Original subtitles

Good evening, Panthers.

Hi,

Ruby. Ruby. Just a flashing ginger beer.

Hey, Peter. Good evening. We are French and Saunders.

We are the Dancers.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Ben, I'll be hosting the show.

Hello, everybody.

Almond turkeys sandwiches, heaps of tomatoes, fresh lettuce and lashings of

ginger beer. Hooray!

The comic strip was a group of entertainers who were the comic strip.

Peter, Richard, Nigel Plainer, Rick Mayall, Adrian Emerson, Dawn Fringe,

Jennifer Saunders.

Ah, stuck -up gits, aren't they?

One, two, three, four.

I was born to be on stage, you know. What can you do when you're multi

-talented? I mean, you can't just sit at home in a coma.

Every opportunity they could to either play guitar, throw grenades, fire guns,

or shag girls. Well, half of them wanted to be rock stars, the other half wanted

to be Clint Eastwood.

I got blisters on my fingers from cocking my guns. My ankles swirled up

wearing spurs.

And my hat kept blowing off and I couldn't chase it because my ankles were

swirled.

I think they were all very, very lucky to get to work with me, to be honest.

I think.

You know.

What happened to French and Saunders?

A couple of nice tarts in there, haven't they?

I don't think this sex thing is happening, Desmond.

Eleanor looks bored.

Is she?

Eleanor.

What?

When Desmond's doing that to you, does the earth move at all?

No, only the bed.

That's a very good thing about working at the comic strip. You do actually get

shag or snog any kind of window. We have shagged and snogged most of the comic

strips. Snogged all of them, except you.

We made up for that later. Made up for that in a stage play.

I think it was the kind of collective force of this group that changed all our

lives, really.

Well, the comic strip went through, I mean, it started out as a club.

Guaranteed laugh all your money back.

Paul Raymond had this theatre that was not used, and it seemed like it was a

group of us that had this kind of energy, I suppose, and a rough -edged

comedy. We got on well, and it was a feeling that we could do something

together, and the force of it would make a club work.

It was Mad Pete who wanted to do it.

He sat us round the table, and we signed some sort of thing on a menu to the

effect that we were going to try and start a club together.

Good evening. Welcome to the comic strip.

As you probably know, the comic strip is a whole new concept in alternative

entertainment. My name's Lexie Stone. I'm actually an alternative comedian.

I'm not funny.

The thing is, I'm non -racist, I'm non -sexist, so don't laugh at me, you

fucking fascist shitbag! It was all very un...

tried and tested and very kind of non -televisual and very kind of difficult

grasp because because not because it was a lot of swearing and very lefty

because both of those things aren't necessarily true but it clearly wasn't

bazazzy and showgirls and cozies this this used to crack him up you see go on

go in a lot like this guys and then i'll just go like this

i'm kenny a photographer

I take pictures of little girls.

Sometimes these pictures are in the magazines.

Page three.

It was a very strange place because it's actually in the Raymond Review Bar. So

the bar, it shares a bar with the Raymond Review Bar. So in the interval,

to eventually stagger the intervals because you'd have the non -racist, non

-sexist audience.

walking into the Festival of Erotica, coming to the bar where there were soft

porn videos playing, and all the way up the stairs there would be pictures from

the Raymond Review Bar.

So it was a most paradoxical venue to be playing.

I'll tell you what's going to be very big money soon.

Fibre optics.

Full frontal shots of these fallopian tubes.

Unborn children discovering for the first time the full sensuality of their

partially formed bodies.

It was quite funny, really, because it was after nudie babes and middle -aged

businessmen, and then at night it was the home of wild, uncontrollable

John Paul Sartre, what a fucking cat, eh?

What a fucking cat. We hate him round our way.

You know why? You know why? Because he knows fuck all about a cortina, that's

why.

I always thought some of Lexi's references were dead obscure, but I

performance. I really liked him, actually. It was very funny, cos he

nailed you to the chair as you watched him, but there was something about... He

had a bit of a twinkle.

It was more performance art than it was stand -up comedy, and I just liked that.

He was the main star, really, for the whole time that we were there, I think,

and the rest of us were kind of like the B team to him.

We like to open the ceiling with a little joke!

A joke! Joke!

Knock!

Who's there?

Open the door!

Open the fucking door!

Rick and Ade did this wonderful kind of stupid... Basically what they're still

doing now, you know?

It's exactly the same. They could take it out and put it in an episode of

Bottom. We weren't technically stand -ups, although we would stand behind the

microphone and do a joke, but it was often sort of ironic.

You know, the joke would be about somebody...

doing it badly.

What's green and hairy and goes up and down?

What? A gooseberry in a lift. It kills them.

