Write Your Own Nathan Barley Episode!

[48k]

The Crass Onion

Dan decides to channel his hatred of the idiots into a script for a sitcom. Cue montage scene of Dan (aided by Chris Morris dressed as a monkey) wrestling with his typewriter/throwing crumpled paper in the bin/pacing his room. Final zoom on Dan looking pleased as punch with a neat paper-stack in front of him; the top page reads "Cunt: a sitcom about trendy morons". Dan takes the finished script over to Claire (at Barley's media centre), who is editing footage of a Chaplin-like tap-dancing tramp.

Dan: I've cracked it!
Claire: Where's my money Dan?
Dan (pointing to his script): Right here
Claire (departing from 'character'): That's not the type of paper-stack I'm after, gee
Dan: I've got an interview with Balktack Productions tomorrow to pitch this script
Claire: Dan, you know what you're like in interviews...

A flashback sequence begins. Dan is being interviewed by an Oxbridge don. He tries to answer a series of testing questions but each time he goes to speak his mouth has dried and he makes barely coherent "tack-clack" sounds. Between answers he drinks desperately from a comically large bottle of water, but the fluid seems to bypass his ever-arid gob. At the end of the interview he stands up to leave and pisses himself liberally.

Dan (in the present): This is different...Can I borrow some money?

Claire pulls a face that suggests she is recoiling from a pungent aroma, but dutifully hands over the cash

Dan exits with the cash - leaving his script behind. Cut to a club full of wankers and Dan trying to buy a "normal drink" from a bar-tender who refuses to sell anything other than the disgusting cocktails with ridiculous names that are on the neon menu-sign (the camera hovers languidly on this sign, the description of one such drink reads "Menstrual Dew - Vodka smuggled from the illegal home-brew underground of Iran collides with cranberries rouge and faux-caviar: this amalgam is then filtered into your glass through an ultra absorbent panty-liner. £9.83"). Cut to Dan and his band of merry-idiots some hours later, clearly drunk (sat around a table). They are talking their usual nonsense but Dan just sits back smiling. Later, leaning in conspiratorially:

Dan (slurring like an actor playing a drunk): I should thank you all. What material! I thought you were dragging me down...you're pushing me up. Cheers.

Dan pukes violently and passes out face-down on the table that is covered in his own sick.

Idiot 1: Preacher, man. He's like, so. Out of control. But in a controlled way.
Idiot 2: Yeah, it's like he's so out of control he went past out of control and back to control, which is cool.

The camera catches Barley licking Dan's vomit whilst no-one else is looking.

Dan wakes the next day, back in his own flat with Barley sat over him.

Dan: Why is my pillow wet?
Nathan: Preach! You were well Boosh'd last night.
Dan: Why are you here?
Claire: This idiot set fire to his own media-centre last night
Nathan: It was arson fuckin' Welles...

Another flashback sequence (rippled fade). Barley leaves the club and calls Pingu, telling him to get to work and work on some new styles. A zoom in on Nathan's phone reveals that it's 4am! Cut to Barley crouched behind a desk in his office, lights are off. Pingu walks in and Nathan leaps up with a lighter and a can of Lynx. Nathan combines these tools as a make-shift flamethrower and directs the resultant emission in Pingu's direction. Cue farcical scene (played out to the strains of that Franz Ferdinand song about fire being out of control) wherein Pingu, hair ablaze, tries to extinguish the flames but ends up spreading fire throughout the office. Nathan films it all on his Wasp, laughing heartily.

Dan (snapping back to the present): My script!
Claire: Oh bollocks!
Nathan: Chill out my n**gers, everything was insured...

Cut to Dan (in anguish) gnashing teeth and moaning as his room spins around him. Sudden zoom on his waste-paper bin full of crumpled script drafts. Cut to Dan in the interview with Balktack Productions, handing over a pile of crumpled paper.

TV executive 1: This script is clearly incoherent and shoddy, but our market research tells us that the kids love this kind of shit.
TV executive 2: We'll make your sitcom, but only if Chris Morris playing a monkey directs it

Cut to Dan and the idiots he despises at a special 1st screening party. Dan is smiling in anticipation of the idiots being shown the mirror. Programme within a programme: the people of Hosegate watch exaggerated caricatures of themselves. Dan looks around him and sees gleeful reactions. Dan is confused.

Nathan (leaning in): Love the show Preach, it's well cancer!

Cut to the after-show soiree. Dan is in a daze as the idiots congratulate him and quote bits of the show back at him. He retires from the party early to check the reaction of his favourite web-site GrumpyCritics.com (Banner reads "We will not be swayed by fads or hype, only laughter will move us - yet we are cynical, and will not laugh easily"). Camera zooms in on post after post of negativity.

Dan looks sad.

[the ruffian on the stair]

IN RECORD SHOP

NATHAN: (Looking at CD talking to CLAIRE ) Bitch-slap! Fucking mega wanksmith! This band's rectal-happy. I mean they kick and fuck arse.

CLAIRE: Can we go now Nathan I've got lots of work to get through? I wanna get cracking.

