Hale & Pace

[Ghughesarch]

All this Hale & Pace talk has me in the mood for some Smith & Jones. They followed the same path didn't they? From what I remember the early series had some great stuff but the later series were pretty crap. I had a compliation VHS I played an awful lot as a kid.

Smith and Jones had the honesty to do a sketch ripping the piss out of their own (pretty piss poor, it has to be said) LWT series when they returned to the Beeb after a naughty trip to the commercial side.
They weren't as good afterwards though, eventually going down the Two Ronnies route of a show in which they introduced clips of their own 25 year old sketches. Bit sad, that.

[DrGreggles]

"... ... wank"

[Hecate]

Wanky wanky wanky wank

[bim sherman shirts]

And yeah I too loved that period when comedy songs were still a thing, we should do a new thread, I'll maybe split your post off later. Smack The Pony was probably one of the last British shows to do them, I think? My memory is that we got into the noughties, and shows started to eschew things like traditional credit/title sequences, and even sig tunes, and the comedy song tragically became a relic of the past.

I'd argue the emphasis on music in comedy became more sophisticated/niche in the noughties with stuff like Bill Bailey or Flight Of The Conchords, whereas the comedy song was previously semi-obligatory for most comedians (regardless of whether they had a particular gift for it). It's certainly hard to picture a mainstream comic in 1987 doing a routine about a guitarist's over-reliance on effects pedals or whatnot.

[Norton Canes]

Wanky wanky wanky wank

Fuck those griffins are scary. It all goes gloriously Two Ninnies at the end there.

[Dr Rock]

That Reeves and Mortimer House Of Fools had a little sing-song at the end. Not a comedy sketch song, but worth mentioning.