Comedy Roast: Chris Tarrant

This week Channel 4 ran a trilogy of comedy roasts in which a well known celebrity would sit on a stage while comedians and friends ripped as much piss out of them as is humanly possible without causing death by dehydration.

 

The subject of the final roast of the trilogy was Chris Tarrant, who began broadcasting as host of saturady morning kids’ show TISWAS and went on to host Capital FM’s breakfast show for 17 years as well as many TV gameshows, including Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

 

Jimmy Carr has hosted all three roasts and started this one by insulting chris’s home town of reading and worked his way through tarrant’s studies, pre-broadcast carreer as a teacher, first footsteps into broadcasting and marital problems.

 

Sean Lock was then stepped up to the podium. Lock essentially called Tarrant boring and pretty talentless. He ran throught the extensive list of quiz shows Tarrant hosted and makes up a few really tedious ones to point how how ludicrous some of the shows the man hosted over the years were.

 

Jamie Theakston was next up. His sepeech wasn’t particularly funny but when he slipped up reading the autocue the laughs started flowing. Chris interupted him and read the end of his speech for him.

 

Sally James, Chris’s TISWAS co-presenter, followed Jamie with quite a dull bit of banter. The two were like an unfunny aunt and uncle trying to show off at a party. She listed off the injuries Tarrant suffered during his time as kids TV host. ‘Twasn’t very funny.

 

Sir Terry Wogan didn’t attend the night but he prerecorded a wee speech in which he tries to find nice things to say but only manages to call him tall and often drunk. Killer delivery from a legendary broadcaster.

 

Peter Kay’s sometime sidekick and probable heir to Chris Tarant’s throne as host of any gammy new quiz show, Paddy McGuiness then did a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? spoof with multiple choice questions. Very funny for a complete chancer.

 

Jack Dee kermudgened his way to the podium next. He starts by having a go at tarrant’s hawaiian shirts, then goes through all of the other little things that annoy him about the roastee from his goofy chuckle to the pauses he takes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

 

A short spoof film about Bob Carrolgees was then shown. Bob and his puppet dog talk about how he feels abandoned by Chris from his candle shop.

 

Jack Whitehall followed this by talking about Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and how Chris has made loads and loads of money from the show and compared the scandal when a contestant cheated to win the million and Chris cheating on his wife.

 

Mark Durden Smith who is Judith Chalmers’ son and family friend of Chris then stood up. He’s no stand up though and he seemed to think cursing a lot would be funny. He was wrong.

 

The penulitmate speech came from Mark Watson and he showed a clip from Tarrant’s cheesy dating show Man Oh Man. He reads out the offensively brief wikipedia entry about Chris’s Colour of Money game show.

The final speech came from the man himself and he began by pretending to have a big ego and calling for his own knighthood. He then acted as if he didn’t know that he was going to be ridiculed. He then reminds the audience that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was the biggest quiz show in the world and uses McGuiness as a link to an annecdote about Peter Kay only winning £500 on the show. He doesn’t take on any of the proper comedians on in is response but does give Durden Smith, Theakston and Sally James a backhander each. His delivery is clunky and hammy, but hey he had some good lines and took the whole thing in good spirit.

 Click here to watch the roast on YouTube

Have I Got News For You

BBC One

Thursdays, 8.30pm

Have I Got News For You returned for its fifty gagilionth series this week. It’s still the BBC’s archetypal comedy-news quiz, with one host asking questions on all things newsworthy, while improv comedian, Paul Merton and Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop try to answer them in as funny a way as possible with the aid of one guest panelist each.

 

Hislop was paternered with 22 year old Scottish stand up, Kevin Bridges, while Merton had Nigel Farage of UKIP for company. UKIP being the UK Independence Party, a party who according to their website are a “Libertarian, non-racist party seeking Britain's withdrawal from the European Union”. If you feel the need to put “non-racist” in on your website, you’ve probably justifiably earned a reputation for being racist.

 

Lee Mack occupied the guest host’s chair, which has still not found a new owner since Angus Deayton was fired for doing naughty things in 2002.

 

The quiz consisted of three rounds. The first round sees videos involving the week’s biggest news stories with no audio being shown to each team, who have to guess what the story is. Obviously both teams got the answer correct, but this isn’t a very hotly contested competitition. It’s more an excuse to take the piss out of any political figures who have strayed into the press in the time between episodes. This week Tony Blair got it in the neck for giving a speech in support of Gordon Brown’s election campaign and five MPs got hammered for accepting money from companies in exchange for changing little laws that prevent them making money.

 

The second round was the picture spin quiz, which is focussed on the less publicised, more ridiculous stories in the news. This week a Hollywood-style sign for Basildon, health and safety measures preventing the Queen from walking down some stairs because she “had not been trained to use them”, the laughter of hiennas and a sign in Romania warning motorists of drunks in the road were mulled over. Here’s hoping it continues through the whole series.

