PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

John Cleese - How to Irritate People 1968

Someone posted the John Cleese TV program How To Irritate People. I saw it in the 80s on VHS but not since. It was produced in 1968 and an idea of producer David Frost. They aimed the program at the US market to try to introduce British comedy to Americans. The Wikipedia says that it was first broadcast in the US on January 21 1969 and did not get broadcast in the UK. I would have been in Canada at that time and don't remember it being on TV. Not that it means anything, I've hardly any memory of much of what went on in 1969. I do know I would have seen John Cleese and Graham Chapman on The Frost Report by then and knew their names. Everyone who wrote HTIP, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Marty Feldman, all worked on The Frost Report. I remember The Frost Report being entertaining and making me laugh. Ian Fordyce was the director of HTIP and joining John in the sketches are Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Gillian Lind, Connie Booth and Dick Vosburgh. How to actually irritate people is shown in a series of sketches introduced by John. One of the sketches was an early version of the Python Dead Parrot sketch. I had a letter from John back in the 70s and he said he was going to be buried with that parrot. I wonder if he still has it. I should write again.

Cunk On Britian Series 1

Diane Martin plays Philomena Cunk in the new series Cunk On Britain. The first two episodes are up on YouTube for now locals. There are 4 in total, episode 3 is on BBC Video but I can't access that from here.

Episode 1

Episode 2

I find her daft character quite funny and I know a little about British history so many of the jokes are quite hilarious. 

Very British Problems Series 1 & 2

I watched the whole series of Very British Problems yesterday. It's only 7 episodes and even at 45 minutes each it didn't take much of the day. It's a stack of comedians and TV presenters commenting on a themed show. The first series of 3 episodes came out in August 2015, there was a Christmas episode in December, the second series started airing in May 2016. Nothing since. There is a book by Rob Temple but I doubt that I'll order it.

The show is narrated by Julie Walters. There's a bunch of people I like to see commenting: Steven Mangan, Johnny Vegas, Catherine Tate, Jack Whitehall, David Tennant, Danny Dyer, Catherine Ryan, Susan Calman, James Corden, Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer, Rich Hall, Ruth Jones, Susan Calman, Jonathan Ross, Rob Beckett, Aisling Bea, Roisin Conaty, Alex Brooker, Josh Widdicombe and Romesh Ranganathan. There are a few other people that I haven't heard of before or don't care much about.

Series 1

1 Other People

2 Out And About

3 Feelings And Emotions

Christmas Special - At Christmas

Series 2

1 At School

2 With Friends

3 On Holiday

Our House 1960

There are only the three episodes of Our House left and all are from the first series that aired in 1960. All the existing episodes have been released on DVD, the other 3 dozen are gone. The show was created by Norman Hudis, who was the main writer, he was joined by Brad Ashton and Bob Block. Norman was the writer of the first 6 Carry On... films and after 1966 he wrote American TV episodes for shows like The Wild Wild West, The FBI, The Man From Uncle, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon and Baretta.

The cast includes Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques and Norman Rossington. They all appeared in the Carry On... films and they all live together, with 5 more people, in a big old house. Often all 9 are in the scene together. They're a bunch of characters and there's plenty of noisy interactions between them. Each episode runs just over 45 minutes so there's plenty of time for jokes. The material is typical TV fare of the time period. Quite a few things get dropped and broken during the yelling and great excitement. They aren't as entertaining as the Carry On... films or the later Carry On TV series but I was still glad to see them. Not sure I needed the DVD but now I have it. You can see them on YouTube.

Simply Simon Charles Hawtrey plays 4 roles in this one.

Love To Georgina Hattie Jacques has a bit of a romance.

A Thin Time Plenty of laughs on dieting.

Sean Lock "Keep It Light"

Sean Lock "Keep It Light" is Sean's 2017 stand up comedy DVD. He had stand up DVDs in 2008, 2010 and 2013. I have them all and enjoyed watching them. The market for comedy DVDs in the UK has been complained about by comedians on the panel shows for a while now. Sales are down and you can find cheap stand up comedy DVDs on Amazon UK. I have ordered several. Jimmy Carr released his last stand up show as streaming only.

I just got Sean's DVD today from the UK. It's rather doubtful that it will ever be released in the US. I can't imagine hardly anyone have ever heard of Sean over here. "Keep It Light" was OK and I got a few laughs. I even laughed out loud a couple of times in the second half. I'll watch it again.

The Last Leg Series 13

I found a page on YouTube of the current series, 13, of The Last Leg. They started airing January 26 and the YouTube person started uploading the 8 videos the 6th of this month. I hadn't seen them anywhere else so far and I had trouble finding nice copies of Series 12 last year. I just assumed Channel 4 was just getting them taken down as fast as they were being posted. As usual Adam Hills hosts and Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker co-host. They talk about the news and have guests. David Tennant, Stephen Fry, Richard Ayoade, Noel Fielding and Kathy Burke head the list of folks I like to see. By the 7th show they've really started to spend more time on the Paralympic Games.

