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Lee & Herring and On The Hour

Started by Papercut, March 24, 2004, 12:11:11 PM

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Papercut

Does anyone know why Lee & Herring fell out with Patrick Marber over On The Hour and The Day Today?

As I understand it L&H contributed many sketches to On The Hour, and were then involved in an argument over royalties for the tape release. The royalties dispute wasn't resolved, so their material was edited out of the tape by Armando Iannucci before it was released. I think the argument was about getting a percentage of the royalties (as with the other writers) rather than a flat fee they were offered.

Is that roughly it?

What I don't understand is why they fell out with Marber over this. Presumably any royalty problems would be down to the BBC, or Iannucci who was producing the tape. Did they fall out with Marber over something else (like him then using some of their characters in TDT)?

Was it the On The Hour royalties disagreement that lead directly to them not being involved with The Day Today? When a new, complete On The Hour release nearly happened, what had been resolved?

Most of what I've read about this comes from Lee & herring or sotcaa (which seemed to be biased against Marber), so I don't know the other side of the story, and the details are a bit murky. I'd always been sympathetic towards L&H over the OTH business, but as a friend pointed out I don't really know what happened...

DuncanC

Quoted through a different forum page I googled up so could be bollocks:
QuoteQ. Why do you hate Patrick Marber?

A. Rich feels sorry for Patrick, but Stew hates him. When Marber came back from failing to write a novel in Paris in 1991 he was desperate for people to write stuff for him, including us, and he really creeped up to us, but after he started to do well he just was nasty, and seemed delighted by any failures we had. He also claimed he'd written some stuff that we did. And when we used to go round to his house, which he owned(!), to write for him, he used to make us pay for any phone calls we made. That's it really. Part of the fun of picking on him in FOF1 and the book was just because he is quite an obscure figure. Also, he writes plays, and all plays are shit, and so is anyone who likes them, or writes them, including Richard Herring whatever excuses he may try and make up.
It seems they hated his attitude more than what he actually did.

Purple Tentacle

Who said what was quoted there?

DuncanC

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Who said what was quoted there?
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.patrick/graveyard.html seems to be where it was paraphrased from

Purple Tentacle

Very interesting link that, DuncanC, I especially like this bit written by L&H about Peter Baynham:
Quote from: "Lee and Herring"2) The reason Pete was only in one sketch in "The Day Today" is because his job on that show was to write material for all the others making them look good and then to be edited out of any publicity photos supplied to the press, and then to have his material used by Patrick Marber in his Observer column and not be paid for it.

edit: and
QuoteWell we don't care if we're not allowed. We've put them in and no-one's told us off. The attacks on Patrick Marber are entirely justified. He was the only one of the Day Today team who seemed to relish us leaving the show. Also he tried to jump on the backs of a succession of comedians and ride his way to fame before getting his claws into Coogan. We actually quite like him, but it's funny to bring pointless personal grudges on to the national TV arena. Also he has a grumpy cornish face. You're right about Eric Idle. He was great in Python, but oh dear, what has happened since. Watch us decline in a similar sell out fashion over the next 20 years. The girl in the titles is called Lucy. She's the daughter of an actress we know, but is just an ordinary kid and much more natural than all the stage school freaks who auditioned for the role.

Purple Tentacle

Here's your answer from that very site:
QuoteMR JR Rogers asked why we were in the "On The Hour" writing team and not in the team for "The Day Today" on telly. I think we must have answered this somewhere else on here but here goes... For the last time, it's because we wanted a co-ownership deal on the TV show rather than just a straight weekly comission, as we felt like we'd created or co-created lots of characters that were successful in the radio show, i.e Patrick Marber's Brian O'hanrahanrahan which we made up, and had influenced the style/tone of the show more than we'd originally envisaged. They didn't agree and did a Stalinist re-write of hsitory which erased us from the annals.

TJ

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Here's your answer from that very site:
QuoteMR JR Rogers asked why we were in the "On The Hour" writing team and not in the team for "The Day Today" on telly. I think we must have answered this somewhere else on here but here goes... For the last time, it's because we wanted a co-ownership deal on the TV show rather than just a straight weekly comission, as we felt like we'd created or co-created lots of characters that were successful in the radio show, i.e Patrick Marber's Brian O'hanrahanrahan which we made up, and had influenced the style/tone of the show more than we'd originally envisaged. They didn't agree and did a Stalinist re-write of hsitory which erased us from the annals.

Missing from that quote but very relevant; Stewart Lee once said that their main reason for wanting a percentage of ownership was "so that when Marber and Coogan tour them [ie the characters they had created] around, we don't get ripped off".

