Well, last night I spent a couple of hours watching The Fast Show reunion tour in Nottingham. They never did a skit on shopping telly back then as I recall. Maybe just a few years too early for them to have picked up on the very early days of it.
My theory on well-known comedy performers is ‘funny’ generally goes with younger. Mortality isn’t usually that hilarious. So when younger gets older, it isn’t so funny any longer. And that was very how it was last night. Caroline Aherne obviously couldn’t show up, and for some reason John Thompson couldn’t be there either. Watching a 65 year old Paul Whitehouse reprise ‘Suits You, Sir’ just wasn’t funny any longer. Some of it raised a chuckle, but what you did realise watching all those ‘90s comedy characters and themes, is how much comedy has changed in the 30 years since that show first aired, and how most of it presented today as new to a commissioning editor, wouldn’t even make it to air for fear of numerous causing offence issues to some minority or other. Any edge or daring comedy once had then, long gone in todays PC-ridden world, outside of the Ideal one, of course.. You can still be thirty years out of date and longer and get away with it on there, Peter.
vostok-europe.com
familiar theme?