 

Finally a very brief missing words round where contestants had are shown a sentence from a publication and have to guess a word which has been blacked out gave a Merton and Mack the chance to exchange a few improvised one-liners. Bridges tried to join in but he was outclassed by the senior comedians.

 

Bridges didn’t say much throughout the episode. He’s had a few telly appearences this year, but seemed to let the nerves get the better of him here. He did bang out one corker though, when he pointed out that a Tory billboard with the words “I let 80,000 criminals out early, vote for me” next to picture of Gordon Brown actually secured ol’ Brownie 80,000 votes.

 

Farage was a complete joke, and not in a good way. Merton, Hislop and Mack tore him to shreds with ease because of his party’s policies. All he could do was sit there chuckle along as he got called ignorant. He may have thought appearing on the show would make him look as if he wasn’t stuffy and had a sense of humour, but he wound up looking like a gormless gimp who thought taking a beating was funny. In the end he wound up making UKIP look even more out of touch with everyday Brittons. At one point he admitted to being a crooked politician, expecting the audience to laugh. They didn’t.

 

This series could be a little different to previous years. Normally the producers force the panelists to go quite soft on Labour, but with the upcoming election, they know there is a strong chance that the reds will soon be out of power, so took the oppurtunity to go for the jugular. Of course the Tories got as much of a battering. David Cameron’s hint that he may cut the licence fee may have caused the BBC to be fearful enough to take the kid gloves off with Labour, but he’s still a dick and Merton and Hislop seemed to relish the freedom to take everybody down a peg. The Lib Dems and UKIP got spanked aswell, so it was all very fair.

QI

BBC One

Fridays 8.30pm

Viewers of the first episode of QI will know that the Q stands for quite, and the I denotes interesting. The previous sentence is an example of pointless trivia, and pointless trivia is the core theme of QI.

 

Stephen Fry, who is seemingly an expert on everything, poses questions - each episode has a theme that the trivia revolves loosely around - and a panel of four comedians/journalists/professional-personality-types fumble around their memory banks for answers.

 

There is a twist though. All of the questions have a fake answer and a real answer. The fake answer is a common belief that has come to be understood by most people as the truth. Say the fake answer and you loose points. Say the real answer, or just anything distinctly interesting, to gain points.

 

QI is currently in its sixth series and this week perennial panelist, Alan Davies was joined by Jeremy Clarkson, Danny Baker and Bill Bailey to ponder the theme of being ecological.

 

They cover everything green from the original colour of Frankenstein’s monster (which was yellow and not green, as most people think), to the amount of gold contained in mobile phones, to the fact that wind turbines cause bats (but not birds) to fall out of the sky.

 

Along the way the panel take the conversation on detours, with Bill Bailey imagining turning his pet tortoise into a cold blooded remote control car and Danny Baker regailing everyone with a tale of how his car was once smothered by cows.

 

Predictably enough in quiz on ecology, Jeremy Clarkson comes last, but he does point out the set design of QI, which involves Fry being flanked by two panelists and one big screen on each side, is waste of energy. As a result Bill and Alan relocate to Jeremy and Danny’s side of the set so one of the screens can be switched off, thereby saving electricity.

 

The show is built on the charm and wit of Stephen Fry. He could be absolutely wrong about everything, but his delivery of knowledge is so confident that you would believe him if he told you that your parents were badgers.

 

Most pub chats revolve around the X-factor or Eastenders or some other pointless bollocks. QI plays like the type of chat you want to have down the pub. Sophisticated, witty and clever. If only Stephen Fry and the other writers would take up residence in my local.

Republic of Telly

RTE Two

10.25pm Mondays

Republic of Telly is a vehicle show for Irish stand up, Neil Delamere. Essentially what happens is Neil rips the piss out of a bunch of RTE’s shows. Sometimes he ventures into the UK’s TV guide, but only when RTE’s two stations fail to provide him with enough ammo. The whole thing is essentially Harry Hill’s TV Burp with an Irish accent and a few non-telly related segements with reporters.

 

The show begins with Neil taking a few clips from the likes of Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy out of context and making little quips about them. Then he zeros in on Operation Transformation, Gerry Ryan’s weight loss reality show. Naturally the review begins with Neil pointing out that auld Gerry isn’t exactly Kate Moss, then he lamps into Ryan for suggesting that the show has some how magically begun to fix the national weight problem.

Then Neil is superimposed into the Oscars Ceremony alongside Alec Baldwin. Baldwin’s opening duolog wasn’t funny when Steve Martin did it with him. Delamere didn’t improve the situation.

