Make Em Laugh

It's Melbourne International Comedy Festival time here in Australia and Centrelinked tried to celebrate by putting together two hours of funny songs. The problem is that one man's funny is another woman's fingers-on-blackboard, with some songs by comedians excruciatingly unfunny and some very serious songs horrifically hilarious. So, armed only with a vague notion of songs that try and give people a chuckle here's what we ended up with this week: 


The Young Ones theme
Eat It - Weird Al Yankovic
Stutter Rap - Morris Minor and the Majors
Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) - Benny Hill
Mahna Mahna - The Muppets

The Court of King Caractacus - Rolf Harris

We're Both in Love with a Sexy Lady - Flight of the Conchords
This Poem Sucks (Harriet) - Mike Myers (from So I Married and Axe Murderer)
Tram Inspector - the Bedroom Philosopher
Cows with Guns - Dana Lyons
24 Hour Garage People - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Ballad of Freda and Barry - Victoria Wood
Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage Mrs Worthington - Noel Coward
You're Just Too Hip Baby - Dave Graney
Becoming More Like Alfie - Divine Comedy
Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me - Rocky Horror Picture Show Original Cast
Money, Money - Liza Minelli and Joel Grey (from Cabaret)
A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place - Dolly Parton (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas)
Hold My Hand - The Rutles
Eric the Half a Bee - Monty Python
The Intro and the Outro - the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Love Life - The Rutles
Bedazzled - Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore)
Montage  - Team America World Police
The Riddler - Mel Torme
The Pub With No Beer - Slim Dusty
Preposterous Tales - I, Ludicrous
Right Said Fred - Bernard Cribbins
I'm Too Sexy - Right Said Fred
Barbie Girl - Aqua
Shaddup Ya Face - Joe Dolce
Ain't No Greens in Harlem - The Vibrations
I Remember Punk Rock - Vic Reeves
The Majesty of Rock - Spinal Tap
Bring Me Sunshine - Morecambe and Wise


Although I had an extra hour, I still ran out of time to play these:


I Wanna be Straight - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Bad Babysitter - Princess Superstar
Thou Shalt Always Kill - Dan le Sac and Scoobius Pip
Metaphor - Sparks
Ello John, Got a New Motor - Alexei Sayle
Hole in My Shoe - Neil
Austin Ambassador Y Reg - John Shuttleworth (yes, again - sorry Graham)
Jilted John - Jilted John
Panic Plants - The Lovely Eggs
The Queen is Dead - the Smiths
Formed a Band - Art Brut
I Can't Forget - Leonard Cohen
Why is it Always Dairy Lea? - the Shirehorses 


If you'd like to chuck in your tuppenceworth about songs that make you laugh I'd love to hear from you in the comments bit below. 


AFL returns to 98.9 North West FM next weekend so Centrelinked has a new starting time of 11am on Saturdays. Tune in on your Melbourne wireless or via http://www.northwestfm.org/ 

Know Your Product

Advertising. It can be evil, subliminal, insidious, sometimes genius. Advertising companies can spend millions trying to get brand names into our minds and often fail. Thank goodness then for our old friend Rock and Roll and it's uncanny ability to capture zeitgeists and enshrine aspects of popular culture in musical aspic in ways that ad men (and women) can only dream. Here are just a few examples, as celebrated on this week's Centrelinked:  

What Got Played
Know Your Product - The Saints
She Don't Use Jelly - Flaming Lips (Vaseline)
Vaseline - Elastica
Paninaro 95 - Pet Shop Boys (Aramani, Armani, A-A-Armani)
Wearing My Rolex - Wiley
My ADIDAS  - Run DMC
Razzmattazz - Pulp (tights)
Perfume - Sparks (every perfume under the sun)
Hymn to the Cigarettes - Hefner (every brand of cig you can think of)
Valium - Ffa Coffi Pawb (housewife's friend)
Under the Milky Way - The Church
Mars Bar - The Undertones

I desperately wanted to play I've Got a New Hoover by Reeves and Mortimer, which is one of the best starts to any comedy show in history (and certainly the best ever song about vacuum cleaners) but sadly copyright wouldn't allow. Here's some others that I had shortlisted, plus a few suggestions by our lovely listeners:

Advert or Blue Jeans - Blur ("Air Cushion Soles")
Man at C&A - the Specials (menswear)
National Express - the Divine Comedy (coach travel)
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana (deoderant)
Supersonic - Oasis (Alka Seltzer and BMW)
Down Under - Men at Work (Vegemite)

By far the most common suggestion was for car songs (Little Honda by the Beach Boys, Prince's Little Red Corvette, Natalie Cole and Pink Cadillac etc) but the undisputed king of the road for me is Y Reg by John Shuttleworth. sadly I ran out of time to play it, but you can watch the video here... 

