he lives more or less on his own to sing for him on his birthday.
Abigoliah: So does he essentially parent trap them?
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: That’s adorable.
Tom: Yeah, it’s really good fun. And Carey Mulligan’s in it too. It’s fantastic.
Abigoliah: All right, I will seek this out. I’m going to guess iPlayer? It’s on iPlayer?
Tom: I would have thought so, yes.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: All right, Abigoliah. Now this was news to me. Do you miss the early days of your Fringe shows? The vibe of the room in the Counting House or the freak-show act you did? I have a friend who saw you pull a needle through your hand. She still freaks out a little every time it’s mentioned. Do you have a circus past that I don’t know about?
Abigoliah: Yeah. So the reason why I put this in, first of all, I was like, so few people know this about me now. And I was like, does Tom even know this about me?
Tom: I didn’t.
Abigoliah: So I ran a variety show in New York, a live stand-up show called Abigoliah’s Bizarre Bazaar. Great title, right? I didn’t come up with it. Where it was stand-up comedians and sideshow acts. And I had a friend who was a magician who would do it sometimes, and he was like, “You know, I can just teach you some sideshow stuff, so if someone drops out you’ll have something.”
Now, any sideshow stuff I can do is stuff that can be learned in an afternoon. However, it is the stuff that looks the most horrific. So I can eat fire, I can eat glass, I can walk on glass, and I can do something called human pincushion.
Tom: So the nail up the nose?
Abigoliah: I can’t do nail up the nose because I’m too sneezy. I really tried to do it, but I’m too sneezy. But I used to take an acupuncture needle and thread it through my whole palm. And with hypodermic needles, you can put them subcutaneously on you, like through your skin. So I used to do that. And when I say I used to do it, I did it in one Edinburgh show.
Tom: Oh.
Abigoliah: And I can set myself on fire. No big deal. I did it in one Edinburgh show that I also took to Australia, and that show got reviewed in Australia as one star, disturbed, and called me disturbed. And then it got reviewed in Edinburgh as four stars, also disturbed.
Tom: Some people like being disturbed more than others.
Abigoliah: Yeah. But I will say, I did that. It’s stuff that I learned for fun from some friends and some sideshow people. And yeah, I just kind of shoved it in an hour because I learned it. Why not? Why not do it?
And that being said, those early days of doing the Free Fringe and still learning what my voice was for stand-up and what I wanted to do, there was a lot of experimentation and, like, let’s see what happens. And I do miss it. I also miss when I first showed up at the Fringe, I didn’t know about all the politics of the Fringe or about the Edinburgh Comedy Award or anything like that, or getting PR and getting the right reviewers – not even reviews, the right reviewers. And I was just having fun doing comedy, doing weird stuff. And once I learned the game, it did become less fun.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: So I do miss it. I don’t know if I can ever get back to it in my head, if that makes sense. I haven’t done the Edinburgh Fringe – The last time I did it was 2022 and it was a really fun one for me. And I had a show in my heart. Since then, I haven’t had a show that I really was like, I need to do this. But I do wonder if I just went up on the Free Fringe and just fucked around. But it’s just so expensive to fuck around.
Tom: It’s true, yes.
Abigoliah: But at the same time, I’d probably get a lot done. Now you’re making me think I should do it in 2027. Just go up, Counting House, fuck around.
Tom: All right, all right.
Abigoliah: So this one is all on you, Tom Salinsky, because I have no clue what they are talking about. I have a serious question concerning Fawlty Towers about something which has become known as the Mandela Effect, where –
Tom: First of all, you know what the Mandela Effect is?
Abigoliah: Yes.
Tom: Okay.
Abigoliah: Yes. Do you want to explain it for our listeners?
Tom: Yeah, very, very briefly. It’s a term that is applied to what are supposed to be false memories, but which some people think are alternative universes bleeding into ours. But the one I always think of is The Berenstain Bears, which people remember as being The Berenstein Bears with an E. So they imagine that there was a point in the past where it was The Berenstein Bears, and then the universe changed and time was rewritten, and now it’s The Berenstain Bears, and they’re the only ones who can remember it being Berenstein. This is, of course, nonsense because we can affect memories all the time.