 

Neil then takes on an appearance by Trevor Sergent on some show and a BBC documentary about hospitals This is a chance to do what he’s really good at; political satire. He fires off a few barbs that would’ve been more at home on the Panel than on a TV review programme. Unfortuneately RTE has handed the job of satire over to Kevin Myers and Mario Rosenstock  – neither is particularly funny but Mario can do a decent impression of Keith from Boyzone.

 

Soon afterwards Mairead Farrell of Ray D’Arcy's radio show is rolled out to add some glamour. The producers sent her down to Croke park for the Ireland v Wales rugby match to vox pop the crowd. This has nothing to do with television but it was funny watching a load of drunk people talking into a microphone. Got a bit odd when some of the vox poppers started groping Mz Farrell. She was clearly uncomfortable.

 

Then Bernard O’Shea is plopped in front of a green screen to give his survival guide to St.Patrick’s day. Again, this has nothing to do with tele, but hey, Bernie’s supressed rage schtick is funny.

 

After that, red carpet correspondent, Jennifer Maguire gets shipped off to the VIP style awards, the very tenuous link here being that there were some people off the tele at it. She tries some Dennis Pennis/Olivia Lee style cheeckiness. Sometimes it works, as with Marty Whelan who riffs with her a bit. Sometimes it doesn’t, as when Grainne Seoige just calls her mean for insulting “talent” of All Ireland Talent Show.

 

Then there’s some bashing of Fregal Quinn’s Retail Therapy where Fergal Quinn revamps some little shop on the northside or something. I’d started to lose interest at this stage as had much of the audience. Everytime the director cut to them they were gently smiling or applauding, but the big laughs stopped around the time Bernard O’Shea finished.

 

Then there was some gnattering with Mairead on subjects that had nothing to do with TV. They might want to revise the name.

 

The show closes with the TV highlight of the week (and possibly the decade), Crystal Swing’s appearance on the Late Late Show. Neil makes a few jokes about their performance but nothing he says could possibly be funnier than the visuals.

 

A hit and miss episode from a hit and miss series. 

The Bubble

BBC2, Fridays @ 10pm

 The Bubble is a comedy-news quiz where three celebrities go into a house with no connection to the outside world for four days. When they emerge they are whisked to a studio where David Mitchell shows them a series of outlandish news stories, some real and some fake, and they have to geuss which ones really happened and which ones are a load of old codswhollop.

 

The BBC kind of shot the producers in the foot by banning its news editorial staff from contributing to the show. Sky and ITN ironically have allowed their journalists to be involved.

 

The idea the creators are pushing here is that the real news has become so ludicrous that you couldn’t make up more ridiculous stories if you tried. And they have a point. Amongst the true stories this week were reports of a town in Germany selling potholes, a man who married a pillow, a chef selling cheese made of breast milk and an opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith 

 

Of course the Bubble has a very creative writing staff and they did manage to come up with dwarf bowling (bowling with little people as the pins), David Frost falling asleep on live TV and Banskey being outed as the alter ego of Neil Buchanan from Art Attack.

 

These kinds of shows depend heavily on the ability of their guests to create some laughs. Previous weeks have seen Reginald D Hunter, Ed Byrne and Jon Richardson all bringing the giggles. This week Marcus Brigstocke, Sue Perkins and Julia Hartley-Brewer got bubble wrapped, and that line-up resulted in the least funny show of the series. Unlike in previous weeks, none of them are just funny for a living.

 

Brigstocke is a comedian AND environmentalist, Perkins is comedian AND historian and Hartley-Brewer isn’t even a comedian, she’s a newspaper columnist. The worst part is that Hartley-Brewer got more laughs than the two comics. Add to this the fact that they all middle class, college educated white people and you get an episode that represents the problem with the BBC’s comedy since Sachsgate – everybody is safe. Nobody there has the potential to say anything controversial.

 

Each week there are a few clips of the time the contestants spent in the bubble (it’s a big fancy house in the country). Most weeks there are arguments about scrabble and X-box and fun trivial things. All they did this week was have a civilised discussion about climate change. Somebody throw something!

 

Despite the dullness of the guests, the episode was still pretty funny thanks, in the main, to the stories being mocked. If you’re into news based comedy this should fit snuggly into the gap between Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week in the BBC’s annual schedule.

 

 

Great unanswered questions with Colin Murphy

(I couldn't find any clips from the show on YouTube so I went with a video of Colin Murphy drunkenly chasing some pigeons)

Great unanswered questions with Colin Murphy began life on BBC Radio Ulster before making the leap to the small screen. As the title suggests the show is presented by Belfast’s Colin Murphy. The premise of the show is that Colin tackles pointless, silly, existential questions with the aid of “Doctor of everything” David Booth, who has an uncanny ability to spout facts and figures off the top of his head, and Matthew Collins, who shows bits and bobs he finds on the internet to the audience via a big screen. The trio are also joined by celebrity guest and this week Celebrity Mastermind winner, Lucy Proter filled that role.