Does anyone like to tell the gooseberry joke? How does a gooseberry get into a

lift?

I beg your pardon?

How does a gooseberry get into a lift? How the plop do I know?

It just seems a bit improbable. Maybe somebody brought it into the lift. How

hell do I know?

Do I have to take everything?

I quite fancied them, didn't you?

They were pretty spunky -looking.

I can't tell how I can say that, actually.

They were all right.

They had one dressing room and we had the other one. I don't know how it

out like that.

Because we were girls and they were boys. Yeah, yeah.

And they're stonk, they're stonk. Yeah, they'd never wash their costumes.

They'd sweat and sweat and sweat and they'd never wash their costumes.

They'd be a smell and it'd be my shirt.

So we always smoked as much as we could, as far as I remember.

But it was my fault, the smell.

Because rather than have a sink, which you might use to wash your armpits in,

from, they used to fill it up with ice and put lagers in it.

Me and Peter, we put on really crap black suits and did crap mime, high

movie spoofs, and everything was sort of high -speed.

We didn't sort of talk to the audience or say hello or relate to each other in

any way, really. We just did material. We just kept it churning out. In a way,

it became the new punk, if you like. And there was a connection with punk. There

was an anger and a kind of attitude about it.

They didn't wear safety pins and stuff, but they would have gobbed at the

audience if they thought that was a good idea.

All right, nobody move!

Nobody move!

Keep your heads down! Nobody will get shot!

I've come to read the gas meter.

Keith Allen certainly famously threw beer over an Evening Standard critic.

He said something one night with John Blake, and it was along the lines of, I

own you, which what he was implying was, you know, without the press, you're

nothing, which was a bit daft. So I emptied a bucket of water over his head

rubbed his bread in his face.

Keith Allen used to turn up and make trouble from time to time, yes. I want

be the first SAS comic.

Keith had come in tell us what bastards we were well he's now space I Think they

deserve it. I think they're a great bunch of lads. You know, they're really

good. Let's sunbathing with frilly underwear.

I Always thought that character based stand -up comedy was a cop -out I always

thought you had to stand up on stage and reveal yourself.

That's what you did and in so doing, you know, you could Have an influence or an

effect whereas all these guys came down to the basically they were comic actors

And I wasn't that impressed. Hi.

I'm here to welcome you to, well, quite a serious evening, the psychodrama.

And it's nice to see so many people coming in for this.

Because often we don't get quite so many people.

Diana Bernstein, right?

Muriel.

You're here.

You're here.

Yeah.

We're here.

We weren't very good, I have to say that.

All the rumours are true.

We were crap.

Yeah!

You were in London? Yeah.

Like, how long have you been here?

Oh, two whole days now. Oh, really? You must have seen everything.

Yeah, yeah, I have, yeah.

I went to Tower of London this morning. Oh.

Got all the little beef burgers there. Yeah.

I was talking to Dawn and she was very worried about it. I'm sure Dawn will

agree that in those early days it was rubbish, you know.

And she said, what should I do? Because I think she was a primary school

teacher.

And I said, I'll give up. I'll give up and go and be a primary school teacher.

It's probably the best case of ignored information ever.

We made the big mistake of thinking that the audience would probably be the same

every night and therefore we would have to change our material.

Yeah, we did a different act every single night.

And then we realised... It took a long time. Imagine how good the standard was.

We were very dim. Cracking.

It took a long time to realise that the boys were actually doing the same act

every single night.

Because, of course, it's the audience that changes.

Before we do the next piece, I'd like to give you a little contortionism.

I got on the front cover of, I think it was The Sunday People, as I recall.

They called me a four -letter gag merchant, which I wanted to put on my

passport, because I thought that was really cool.

It was exciting, because you'd have Dustin Hoffman one night and Jack

the next night.

You know, Robin Williams would turn up sort of midnight and just before, just

we were about to close, and he's going, can I go on, you know, and so the show

would run on to about one o 'clock in the morning, you know.

Peter was always very cool about that.

You know, it seemed inevitable.

You know, I'd be shitting my pants.

You know, we seem to be moving... Not because these people are more important.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Because suddenly we were groovy.

The first Christmas we were doing a comic strip and there was a big thing on

time -out.

I mean, the music business, I think, started taking an interest first.

And kind of TV and stuff, yeah.

When I was that age, anyway, you're kind of not... I wasn't surprised.

I'd go, yeah, I'm brilliant.

Yeah. You know, like, why aren't you here sooner, you know? A big welcome,

please, for Alexis Midnight Aranas.

OK. Hey. All right.

OK. All right. Now, there's been a lot of racial trouble in the world these

days, you know?

Blacks and whites, Russians and Afghans.

Don't know why they pick on them. I think they're fucking nice dogs.

