Backstage... At The Cambridge Footlights

[Narshty]

Some have suspected that the Backstage job was a hatchet job. I do wonder.

Oh, it's utterly ruthless. Starting and ending on the same feeble 'comedy dancing' skit, only at the end they let it run on agonisingly for a full three minutes, continually cutting to wide shots of a very lonely auditorium with everyone in Footlights' name and photo sliding across the screen in that classic 'you have been watching' style.  Aside from one extremely brief snippet at the start, I don't think you ever see them unveiling the show to a live audience either, which you'd rightfully expect as the climactic moment of the piece. The inclusion of moments like Ayoade having some sort of strop on the beach and Rebecca's toffish gushing over the thoughtful shopkeeper is less than generous too. Still, their smug awfulness is so nakedly on display no matter how its edited, its hard to muster much sympathy.

[infinitemonkeys]

So hang on, you're asking people to be lenient towards something from nine years ago on the one hand, but getting angry with something from nine years ago yourself!??!?!?

No, you're deliberately misreading what I've written in order to continue this pointless comparison between invective and support, two very different things.

I doubt ELW10 was the same age as the people in the documentary. If he was I might see your point, although I'm not abusing him, like he is abusing people I know, so your point doesn't stand.

I'm not asking people to be lenient. I'm asking people to be reasonable. The documentary is not really what I'm talking about, it just happens to be the focus of this thread.

[Bert Thung]

Sendspace won't let me download anything. Any chance someone could put these documentaries up somewhere else?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I doubt ELW10 was the same age as the people in the documentary.

23.

[infinitemonkeys]

I doubt ELW10 was the same age as the people in the documentary.

23.

Thank you.

[TJ]

So hang on, you're asking people to be lenient towards something from nine years ago on the one hand, but getting angry with something from nine years ago yourself!??!?!?

No, you're deliberately misreading what I've written in order to continue this pointless comparison between invective and support, two very different things.

No I'm bloody not.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I was just shocked by how you could have a reaction so filled with absolute hatred. Your loathing of them seems so alien to me, bordering on the obsessive. You could barely sleep you were seething so much? I doubt it. But if so, you should get help.

Why are you SO driven by hate for these people, and people like them? They don't deserve such violent abuse. They were just young. I wouldn't be surprised if footage of you, or me, or fucking Satre or Einstein or Beckett or whoever, when they were nineteen would seem cringeingly awful now.

It frightens me how hateful some of you people are. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it is reading that people you know, friends of yours, people you've known for years and years, and respect and appreciate, seeing those people abused and villified and called CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT? Accused of not having a fucking soul, of being dead inside? Reading things that seem one step away from suggestions that these people be killed to save comedy? Because, what?, they don't produce the kind of stuff that appeals to you? Because they have to work on shows you may not like to earn a living?That's not criticism. That's just abuse. And it takes away from every reasoned comment on here. Be filled with passion, yes, just not with hate. Save that for something that deserves it.

Are you talking specifically about my old letter to Alan (which is private-vitriol-made-public, a snapshot of how I felt one evening in 1997), or about comments made more recently/generally on this forum?

In either case, I think it's in direct proportion to the gush comedians and comedy shows receive from the press every day. Sometimes it's just a reaction to that. This is one of the few places on the net where you can read anti-gush.

Charlie Brooker used to be hailed as a hero for writing aaaagghhcuntcuntcunt-type invective and posting it on the net. Was that because the invective was directed at safe targets like Noel Edmonds and Nicky Campbell? Was it because he was a Future Of Comedy figure? Or was it his come-to-bed eyes?

Besides, what should the rules be? When does acceptably angry criticism become baseless abuse?  When it concerns an up-and-coming figure? When it's one of your friends? (I work on the basis that 99.9% of the people who read this forum aren't friends with John Oliver.)

And if comedy is too trivial a subject to 'deserve' vitriol, then what subject does?

[Brutus Beefcake]

They don't deserve such violent abuse.

Watching that doc makes it quite clear that they do, and much more besides.


Comedians eh? They can dish it out but they can't take it.