Papercut

Thats all pretty interesting stuff, but its all from l&h's point of view. Does anyone know if any of the other OTH staff commented on this?

It doesn't explain exactly what happened about royalties, or why they were excluded from TDT. I'd be surprised if they just chose not to do TDT.

TJ

Quote from: "Papercut"Thats all pretty interesting stuff, but its all from l&h's point of view. Does anyone know if any of the other OTH staff commented on this?

It doesn't explain exactly what happened about royalties, or why they were excluded from TDT. I'd be surprised if they just chose not to do TDT.

None of them have ever commented directly, but the impression is that everyone was pretty apologetic apart from Patrick Marber, who took the opportunity to make himself more heavily involved in the writing...

benthalo

Marber's quite reproachful in a new interview for Ben Thompson's Sunshine On Putty. The situation is handled quite laughably, but it does get covered.

alan strang

Quote from: "TJ"
Quote from: "Papercut"Thats all pretty interesting stuff, but its all from l&h's point of view. Does anyone know if any of the other OTH staff commented on this?

It doesn't explain exactly what happened about royalties, or why they were excluded from TDT. I'd be surprised if they just chose not to do TDT.

None of them have ever commented directly, but the impression is that everyone was pretty apologetic apart from Patrick Marber, who took the opportunity to make himself more heavily involved in the writing...

Which, considering how much he actually wrote for the whole of On The Hour (about four minutes in total?) was bound to be a bonus. He later claimed ownership of Peter O'Hanrahahanrahan.

They weren't asked to contribute to TDT after all the bad feeling created by the co-ownership requests and cassette release. The latter was supposedly put together by Iannucci to prove a point - that their material could be removed without spoiling the show.

They worked with Iannucci, Front and Schneider on the Armando Radio 1 show in '94 though, so a few bridges must have risen from the ashes by then.

Papercut

Quote from: "benthalo"Marber's quite reproachful in a new interview for Ben Thompson's Sunshine On Putty.
I'll have to dig that out, it would be interesting to see what he has to say about it.

Bert Thung


Purple Tentacle

Quote from: "Bert Thung"Here's a Lee and Herring live review, defending the Marber (highlighted, about a quarter of the page down:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:5Yw4nVRymmIJ:www.the-horse.net/horsel.htm+%22patrick+marber%22+lee+herring+sunshine&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

What a deeply unpleasent, one-sided interview:

QuoteSo why did I come here at all? Why did I traipse along to what essentially amounted to a fanclub show, given by a comedy duo I fundamentally dislike? The reason is, Lee and Herring are a fascinating puzzle. They've worked with the best there is - Morris, Iannucci and Coogan.....

So you go to a gig to see people that you "fundementally dislike", then slag them off.

Bloody hell, that sounds a bit like me being paid to go and watch a Kevin Smith film and giving my opinions afterwards.


I'm reading their tour diary at the moment (on leeandherring.com) and it's great, muchos self-depreciation, paranoia and gloom, fully aware of the shallowness of their material, and all too aware that their delivery is all important.... if it's a bad night (as apparently the night I saw them was, didn't notice meself) then the flimsyness of their material is exposed, but when they're on form they are, "imho", punching their weight up there with Coogan and streets ahead of (mandatory CC sneer and kick in the balls) Julia-bloody-Davies.

Alberon

Quote from: "DuncanC"
Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Who said what was quoted there?
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.patrick/graveyard.html seems to be where it was paraphrased from

Yay, my site. Always nice seeing it linked to. As that page says, I got it from the original BBC Fist of Fun pages back when the first series was broadcast. I've always got the opinion that while they may not like Marber much they don't spend their spare time sticking pins into voodoo dolls of him. Sticking references to him all over the first series seemed to be little more than a fun little in-joke.

Quote from: "Stewart Lee"This week I have been unable to sleep because everytime I close my eyes I'm chased through a maze by giant rats with the faces of all the comedians on TV. So, I'm out most nights driving round and round the Elephant and Castle roundabout in south London, in my buff metallic 1973 Hillman Avenger, shouting out of the open window "Damn you! Damn you to hell, Patrick Marber!"

I should really give the site an overhaul, I don't think I've touched it in three or four years. Maybe add links to their sites and their books and point out Rich's minor-celebrity whoredom in 'The Other Boat Race' on BBC 3 at the moment.

Purple Tentacle

Nice work Alberon, you ate up my afternoon nicely yesterday. Good man.