There's only one device that can solve all this racial conflict.

What is it? Is it our big melting pot?

No!

Is it a model railway set?

No!

Is it a pop -up toaster?

Yes! No, Joe!

God knows how the stage at the Raymond Review Bar held them all.

You know, if you go back and look at it, it's really tiny.

But you had all these people there with all these ideas, hurtling around with

all these gags.

Pish -poor comics, weren't they?

Were they comic?

Yeah. See, it's called Comic Strip, you see.

Oh, right. I never... Saw any of them, Starkers.

No.

The comic strip became a group of people called The Comic Strip.

From there, it became a TV show.

I'd come out of Dorset. Went out on the first night of Channel 4, which was a

historic night to go out on.

It was the very first thing I ever commissioned.

A sort of man in a long, crombie overcoat shuffled into my temporary

the IBA, which I shared with...

the creator of Max Headroom and, I'm afraid, also the creator of Minipops.

And we kind of took ourselves away. And a very shy, selfie -facing guy, he was

Pete Richardson.

He did the deal without telling us that he'd done it.

He went to Channel 4 and said, this is what I can offer you.

I went in and said, well, I want to do film comedy.

Because I think film comedy is very different to television comedy.

Peter Richardson is very determined and sort of, I mean, in the way, you know,

perfectly, I mean, kind of Machiavellian in a way that I think maybe an auteur

has to be. But I remember when the comic strip club started,

before it started, we had a big meeting at Peter's house and we just, you know,

we decided that everything would be done by a kind of single, non -transferable

boat. via a kind of parliamentary system based on the upper house in finland or

something like that you know kind of you know and kind of you know you could uh

you know it's kind of you know it's like the like the doomer or something in

post -revolutionary russia anyway so we're like yeah we vote and we every

issue will be like anyway it turns up the first week our paychecks it says

richardson limited the comic strip i guess was always my baby and so it was i

worked most at it and also pete and i and i think we kind of enjoyed writing

know we just raised to sit down and, you know, spend a long time working on the

scripts and wrote quite a few of them. They were all sort of quite elaborate

past issues, but having seen the act and knowing the people involved, knowing

from seeing them at the comic strip, the people involved, I thought it was a

really exciting prospect.

I say to you, that man looks foreign.

Yes, I expect his name's Gollywall. Yes, or Tarzan.

I think we'd better call the police just as soon as we get back to Cairn

Cottage. The cheek of taking on an icon like Enid Blyton and the Famous Five was

applauded by many and appalled by some.

It was completely subversive and anarchic and irreverent to the whole

Blyton thing, but it was actually strangely quaint and true to the form.

Rhubarb tart, my favourite, with lashings of cream.

You've had four helpings already, Dick. Thanks, Anne.

You really are a proper little housewife. Not like George.

She still thinks she's a boy. I think it's stupid being a girl.

I wish I was a boy.

Really, George?

It's about time you gave up thinking you're as good as a boy.

There was an 11th hour meeting with a couple of barristers from the Blighton

estate and a relative.

And we sat down in that room in the Channel 4 building in Charlotte Street

watched it.

And it was just one of those, you could have cut the atmosphere.

And it was actually wonderful, because what happened was that there was a woman

barrister, and she had a sort of, she sat there,

and then her document started shaking, and she was trying to hide her face. And

at the end of it, they were all laughing.

And they were fine.

And actually, I'm sure it probably helped the sales of the book. What a

bar. Yes.

One's got a big nose and thick lips, and the other one's got mean, clever little

eyes. And they're unshaven.

Just look at the way they're slouching. The thing about film is you create a

world. I mean, it's not the same as that TV theatre experience with, you know,

the shows that Rick and Ade do and Dawn and Jennifer are played to an audience,

I think.

Whereas I don't think our films ever were, really.

Yes, there's been a lot of strange comings and goings in this village.

and secrets and signs and threats.

In film, the laugh come internally.

Hello, Master Torby. Give me some chocolate cake and some ginger beer, old

woman. You could say please.

I'm so filthy rich, I don't have to.

Here's a five -pound note.

Keep the change.

Well, I slept with Peter Ritzen, of course, but we all did once.

And yet he came to play one of the heaviest, didn't he?

Remember that? No, I don't.

Yeah, he walked in, he wanted him to do the Nosher Powell part, the blah, blah,

blah thing.

And no -one could do it quite as nice and flat as Nosher did it, you know.

So he said, well, all there is left is a randy gypsy and the horrible old bagger

runs the local Twiggy store. And I thought, well, if I can have them both,

you're on.

And the rest is history.

You know, you remind me of my naughty granddaughter.

Right, off we go.

And from then on, of course, we started writing for him as much as anybody else.

