Main Menu

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, 09:00:15 AM

Login with username, password and session length

The REAL Harry Hill

Started by Johnny Textface, November 21, 2020, 12:43:39 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

TommyTurnips

I didn't watch very much tv burp but I heard that the show devolved into "haha look, a fat woman" and other such Gervaisian humour.

I've heard he gets a bit irritable if people persist in parroting his old routines/sketches back at him as if to impress him.  I'm sure he's the only comedian that's ever happened to.

Bazooka

Pound for pound one of the best gag deliverers (gaggers) in the business. I thought Alien Time Capsule was a good chuckle, and 2006-2009 ish Burp was worth your time, his stand up is flawless to me and I don't like music anywhere near stand up.

timebug

Matthew Hall (for that is he!) can be patchy. I have loved some of his stuff, and found other bits pointless. But I will always have a soft spot for 'Harry Hill's Fruit Fancies' a short set of inane films that were (to me) some of his best.

The Mollusk

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 22, 2020, 06:52:01 PM
Similar (although my mum was 23), but I think such a cloth-eared comedy idea was one of those moments that threw everything else he'd done into relief. While I've loved a lot of his work, everything since the writer exodus on TV Burp has been pretty slim pickings, comedy wise, for me.

Yeah his published work has been largely shite but have you seen him live recently? I caught him twice in the same small venue a month or so apart about 3 years ago and he was tremendous, absolutely slayed the room on both occasions. He has still got it where it counts.

idunnosomename

Quote from: TommyTurnips on November 23, 2020, 04:17:58 AM
I didn't watch very much tv burp but I heard that the show devolved into "haha look, a fat woman" and other such Gervaisian humour.
it might have got shit but it was never that bad

Menu

Quote from: idunnosomename on November 24, 2020, 01:54:51 AM
it might have got shit but it was never that bad

I didn't like how they dressed up that big fat man to play that Eastenders actress. I kept hoping there was some twist to the joke but there never was. But it was mostly good even by the end.

And Alien Fun Capsule was often brilliant.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: idunnosomename on November 24, 2020, 01:54:51 AM
it might have got shit but it was never that bad

It really was. By the end, the were just showing clips of Heather from Eastenders kissing someone and that was the joke, that she was kissing someone. Euuurgh! There was lots of pointing and laughing.

Fambo Number Mive


jobotic

Heather from Eastenders also a figure of fun for King of Women Glinner too.

Rich Uncle Skeleton


Crabwalk

His triumphs (the C4 show, his stand-up, about 50 hours worth of TV Burp) massively outweigh his crimes. Can't say I've ever warmed to him 'out of character' but who gives a shit? Yes, he's produced some absolute tods like that album, but his whole career has been a high-wire act so he was always bound to fuck up at some point.

Crabwalk

Gonna put a pic of Stouffer here just to make some people happy.


idunnosomename

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on November 24, 2020, 03:21:00 AM
It really was. By the end, the were just showing clips of Heather from Eastenders kissing someone and that was the joke, that she was kissing someone. Euuurgh! There was lots of pointing and laughing.
i think it's more my perception of "gervasian", which i considered to be more actively cynical than completely childish, but i think i am giving him too much credit

non capisco

It did get incredibly ropey towards the end, round about when The Knitted Character started its domination of the programme, but TV Burp was knockout stuff for years.

Clip of HUGH FURNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL or similar visiting a battery farm with chickens kept in atrocious cramped conditions: I mean...what on earth kind of animal could possibly be happy here?

HARRY HILL: A fox?

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: idunnosomename on November 24, 2020, 12:52:50 PM
i think it's more my perception of "gervasian", which i considered to be more actively cynical than completely childish, but i think i am giving him too much credit

I wouldn't say it was all over the show or the vibe of the show but there was a bit of nastiness creeping in towards the end of the run. I put that down to him having to watch years and years of fucking awful TV to make TV Burp and he just lost his patience with it all, that kind of nastiness was never there in his early work or early Burp. I think that shitty song he did, the digs at women's appearances, there seemed to be a lot punching down at the working class, I put all that down to him having to watch all those BBC3 shows like Freaky Eaters. That nasty streak did seem to end when Burp did, haven't seen too much of it in his work since.