 

The first unanswered question to be ununanswered comes from a geordie girl via a vox-pop who asked why hearing running water when you need to pee makes you need to pee even more. Nobody bothers answering the question, they instead talk talk about how attractive she is. This would be sexist if wasn’t for the fact that is was unspeakably good looking and was wearing a funny hat.

 

Next up is an Australian man’s question, via the vox-pop again, who asked why don’t kangeroos and emus walk backwards. Matthew Collins unconvincingly repeats the claim that neither beast can moonwalk before being told to “hold up” by David Booth, who begs to differ. Apparently kangeroos can’t walk backwards but emus can. Booth then stars explaining why Skippy can’t walk backwards until Murphy and Porter go off on a tangent about kangeroos at a party with an awkward situation. The kangeroo party gets interupted by Matthew displaying a video of two roos having a fight.

 

This leads into an annecdote from Murphy who talks aout how kangeroos like to lounge around in quite a human fashion in the parks of Melbourne, then somehow  the subject of kaneroos’ penises is raised and Davey has a whopper of fact to drop on this subject too; apperntly kangeroos have forked penises. This leads to more questions that Booth has no answer for. Matthew digs him out of his void of knowledge by declaring “kualas have it too”.

 

After a smidgen more schoolboy humour the conversation returns to the vox-pop where somebody asks does eating loads of oranges turn your skin orange. Booth goes through the science of the theory and concludes that it will work but you would need to eat a lot of oranges. Carrots work better though, as proved by Matthew who whips up a website that shows a girl who went on a 4-week carrot diet with visible results. This inevitably leads to the revelation that ginger people have a mutant skin pigment.

 

The final ponderance comes directly from the brain of Colin Murphy; why is that boys and old men can’t dance but young men can. David gives a scientific answer involving testosterone levels and body symetery. Matthew throws up a picture of an old man having a whale of a time on a dancefloor and a 5-year old tearing it up on Dance Dance Revelation.

 

Essentially the dynamic is that of a chat in the pub with your brainy mate (Booth) with the added dynamic of a big screen showing funny videos from youtube. It isn’t the most uproariously funny show on the tele (although a stronger a guest could put it closer), but at no point is it less than interesting. Well worth your time.

Mock The Week

The standard BBC comedy show gets a six week run, but there has been a trend to, where possible, film five episodes, then close the series out with a compilation/out-takes episode. It’s cheap and it’s lazy, but sometimes it’s funny enough to be worth while. This week Mock the Week closed out their current series with a clip show.

 

For those unfamiliar the show, Mock the Week is a British panel game based on improvised topical stand-up comedy. It’s hosted by Ireland’s Dara O’Briain who is joined by 3 regular panelists (Hugh Dennis, Any Parsons and Russell Howard) and 3 guest comedians.

 

Although this series has been good, it hasn’t been as good as previous years due to the departure of Frankie Boyle as a regular. The other regulars are all pretty middle class. Boyle brought a working class I-don’t-give-a-shit kind of attitude that provided at least one jaw on the floor moment of anti-political correctness hilarity per week. All this compilation does is highlight that the show is severely lacking in edge since the departure of Boyle.

 

The geusts rarely stepped up to fill the gap left by Boyle. Patrick Kielty was the first in the scotsman’s seat and came across as turgidly broad, saying nothing controversial. Instead of attempting stinging ploitical satire like the other comedians, he made Ant and Dec jokes. The BBC must love him.

 

The BBC has been very fond of safe comedians since Sachsgate and two of their current darlings, John Bishop and Chris Addison, also made appearences without really saying anything properly funny. It was just humourous.

 

One of things that really grated about this “best of” episode is that it didn’t really reflect the series. Edinborough award winner, Sarah Milican was pretty dissapointing over the course of her 30 minute appearance. When that appearance was condenced down to a few clips she seemed bloody hilarious.

 

Milican got more screen time than the minority acts who appeared during the series. Andrew Maxwell, Andi Osho and Holly Walsh barely got a look in. If you’re Ireish or black or young you were slightly overlooked.

 

Milton Jones stole the show the two times he appeared this year with his obscure one-liners. None of these made it in, instead his only real inclusion was an off the cuff remark about a short policeman being nicknamed “Piglet”.

 

The regulars obviously had the best clips. Russell Howard tells an annecdote about how his catted batted his balls when he’d gotten out of the shower one day and Andy Parsons compares sex addict clinics to Weight Watchers meetings where everyone else is a cake.

 

All of the satire and improv was however blown out of the water by outtakes of Dara O’Briain shooting the panelists with a little Nerf gun. He then shoots a little foam ball up in the air and tries to catch it in his mouth. The first two attempts fail but the third time is the charm, and this somehow brought the biggest smile to my face. Bring back Boyle.