Centrelinked: Saturday mornings at 10.30am on 98.9 North West FM. Listen on your wireless or online at http://www.northwestfm.org/. If you'd like to play along, follow @mintcustard or use #centrelinked on Tw*tter.  

The Circus is Leaving Town

I know that no-one reads yesterday's papers but unlike Morrissey I would like to finish something that I've started and bring you up to date with the shows I saw in the final week of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In a firesale clearance sale of a posting I've also included some souvenir photos I took during the festival to gaze wistfully at for the next eleven and a half months...

Felicity Ward reads from the Book of Moron, Melbourne Town Hall

I suppose it had to happen at some point but Felicity Ward reads from the Book of Moron was the only show I saw at the festival that I didn’t enjoy.

Based around a slightly incongruous notion that the well-spoken and professional Ms Ward is the worst kind of incompetent, much of the night was spent listening to our host reading stories of alleged social ineptitude from a big book. Sadly the tales – whilst amusing enough - didn’t pack much comedy punch, nor did they convince that Felicity is any more moronic than the rest of us. Losing your bikini top or getting stoned at drama class might make amusing dinner party anecdotes, but they aren’t enough to base a show on.

Her cause wasn’t helped by a decision to adopt a hammy theatrical approach - perhaps influenced by her television work on the Ronnie Johns Half Hour. What we were left with was a slightly self-congratulatory performance that had been rehearsed and polished to within an inch of its life, stripping it of any personality. This was reinforced when she handed out glossy copies of the Book of Moron after the show, the stories reprinted word for word including all the improvised exchanges with the audience.

If theatrical comedy is your thing then there are pleasures to be had. Felicity is clearly a talented performer but for me this show would have benefitted if she’d turned down the acting and let herself shine through more.

Felicty Ward is current performing at the Basement in Auckland as part of the 2010 New Zealand Comedy Festival...

Jamie Kilstein - Revenge of the Serfs, Victoria Hotel

I hadn’t heard of him before but motivated by a wonderful interview on Alan Brough’s ABC 774 show I turned up at the Victoria Hotel to see New Yorker Jamie Kilstein for some perspective on post-Obama America. I was duly served, but what I didn’t anticipate was being a front row witness to feats of extreme physical endeavour.

Kilstein has justly been labelled as the heir apparent to Bill Hicks’s throne of polemic. His conservative baiting, hypocrisy deflating, anti-religious themes are highly informed and articulately delivered with the right amount of intelligence, contempt and humour which is hard not to like. What the Hicks comparisons miss are Jamie’s impressive outpourings of physical and mental energy which see him transform from politicised stoner kid into a veins-throbbing-megaphone-wielding-stream-of-consciousness modern day Gil Scott Heron.

Kilstein’s performance is akin to watching a rapper in full flow; a deep intake of breath and then out it comes, a raging torrent of information and explanation and inspiration, no rhymes but perfect rhythm, breathing as controlled as an Olympic swimmer. Imagine The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart possessed by the spirit of Abdominal (check out his Vicious Battle Raps with DJ Format for a taste), the articulacy of John Cooper Clarke and the neck veins of Henry Rollins and you’re getting there.

If this sounds a little too political for you then a) you’re probably exactly the kind of person that should go and see his shows and b) don’t panic because Kilstein is first and foremost a very funny guy. His anti-religion soap-boxing was delivered using Eddie Izzard-levels of absurdity whilst a lengthy but rewarding piece about his changing relationship with his dad might have drifted from the show’s theme but it showed great self-awareness and added a bit of the personal to his political.

Revenge of the Serfs was one of the big highlights of my festival. I’d urge anyone to see Jamie Kilstein perform – not just to channel some of your grumbling into something more interesting and productive but to be impressed and, if I may get all NYC on y’all - laugh your frickin’ ass off.

