Little & Large Xmas special 1980. Extraordinary.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Today is the 40th anniversary of the broadcast of this thread's titular show!

And a bigger candlight vigil outside Television Centre than there was outside the Dakota building.

[Menu]

The tags on this thread never fail to make me smile. If anyone ever asks you what CaB's greatest achievement ever is, well, then just look at the bottom of this page.

I've always assumed they were mainly Lisa. Not sure why.

[weirdbeard]

Rittle and Rarge. Even the caption spells it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Lcj6Fqxx8

[millwall32]

You see a lot of men who look a bit like Eddie Large and they don't like having it pointed out to them. What's weird is how that type of face always goes with that type of hair and those beady eyes. They're practically a race.

Awww, Swiz!
Video currently unavailable!

[Glebe]

Rittle and Rarge. Even the caption spells it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Lcj6Fqxx8

The BBC officially condoning Syd & Eddie's vicious, racist attack on Burt Kwouk there.

[Sonny_Jim]

Say what you like about Little And Large, at least they didn't fucking corpse all the time like Cannon & Ball, although that might just point to the fact that even Eddie & Sid think their material is shit.

[Satchmo Distel]

Large and Ball both corpsed last year.

[Brundle-Fly]

The BBC officially condoning Syd & Eddie's vicious, racist attack on Burt Kwouk there.

I don't think Kwouk gave a shit, either way, seeing that he and David Yip pretty much had every non yellowface Chinese screen role sewn up between them from the sixties onwards.

[DrGreggles]

Not sure if this has been posted before:
https://youtu.be/TLi8A9WUb78?t=307

[vainsharpdad]

Large and Ball both corpsed last year.

We could still see a comeback from Little and Cannon.
They could both sing, uninterrupted.

[George White]

I don't think Kwouk gave a shit, either way, seeing that he and David Yip pretty much had every non yellowface Chinese screen role sewn up between them from the sixties onwards.

Eric Young too (for characters younger than Kwouk, then went to Hollywood), Robert Lee (if you wanted an elder Chinese guy), Andy Ho (if you wanted someone who was younger than Lee, older than Kwouk, but didn't have much dialogue) and Anthony Chinn (for someone slightly more imposing than Kwouk)

[DrGreggles]

A year ago today we lost a comedy behemoth.

[jamiefairlie]

Series 1 (1978) of their TV show just appeared on the torrent site today.

[Alberon]

Bloody hell!

Series 2 is up as well!

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Glory be!

This requires a dedicated CaB watch-along.

[non capisco]

Which torrent site? I can't pinpoint exactly why I feel a burning need to watch these but there we are. If it needs an invite please sort me out, I once slaved over a post years ago imagining what a David Peace book about these two fuckers would be like. I've put in my graft in the Little and Large salt mines.

[Jackson K Pollock]

Amazing! If someone could please send me a message with the details of where I can get this from, I would be beyond grateful.

[Registering to lurk]

Which torrent site? I can't pinpoint exactly why I feel a burning need to watch these but there we are. If it needs an invite please sort me out, I once slaved over a post years ago imagining what a David Peace book about these two fuckers would be like. I've put in my graft in the Little and Large salt mines.

That, and your Terry and June Hut Song/IBS post, have been two of my CaB highlights.

I'd also be up for a watch-along. May God have mercy on my soul.

[koeman]

I once slaved over a post years ago imagining what a David Peace book about these two fuckers would be like.

As mentioned above, one of the finest posts in CaB's long history.

[neveragain]

Just read on IMDB that Eddie Large had a cameo in Alpha Papa - fact or bollocks?

[Sonny_Jim]

Apparently he's in the crowd scene outside the station:

http://www.simondunn.me.uk/?p=7205

Might just be someone who looks like him though.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

The resemblance is close, but I don't think Eddie looked like that in 2012. His hair wasn't like that and I don't think he was so overweight then. Looks like someone younger.

My verdict: other humanoid.

[jamiefairlie]

Looks more like John Prescott.

