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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The first time I'd seen fart jokes that were actually funny': comedians on their cultural awakenings
The Young Ones arrived at exactly the right time. I was 15, and a weird mixture of studious and smart but also disruptive in class. I was also extremely virginal – both fascinated and terrified by the idea of having sex and in no danger of doing so for another half a decade. I was basically Rick. My parents were strict – my dad was the school headteacher – so I can't think why they let me stay up late to watch it. Maybe they just wanted me out of the way so they could get on with other things. What drew me in right away was how silly it was. A lot of the comedy I'd liked had been clever stuff that was almost snooty, like Monty Python or Derek and Clive. The Young Ones was rude. It was the first time I'd seen slapstick and fart jokes that were actually funny. My generation missed punk, but The Young Ones had a similarsense of anarchy – a 'do it yourself' spirit, with a cavalcade of ideas being thrown at the screen. The alternative comedy scene – as well as the Comic Strip and French and Saunders – felt new and very galvanising. In the same way the Sex Pistols made anyone feel as if they could pick up a guitar, The Young Ones made me feel like I could make a living out of making people laugh: it didn't matter if I was a regular kid at a comprehensive school in Somerset. This was a particularly important revelation, as my careers adviser had told me that I should give up on being a writer and work in a bank. Watching The Young Ones episodes on repeat to learn the lines by heart, I learned about the rhythm and language of comedy. Plus, I discovered that if you could do a good impression of one of the characters, you'd get a laugh at school the next day. I loved Rik Mayall. He was a handsome and sexy figure, but not afraid to make himself look ridiculous. He continued to inspire me throughout my life. Years later, as a comedy writer, I wrote some scenes for him in the sitcom Man Down, but he died before they were filmed. I was on the toilet when I heard the news. I cried, both upset that someone I loved had gone, and sad that I'd no longer be able to work with one of my heroes. The Young Ones was a show that parodied idiotic students, a bunch of men who didn't want to grow up. Neither did I – and, thanks to The Young Ones, I didn't have to. As told to Harriet Gibsone Richard Herring's RHLSTP is at The Stand Comedy Club, 30 July to 10 August. A year ago, I was in the pit of a perimenopause crisis but I didn't fully know it. I didn't know there was an explanation for feeling depressed, suicidal, confused, exhausted and generally ill. Then I read Davina McCall's book Menopausing. The idea behind the book is simple: Davina went on to social media and got people to send their menopause stories. I listened to the audiobook while I was travelling around gigging, and heard lots of different readers voicing their stories, interspersed with Davina's chats with a doctor, who gave useful information about what was going on in these women's bodies and minds. There are people in the book who left their careers because they couldn't cope intellectually or emotionally. It just seemed crazy to me. A woman who has spent 25 years of her life building up her career shouldn't just have to walk away because she's too scared to say: 'I don't know what is going on. I'm losing words. I'm losing the ability to be in the present moment because of brain fog.' Davina's book helped me to understand that I had reached a stage that was actually quite serious. So I went ahead and pushed my case with my doctor. After reading the book, I was able to say: actually I'm not depressed – I'm losing parts of my cognition due to fluctuating hormone levels. Most of the time, the doctor just asks: how's your sex drive? But most of us experiencing perimenopause don't care about sex at that point. I was more worried about staying alive, how I'd perform in my job and how words weren't coming out of my mouth correctly. Being able to tell my doctor what was wrong was really important. I was given testosterone as well as oestrogen, and that was extraordinarily helpful. All of it has made me committed to trying to show up in my performances a bit more. I need to keep practising, keep exercising my brain. There has always been something so special in the art of live performance and being able to stay present – even if it means saying I forgot what I was about to say. Having Davina say that she'd gone through this was a big thing for me. So I'm always pushing her book to friends, to spread more awareness and bring the issue to the light. As told to Miriam Gillinson Desiree Burch: The Golden Wrath is at Monkey Barrel Comedy, 28 July to 10 August. Growing up as an only child and a drama kid, I was probably quite annoying. I was always coming up with ideas and characters, but I wasn't the type of kid to say: 'Come and look at what I've done!' Instead I