Visit Jamie’s MySpace page here. Alternatively check out the We Are Citizen Radio site which he runs with Allison Kilkenny (“it’s like CNN with more swearing”)

Phil Nicol - Bobby Spade, a Deadpan Poet sings Quiet Songs Quietly, Bosco Tent

For the first five minutes of Phil Nicol’s performance as psychotic Rat Pack wannabe Bobby Spade I thought I’d made a terrible error of judgement. Bobby’s ego was uncomfortably big, his self-aggrandising disproportionate to the quality of his lines and the sound of his two-piece band drowned out any subtleties that might have been present. What was I doing here? Yet by the end I was convinced I’d seen a comic genius deliver a brilliantly inventive idea with infectious energy, wild enthusiasm and a delicious smack of what the fuck?

What happened in that hour would be unfair to relate in full, after all a nice twist is a nice twist. Still I think it’s OK to say that Bobby was an unexpected step up (and one to the side) from other white-suited lounge singers (that includes you Tony Ferrino). The central premise may be familiar but there is nothing old hat about Bobby. Coming across like a be-suited Ian Dury equipped with Rik Mayall’s glaring eyes, Nicol’s portrayal of the mental and physical disintegration of Bobby Spade is something to behold; as unnerving as it is hilarious.

Assisted by his band The Ghosts (Banquo and Casper, naturally) Bobby delivers songs and poems in a range of styles including an ode to deaf-blind Helen Keller’s husband (‘his tastebuds didn’t work; theirs was a senseless relationship’), a country ballad comparing albino cowboys with giant hairless rabbits and an ancient Scottish hymn about piss-flaps. Things mostly degenerate from there, with tales of degenerate monkeys ‘jizzing on my windscreen’ and primitive sexual awakenings (ahem) fingering his mother.

Along the way Spade takes to stopping mid-sentence to verbally attack or hug people in the audience, rant incomprehensibly or just start crying. As momentum builds you get the sense that it might be heading somewhere but even when you finally figure it out it’s still immensely satisfying.

After my Felicity Ward experience I wasn’t sure if theatrical comedy was for me. Thankfully A Deadpan Poet sings Quiet Songs Quietly was one of those rare shows that are so good they force you to change your mind about what it is that makes you laugh – and after three weeks of festival that’s no mean feat.

Sadly there’s no official Phil Nicol website but take a peak at his profile site here.

Tim Key - the Slutcracker, Melbourne Town Hall

So to the end, and my last show was one of the first on my list way back when; Tim Key’s highly decorated Edinburgh success, the Slutcracker. And what a lovely ghost to leave wandering about my mind until next year…

Slutcracker (if there was a reason behind the name I totally missed it, sorry) was a beautifully understated piece that sucked me in from the get-go. From the moment the doors closed then reopened again to reveal a slightly bewildered, carrier-bag laden Key in a tracksuit top it was clear that we were going to be a slightly different hour. As far from the manic energy of Messrs Kilstein and Nicol as it is possible to be, Key’s performance was so subtle some in the audience seemed to struggle with the idea that he really did know what was going on.

After changing offstage into an ill-fitting second hand suit (and making us wait whilst he did so) Key seemingly remembered to talk to the audience. Serving up haikus and short poems covering African savannah carnage, self-Googling and several uncomplimentary examples of Mr Key Snr’s ability to deal with technology or the modern world (‘what a dick…’) much of the show was delivered conversationally, as if he’d only just thought of it or was making up ways to fill the silence. As if to emphasise that there could be a point to it all, the show’s ‘structure’ (a page of overhead projector paper filled at random with hundreds of unrelated words) was shared. Words were then crossed out one by one as he ticked them off as done.

We were treated to several short films of increasing pointlessness involving a bearded Tim in mysterious outdoor locations (if you’ve seen any of the Smell of Reeves and Mortimer you’ll know the type). This was balanced by a generous amount of audience participation - the most I saw during the festival and yet the least cheesy. One man was nominated to hold Tim’s pint of bitter all evening, whilst people in the front ten rows were asked to assist Key cross the room back to the stage without touching the floor. This involved him standing barefoot in a Sara Lee cake and then putting his shoes back on whilst another member of the audience deposited him on a large antique fridge whilst we all cheered. Obviously.

