Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 10:02:54 AM

Login with username, password and session length

The Fast Show - Just A Load Of Blooming Catchphrases

Started by Malcy, August 08, 2020, 08:29:20 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Hand Solo

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 22, 2020, 03:23:36 PM
It's not just the punchline (in fact that's actually the least of it), it's his little bits of business or the way he looks at her whilst she's waffling on.

It's the zombie-like beaten down henpecked husband having to back up his awful wife on everything she says weariness. Though he did cross her once "She said I could shit through the eye of a needle.." and got a right telling off.

Shit Good Nose

Yes, absolutely - it's the meekness.  Right up there with Charles Grodin in The Lonely Guy.


paruses

Quote from: Hand Solo on August 22, 2020, 03:32:33 PM
It's the zombie-like beaten down henpecked husband having to back up his awful wife on everything she says weariness. Though he did cross her once "She said I could shit through the eye of a needle.." and got a right telling off.

Doesn't he cross her every time which is the point of the sketch? (Or maybe I'm missing your joke):
"Some of 'em are gay and that's fine. What did I say Roy?"
"They're all poofs and lezzers"
"You lying bastard Roy".

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 22, 2020, 03:23:36 PM
It's not just the punchline (in fact that's actually the least of it), it's his little bits of business or the way he looks at her whilst she's waffling on. 

I think they work really well together in those sketches. JT is great as the henpecked and hapless husband and CA is great as the passive aggressive wife.

I know what you mean about her having "one voice" but I enjoyed the monologues over Weir's catchphrases (not that I don't like Arabella Weir). She was one of the few people I remember being genuinely sad and shocked about when she died (Victoria Wood being the other I can remember).

The only one of her creations I didn't like paricularly was Mrs Merton.

Captain Crunch

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on August 09, 2020, 03:03:51 PM
As I've said, he's mellowed in recent years and has started being himself more, but other than the docs (which he had to take part in because they were a team effort) you don't see on his own talking about comedy,you never saw him on the chat shows, or on the panel shows, he has no interest in it, I've heard him say he doesn't like talking about comedy, he's of the 'dissecting a frog' view of comedy. Which is fair enough.

There was this painful (aren't they all?) appearance on Parkinson where he gets asked about having sex on a bus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pRAxOsMLhw

No wonder he steered clear after that. 

Captain Crunch

Quote from: ollyboro on August 19, 2020, 12:26:08 AM
Weir played a similar character to "Does My My Bum Look Big". The high powered woman (copper etc) who simpered around blokes and asked them to open tins. To me this character was lampooning the idea of women wanting equal opportunities, but still using outdated male opinions of women to get their way. Or something. "Does my bum look big" came from the same place. The idea that women couldn't just exist without reference to
how men view them. Or something.

That was quite accurate; I've worked with women like that, complete with baby lisp and hair-twirl. 

Jittlebags

Quote from: Marner and Me on August 22, 2020, 04:03:25 PM
Fuck me they look old, not as bad as Red Dwarf though.

Paul doesn't need any make up to do Rolwy Birkin now. Still I love him.

Jockice

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 22, 2020, 01:06:43 PM
Yes, but we might have to start charging subs.  I'll let Jockice set the amounts as VP and CEO.

We're a team. All three of us. No cost until you start recruiting properly.

Jockice

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on August 22, 2020, 12:31:52 PM
See, for me the weak link in The Fast Show was Caroline Aherne, not Weir. I don't think I laughed at a single character she did, never could see what people saw in her. The sketches she was in were usually the most basic ones with little deviation (like "simple as that", ones where there are no jokes in the set-up and the catchphrase is the punchline), her various character monologues were crap and one-note, I usually fast forward through her stuff on rewatches and the thought of having to sit through her stuff usually puts me off rewatching it.

Got to admit when I had the (excellent) Fast Show Live video I didn't really notice that she wasn't on it. Did she ever actually appear on stage with them? She wasn't there the one time I did see it live. Neither was Thomson, who I think was in rehab at the time, but he was missed and indeed mentioned in a sketch.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Jockice on August 23, 2020, 12:41:24 PM
Got to admit when I had the (excellent) Fast Show Live video I didn't really notice that she wasn't on it. Did she ever actually appear on stage with them? She wasn't there the one time I did see it live. Neither was Thomson, who I think was in rehab at the time, but he was missed and indeed mentioned in a sketch.

Indeed, the whole thing was improved for me with her absence. Most of her stuff in The Fast Show was solo too, other than Channel 9 and Roy & Renee she didn't really appear in the ensemble sketches or anything. Along with not doing the live shows, she always felt like she was the one who was least in to the whole thing.

beanheadmcginty

I just want to register my extreme disagreement with all the anti-Aherne comments here. Not just because she's dead.
Also, I've always felt really sorry for the Fast Show regulars who no one regards as Fast Show regulars. You know the ones. That blonde woman with the eyes and that bloke with the slim face who looked like he could be from the 1930s.