would do parodies of teachers or characters from the television in the privacy of my bedroom. One Christmas, at primary school, I finally got the chance to stand on a stage and show everyone what I could do. It was the nativity play, and I was playing the part of the innkeeper. I only had one line, which I've since forgotten, but I remember that when I said it, people laughed. I liked that feeling so much that I said it 10 more times. It flicked a trigger in my brain: I wanted to do this all the time. I just didn't quite have the skills to do it yet … Then when my mum took me to see panto at Theatre Royal Stratford East, I was amazed and began to understand, at six years old, what it meant to properly put on a show. Not only was I impressed that there were children on stage – that this was something a young person might be able to do – but there was so much more to it than funny lines. There were theatrics, lighting and comedy characters, such as the famous pantomime dames. Michael Bertenshaw, one of our most famous dames, was very inspiring. I loved his massive hair, the bloomers and the songs – but mostly that he knew exactly how to get an audience on board. After that, I'd go to the panto every single year. Even though I knew what was coming next, the predictability made the chase scenes, the misunderstandings, the 'He's behind you!' jokes even funnier. I loved there was a baddie, and that you could boo and hiss at them. I remember going to see Dick Whittington and thinking: 'I am so incredibly jealous of everyone who is doing this for a job.' Now I do get to do it as a character and sketch comic. To go to panto aged six, and see a show on such a big scale, with props and costumes, I realised that this is what you need to do to be properly engaging. Instead of, say, repeating the same line 10 times at the school nativity play. As told to Harriet Gibsone Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Friends: Kool Story Bro is at Pleasance Courtyard, 15 to 22 August; String v Spitta, with Ed MacArthur, is at Assembly George Square Studios, 15 to 17 August.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The first time I'd seen fart jokes that were actually funny': comedians on their cultural awakenings
The Young Ones arrived at exactly the right time. I was 15, and a weird mixture of studious and smart but also disruptive in class. I was also extremely virginal – both fascinated and terrified by the idea of having sex and in no danger of doing so for another half a decade. I was basically Rick. My parents were strict – my dad was the school headteacher – so I can't think why they let me stay up late to me watch it. Maybe they just wanted me out of the way so they could get on with other things. What drew me in right away was how silly it was. A lot of the comedy I'd liked had been clever stuff that was almost snooty, like Monty Python or Derek and Clive. The Young Ones was rude. It was the first time I'd seen slapstick and fart jokes that were actually funny. My generation missed punk, but The Young Ones had a similarsense of anarchy – a 'do it yourself' spirit, with a cavalcade of ideas being thrown at the screen. The alternative comedy scene – as well as the Comic Strip and French and Saunders – felt new and very galvanising. In the same way the Sex Pistols made anyone feel as if they could pick up a guitar, The Young Ones made me feel like I could make a living out of making people laugh: it didn't matter if I was a regular kid at a comprehensive school in Somerset. This was a particularly important revelation, as my careers adviser had told me that I should give up on being a writer and work in a bank. Watching The Young Ones episodes on repeat to learn the lines by heart, I learned about the rhythm and language of comedy. Plus, I discovered that if you could do a good impression of one of the characters, you'd get a laugh at school the next day. I loved Rik Mayall. He was a handsome and sexy figure, but not afraid to make himself look ridiculous. He continued to inspire me throughout my life. Years later, as a comedy writer, I wrote some scenes for him in the sitcom Man Down, but he died before they were filmed. I was on the toilet when I heard the news. I cried, both upset that someone I loved had gone, and sad that I'd no longer be able to work with one of my heroes. The Young Ones was a show that parodied idiotic students, a bunch of men who didn't want to grow up. Neither did I – and, thanks to The Young Ones, I didn't have to. As told to Harriet Gibsone Richard Herring's RHLSTP is at The Stand Comedy Club, 30 July to 10 August. A year ago, I was in the pit of a perimenopause crisis but I didn't fully know it. I didn't know there was an explanation for feeling depressed, suicidal, confused, exhausted and generally ill. Then I read Davina McCall's book Menopausing. The idea behind the book is simple: Davina went on to social media and got people to send their menopause stories. I listened to the audiobook while I was travelling around gigging, and heard lots of different readers