The Mollusk

To be honest I've long had Hill pegged as someone who might be a bit of a snob in his private life. There's a very quiet air of sneery middle-class chauvinism about him which has occasionally seeped through into his work, including the fact that he's always done his own thing and never appears under anyone else's umbrella, on panel shows and the like, which would suggest he might see the work of others as "beneath him".

It's also worth bearing in mind that a lot of his material, although deliriously absurdist at times, has very strong roots in old school standup routines and delivery, so it would be not at all surprising if these notions were correct.

As I said before though, this doesn't bother me in the slightest as it doesn't really pervade his best work at all, and he's not some outspoken social media prick like Gervais or Glinner, so a couple of minor offences on that track record are still fair game.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

It's odd. I know my friends and I watched and enjoyed Hill's Channel 4 show back in the day, but he's not a figure I have any particular affection for or interest in now.

Quote from: The Mollusk on November 24, 2020, 06:17:44 PMhe's always done his own thing and never appears under anyone else's umbrella, on panel shows and the like, which would suggest he might see the work of others as "beneath him".
He turned up on an episode of Cats Does Countdown I saw recently.

Captain Z

I rewatched TV Burp recently and it was incredibly strong up to series 8, dipped a bit in series 9, more in 10, then 11 picked up again slightly. The real Heather from Eastenders appeared in a sketch towards the very end to give Harry some comeuppance.

BeardFaceMan

If you mean Heather appeared on the last show because people were mentioning how mean they were being about her and they thought they would get her on to say "see! She can take a joke! It was ok to laugh!" and negate any criticism for how they've treated and portrayed her for the last few years, then yes, Harry got his comeuppance.

Menu

Another thing that instinctively bothers me about him: why does he wear such garish jewellery? Chunky rings and gold chains. I don't think it's part of the character. He's like a posh darts player.

Quote from: non capisco on November 24, 2020, 01:14:36 PM
It did get incredibly ropey towards the end, round about when The Knitted Character started its domination of the programme,


The KC and Wagbo were the absolute nadir.

thr0b

I guarantee KC and Wagbo were popular with the kids, who would've been a big part of the audience in that era of the show. It was family teatime viewing at that point.


kidsick5000

He has a very doctor-skewed disdain for anyone unhealthy by their own hand.
I think TV Burp – and looking at all those reality-doc subjects – helped grow a contempt in him that resulted in that single.




SpiderChrist

A friend of a friend interviewed him and said he was an obnoxious cunt.

I saw him at The Comedy Store in 1995 and he was fantastic.

That's all I got.

gilbertharding

He was on a Room 101 (I can't remember if if was a Hancock one, or a Merton one though) and it really, really bothered me.

Obviously he was wearing the suit with the row of biros in the pocket, and the glasses, and the big collared shirt, but he was wearing the wrong shoes. And his gripes were very clearly the peeves of Dr Matthew Hall, rather than the absurd cartoon character Harry Hill (there was no mention of scurf, or sild, or Savlon for instance).

I really liked Fruit Fancies though, and the Channel 4 stuff, and Alien Fun Capsule. He is also better than Johnathan Wilkes on You've Been Framed.

ASFTSN

When I worked in a customer service job he was probably among the more contemptuous famous people I served based on the 5 seconds I interacted with him.

Maybe he was having a bad day and so was temporarily rendered utterly incapable of politely greeting staff behind the till, in which case he has my deepest sympathies.

notjosh

I preferred his work as a WWII-era propaganda carrot:


sevendaughters

Quote from: Menu on November 25, 2020, 02:25:42 AM
Another thing that instinctively bothers me about him: why does he wear such garish jewellery? Chunky rings and gold chains. I don't think it's part of the character. He's like a posh darts player.

drives a Bentley or a Rolls too. one of those big old ones. he's an odd fish.

Quote from: Menu on November 25, 2020, 02:25:42 AM
Another thing that instinctively bothers me about him: why does he wear such garish jewellery? Chunky rings and gold chains. I don't think it's part of the character. He's like a posh darts player.

Quote from: sevendaughters on November 26, 2020, 06:04:15 PM
drives a Bentley or a Rolls too. one of those big old ones. he's an odd fish.

He spent a lot of time around hospitals, too.  What other things has he in common with Jimmy Savile...?