Ermmmm...... TV Offal.

[Twonty Gostelow]

It's just so funny. Ross sizes them up as a couple of staggeringly unfunny twats within the first ten seconds, then proceeds to call them out on their hypocrisy. He doesn't even try to take the piss in a witty, chummy way, his disdain is palpable. They're just wasting everyone's time.

The young Jonathan Ross was great. He later became a twat himself, but such is life.

I don't know if they were ever in the same studio together but I think Ross was on Loose Ends around the same time as VL-S. That would probably have been before that interview, but I'm not sure.

[markburgle]

I've still got lots of affection for it as I loved it at the time, even though I can't exactly defend a lot of it. I agree he was charmless and some/all of his targets were soft and easy, but that was part of the joke for me. Sort of like the Mr Plinkett character, I saw him as partly sending himself up for the level of bile reached over innoccuos people / things.

I loved the bizarre and slightly shit links, delivered with manic conviction.  Such as:

"I have a dream" - (picture of fish appears) - "No that's a BREAM, I SAID I HAVE A DREAM"

[jingle kicks in but sung really badly] - "The show's falling to bits, sing it again PROPERLY" - [jingle sung properly] - "THANK YOU. Pay you enough"

"Where was I? Oh yes, I was a 1940s big-band-style crooner about to warn you that the next item might be about paeodophiliacs" [jingle kicks in fitting that exact description] (that's from ads infinitum but you get the idea)

[neveragain]

I don't know if they were ever in the same studio together but I think Ross was on Loose Ends around the same time as VL-S. That would probably have been before that interview, but I'm not sure.

Wow, that Ross interview really was bad. Their demeanour (not to mention material) certainly didn't help. They do a lot better with Clive - consistent laughs - but it's obvious the barrister doesn't like them.

[Twonty Gostelow]

I have a vague memory of a comedy writer[nb]he used to be on here I think but this was on NOTBBC. I won't name him in case they're about to work together![/nb] saying how he once found himself malevolently staring at the back of VL-S's head in the Evening Standard office as he typed out his TV column. Perhaps one of those people who rub people up the wrong way without trying.

[Twonty Gostelow]

And that's reminded me that in his collection of TV Reviews - not Inside the Magic Rectangle, the other one where he adds commentaries to each review - he thanks his co-writer Paul Sparks in the introduction, saying that Sparks doesn't get the praise he deserves, but on the other hand he isn't the one who gets assaulted in the street.

[the]

I think with a lot of his stuff it's the cumulative effect that makes the not particularly hilarious bits seem funnier than they are. That's stating the obvious really as that was his MO, what with the hyper-fast speech and symbolic tape winds.

Regarding the fast speech, I've come to regard this as a technique to make the things you're saying appear funnier and cleverer than they actually are, by deleting the landing area between jokes. It's admirable to try and cram more material in, but it's really just a bit of sleight-of-hand.

(A technique pinched by Charlie Brooker, who of course needs his material to appear funny and clever a lot more.)

Re. TV Offal, similar to what many people have said, the real thrill of it was seeing rare archive and 'retro' material served up in an unstructured way, back when such things weren't being endlessly recycled via the clip show, and info on them couldn't be called up easily. Some of the stuff shown was satisfyingly raw (although obviously repackaged (and in some cases misrepresented) alongside the acerbic commentary).

But a lot of it is (and as it appeared back then) pretty tawdry too. Latterly I've found it harder to reconcile how spiteful and unfair he was in general (ie. to non-celebs) with just how fucking posh he is, resulting in finding it harder to bother with his nasty shit to get to the good bits.

[Shit Good Nose]

Ads Infinitum:
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MaottnNoH0

De Kuyper redub in that one - THANK YOU.

Kills me every fucking time.

[Gurke and Hare]

Christ, him describing that call to LWT as being against LWT rather than humiliating the individual. There was nothing specific to LWT in it, what a twat.

[mippy]

I found a copy of VLS' TV reviews in a charity shop as a teen and loved it, especially as I used to read his Graun column. It was a massive headfuck to see TV Offal and realise he didn't sound like I thought he would. I was expecting a gruffer version of Mark Steel.

His call to Brian Sewell whilst impersonating Brian Sewell made me cry laughing when I heard it, because it was so childish.

[mippy]

Regarding the fast speech, I've come to regard this as a technique to make the things you're saying appear funnier and cleverer than they actually are, by deleting the landing area between jokes. It's admirable to try and cram more material in, but it's really just a bit of sleight-of-hand.

(A technique pinched by Charlie Brooker, who of course needs his material to appear funny and clever a lot more.)

See also: Zero Punctuation, the 00s (is it still going?) 'comedy' video game rant series.

[mippy]

I revisited a couple of episodes of the first R1 series recently, and obviously it wouldn't stand a chance of being put out today. Apart from the gratuitous sick humour which I think he was deliberately trying to push to the limit - Moors Murder joke in the Christian record company song, Lockerbie joke in the Summer Holiday parody etc - the jokey racism would get canned - eg Dr Dreyfus, Mr Lao Tzu, and his imitating the band Take Six. I think this has all been said before, but I wonder what they made of it, if they ever knew.

I'm pretty sure they repeated *some* of them on Radio 4 extra - definitely the Christmas Special has.

[thr0b]

He had a decent website back around 1999. Bizarrely, it was shared on a domain with a similarly-named furniture company or something.

[Blumf]

What is he up to these days?

[Shit Good Nose]

What is he up to these days?

Still refusing to cut off those fucking dreadlocks, presumably.

[neveragain]

Christ, him describing that call to LWT as being against LWT rather than humiliating the individual. There was nothing specific to LWT in it, what a twat.