NATHAN: Muff balls! Love the crack. I'm like an Irish lesbian.

IN THE OFFICE

NATHAN AND CLAIRE ARE LOOKING AT NATHAN'S LATEST WEB PAGE: FORCE-FEEDING ANOREXICS. It's a £1 for every lb they put on.

ENTER DAN

DAN: Claire I need to borrow some money.

NATHAN: Blockbusters on your arse, diddlecock? Those spunk-breath nano-turd-gogglers can kiss my lily white. (Chinese Voice) You likey ma new sitey? We've gagged the little food-spewers and corked their arses.

DAN: (TO NATHAN SARCASTICALLY) Very good. (TO CLAIRE). I'll pay you back tomorrow. I've been given a  good assignment:

CLAIRE: Who's that for?

DAN: Rape. No, sorry, that's SugerApe. They've got me doing it now. (Shows her card). See? They've emphasized the 'R' and the 'A' and the 'P' and the 'E'. See? Looks like RAPE.

CLAIRE: Very amusing.

(VIEWER): No it's fucking not!

[Dr David V]

BUCKTOOTH BLUETOOTH:

Nathan Barley's Bluetooth headsets become fused to his head, and soon O2 begin sending messages directly into his brain, telling him to rape a monkey and spend at least £20 on top-up vouchers to get 10% extra free. His monkey-raping antics soon catch on, and he opens the world's first monkey brothel. Dan tries to write an article about it, but contracts AIDs. He reacts.

[Detective John Kimble]

The Arthur Askey Show

Episode 6 of Nathan Barley is replaced in the schedule by classic variety comedy from Arthur Askey, circa 1950's.  Chris Morris reacts by sticking the message "Grade is still a cunt" on a single frame before the first break.

[TJ]

Barley

Some wank-breath moron who should be shot does an ironic 'mashup' of forgotten 1970s European animated series Barbapapa and less-well-remembered Watch With Mother 'Trumptonshire' series Chigley.

[hands cold, liver warm]

Morris talks directly to camera

"Nathan Barley is about everyone who is watching. You are all idiots, do you understand? You are all Nathan Barleys."

hclw hopes there is something good on BBC4 or that there is a repeat of Jonathon Creek on UKTV gold. Then hclw tries to ironically use a phrase that Nathan barley used in the show but finds that he can't remember any.

[slim]

1970s European animated series Barbapapa

Was there something closely resembling that programme name broadcast? I presume it's a joke, although I suppose it might be an actual program... It's just that it rang a rather distant bell.

[Rats]

I presume it's a joke

Haha, yes

[The Mumbler]

1970s European animated series Barbapapa

Was there something closely resembling that programme name broadcast? I presume it's a joke, although I suppose it might be an actual program... It's just that it rang a rather distant bell.

Well, Barbapapa was a real programme alright - French cartoon imported to BBC1 childrens programmes in January 1975 about a family of colourful creatures who could change shape and size at the drop of a hat.  The English version was narrated by Michael Flanders (of Flanders & Swann) mere months before his death.  And there was even an LP, with songs composed in Holland, and performed by Ed Stewart and a childrens choir, released in 1976.  I know that, because I owned it for a while.

[Clinton Morgan]

[slim]

Oooh, thank you oh wise ones. I remember it now! No wonder it rang a bell. Sorry to turn the thread into one of them crap pub conversations.

[Little Hoover]

Another 13 episodes are commisioned for series 3
Brooker and Morris have run out of ideas
so they repeat the first 6 episodes but just make a filterd Jaaaaaaam style effects for them.
Morris is hailed a genius of reinvention and subversion by the 2 papers that requested preview tapes.
NO ONE: REACTS

[Coughlan]

Either that or he just re-edits episodes of my family with some swear words and random pictures of penises

[Little Hoover]

Well that would be for the next 7 episodes

[Pepotamo1985]

NO ONE: REACTS

Genius.

[Maximash]

Please get good again, Chris. Please.

[edlismange]

everyone sounds so cynical, this is the most miserable comedy forum ive ever seen

[slim]

im glad im not cynical

Is it me or is this yet ANOTHER channel four celebrity sit around.
And with Jimmie bloody Carr again.  
Why are they supplying us with this pointless stream of drivell?

everyone sounds so cynical, this is the most miserable comedy forum ive ever seen

<whistles>

[TJ]

everyone sounds so cynical, this is the most miserable comedy forum ive ever seen

Like I said, bit of fun at the expense of a TV series. Not much misery going on at all, to be honest.

[TJ]

(picture)

Any arty types fancy trying to make a "Chigley" puppet version of Nathan?

[The Boston Crab]

I did enjoy reading the phrase 'fucking mega wanksmith!' up and over there. I'm gonna use that one ad infinitum.

[fudgemonkey]

I am going to edit all these scripts together into a new Nathan Barley series, say there are thousands of writers and see what I can do.

Thanks,
              Chris Morris

[LordSnooty]

I am going to edit all these scripts together into a new Nathan Barley series, say there are thousands of writers and see what I can do.

It'll bomb, mate, don't bother.