Imagine going to the hairdressers and having someone wash your hair only to find out they were using trifle instead of shampoo. If the idea makes you smile more than it makes you angry then you'll probably like Tim Key. To describe anymore would be to risk spoiling something beautiful so like Key I'll gather my things in a carrier bag and nick off before anyone realises what's going on. For more Tim Key visit his marvellous website here.

Anyway, that's it. Bye for now Comedy Festival, you were ace. Miss you aready...

Jimmy Jimmy, Oh!

Demonstrating that January remains slow news month for most Australian journalists there has been a disproportionately large amount of coverage here of the Conan O’Brien – NBC - Jay Leno brouhaha currently making waves in the US. For those not in the loop (anyone who isn't American or doesn't have cable) here is a short story to bring you up to speed:

Old, unfunny man hosts iconic late night TV show. Old man leaves to host new, unfunny TV show in earlier slot. Freaky looking, slightly funnier man takes over iconic late night show. He is very happy. TV network spends US $50 million building a new set for iconic late night show. Ratings for both shows fall through their respective arses. TV network panics and tries to move old man’s new show back to iconic late night TV show’s spot. Freaky looking, slightly funnier man gets upset, refuses to move iconic late night TV show on principle. TV station and freaky looking, slightly funnier man go at it like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. People start to watch iconic late night TV show again. TV station pays freaky looking, slightly funnier man and his crew a silly amount of money to terminate their contract. Old, unfunny man gets his old job back. The world shrugs / gets upset because they prefer freaky looking, slightly funnier man.

Outside of his mock three-way stoush with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert I’ve never really embraced Conan and his Robin Williams-style of mania. However I did have some interest in the fate of the Tonight Show because of possible implications on one of my new televisual treats, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which risked being bumped or even cancelled if Conan’s show had been moved back. With Conan stepping aside we get to see more of Jimmy doing that thing what he do…

And what he do, exactly? Well, ostensibly the same thing that most American late-night-fawning-star-interview-house-band-audience-participation-pop-culture type shows seem to do. Such programs (Letterman, Conan, Leno, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel etc) are so formulaic that Garry Shandling’s sublime Larry Sanders Show was pretty much ready-made before they even started writing the gags.

It’s a formula that many around the world have tried to copy, notably Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton in the UK and Rove McManus in Australia. All three had ratings success but with weekly shows and precious little competition. Their US counterparts run parallel and in competition with each other five days a week, 52 weeks a year, meaning star guests and material are spread precariously thin.

This might explain why I have developed a fondness for Jimmy Fallon’s take on the genre, which is to fill the gaps between his opening monologue and the mutual back-slapping interviews with some moments of quality silliness reminiscent of his old days co-hosting Weekend Update with Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. The result is more late night community radio than polished television chat show which contrasts nicely with some of the very-famous-indeed guests.

Following in the footsteps of shows like Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush and Shooting Stars, LNWJF is proudly daft. Audience participation games are mostly pointless, pleasingly confusing and with desultory prizes. Many skits have no punch line or purpose and are played (unless Jimmy can’t help himself, which he usually can’t) straight faced. Like the early days of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out pleasure is derived from continual repetition of seemingly unfunny concepts til they eventually batter you into submission (the weekly ‘Shout Outs’ make no sense at all the first time…)

Despite all the Conan hoo-ha Late Night is undoubtedly aided by having NBC as its parent network. As the home of 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation and Saturday Night Live the show has a deep pool of comedy talent to draw on at will. There are many cameos by SNL alumni, past and present – which is unsurprising given Jimmy’s past and having SNL head honcho Lorne Michaels as Executive Producer.

Stylistically some of Late Night’s best moments mirror the SNL Digital Shorts; clever and funny pre-records which allow Jimmy’s hammy comedy style to shine and give the talented crew a share of the spotlight. Check out their pre-Christmas series the Real Housewives of Late Night featuring Jimmy and co as their own wives (including a scarily feminine AD Miles) or the recent inspired Video Vision Fire Safety skit.

Integral to the show are The Roots, Jimmy’s adopted house band who put the funk up every other house band on TV. The rapport between them and Jimmy - especially leaders Tariq and Questlove - is genuine and their ability to give musical backing to every idea on the show provides the glue that holds it all together.