voicing their stories, interspersed with Davina's chats with a doctor, who gave useful information about what was going on in these women's bodies and minds. There are people in the book who left their careers because they couldn't cope intellectually or emotionally. It just seemed crazy to me. A woman who has spent 25 years of her life building up her career shouldn't just have to walk away because she's too scared to say: 'I don't know what is going on. I'm losing words. I'm losing the ability to be in the present moment because of brain fog.' Davina's book helped me to understand that I had reached a stage that was actually quite serious. So I went ahead and pushed my case with my doctor. After reading the book, I was able to say: actually I'm not depressed – I'm losing parts of my cognition due to fluctuating hormone levels. Most of the time, the doctor just asks: how's your sex drive? But most of us experiencing perimenopause don't care about sex at that point. I was more worried about staying alive, how I'd perform in my job and how words weren't coming out of my mouth correctly. Being able to tell my doctor what was wrong was really important. I was given testosterone as well as oestrogen, and that was extraordinarily helpful. All of it has made me committed to trying to show up in my performances a bit more. I need to keep practising, keep exercising my brain. There has always been something so special in the art of live performance and being able to stay present – even if it means saying I forgot what I was about to say. Having Davina say that she'd gone through this was a big thing for me. So I'm always pushing her book to friends, to spread more awareness and bring the issue to the light. As told to Miriam Gillinson Desiree Burch: The Golden Wrath is at Monkey Barrel Comedy, 28 July to 10 August. Growing up as an only child and a drama kid, I was probably quite annoying. I was always coming up with ideas and characters, but I wasn't the type of kid to say: 'Come and look at what I've done!' Instead I would do parodies of teachers or characters from the television in the privacy of my bedroom. One Christmas, at primary school, I finally got the chance to stand on a stage and show everyone what I could do. It was the nativity play, and I was playing the part of the innkeeper. I only had one line, which I've since forgotten, but I remember that when I said it, people laughed. I liked that feeling so much that I said it 10 more times. It flicked a trigger in my brain: I wanted to do this all the time. I just didn't quite have the skills to do it yet … Then when my mum took me to see panto at Theatre Royal Stratford East, I was amazed and began to understand, at six years old, what it meant to properly put on a show. Not only was I impressed that there were children on stage – that this was something a young person might be able to do – but there was so much more to it than funny lines. There were theatrics, lighting and comedy characters, such as the famous pantomime dames. Michael Bertenshaw, one of our most famous dames, was very inspiring. I loved his massive hair, the bloomers and the songs – but mostly that he knew exactly how to get an audience on board. After that, I'd go to the panto every single year. Even though I knew what was coming next, the predictability made the chase scenes, the misunderstandings, the 'He's behind you!' jokes even funnier. I loved there was a baddie, and that you could boo and hiss at them. I remember going to see Dick Whittington and thinking: 'I am so incredibly jealous of everyone who is doing this for a job.' Now I do get to do it as a character and sketch comic. To go to panto aged six, and see a show on such a big scale, with props and costumes, I realised that this is what you need to do to be properly engaging. Instead of, say, repeating the same line 10 times at the school nativity play. As told to Harriet Gibsone Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Friends: Kool Story Bro is at Pleasance Courtyard, 15 to 22 August; String v Spitta, with Ed MacArthur, is at Assembly George Square Studios, 15 to 17 August.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Robin Williams Reportedly Said He'd Buy an '80s Strip Club to Impress This Music Legend
Robin Williams Reportedly Said He'd Buy an '80s Strip Club to Impress This Music Legend originally appeared on Parade. Some people write love songs for their idols. Others name-drop them in speeches. Robin Williams? He walked into a London strip club and threatened to buy the whole place—just to impress David Bowie. On Monday, July 21, The Guardian published a new interview with The Comic Strip Presents… creator Peter Richardson ahead of the show's remastered film screenings at Edinburgh Fringe. While reflecting on the wild early days of the British alt-comedy scene, the article resurfaced a jaw-dropping moment involving the late actor and the music icon. Back in 1980, Williams reportedly turned up at the Comic Strip club—hosted inside the Raymond Revuebar strip club in Soho—with Bowie and made it clear he expected stage time. Comedian Alexei Sayle, who helped run the venue, recalled offering the Mrs. Doubtfire star a 15-minute slot. 