TotalNightmare

When you listen to on the hour, it is almost very clear just how much L&R contributed to the show.

The most obvious examples are the Green Desk with Rosie May which is written just like the Fist Of Fun 'Things to do' news bites.
Also, some of the Alan Partridge stuff is theirs too... most notably the phrase 'the football skills that made him famous' quote which is used i think at least twice in Fist Of Fun, both the radio and the TV series.

We should pin a hat on a tree to remind us all of their contribution...

DuncanC

Quote from: "Alberon"Yay, my site. Always nice seeing it linked to.
Cool, good work.
QuoteAs that page says, I got it from the original BBC Fist of Fun pages back when the first series was broadcast. I've always got the opinion that while they may not like Marber much they don't spend their spare time sticking pins into voodoo dolls of him. Sticking references to him all over the first series seemed to be little more than a fun little in-joke.
Yeah, it did always seem to be mostly because it's funny to negatively obsess about someone (everything in Richard's weblog about Simon Streeting still makes me laugh hard), I can't see them doing it if it didn't work as comedy. Didn't Rich's renamed genital-area diagram include a reference in Talking Cock?

Papercut

Another interesting L&H interview here:

http://www.koekie.org.uk/funnel/articles/newleeherring.html

This is where I first read about the L&H OTH kerfuffle.

Quote from: "Stu"Would you work with the On The Hour Team again?

I want to work with Peter [Baynham] again but I wouldn't work with that lot because I don't really trust them as much as I like them. I'd like to work with Chris Morris again if the right thing came along. The thing is though, we're more happy writing for things that we're in control of now because we've been going for so long. It's often difficult to fit into someone else's idea. Plus I don't think any of those people need us, and I don't think we need any of them. Everyone's doing different things now.

Would you write for Blue Jam?

No. The thing is you have to fit in with Chris's tone of voice, and I think we're better off keeping away from those people. Somebody wrote an email saying 'a lot of your stuff reminds me of On The Hour, you've copied that.' Whilst we actually originated a lot of the tone of voice for On The Hour. And then in Observer on Sunday there was an interview with Patrick Marber saying what a genius he was for coming up with the Brian O'hanra'ha'hanra'han character, which again is something that we made up that he stole off us and then took the credit for even though we actually wrote it. He was kind enough to tell journalists and the media in general of the idea that he single-handedly created Alan Partridge and stuff like that, even though the character existed before he started working on the programme. We seem to get pulled into the gravitational orbit of more famous people and our contributions tend to get eclipsed. We've always said that – we got offered the Sunday Show when it started but we turned it down because we didn't want to step into an existing format. But when you're 23 and get offers for things like On The Hour and The Day Today you see the figures turning round and it's quite hard to resist such a lot of money. If we'd done an advert five years ago we'd have got our hundred thousand pounds and given up working.

Is there any chance of the rest of On The Hour getting a full cassette release?

No. At the time it got a cassette release they were doing The Day Today and they wanted to cut us in on a weekly salary for a certain amount of material, and what we wanted was an ownership of the show. Not completely but a 10% ownership, because we felt that although we were brought onto the show as writers we felt we'd help set the tone of programme. They wouldn't go with that so they had to make a point that we weren't essential to it, which was why all the stuff we'd written was either reedited or chopped out of the commercial release. Even to the point where Armando actually reedited individual sentences which if you were really obsessed with it you could probably notice where he's condensed a surname and an address to make a new name for a character rather than using the name that we made up.

It sounds a bit bitchy.

It wasn't really; we didn't really get involved. It was all done through management. You've also got to remember that all those blokes were about 30 and they thought that it was their ticket to the future. We were the youngest people involved in it so the first to be crapped on.

Chris and Armando had registered it as their format and we were chancing our arm, but in a fair society – well I would certainly cut writers in. It was hypocritical of Marber because he always maintained that it was somebody else's existing format and the writers shouldn't be cut in on and was delighted when we went missing. Marber has a 60% ownership in Steve Coogan's character Paul Calf, and gets a 60% fee from Paul Calf related merchandising. Which is so funny that he actually took it to that point and then got more of the ownership of things that Steve did, yet got annoyed with us trying to establish an ownership of ideas of ours which he later just copied anyway.

Chris wasn't anything to do with it. He more or less did his own bits for On The Hour, edited them, and then gave them to Armando to put them in the show. He wasn't really part of the collaborated process. Most of the voices were Chris's sped up or slowed down, treating them himself in a studio.

I remember seeing an interview with Chris when the Chris Morris Show was going out where they said that this idea was excellent and that this idea was excellent, but they were all Pete's, but he was the co-writer and not the face on it.