My love is not unconditional just yet. There are still things wrong with LNWJF, not least some of the fawning interviews, with Jimmy happy to pump up a few egos or promote any old tat as great. An over-reliance on showbiz mates often leaves some guests covering little more than how fun it was to work together. Also, it may be a Late Night tradition, but please scrap the monologue. Jimmy can’t do them and why should he when there are other things he can do so much better? Fallon’s goofy personality is both his blessing and his curse (he was eloquently described by Tracy Ullman this week as the guy you’d invite out with a bunch of girls because he’d make you laugh but wouldn’t try to shag you) but ultimately there is much to like. His producers could do a lot worse than allowing him even more freedom to take Late Night somewhere totally new and not force structure upon him for tradition’s sake.

Having stepped into Conan’s old chair at Late Night the same time as O’Brien replaced Leno, Jimmy Fallon is slowly finding his feet some six years after quitting Saturday Night Live for a film career that never quite happened. I for one am glad he’s going to have more time than Conan did to prove himself the right man for the job.

We Seem To Be Made To Suffer

I haven’t seen any new robots around Melbourne for a while but I was quite touched last night by the tragic tale of Cheesoid, Mitchell and Webb’s ‘robot that smells.’ If you haven’t seen it yet I’d heartily recommend a few minutes here on You Tube. I take my hat off to them for a story that starts off so cheerfully and yet descends so quickly into Frankenstein-esque existentialist horror. And for bringing together robots and cheese in the name of comedy and pathos (‘Why Cheesoid exist...? Cheesoid hate self…’)

'Petril'

Naturally enough Cheesoid got me thinking about other famous comedy robots, so here’s a list of some of my other favourites, starting with (might as well get him out of the way):

Marvin the Paranoid Android (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) The original and best, Marvin is the Robfather – the don of all crap but lovable robots. He epitomises anthropomorphised boxes-painted silver, covered in crappy LEDs and old oven knobs and bestowed with a voices that are highly unlikely for machines meant to make human life better.

Of course Marvin had life through the Hitchhikers books and radio series long before he first appeared on telly, so its his droning, moaning voice that is his most recognisable and endearing feature (‘The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.’)

This is just as well because I’m sure if Marvin could have seen the lame-arsed job the BBC props department did with his physical incarnation he would really have had something to moan about. Still, he now has a whole BBC mini-site dedicated to him, which might have made him smile somewhere inside. Maybe.



Talkie Toaster (Red Dwarf) Naturally enough for a show set in the future, cargo vessel the Red Dwarf has more than its fair share of inhabitants with artificial intelligence. This seems to balance out the lack of natural intelligence shown by Lister, Rimmer and the Cat. ‘Service Mechanoid’ Kryten and ship’s computer Holly are the most celebrated, but they are a little too developed for this particular list. Elsewhere there are the Skutters, wandering about the enormous ship undertaking menial cleaning tasks, insulting Rimmer with the middle digit of their three-pronged claws and renacting key scenes from their favourite John Wayne movies.

And yet of all the artificial lifeforms on Red Dwarf, none tickles me more than the Talkie Toaster. Like the best robots he has just one mission (I toast therefore I am) and goes to great lengths to make sure that he carries out his directive. To tell you more would be to spoil his joys, so I suggest just watching his finest moment, trying to persuade a disinterested Lister to partake in some warmed-up bread products.



Alternatively you can look at attempts by real people with real jobs to make a real Talkie Toaster by clicking here.

Dylan (Vic Reeves Big Night Out) It’s interesting how much sympathy can be engendered by a plastic flip-top bin on wheels with flashing lights, deely-bopper eyes and a computerised Middlesbrough accent, but I still feel sad about poor Dylan. When he first rolled onto the Big Night Out stage as the cheery ‘special friend’ of Les, Vic Reves’ silent and oft-abused sidekick, who could have known the sorry existence he would have to endure.

Constantly berated by Vic as Les’ ‘sycophantic little robot’ Dylan responds to Vic’s ongoing cruelty to him and Les with a camp and indignant “ooh you bugger!” Despite his loyalty to Les, he eventually dies an ignominious death at the hands of a 'quite riled' Mr Dennis (a newsagent who doesn’t stock Curly Wurleys because they are far too elaborate). His appearances were fleeting so I’m not sure why Dylan’s memory has stayed with me all these years (apart from saying ‘ooh, you bugger’ makes me laugh) but I’m glad to have the opportunity to commemorate his short-lived life.

Ooh, you bugger!