'I told [Bowie] I'd do an hour,' Williams said. When Sayle refused, the Mork & Mindy icon responded, 'I'll buy the club!' Unfortunately for Williams, the venue wasn't for sale. 'We don't own it,' Sayle told him. 'It belongs to a bouffant-haired pornographer.' The Comic Strip, founded by Richardson with support from Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, helped launch the careers of comedy legends like Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, and Adrian Edmondson. The shows were edgy, strange, and often risky—just what Channel 4 was looking for when it tapped Richardson to bring something new to TV. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 That something became The Comic Strip Presents…, a tonally unpredictable anthology series that ran throughout the '80s and returned for occasional specials until 2016. 'It wasn't good television,' Richardson admitted. 'Because it wasn't repetitive, and television is about repeating a formula.' 🍳 SIGN UP to get delicious recipes, handy kitchen hacks & fun food news in our daily Pop Kitchen newsletter 🍳 Now 73, Richardson is remastering the series for theatrical screenings, which kick off next month. 'We've discovered that there is an audience around the country who want to see these films on the big screen and talk about them,' he said. 'It's fantastic that something we created 30 or 40 years ago is still creating laughter.' As for Williams, he never did buy the club—or any club, for that matter—but he did go on to become one of the most beloved performers of his generation. He won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting, two Emmys, six Golden Globes, and five Grammys over the course of his career. He died by suicide in August 2014 at age 63, after battling undiagnosed Lewy body dementia—a rare and aggressive brain disease that was only discovered after his death. Robin Williams Reportedly Said He'd Buy an '80s Strip Club to Impress This Music Legend first appeared on Parade on Jul 21, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 21, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Robin Williams said: 'I'll buy the club!'': how The Comic Strip set the UK comedy scene ablaze
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise. At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television. This being a celebration of an iconic moment in UK comedy history, one might assume Edinburgh's Usher Hall or the 750-seat Pleasance Grand has been set aside to host. But one might assume wrong. 'When I started [showing these films] about a year ago,' Richardson tells me, 'we didn't have the money to advertise them. So we'd arrive at theatres that had about 30 people who had somehow read our minds that we were going to be there. And 30 people in a 300-seat cinema can be hard work.' The Comic Strip Presents … ran for three series on Channel 4 from 1982-1988, then it moved to the BBC in the early 90s before making a return to Channel 4 for one-off specials, the most recent in 2016. But it's not a big name in comedy – far less so than, for example, The Young Ones, the BBC sitcom starring some of the same talents and broadcast at the same time. 'It wasn't good television,' admits Richardson, 'because it wasn't repetitive, and television is about repeating a formula and people getting to know it well.' And was it even comedy? One of the show's stars, Mayall, argued that it shouldn't have been called The Comic Strip, and that 'Interesting Films' might have been a better fit. In fact, the series was – like Inside No 9 more recently – a tonally varying anthology show, a suite of standalone films united only by sensibility, and by the performers bringing them to the screen. 'I told Channel 4,' says Richardson, ''These performers are so good they don't need to be stuck playing one-dimensional characters. They can play all sorts. One week they can be a heavy metal band, the next week they can be The Famous Five.' You could call it bad television, because you're not seeing more of the same. But as it's gone on, it's become a collection of very memorable one-off moments and that's what people now remember.' The performers also included Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Richardson himself, with a rotating supporting cast that included Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and more. At the time, they were setting the UK comedy scene ablaze. That all started at the Comedy Store, a strip club and the anarchic HQ of what had recently been called 'alternative comedy'. Richardson's coup was to cherrypick the most exciting voices of that generation, and cart them off to another strip club, a little less anarchic, a few blocks up the road: the Raymond Revuebar. Here, with the financial support of the Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, he opened The Comic Strip club – a name that seems obvious, although 'the New Depression Club' was, according to Edmondson, a very near miss. For a year from 1980-1981, the Comic Strip was the hippest and hottest comedy night in town. 