[Lee]

I went on to be heavily envolved with the Cambridge Footlights, appearing in most of the shows they put on during my time there, including the 1995 Footlights revue The Barracuda Jazz Option (directed by my current writing partner Mark Evans), and working with a load of up and coming comedians such as Matthew Holness and Mitchell and Webb, the last three of whom I returned to Cambridge to direct in the 1996 revue Fall from Grace.

Ah, that explains a mighty lot.

[Lee]

"The Richard Blackwood Show"

CHECK MATE!

;)

[Milo]

You could barely sleep you were seething so much? I doubt it. But if so, you should get help.

I think this is a great thing. Passion is wonderful, whether it's positive or negative.

[Marv Orange]

Erm they do derserve some abuse, apart from some of the bollocks they talk, they blatantly plagerise a fast show skit.

Watching this reminded me of the current footlights video that was posted here a while ago (the thing about the circus and the monty pythonesque men dressed as women using the same fucking vocies as the python). People with no new ideas plagerising what has gone before.


Thank fuck only 3 of them  have ever appeared on my radar.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Comedians eh? They can dish it out but they can't take it.

Yeah, that's always mystified me. Comedians effectively have careers which entail taking the piss out of stuff for a living, and yet they become confused and defensive when others do it back.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

I doubt infinitemonkeys would have given a shit if this thread didn't concern people having a negative critical reaction to something his *mates* did.

[The Mumbler]

I notice from his website that infinite wrote for Channel 4's 2001 Joe Cornish topical panel game This Week Only.  Which, fairly early on, I was calling (as a matter of course) Cunts Behind A Long Desk.   They may not have been cunts in real life, but in the context of that programme, they undoubtedly were.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

His co-writer Mark Evans managed to read out all of the stage directions at last week's Mitchell and Webb warm-up in That Voice.

"We see a wall. It is a stone wall. Like you'd see in a monastery".

Need I say that this delivery got consistent laughs?

[ziggy starbucks]

I agree with what ELW10 had to say on page 1 about the people involved in this documentary. They are utterly fucking useless. Everything that is wrong with comedy is personified by those people, who can somehow get paid to entertain me and everyone else despite the fact that they have zero zero talent. They can't even steal material properly, taking once amusing stuff written by other people and making it terrible. I imagine even the mothers of this dismal comedy band have a hard time pretending that they like their offspring's material.

and if infinitemonkeys is mates with these people then you have my deepest sympathy

and no, I haven't had a rejected script. I don't want a career in comedy becaues it might involve having to deal/meet/associate with these cunts.

But if I've hurt anyone's feelings I'm very sorry. no I'm not

[The Mumbler]

Just in case anyone is under the impression that I'm particularly proud of my This Week Only retitling, I should explain:  No it's not witty (but nor was the programme), and obviously, I should have kept the title for, I dunno, some panel game in the future where General Pinochet and the ghost of Stalin think up some hilarious alternative captions for some stills of distraught tortured prisoners.   Andrew Newman's doubtless commissioning it as we speak.

Was the retitling based on hatred?  Hatred for the concept of the show (basically cheap cracks at minor celebrities, based largely on the way they looked and dressed), hatred for a terrible wrong-turn that Cornish had taken (the series of Adam & Joe earlier that year had been the best yet), hatred for the increasingly plebby Channel 4.   OK, and hatred for some of the panellists too - be fair, I had just been enjoying The Armando Iannucci Shows and then all that goodwill evaporated.  I am but a human being.

[lazyhour]

Watching this reminded me of the current footlights video that was posted here a while ago (the thing about the circus and the monty pythonesque men dressed as women using the same fucking vocies as the python).

Oooh, what was this?  I must have missed it.  I've had a search but can't find anything.

[Boss Mew]

I can download that video on page 1

Do I really need to, or will I be biting my fist in anger at the inepitude of the thing?

[Marv Orange]

Watching this reminded me of the current footlights video that was posted here a while ago (the thing about the circus and the monty pythonesque men dressed as women using the same fucking vocies as the python).

Oooh, what was this?  I must have missed it.  I've had a search but can't find anything.

http://www.seethecircus.com/

Thats the website you can view the trailers there as well, beware its highly shite.

[infinitemonkeys]

They don't deserve such violent abuse.

