Comedy Double

BBC radio panel shows are where standup comedians go to die…. well, OK, maybe that is a little harsh, but there is a grain of truth in it. Look how many ‘alternative’ comedians of the seventies, eighties and even earlier are now Radio 4 panel game stalwarts. Graeme Garden is one such and has been behind (and in front of) some of the most acclaimed comedy of the past thirty years or so.

Here he is with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Jeremy Hardy with Humphrey Lyttleton chairing, playing “Finish The George Bush Quote.”

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is the Rolls-Royce of radio comedy panel games, stacked with experienced comics. Humphrey Lyttleton’s urbane voice and advancing age makes his increasingly louche double entendres even more shocking to gentle suburban listeners: here’s Humph in a rare video clip of the radio recording taken from the South Bank Show, in which he traduces poor invisible lovely Samantha‘s virtue yet again:

Oh all right, those two had barely a few seconds of Graeme Garden in, but any excuse to run an ISIHAC clip. We fans are notoriously obsessive, expecially when it comes to the game called Mornington Crescent. How obsessed are they? Belle & Sebastian even wiote a song about it Some fans even make movies.

But back to Graeme Garden. Here’s A selection of clips from his long career in UK comedy, set to the tune of ‘Stuff that Gibbon’.

Bonus clips:

The Goodies did some groundbreaking things with film and video: here’s a series of clips from The Goodies and The Inbetweenies to demonstrate, set to “Filthy Gorgeous’.

Their ‘singing dogs’ clip was made entirely the old-fashioned way, by cutting and splicing actual, physical film together, rather than just doing a bit of jiggery-pokery with software.

Compare and contrast with the modern version – cute, but lacking a certain something.

(Of course the cats had to get on the act too, they always do.)

Bonus bonus clip:

While we’re on the subject of small mammals – make haste! For the badger parade is in but thirty seconds!

I can’t be the only one who went all “Zeinab Badawi!”. last week on seeing Savlon in the news. – long familiar to British viewers but maybe not so much to Americans, here to take you away from whatever it is you’re currently stressing about is the indescribable Harry Hill, with part one of his standup show, ‘Hooves’.

Part two can be found here.

Me, I’m off to have coffee and a pink cream horn with a certain Mrs Trellis of North Wales.