I saw an article in the Melody Maker, "Five Great Chris Morris Ideas", and one of them was an idea that we'd had, and it was strange seeing it attributed to him. It's not the first time it's happened in history; it's always involved in the creative process.

Quote from: "Rich"Are there any people who you have worked with in the past who you would like to work with again?

I'd like to work with Chris Morris... Well we never really worked with Chris, we wrote for the others and he did his own thing. I'd like to work with him; I think he's brilliant. I'm not that keen to work with Armando Iannucci again because I don't think he acted very honorably with On The Hour when it went to The Day Today. I don't think he's as good as people think he is. I don't really have any interest to work with him again. I'd like to work with Peter Baynham again. I'd like to write something for Steve Coogan, I would never like to work with Patrick Marber ever again.

Say something nasty about Patrick Marber.

Um, no.

Ah, go on.

No, you know, I just have no interest in him. I feel quite sorry for him. I think he is overrated.

Do you think that Steve Coogan can write for himself?

I think he could do. He's better with a bit of help. I think he's much funnier than Patrick Marber or Armando Iannucci. Pete Baynham is a really good person to write for him, for my money the best bits of I'm Alan Partridge were clearly written by him. But Steve Coogan is actually far more talented as a comedian than I think he realises himself, and a bit in or of the kind of Oxbridge thing. Ironically, he desperately wanted to be accepted by Armando and Patrick when I think those two men have both made their careers flying on his coattails.

Are there any definite plans to work with Pete Baynham?

There aren't any definite plans to work with Pete, he's very hard to tie down, and he's very unreliable. So it's very hard to work with him. I very much doubt that it will happen in the short term. It would be nice because we always have a really good laugh; we have tremendous fun with him.

We always ring him up leaving messages on his ansaphone. We have a game to try and leave the sickest ansaphone message, which is always good fun. Perhaps one day we'll release those as a record, except we haven't recorded any of them, and they are much to offensive to ever go out for public broadcast or even for me to tell you them.

L&H seem more bitter here than in their later comments about OTH/TDT and Marber.

alan strang

Here's an amusing one, from an old forum thread:

QuoteLee and Herring sidelined... again Posted Wed Aug 1 11:53:52 BST 2001 by 'The King Of Ker-Ching!!'

The feature on Steve Coogan in the new Radio Times appears to credit the creation of Alan Partridge to Armando Ianucci and Patrick Marber. Oooooh, naughty.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Lee and Herring sidelined... again
Posted By 'Al' on Wed Aug 1 16:28:26 BST 2001:

What was the story there again? Did they definitely write it?

Are there any articles on this site where I can read all the sordid details?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Lee and Herring sidelined... again
Posted By Justin on Wed Aug 1 16:53:42 BST 2001:

Essentially, Lee & Herring wrote the first Partridge items for On The Hour. Iannucci had suggested a sports reporter character, so he thought it up in that respect. But Marber didn't contribute any Partridge material until (at least) OTH Series 2.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Lee and Herring sidelined... again
Posted By Richard Herring on Wed Aug 1 17:25:00 BST 2001:

I would argue that Steve created the character.
Armando should indeed take some of the credit

We did indeed write most of the early jokes and thus slightly informed the voice of the character.
But Marber wrote Knowing Me, Knowing You with Steve and thus came up with much of the biographical details#

So I don't feel too miffed about not being mentioned in that context and couldn't really lay any claim to the creation of the character or his life


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Lee and Herring sidelined... again
Posted By Stewart Lee on Thu Aug 2 01:05:49 BST 2001:

I agree with the comedian Richard Herring. It would be as much of an exaggeration to credit us with the creation of Alan Partridge as it would be to credit Patrick Marber with an ounce of humanity or dignity. However, we did create Brian O'etc and Trebe Lopez, both of which are traditionally ascribed to the liar and opportunist P Marber, who, at the time, was floating like a vulture over anything he thought might float his lying ass to fame and fortune, dropping like heavy stones all those to which he had afixed, limpet-like, his desperate carcass, as soon as the real cash cow - coogan, presented itself to his lying, play writing face. Coogan was then a vulnerable and bewildered mainstream entertainer, out of his depth in clever clogs land, to whom Marber cynically made himself invaluable. True. The 'details' of AP's life, which biographers cite as evidence of Marber's meticulous approcach and creative genius, are stock moves devolved from the Coogan voice and then extant Partridge material, which anyone would have arrived at given time, access and support.

DuncanC