Medibot (Look Around You) Medibot is the future of medical science according to the Tomorrow’s World-parodying 1979-tastic vision of the world that is Look Around You. Despite resembling a cake tin attached to a police filing cabinet he is able to perform any number of complex surgeries with only minimal assistance from his friend and keeper, Dr Franklin Fu.



His only reward is a serving of his much beloved hundreds and thousands (sugar sprinkles for all you Australians and North Americans out there) which Dr Fu pops in his mouth after a gruelling day at the surgeon’s table. Medibot’s vocabulary may be limited (Meh-di-bhot!) but he makes up with his jaunty style on the mouth organ. Until Cheesoid, Medibot was my favourite 21st century comedy robot. Now they’ll just have to share. Meh-di-bhot!



MaxiPower (the League of Gentlemen): More Transformer than pure robot, MaxiPower is a crime fighting G-reg Fiat Uno whose ride has been well and truly pimped by idiot-savant Neds to impress his young mate Tristan. Although possessed with a slightly larger dictionary than Medibot (“Hello Neds, let’s solve some crime”) she is generally a bit crap, though she does play the Knight Rider theme quite well. For a while.



Her one and only mission (to stop 'some lads who are going to rob some fags from the cash and carry and sell them to their mates at the power station') ends in disaster when Neds reveals that he wasn’t able to find Tristan’s requested machine gun but has fitted a can of silly string and an ejecting box of paper clips (‘It’s meant to be drawing pins but Mrs Ridley’s ran out…’ explains Neds). Tristan’s doomed ‘aw, fook’ as the flames rise around them is worth your admission price alone.

Honourable Mentions

Smash Robots – more robot/food interfacing with cocky Martian robots mocking the stupidity of humans for eating real potatoes. English humans, to be fair.

Techno Trousers (Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers, 1993) Mechanised remote control pants plus evil penguin plus Peter Sallis equals ace. You do the maths. (‘It’s the wrong trousers Gromit! And they’ve gone wrong!’)

Twiki (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) ‘bidi-bidi-bidi’

Metal Mickey – ‘boogie-boogie-boogie’

Tim Brooke-Taylor’s Golden Ticket-seeking computer (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) “I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime’s supply of chocolate”

Ungentlemenly Behaviour

A few overdue words of praise for Psychoville, the recent BBC comedy show starring and written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, erstwhile members of the League of Gentlemen. In case you hadn’t noticed, the League are rather popular round our way, so it’s been fantastic to have even 50% of them back together doing what they do best: intelligent, horror-inspired grotesquery with a heavy dose of silliness.

(Fear not, here be no spoilers…)

In essence Psychoville (the name given to the Royston Vasey-based League of Gentlemen series by Japan and Korea) is a comedy-thriller. It takes the stories of five individuals from across England and slowly intertwines them until you see they were mixed together all along. It eschews the sketch-based approach of the first two League of Gentlemen series and has more in common with Vic and Bob’s Catterick (also starring Shearsmith). Reece and Steve play three of the leads each but this time there are more prominent roles for an impressive supporting cast.

The most recognisable is Dawn French as Joy, an obstetrics nurse who treats her creepy demonstration baby like a real child. There are also great turns by Daniel Kaluuya as Tea Leaf, a petty criminal on community service, Alison Lintott and Debbie Chazen as the conjoined-Crabtree sisters, Daisy Haggard as a dim-witted pantomime Snow White, Elizabeth Berrington as Joy’s seemingly more down-to-earth colleague Nicola and Vilma Hollingbery as a pensioner with verbal diarrhoea.

For all these actors bring, Psychoville remains very much the Shearsmith and Pemberton show. The latter is particularly impressive as the serial killer obsessed mummy's boy David Sowerbutts and the mysterious blind recluse Oscar Lomax. As with Tubbs Tattysyrup and Pauline Campbell-Jones, his most infamous League characters, Steve’s performances generate genuine sympathy for two otherwise very unlikeable fellows and you completely forget there is a man behind the mask.

Shearsmith is not far behind, and whilst his Mr Jelly (a depressed, one-handed children’s clown) is a one-part Ollie Plimsolls, two parts Geoff Tipps shandy, he is more potent as David’s Bontempi organ-playing mother Maureen. The Sowerbutts provide the series highlight in episode four - a half hour special which abandons the five story format to provide a note-perfect homage to Hitchcock’s The Rope with a genuinely lovely surprise cameo.