[Alberon]

Okay, dived into the first episode of the first series.

Eddie starts the show alone, until Syd shows up throwing his dignity immediately under the bus dressed in a particularly bad bird costume. Cue usual stream of impressions and poor jokes from Eddie. Then something strange happens - SYD starts doing impressions and gets the series' first round of applause. Eddie must have beaten him mercilessly for that later. About four minutes in and piss poor from start to finish.

Then on to some Legs and co style musical interlude from a group rather implausably named 'Geoffrey Richer's Birds of a Feather'. Seems unfair to blame Little and Large for this shit as it was the usual for light entertainment shows. But the miming to the words seems particularly hit and miss with some of the dancers attempting it, badly, and others just grinning as if their lives depended on it.

After that it's a filmed bit where Eddie is doing impressions with kids at the seaside. Syd is even more superfluous than usual.

Then it's back to the studio and Little and Large's one routine again, Syd getting interrupted by Eddie's jokes and impressions. This time Eddie comes on as Quasimodo. The two of them almost start corpsing halfway in, so it's nice that at least someone is getting amused.

Following that it's another musical respite, this time from some American singer called Charlie Pride. Eddie does a small skit with him after introducing Supersonic singing Sinatra. Yes, it's the same routine again as Eddie interupts, first as Kojak, the blind Master Po from the Kung-Fu series (yes I had to look the name up), Sooty Sweep and Sue (Eddie just uses lookalike hand puppets and there's a joke here that did raise a smile from me - 17 minutes and 50 seconds in), Benny from Crossroads and then the UK's favourite paedo Jimmy Savile and so on.

After a quick filmed joke about depression we get the same interrupting routine again featuring a particularly bad David Bellamy impression. It does end on a novelty, Syd gets to sing with Eddie backing rather than obstructing.

Written by Eddie Braben, Eric Davidson and David Renwick

Half an hour into their own show and they already seemed to be out of material and repeating themselves.

[The Bumlord]

Looks like Charley Pride went the same way as Eddie just before Christmas. It's a curse.


Is Syd in on this?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Little and Large are some of the grimmest media memories of growing up. My parents could be strict about what I could see on TV and sometimes I had to hang out with younger kids from church whose parents were even stricter. One of the few things they could watch on the weekend was Little and Large, and I can remember having to run indoors on a sunny day and sit there and suffer through it. As a kid every single time I had the desolate feeling of "this is supposed to be funny oh god why is it so horrible"

My three most precise memories are the status quo with holness thing, a sketch about lowry's match stick men (another quo reference?) and a really, really grim skit about reserving a hotel room that descended into toe curling bullying (just insults in my memory, no jokes). It totally depressed me to watch something that was supposed to be funny but was just cruel remarks and foiling someone doing really basic tasks. Like a Vlad "The End - No Punchline" story from Achewood only in the most toothless, light entertainment way possible.

absolutely horrified to find the Quo thing in here and even more horrified to find myself watching it. I live in fear of accidentally clicking on this thread and seeing the skit that depressed me so much as a kid. I'm sure it was indistinguishable from any other Little and Large looking back, I think what made it so grim to me was that I adored Laurel and Hardy so much and Little and Large seemed like the same deal but with everything artful or comic stripped out and just the meanness remaining but in a "clean, family fun" kind of way. Actively resented them doing Stan and Ollie

[Alberon]

Think there's a Stan and Ollie bit in one of the other episodes of the first series. I saw a brief bit of it when flipping through a few of the episodes.

Talking of which, on that torrent site, it now has ALL of the BBC series up.

It's the end times, I'm telling you.

[non capisco]

Can some...well, I was going to say 'kind soul' but I guess under these circumstances it's more like 'enabler'..PM me as to which torrent site these are on?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

God, help me pick the scab of a 35 year old trauma and me up too if I have enough posts. I think if I see that reservation sketch again I'll evaporate into a fine mist of fuck.

[George White]

Looks more like John Prescott.

Also a bit fat Larry Gogan.