Abigoliah: I was thinking about The Berenstein Bears, as I used to pronounce it. So we’re constantly Mandela-ing. We’re storytellers.
Tom: And this happens, for example, with misquotations. “I am your father.” “Luke, I am your father” is a more succinct and helpful summary of what is happening in the story at that point than the actual quote.
Abigoliah: “Luke, I am your father” is the misquote?
Tom: It’s just, “I am your father.” No, there’s no Luke at all. Or “Play it again, Sam.” “Play it again, Sam” tells you what’s going on in the story at that point in a way that the actual quote doesn’t.
Abigoliah: What is the actual –
Tom: “You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it.” Something like that.
Abigoliah: One that we didn’t get to when we did I Love Lucy is something that’s remembered as Ricky Ricardo always going, “Lucy, you have some ’splaining to do.” He never said that.
Tom: Yes. Kirk never said, “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Abigoliah: Yeah. But as you said, it kind of sums up because he’s always like, “Lucy, what did you do? Lucy, ’splain, please.” But on to Fawlty Towers. Hold on. Let me see.
Oh, it was kind of you, dear listener, to explain the Mandela Effect, but we let Tom do it. In the case of Fawlty Towers, I distinctly remember being at school in the 1970s and discussing two scenes in two separate episodes which do not seem to exist in current repeats of the show. One is Kurt vomiting all over the mullet in the episode “Gourmet Night”. The camera now just pans to Sybil’s face, but the studio audience clearly sees the vomit. And in the final episode, “Basil the Rat”, my friends and I collectively recalled seeing Manuel getting the two pigeons from the water tank. This second scene is more difficult to prove. Is this just me and my friends, or were these real scenes cut later on the grounds of decency or timing? This person did put in their name. This is from Stu, who is aged 58.5.
Tom: So no, as far as I’m aware, no Fawlty Towers episodes have been edited for content or timing, including instances of the N-word included to make fun of racist attitudes. They are still there. These are two different categories.
So Kurt – This is the episode “Gourmet Night”, where Basil and Sybil are attempting to have a high-class dinner party for local Torquay dignitaries. But the chef that they’ve hired gets drunk and is unable to prepare the meals. And yes, they did shoot – because John Cleese talks about this on the DVD audio commentary – they did shoot the actor playing the chef vomiting over the fish. And you can see, early in the scene, he has a mouthful of something and you can hear the audience reaction, but the camera cuts to Sybil. And John Cleese said the BBC made them cut it out.
Abigoliah: Oh.
Tom: That was shot but not broadcast. So unless you were at the recording in 1974, you have never seen this. You’ve just imagined it because that is what the story is telling you.
Manuel getting the pigeons out of the water tank, I am 100% sure was never filmed. I mean, that set didn’t exist. That would have been a big build, with water in the studio. That would have been a huge deal. Even on location, it would have been a huge deal. If that had been filmed, you can bet they would have used it. So I’m going to be very confident in saying that is a memory you’ve confected.
And the thing is, there is no way of determining a real memory from a fake memory except by looking for objective comparisons. And this has been studied. You can show people doctored photos of themselves as children in hot-air-balloon rides that never took place, and something like 30% will begin to recall this balloon ride that they never went on.
Abigoliah: Interesting.
Tom: Because they’ve been shown a photo which appears to prove it, and they’ll then start confabulating details. “Oh yes, I remember. It was windy that day. It was cold. I was holding my mother’s hand.” No, this is all horseshit. This is just how our minds work. And when you recall a memory, you also rewrite it.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Every single time you recall a memory, you rewrite it a little bit. It’s a creative act that you don’t realise you’re doing. So human minds are very fallible things, which makes the Mandela Effect so fascinating. The other famous one is in the James Bond film Moonraker, where the villain Jaws is given a girlfriend and this tiny blonde woman pulls him out of the wreckage, and she smiles and everyone imagines she has braces, which she never had.
Abigoliah: What? Wait, I just saw it.
Tom: Yeah. See, it’s a better story if she has braces because he has metal teeth and she has braces.
Abigoliah: Why do they fall for each other then?
Tom: Just because he’s a great big hulking brute and she’s a tiny little blonde girl with bunches.