Yeah. Some embarrassing back-pedelling there.

[thenoise]

I loved the VLS radio 1 shows when some kind soul linked them on here. A lot of the jokes were quite 'trad', Christmas cracker puns and Yiddish accents et al, but the nastiness was still shocking all those years later, and the bitterness of it all,lashing out in all directions, lent it a distinctive comedy voice. Sadowitz does it a lot better, of course, and doesnt have to embarrass call centre staff to do it.

I was inspired to seek out more VLS, to pretty diminishing returns. Gags that weren't very good the first time crop up again, and again, and again.
I managed to dig up all his restaurant reviews and they were pretty entertaining,as these things go. His last one he visited a Little Chef or something, to illustrate a wider rant on how England couldn't do fast food. Which dated badly,I'm quite nostalgic for the likes of Little Chef now rather than Costa and Waitrose sandwiches. Get a decent hot meal inside me. Proper service station food.

[Shit Good Nose]

I managed to dig up all his restaurant reviews and they were pretty entertaining,as these things go. His last one he visited a Little Chef or something, to illustrate a wider rant on how England couldn't do fast food. Which dated badly,I'm quite nostalgic for the likes of Little Chef now rather than Costa and Waitrose sandwiches. Get a decent hot meal inside me. Proper service station food.

Without wanting to derail the thread, I'm no expert on American fast food at all but a mate of mine lived in America (L.A. and New York, plus 9 months over the border in Montreal) for several years when he worked as a freelance entertainment correspondent for various UK publications, and he said Americans make their fast food look great, but for the most part the ingredients are REALLY REALLY low quality, and the big chains that had also made it to the UK like yer KFC, Burger King, Denny's, Pizza Hut, Dominoes, Papa Johns, Five Guys etc were MUCH better here than they were there.  He only had good things to say about In-N-Out and McDonald's, the latter only because (in theory) a McD burger in America tastes exactly the same as a McD burger in the UK, or Russia, or Japan (cos they put their "special ingredient" [Ronald's spunk mixed with a soupcon of his feaces] to make them taste the same all over the world), whilst most of the other chains relied on more "local" produce.  Plus their equivalents of independent greasy spoons were overpriced and very limited with what you could have.

Course, after Brexit all of the above will be switched around and we'll be the ones with terrible food.

[The Mollusk]

Christ, him describing that call to LWT as being against LWT rather than humiliating the individual. There was nothing specific to LWT in it, what a twat.

From the same bit(? Or just the same topic from that clip, I cannot be fucked to watch that dreck again to find out) he also described the person on the phone as practically frothing to get him on the show based on the fact he said he was disabled, when it's highly apparent from the actual audio that this wasn't the case at all.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I like how in the Clive Anderson clip, the man himself straight up says to that Sparky feller " Have you got a problem?" The Sparkster has the grace to say " yes, I'm not funny.", so fair play to him.

[neveragain]

Which, in itself, is funny! So... a paradox.

[Jockice]

Not of course that Ross is a great defender of 'the disabled.'

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/jonathan-ross-top-10-controversial-352660

And I'm sure there's at least one more comment of his that enraged disability organisations but I can't find it online. Something about Scope and not being unable to do his buttons up. But that's not the reason I can't stand him. I'm pretty hard to offend in that way. Even when he was supposedly good in the 80s I thought he was an unbearable prick then. And nothing has happened since to change my opinion. At least I'm consistent about it.

[Thosworth]

Lest we forget, when they were both working on Radio 1 and GLR in the '90s, VLS and Chris Morris were arguably very much two sides of the same coin. Although obviously a clear diversion in careers since...

[non capisco]

Not of course that Ross is a great defender of 'the disabled.'

It's an obvious point but Jonathan Ross taking the moral high ground about unfunny and cruel prank phone calls hasn't stood the test of time.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Give VLS a bit more slack. He's no genius of comedy - in fact, he strikes me more as the comedic Marmite that characterises, say, Spike Milligan or even the Pythons. Just like those examples, his work is frequently self-indulgent, repetitious, and laboured: but when he hits the target, he hits it every bit as well as they do.

'Little dead tin messiahs' is one of the most perfect bits of phrasing that I've ever heard in a satirical song, and just the way that he pronounces 'suck the dust off sausages' in his prank call to Harrods is enough to make him an enjoyable and funny comedian.

You don't like him? Tough shit. One VLS is worth a hundred Ricky Gervaises.

[the]

Note that a lot of the things said here were more nuanced than 'I hate him'.

[non capisco]

You don't like him? Tough shit. One VLS is worth a hundred Ricky Gervaises.

Nobody compared him to Ricky Gervais.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Not arguing either of those points. Gervais just struck me as a decent comparison in terms of comics specialising in 'edgelord' material. Nothing more than that. And yeah, not everything has just been 'I think VLS is crap'. That's not why I made that post. I made it to try and explain why I (along with others on this thread) like VLS, despite his flaws.

That is all.

[Andy147]

Lest we forget, when they were both working on Radio 1 and GLR in the '90s, VLS and Chris Morris were arguably very much two sides of the same coin. Although obviously a clear diversion in careers since...

They had a lengthy feud IIRC, with VLS accusing Morris of copying him.

[Blumf]

You don't like him? Tough shit. One VLS is worth a hundred Ricky Gervaises.

Seeing as Gervais' worth is a negative value, you probably mean -100.

Anyway, perhaps a more worthwhile comparison (after the natural Morris one), would be Charlie Brooker.

[neveragain]

In which case I'd have to plump for Brooker.