This being one half of the League of Gentlemen, there are some marvellous one-liners and set pieces. Maureen’s organ, Lomax’s Club biscuit, Mr Jelly’s toilet break handcuffed to a diabetic old lady and any reference by Joy’s to her little Freddie Fruitcake are all worth looking out for.

As with the League, Psychoville is not all about big belly laughs. Much of it is about the pathos of sad, lonely and complex characters slowly revealing their tormented souls in increasingly bizarre circumstances (Lomax and David in particular). In that it has to be said that Psychoville did not hit the mark as consistently as I’d hoped. The whodunit element of the show buoys up some of the weaker stories, but as that fell away towards the end some of the joins started to show. The pantomime dwarf story in particular runs out of steam a bit, which was a shame, whilst something just didn’t click with the finale.

This doesn’t detract though from what has been a welcome return for two of Britain’s best comic performers. Personally I’d pay to see Reece and Steve read golf results from the paper, so seven new episodes of them together was wonderful. It’s far from easy to create a likable variation on the sitcom, so after a decade in which reality-based comedy took the lead, Psychoville is a welcome piece of fiction from two very fertile imaginations. More please BBC, more please.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Micallef?

I have a good friend who for anonymity’s sake I shall call Dave. It’s also his actual name which makes things a bit simpler. Before I ever met Dave people were telling me that I would like him. They remarked on our similar backgrounds and accents and sense of humour and kept trying to get us to be friends. When we did meet we were friendly and chatted as colleagues do, but we weren’t best buddies, at least not straight away. This was mostly my fault because I didn’t want English friends when I first moved to Australia. Anyway, I grew up a bit and started hanging out more and more with Dave and I realised that everyone was right. I met Dave’s wife, and Dave’s wife met my wife, and then we all started hanging out together until suddenly they decided they were moving back to England. I don’t think the two events were related… We still miss Dave and Mrs Dave.

Anyways, sometimes life is like that. You spend ages getting your act together and then before you know things change and move on. I tell you this because something similar has just happened with me and Shaun Micallef. Not that I’m friends with Shaun Micallef. I have never (to my knowledge) even been in the same room as him. I have however been told on many occasions that I would like him and his comedy and that I should give him a try. Much like with Dave, my response has been to dawdle and basically stand in the kitchen of the Micallef love-in party getting drunk on cheap lager and telling boring anecdotes about how Australian comedy hasn’t produced anything wonderful since Frontline.

When Shaun and I did finally meet it was via Newstopia, the SBS news parody show. This disappointed me a bit because as funny as Newstopia could be (and it could be very funny), it was essentially a copy of The Day Today, the Chris Morris-fronted BBC show from 1994 that launched Alan Partridge. Micallef’s confrontational and aggressive host seemed a little too closely modelled on Morris’s character on the Day Today (and he has admitted to be being a fan) which left a taste similar to when I watched the first episode of the American version of The Office.

Perhaps the rewards I got when I stopped comparing Steve Carrell to Ricky Gervais helped with Shaun because I was still interested enough to take a punt on a second-hand DVD of the Micallef Program. Good job I did because now, finally, I realise the brilliance of Shaun Micallef, my new best buddy in the comedy world.

My damascene moment came mid-way through a brilliant piece of physical comedy in which an inebriated Shaun battles to get a bottle of wine from his cellar which has been filmed at such an angle to render it impossible to tell what is a ceiling, what is a wall and where the hell the floor is. As the sketch unfolded and its intricacy became more apparent I was massively impressed that something so unashamedly intelligent yet unrepentantly silly could make its way onto typically conservative and dumb Australian television. Having since found other series on DVD it was a real treat to find out that The Micallef Program (or Programme or Pogram depending upon which series you watch) was consistently this brilliant.

The show’s strength is in knowing exactly what it wants to be, sticking to its guns and creating each program with a conviction that what they are doing works. It doesn’t explain concepts or provide unnecessary punchlines; it is, unapologetically, what it is. In that sense it reminds me of shows like Big Train or the Dadaist faux-variety of Vic Reeves. The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) has much in common with Bang Bang, It’s Reeves and Mortimer which is of a similar vintage and takes equal delight in doing something without reason (see German Girls) or taking sketches to places that no one could ever have anticipated (see Vic and Bob become Seagulls).