Tread Softly 1952

Tread Softly is a 1952 British crime comedy that's on the same disc as The 20 Questions Murder Mystery. TS was based on the novel, The Show Must Go On by Gerald Verner. The screenplay is by Gerald Verner, with additional dialog by Donald Ginsberg and Vivian Cox, the director is David MacDonald.

The star of a play leaves in pre-production and they loose their theater. They find an abandoned theater and open it up. There's dark secrets in the theater's past and opening it brings them out in the open. People die.

The mystery part of the movie was OK but the song and dance bits had me hitting the fast forward button. I was pleased to find John Laurie in the film. I liked him in the TV series Dad's Army and it was nice to see him in something else when he was a bit younger. The disc was worth getting to me, I'll want to watch these again.

The 20 Questions Murder Mystery 1950

The 20 Questions Murder Mystery is a 1950 British film that I picked up recently. It's on a disc with another British movie called Tread Softly. T20QMM is directed by Paul L Stein and the screenplay is by Victor Katona and Patrick Kirwan. That's Robert Beatty in the middle of the above picture. He's a reporter and so is the lady to the left, that's Rona Anderson. I don't remember seeing Rona in the 1959 TV series The Flying Doctor but it says she was in an episode. It's one of the few shows from my youth that I would like to see again. Sadly it doesn't even turn up on YouTube. The other fellow is Edward Lexy and he's the copper, Detective Inspector Charlton, that's annoyed by their meddling.

 

It's an OK mystery, some villain is using the 20 Questions radio show to pass along clues on the murders that he's going to commit. He strangles the victims with a cord, thugie style. It was a real radio show, based on an American radio show, and the real cast plays themselves. There's a good mystery, some comedy, some romance and a nice ending. A good piece of entertainment.

Grandpa's Great Escape 2018

Last New Years Day the BBC played another of their adaptations of a David Walliams novel. Grandpa's Great Escape has a script by David and the director is Elliot Hegarty. Elliot's directed a lot of TV since 2007 but I can't say I've seen any of it. I read this book last year and I liked it quite a bit.

There's a great cast, David plays Barry, Jack's father, the kid telling the story. Kit Conner plays Jack, he really loves his grandpa, he's a really good kid. Alice Nokes plays his sister Shelly and Samantha Spiro plays their mom Patricia. Tom Courtenay plays Grandpa. He's brilliant. Jennifer Saunders plays the head of the nursing home.

I'd recently seen Tom in Dad's Army, the 2016 movie based on the 60s TV show of the same name. I really liked that show when I watched it a few years back. I mostly haven't seen Tom's work over the years, most of it's stuff I'm not much interested in. I first saw him in The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, it's a 1962 film that I saw in the late 80s. It was after I got a VCR and the video stores came into being. I'm not so interested in seeing it again.

Grandpa is having issues with his memory and Jack works hard to keep him out of the home. It doesn't work so well and Grandpa is carted off to to Twilight Towers, where the inmates are drugged and robbed. Jack and Grandpa plan an escape. There's plenty of action and danger and Spitfire's. Of course, the Spitfire has a special place in Britain's history, the war and all. Grandpa's greatest desire is to have one last fly in his old Spitfire. It's nice he gets his wish. There's a beautiful sad ending that worked really well in bringing a tear to my eye. You can see it on YouTube, at least until it's pulled down, the link is in the title above. I plan to buy the DVD if one comes out.

Ratburger 2017

Ratburger is a 2017 SkyOne adaptation of the David Walliams novel of the same name. David wrote the script and Matt Lipsey directed the thing. Matt's directed a lot of David's TV work as well as shows like Vexed, Saxondale, Human Remains, and Psychoville.

Ratburger is David's fifth novel and it came out in 2012. I have several of the novels but haven't got that one yet. I really enjoy them and I know Suzie Dent says they're favorites in her house. I don't know how popular they are in the US, I usually pick them up from other countries.

Zoe lives with her father and step-mother in a tower block. Her step mother is horrible to her. She even killed Zoe's pet hamster. David Walliams plays a greasy burger seller called Burt and he parks his burger van outside Zoe's school. Burt harvests rats to make his burgers and he's not opposed to grinding up human remains to pad out his rat burgers. He has his eye set on Zoe's rat Armitage and Zoe's step-mom Sheila, played by Sheridan Smith.  Zoe, her rat, and her few friends will soon put an end to Burt. That will brighten up everyone's day and the show has a happy ending.

It's not often that you'll find cannibalism in a children's story and I can't think of anyone better than David Walliams to carry that off. Mind you most of his books have a bit of a dark side but they always have a happy ending for the characters we all like. The villains, well, let's say they're lucky if they live to go to jail and leave it at that. There's a link in the title above and you click on that to go to YouTube and watch the hour long program. Hopefully it will be there for a while. It's been there since January 3 this year.