'The bouncers at Raymond Revuebar had a simple rule of thumb for who was directed where,' Sayle later wrote. 'If they reeked of aftershave they were sent to the strip show; if they smelled of beer they came to us.' Celebs piled in: Bianca Jagger, Dustin Hoffman. Robin Williams came and demanded to perform, to impress his guest, David Bowie. Sayle offered him 15 minutes. Williams said: 'I told [Bowie] I'd do an hour'. Sayle: 'You can't.' Williams: 'I'll buy the club!' Sayle: 'We don't own it. It belongs to a bouffant-haired pornographer.' The buzz even reached the pages of the London Review of Books, whose critic noted, 'within seconds, [Sayle] has the audience agape. Most of them, it seemed, had never been called cunts before.' Then Channel 4 came calling, looking for cutting-edge talent to help launch the new broadcaster on to the country's airwaves. Richardson was given carte blanche. 'They said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to make six films, all different.'' The first, Five Go Mad in Dorset, was transmitted on the station's opening night, and the controversy around its satire of Enid Blyton attitudes gave that event a front-page news fillip. But Five Go Mad will not be celebrated at the fringe this summer, says Richardson. 'Taking the piss out of racism and sexism [in that way] is long gone,' he says. 'It's not a funny issue like it was when we did it in the 80s.' One option might have been to re-edit the episode – a course of action in which Richardson, now 73, has freely indulged as the Edinburgh shows have come together. Not for him a bask in the glory of his youthful success. 'What we've done,' he says, 'is revisited the films and said, '30 years later they need some adjustment.' Because things go faster now.' Western spoof Fistful of Travellers Cheques has been 'cut back a bit'. So too has late-period favourite Four Men in a Car. And a scene has been trimmed from The Strike, the show's faux Hollywood movie making mincemeat of the miners' strike. That one bagged a Golden Rose of Montreux comedy award, and starred Richardson (the only performer to appear in every episode) as Al Pacino playing, er, Arthur Scargill. 'I could do Pacino much better now,' he laughs, 'because I worked with John Sessions on Stella Street.' So now, he says, slipping into a convincing Italian-American accent, 'I can do Al.' Stella Street was another of Richardson's TV hits, undertaken when The Comic Strip Presents, by any measure his life's work, was in abeyance. Even when he was a jobbing comedian, in double act The Outer Limits with Nigel Planer, Richardson was a child of amateur film-makers and a wannabe film-maker himself. With The Comic Strip, he made movies for cinematic release: The Supergrass in 1985, and Eat the Rich two years later. Further TV specials included Red Nose of Courage, telling the tale of John Major's flight from the circus to parliament, and 2011's The Hunt for Tony Blair, imagining the ex-PM on the run having been accused of a series of murders. Both will be screened at the fringe, MC'd by comedian Robin Ince and with special guests including Sayle and Allen. Richardson is modest about the achievement of having brought these 30 years' worth of films to the screen. 'I always thought we were the new Ealing comedies. And [Ealing Studios at its peak] made about 150 films over 20 years, of which about 15 are remembered. So our strike rate isn't too bad. We made some flops, but at least one or two out of each series are really good.' Some, indeed, are carved on this writer's heart – notably Bad News Tour and More Bad News, the show's two-part heavy metal spoof, which predated This Is Spinal Tap and ended up with Edmondson, Mayall and co performing live on stage, under a hail of beer glasses, at the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington. Richardson is at peace with the under-appreciation of The Comic Strip Presents, acknowledging that, as a bloody-minded sitcom refusenik way back when, he is the auteur of his own misfortune. He is delighted to be bringing the remastered films to Edinburgh, a city in which, back in the day, he and Planer once toured as a support act to Dexy's Midnight Runners. 'FrontmanKevin Rowland complained,' he says, 'that we didn't do new material at every performance.' Expect no new material at these screenings – but a new experience, perhaps. 'It's a great thing,' says Richardson, 'to show them in the cinema. You don't often get to share comedy television with an audience, and it changes the whole experience: people laughing around you. We've discovered that there is an audience around the country who want to see these films on the big screen and talk about them. It's fantastic that something we created 30 or 40 years ago is still creating laughter. I love it.' The Comic Strip Presents … is at the Fringe is on 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10 August at Just the Tonic, Edinburgh