Peter Richardson and Pete Richardson used to really... used to write all the

time, in fact.

I mean, their shitting was just something that interrupted their

were always writing. Peter was always writing out in the shed with Pete.

I assume they were writing.

Pete and Peter would always write the most, mainly because they're

megalomaniacs.

And then the rest of the people would get whatever... No, also, they could

write. That was the other thing. That was the other thing, yeah.

Enjoying that writing.

Oh, Timmy, you're so licky.

You shouldn't let him do that, George. It's not hygienic.

But we like it, don't we, Timmy?

Come on, girls, leave Timmy alone.

You've got to remember, the only sat -out that was in television in those

it was the only thing that was remotely satirical or scurrilous at all.

And nobody had ever seen that before.

I mean, I'm not talking about the content, I'm talking about the form. You

didn't go and shoot half -hour comedies with an ensemble team of performers and

put it on television, because before you'd had the kind of Oxbridge axis,

was, you know, not the 9 o 'clock news. Before that, you'd had Monty Python.

And there was this thing, which was fantastically new. Nobody'd seen this,

know.

Blah, blah, blah, stolen plane.

Blah, blah, blah, missing scientist. Blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, atom bomb.

Blah, blah, blah, third world war.

Blah, blah, blah.

The figures were never very good. I think three and a half was about the

But having said that, most of those three and a half million could recite

whole show next week.

You know, it's got quite a dedicated following.

Suddenly all the kids were, you know, you'd hear kids in the street saying

blah, blah.

I remember hearing that a few days afterwards.

I think it fitted the brief perfectly. I mean, I think it did exactly what

Channel 4 should be doing at that time.

I think it was important as well. I think it actually stamped a personality

the channel in the early days.

Fringes? Is that all we ever have?

All we hear is secret conversations?

Digging up buried treasure?

Chasing people down? Tell us, why can't we do something else for a change?

Like what?

No, no.

Just building model aeroplanes or... or country dancing.

I'll pretend I didn't hear that.

Oh! I thought it was good, but I wanted it to be, you know, unsuccessful because

I wasn't in it, you know. I think I probably went round sneering at it. Oh,

just derivative shit, you know. It's pastiche.

It's just pastiche, you know.

Empty pastiche.

You know, it's not... It's not political, you know. It's not about...

It's not about the riots in Brixton.

I probably would have said, but secretly I thought it was very funny, but, you

know, to my circle of bitter little friends, I would pretend that it was

rubbish. No, I loved it, and there was no... I always half thought it was my

idea.

Er, because it was, probably.

I think I found it! Hurrah!

I say, George, you're pretty spunky for a girl.

No, thanks, Dick.

Oh, blow, it won't open.

Well, perhaps the secret mechanism that opens it.

Of course. How silly of us not to have thought of that.

I say, Dick, try bending that branch over there three times.

The fun was doing it and not in the reaction, which is still true, I think,

I think, most people.

But we haven't made very many films. It's like when you come back off holiday

and you send your pictures to Boots and you can't wait to see them again. That

was the feeling.

Oh, look at me in those shorts!

Nobody's thinking well -constructed filmmaking.

Excellent. What the blazes do you mean by that, Toby?

Yes, smell the beans at once, because there's something very unnatural going

here, and that's for sure.

I think I can explain everything, children.

Pete was very good at casting.

Not just casting us, but kind of weird casting, like, um... Do

sit down, children.

With his name, I can't believe I can't believe he's got this shit out.

Now that you dreadful children have found out my little secret, I suppose I

as well spill the beans.

Ronald Allen!

That's it.

That's it.

For many years now, your aunt Fanny and I have not had a proper marital

relationship.

She's an unrelenting nymphomaniac.

And I'm a screaming homosexual.

People were thinking, David from Crossroads, I didn't imagine that he was

of gay psychopath.

I do think they were groundbreaking.

I think they were groundbreaking because they were shot in film. I think they

were groundbreaking because they brought a new...

irreverence to the whole sense of pastiche.

And I think that they were groundbreaking because somebody

prepared to put money into a bunch of people who were virtually unknown.

Because it just was the best time.

We did have a lot of fun.

I think we'd have done it for nothing, unfortunately.

But we never told them that, of course.

That's when life started to imitate art. Me and Nige had such a row, and we, you

know, we were pals.

And we had such a row over sound levels on stage.

It's absolutely terrifying that the safety boat refused to go out.

He said, it's too dangerous.

But there were a lot of girls there that day.

Leslie, who's got the biggest knob?

Me or Harvey?

And we were always made to wear quite short skirts and fishnet -type high

by Peter. Even if you were playing, for instance, a lumberjack, that would be a

suitable costume.

It was just Peter's fantasy, I think, a lot of it.