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Chris Morris Biography - in his own words

Started by alan strang, September 26, 2004, 11:29:37 PM

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alan strang

Just found the following as a printout in an old folder of papers and clippings. A career CV written by (rather than about) Chris Morris. Looks genuine enough - just the correct amount of mis-spelt celebrity names! Had a look on Google to see if it was online elsewhere and it doesn't appear to be, so, here it is.

QuoteCHRIS MORRIS - BIOGRAPHY - in his own words

Pre 1985
Pathologically addicted to interviewing complete strangers and compiling programmes from the results in his bedroom - without anywhere to broadcast them. Pop phase: Around the time of Nick [sic]Kershaw, played mediocre bass, sang ropey vocals, wrote lyrics deemed too ridiculous to sing.

1985-7
Chequered history in local radio. Required to leave after giving running commentaries over news bulletins and failing to eat abject pie dolled out by the pompous zombies in charge

1987-9
Two-year run of twice-weekly attitude chaos No Known Cure, Radio Bristol. Silly voices, lies and phones, grotesque DJ parody Wayne Carr, nonsense vox pops, mess, trouble sacked.

1988-91
Sunday morning GLR. More mess, fake news, phones, tape recorders, more Wayne Carr, discombobulated guests, repeated spoofs of BBC Children in Need etc. Marmaduke Hussey upset, sacked. Feedback reports. Preposterous street interviews for BSB. 'What about small cardboard', etc.

1991-2
Devised, wrote and co-produced two series of On The Hour for Radio 4 with Armando Iannucci. A deadpan news style assault on current affairs broadcasting. Featured phone call to The Sun selling them a bogus story about Neil Kinnock chasing Nerys Hughes naked round a hotel on the eve of the 1992 election. Flexi-disk for Select magazine featuring mockery of The Pixies, and phone call to Piers Morgan in the guise of Bono.

1994
Devised, wrote and co-produced The Day Today for BBC2 with the On the Hour team. Anchored the series and played various characters and reporters including Ted Maul and gangster rapper Fur Q. 26 one-hour shows for Radio 1. Development of earlier GLR show, this time featuring Peter Baynham. Broadcast the reanimation of the corpse of Johnny Walker, the theft of a baby and goaded Paul Garner to absurd public self-debasement. Interviews with Martyn Lewis, Peter Stringfellow, Teddy Taylor, Edwina Curry, etc.

1997
Devised, wrote and produced Brass Eye for Channel 4. Assault on hysteria dressed up as a current affairs programme. More characters and reporters (Weazel Fighter, Austen Tasseltine). Secured celebrity support for ludicrous campaigns. More interviews: Carla Laine [sic], Claire Raynor [sic], John McCririck, Frankie Frazier [sic].

1997-9
Three series of Blue Jam for Radio 1, working with performers from Brass Eye. Originally designed to be transmitted at 3am, programme featured bleakly humourous or twisted situations and monologues in a wash of ambient gloop. Also interviews with Andrew Morton and Jerry Springer.

1999
Wrote a suicide journalist column for The Observer, a series of 12 me-columns by alienated urban male Richard Geefe, who had sworn publicly to kill himself six months hence and would write each week about his mental agony in the meantime. Approached by publishers and TV programmes who believed the character was genuine.

In the corner of the page is a handwritten note from Lalla Ward Ten which says "*Scan this fucker... (Came with the tapes - weird to read...)". I'm presuming the tapes in question were the GLR cassettes we later passed on to CaB.

butnut

Thanks! If this is by the 'man' it's intersting reading. Especially as he devotes much more time to the R1 shows than TDT for example. I wonder if he's more proud of them?

TJ

It used to be the official biog on PJB Management's site. So now you know!

Neil

There was a litte bit more:

Quote2000 - New series for Channel 4 - working title Apes and Music - to be transmitted in March.

related sites:

www.rethink.demon.co.uk/laugh.html

an unofficial but highly amusing Chris Morris site

Morris put that site forward for some technology award thingy back then too.  Shame it's gone, it were cracking.

A Passing Turk Slipper


Solid Snail

I see that link everywhere, but I'll never know what it looks like.

Can't you dig up your memory of it and put it on the Morris Mirrors page?

It must have been good if Morris himself approved of it.

Darrell

It was like an induction course for new Morris fans, with lots of trivia, guides, clips, screengrabs and so forth. Also - it looked lovely then and it'd still look lovely now, it was very well-designed.

Beagle 2

Is that 'Christs fat cock'? That was great, found it ages before this one, brings back memories of waiting hours for my crappy dreamcast to download a tiny wav of Morris shouting "FUCKNUT" or something.

Neil

Yeah it was great, it only vanished pretty recently!  Sadly I didn't save it, but I must dig out the clips, as I came across one on Soulseek a while back and didn't recognise it at all as I hadn't heard it in years.  We tried emailing the guy (Ray) recently to see if he had more GLR stuff he could pass on, but the email eventually bounced back.  Shame.

Oh I've got a different entry for Brass Eye:

Quote1997 - Devised and wrote Brass Eye for Channel 4. Assault on hysteria dressed up as a current affairs programme. Secured celebrity support for ludicrous campaigns (Heavy Electricity - falls out of wires and turns people into 2ft freaks, psychotropic drug 'Cake' - the subject of questions in Parliament). More interviews: Carla Laine, Claire Raynor ("if I attacked you - would you beat me off?").

EDIT:  I think it was called "Chris' Fat Cock."  Or just Rethink?  Christ's Fat Cock was the Morris fanzine (by the SOTCAA chaps) which unfortunately I've never seen.  Anyone out there got it and able to scan it in?

Oh yeah!  I just remembered another class thing on Rethink, they had an interview with Garner's mate, which detailed the methods they used to get the tannoy announcements.  This gets attached to that word document which gets emailed all around the place (along with Ray's clips.)

The Fanciful Norwegian

archive.org has some incomplete backups. They even saved a fair number of the audio clips.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rethink.demon.co.uk/laugh.html

Neil

Quote from: "The Fanciful Norwegian"archive.org has some incomplete backups. They even saved a fair number of the audio clips.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rethink.demon.co.uk/laugh.html

Um, wow!  
This is the clip I was talking about earlier, it's a cracker too:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030820165604/http://www.newf.demon.co.uk/forecast.wav

And this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030820165604/http://www.newf.demon.co.uk/truth.wav

He used to be ace.

Rats

I remember that! It was really good. I remember coming here, looking at a page full of text and and thinking "fuck that" and then going there, it's a much better "ease your way in" kind of design but obviously I ended up here once I'd seen what little content it had to offer. I remember on new deal the wife making a big thing of not putting anything on the computers so I brought that forecast thing in and changed all the "start windows" wavs to that so it played every time you turned a computer on. I am a bad boy.

Purple Tentacle

Hehe, lovely read.

Brass Eye was 1996 wasn't it?

Why can't I write my bloody CV like that, mine's full of fucking "pro-active"s and "thinking out of the box".

DuncanC

Quote from: "Purple Tentacle"Brass Eye was 1996 wasn't it?
No, it was broadcast in '97. Though he does say 1996 as though it's the current year in one episode (moral decline?)

butnut

It was meant to go out in 1996 but was delayed by Grade I believe to make those cuts. So it was actually first transmitted in 1997.