Hand Solo

Quote from: Captain Crunch on August 22, 2020, 10:39:29 PM
That was quite accurate; I've worked with women like that, complete with baby lisp and hair-twirl.

As receptionist at Jeffrey Epstein's Rape Island.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on August 23, 2020, 07:57:50 PM
I just want to register my extreme disagreement with all the anti-Aherne comments here. Not just because she's dead.
Also, I've always felt really sorry for the Fast Show regulars who no one regards as Fast Show regulars. You know the ones. That blonde woman with the eyes and that bloke with the slim face who looked like he could be from the 1930s.

Slim faced man was also one of the original " Alfresco" gang, if we're thinking of the same person. Joins Mark Williams in being Cambridge alumni.
I know exactly who you mean by " The woman with the eyes", it's not the one who played Dave Angel's wife and " Not Pissed" wife, but the other one, innit?

Jockice

Paul Shearer! I like him.

And all the women in the show had eyes.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

I knew who yer man meant though, the woman had eyes in the same way Susan Sarandon has eyes.

Gulftastic

She's the female Officer in the first Monkfish sketch, and she's in all the rest of them too, I think.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I must admit to not really understanding why Aherne was so good in The Fast Show.

The best thing I can think of is 'You know what it was right? We was avin sex. Simple as that'.

Maybe the sketch that ends with her saying she hopes the plane (that she is on) crashes just to spite Roy.

Compare her schoolgirl character which is so threadless and punching down to, for example, Int Milk Brilliant which hits right to the heart of the character's likeability and juxtaposes his everyday banality by how curious and enthusiastic he also is. Also helped by the quick cut editing which makes it feel like you are being jostled around his brain.

beanheadmcginty

Yes, Paul Shearer is the one. And having now just looked her up, I'm talking about Eryl Maynard. Decent name, can't believe she's not better known.

magval

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on August 23, 2020, 09:00:51 PM
I knew who yer man meant though, the woman had eyes in the same way Susan Sarandon has eyes.

The main two 'other' women were Eryl Maynard and Maria McErlane. McErlane was the narrator on Eurotrash.




Jockice

I never found Professor Denzil Dexter funny. Anyone else have a least favourite Fast Show character?

BeardFaceMan

I keep hoping for them to bring back Ed Winchester for a one-off sketch whenever they do a reunion or doc or something. The original sketches were shit, and they seem to know that, which is why it would be funny to see him pop up out of nowhere one more time.

Marner and Me

Arhernes talk as some gloomy nondescript northern teenager were pretty shit.

Mr Wells is one of my favourites for a one off though.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Mr Wells is great and Thomson is such a great actor of punchbag characters.

paruses

#83
Is there anyone apart from me and beanheadmcginty who liked Aherene in the show?
I quite liked the northern teenager then and even more so now. Often think of her when someone says their dad really likes the new baby or similar shit. I silently ask "is their fag ash on the pram cover?".

And often think of the pass-agg/insensitive cashier: "ooh. I bet you're chained to that chip pan".

I always thought Caroline Aherne was quietly funny.


Dr Rock

Quote from: paruses on August 26, 2020, 01:48:20 PM
Is there anyone apart from me and beanheadmcginty who liked Aherene in the show?

Me. And I also thought her cashier character was good.

Malcy

And me. Thought she was great in it.

'Me dad called me nan a gobshite'. Or something like that.

steveh

There's a Q&A on the BFI's YouTube channel tonight at 7pm:

QuoteWe've gathered together The Fast Show gang to chat to journalist Emma Cox about their finest moments and delve into the archives, ahead of their reunion show 'The Fast Show: Just a Load of Blooming Catchphrases'; a two hour extravaganza that interviews the cast and their much-loved characters, intertwined with classic clips and some rarely seen footage.

We are joined by Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Arabella Weir, John Thomson and Simon Day as they lift the lid on how The Fast Show happened, why it became such a cult classic, and how it felt to bring their characters back over 25 years later for this new special.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcwu9qkh6mA

neveragain

Quote from: Malcy on August 26, 2020, 06:08:30 PM
And me. Thought she was great in it.

Me also. The humour in her Janine monologues (and Roy & Renee) is very proto-Royle Family - jokes about the mundane which reveal more than intended - so if you appreciate one you should be able to appreesh the other.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Dr Rock on August 26, 2020, 02:01:36 PM
Me. And I also thought her cashier character was good.

"Lettuce?  Poof's food, that."

magval

Anyone mind the last time we had a Fast Show thread and how quickly it descended into a discussion about who was the 'worst one'?