Despite their different pre-fame backgrounds Micallef and Reeves seem to have walked similar professional paths. Both got starts on commercial television before being snapped up by their respective public broadcasters (BBC/ABC). Given funding and free reign both created shows that were funny, genuinely innovative, critically lauded but not commercially popular. Since then Micallef and Reeves have tried a variety of shows and formats as vehicles to bring their formidable talents to the masses but in both cases the results left a feeling that they were watering down the very thing that makes them special.

Entranced by the charms of 1999-era Micallef and YouTube clips of his Fast Forward sketches, Mrs Custard and I tried out an episode of Talking about my Generation; the latest attempt to sneak Shaun into the hearts and minds of commercial TV watchers via the backdoor. Sadly, even allowing for some great non sequiturs and general strangeness from Shaun the show is mostly pointless panel-based-I-remember-space-hoppers-and-care-bears-and-lava-lamps nonsense. The panellists seemed unsure how to react to his shtick (although how would you react to a middle aged man taking a baseball bat to a giant piñata of Henry Kissinger’s head?) and the audience like they had been augmented with canned laughter. We were left with the feeling of being lured into watching this mess like ancient mariners onto the rocks, with Shaun in a mermaid costume combing his silver hair in the moonlight.

So what to do with Shaun Micallef? There are no ready answers as Reeves can attest. Vic has spent almost two decades as everyone’s favourite talk show interviewee, movie cameo, award presenter and celebrity guest and yet has been forced to return to the safe bosom of Shooting Stars to earn a crust.

Clearly Micallef deserves more recognition for his formidable talents and fortunately it seems like there are enough television, radio and theatre producers who agree. He’s starred on every Australian TV channel in one guise or another – and yet the right mix of critical and popular acclaim has proved elusive. In some ways it’s great that he gets to sprinkle some much needed absurdity into the mainstream but it’s also fair to say that much of the Australian television watching public is not naturally inclined towards the wilfully strange. They’re as likely to be watching shows like Talking about my Generation despite Shaun as because of him. Those of us who do like a bit of oddness are unlikely to tune in for the same reasons. We want to see him doing what he does best – writing and acting out his own work – but as we’ve seen, that didn’t have enough mass appeal to keep going. Apart from overseas it seems to me that there are a couple of places he could go to occupy a unique spot on Australian television.


Ten has missed a real opportunity with its new comedy news round-up The 7pm Project. Kudos for recognising that Australia needs a Daily Show / Colbert Report-style show, but they seem to have got it wrong. The show suffers from a lack of purpose, reporting the news more than it analyses, as well as a crushingly familiar cast (yet more Dave Hughes moaning on about ‘stuff’ like he does on every other panel show). I’m pretty sure that Micallef has the wit and intelligence to be Australia’s Jon Stewart and could add some much needed gravitas when required. One of Jon Stewart’s finest moments was the day after 9/11 when he and his staff found the right words at the right time. It’s hard to imagine Hughesy and co having much to say the next time something terrible happens, but somehow you feel like Micallef could hack it. It’s not too late, Channel 10.

Alternatively, if that’s all a bit too serious then how about filling the huge gap in interviewing styles between Andrew Denton and the mystifyingly popular Rove McManus? The paucity of choice on offer in Australia was even more apparent watching Jonathan Ross on Channel 7’s late-night repeats of his BBC talk show. Ross is by no means perfect but his interviewing style is unique and he walks a quite brilliant tightrope between flattery and abuse with all of his guests. Compare that to the ingratiating perma-smile of McManus and tell me that Micallef couldn’t do better. If we have to be a nation obsessed with celebrity, let’s have an interviewer who can prick a few egos to balance it out. (I say this without having seen Micallef Tonight from 2003 so I’d be interested to hear if anyone thought it was any good).

My hope is that there is some brilliant TV producer out there ready to team up with Shaun and give him the freedom to create something great. There was talk of an ABC pilot called Mouse Patrol written with Tony Martin, but there’s been nothing new on that since 2005. In the meantime I’ll keep working my way through The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) DVDs and hoping for more of this kind of brilliance:

Godzilla Interview - Dracula has a Seachange - Julie Anthony sings Computer Games - Polite Distances

… and to AB, my friend who insisted I watch Micallef and whose advice I ignored, yes yes yes. You were right, damn you. You were right. Happy?