Abigoliah: And she was nice to him and no one – Everyone fears him.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: She didn’t have braces?
Tom: She doesn’t have braces. She’s never had braces.
Abigoliah: It’s the Berenstein Bears. And she had braces.
Tom: I think she’s called Dolly. Dolly does not have braces on her teeth. But you can see why people would think she would. You can see why people would imagine it. And the fact you can see it vividly in your mind’s eye tells you nothing about whether it’s real or not. That’s a really difficult thing for people to internalise.
Abigoliah: Because I’m picturing the scene. I’m seeing the smile and I’m seeing the girl. Whoa. Mind blown. Whoa.
Okay. So this last question I have put in here is actually from our YouTube comments.
Tom: You’ve told me about how erudite and kind and thoughtful our YouTube commenters are. This has got a tiny whiff of criticism to it.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: So our correspondent writes, “I love the idea of All-American Comedy Explained, but Jackass? What about Barney Miller, Cheers, Soap, Arrested Development, the Bob Newhart sitcom, It’s Always Sunny, Seinfeld? For God’s sake, Jackass?” Okay, come on, explain yourself.
Abigoliah: I know. Okay, so here’s my thing. I was so excited to do Jackass. And because of the timing of it, I didn’t realise that Jackass had a film coming out. That’s why I wanted to do it when we did it, because apparently their marketing is not as good as it used to be. And we pushed this through so quickly and I made Tom Salinsky edit this on the quickest turnaround he’s ever had to edit an episode because I was like, everyone’s gonna love it. It’s going to be great. It is going to blow people’s minds that we’re talking about Jackass.
And like I said, I’m in charge of the socials, so I read YouTube. And I was getting ready for all of your thoughtful – Didn’t mind if you didn’t like it, but thoughtful chats about Jackass. And that video died. It flopped. You all were like, I’m gonna give this a miss for Jackass.
Jackass is one of those turning points in comedy. I hate to tell you this, but it is. And Tom has opened my mind to so many different types of comedy and so many people I did not know about. And Tom also has studied comedy. You’ve studied so much comedy, it’s so hard to find something to show you that you’ve never seen. And I was like, I know the one thing you haven’t seen: it’s Jackass. And I couldn’t wait to show our listeners, and you all were like, “What the fuck are you doing?” I’m trying to give different types of culture.
Tom: I want this show to be all about variety. And going back to that other question, I think there should be shows that we’ll include for reasons other than they’re my favourites. I’m kind of going to start with those and we’re going to have those all the way through. But there are lots of reasons to sit down and look at how a show got made and think about how it plays now to us as individuals in 2026. So I have no problem at all with you including Jackass. Once again, I’m not going to watch any more episodes.
Abigoliah: Yeah, fair enough. But I appreciate that you appreciated what it was. The one person who was like, “This is a brilliant idea,” was Phill Jupitus. He was like, “This is great.” And he started suggesting other things, but it was just shows he thought you would hate. And I was like, I’m not gonna show him Foxworthy.
Also, because I’m not going to show you this, but I did think about it. And then I was like, I don’t want to watch it either. George, Poker George, was like, “Next, show him Beavis and Butt-Head.”
Tom: I have seen some of Beavis and Butt-Head, but it’s not what I would be automatically drawn to.
Abigoliah: Yeah. But just so you guys know, on the Patreon is where you will find more episodes of All-American Comedy Explained. We’re going to start doing them monthly. So you guys know what’s coming out next: in August we’ll have The Carol Burnett Show, in September we’ll have The Smothers Brothers, because this season we’re doing satire and they are a satirical show. Then we’re going to have The Jeffersons, then we’re going to have Mary Tyler Moore, and then we’ll have a special Christmas episode and then on to the new year. So that will be the lineup, which are more traditional shows, and I hope you join us there for that.
Tom: Me too. All right. I think that wraps us up.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Guys, thank you as always for listening. If you want to follow us on any social media, please do. We are on YouTube, Patreon. The bonus All-American Comedy Explained episodes start at the £5 tier, and we will be back very soon with our new season on satire. Till then, I’m Abigoliah Schamaun –
Tom: I’m Tom Salinsky. Cheerio.
Abigoliah: Bye-bye.