Watching that doc makes it quite clear that they do, and much more besides.


Comedians eh? They can dish it out but they can't take it.

What, I can't take the fact that you're suggesting that people who are just comedians deserve 'more' than violent abuse?

What are you actually saying, Brutus? That you think they should be physically hurt? What? WHAT? I don't think you genuinely believe what you just wrote, do you?

Look, I'm not upset that lots of you are criticising people I know. Well, actually, I am, but I'm trying to address something more general. ELW10's letter was just the thing that set me off. And I appreciate that it's good for everyone to hear anyone's opinion on things. But I just don't think that many of the opinions I've encountered here in the last day are anything apart from useless bile.

I don't come on here in the hope of getting into arguments - in general I roam around looking to see if I can provide a helpful insider's perspective on things being discussed. But the more I read, the more I am genuinely frustrated with the lack of faith many of you have in the people who are being asked to produce comedy today (and I mean genuine comedy rather than comedy entertainment which encompasses Balls Of Steel et al); that you imagine that we don't find the whole process of television and radio comedy in this country just as frustrating as you.

I don't hide what I've done, so that anyone has to seek it out as you have done. My real name is underneath my username (in fact I recently, before this discussion, tried to change it to my name but couldn't, though many of you seem to know who I am anyway) and my full CV is freely available on my agent's website, my association with the Footlights discussed in other threads on this very forum. Yup, I have written on the Richard Blackwood Show. You've got me bang to rights. I have also written for I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. I wrote episodes of Popetown. I don't mind that I did those - I needed to earn a living. But I also have written things that I'm very proud of - sketches for Mitchell and Webb and Milton Jones, the first draft scripts for Popetown before they were translated into French and then back into English, sitcom scripts that sit in development hell, pieces I wrote for Ant and Dec, two shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, and so on and so forth.

Listen, people like me, we don't want to make bad comedy. Honestly. We didn't get into it for the money. We got into it for the making people laugh. And the only sensible way we can do that as comedians and writers and comic performers is try and do something that makes us laugh. Me, Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, whoever, we don't sit around reading audience and focus group research trying to come up with something we think will appeal to ABC1s, or conciously stealing material from things people already like. That's the way many commissioners would have it, I'm certain, but it's a constant source of frustration to us.

So please try and have just a little hope that every time I go on stage or write a sketch or start work on a sitcom script, when that project is something I want to do (and these days that is luckily more and more the case), I'm really trying to make something genuinely funny. And so are most other people in the same position.

The decision of whether to laugh at it or not is of course yours - no-one can force you to feel either way about it against your will. I'm perfectly happy to take criticism. If anything, I sometimes listen to it too much. But if you don't like what I do all I ask is that you don't call me a cunt. That feels a little strong.

Oh, and please don't  think I need your sympathy for having particular people as my friends. That's insulting.

[alan strang]

Our users have posted a total of 491877 articles
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I'm disappointed to be honest - I was holding out for Rebecca "Johnnie" Johnson at the very least.

What are you actually saying, Brutus? That you think they should be physically hurt? What? WHAT?

But you know perfectly damn well that they weren't saying that, James.

'Violent abuse' = your own words to describe some papery invective. 'A lot more besides' = a few more pages of the same? Makes sense to me.

In your position I guess it's easier to suggest that people who spurt offhand negative critiques are really sadistic psychos intent on physically attacking comedians. It's pure Nev Fountain-speak.

[Marv Orange]

Me, Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, whoever, we don't sit around reading audience and focus group research trying to come up with something we think will appeal to ABC1s.

No you probably don't but commissioning editors are. Last year we saw the farming out a concept to production companies that resulted in 3 (spoons, man stroke woman, that channel 5 one) similar sketch shows on at the same time.

My personal gripe with current TV comedy is that there hasn't been a memorable comedy show on for a while (well except the boosh, TV Burp, Peep Show theres probably more but its late). Instead I see average and below average dross being churned out on a regular basis by the BBC and on a less regular basis by C4 and the press react like its the second coming. Richard and Judy saying the Little Britian was well written can piss right off. Not all these new progs can be blamed on the commisioning editor, so who is there to hold responsible? The writers and the performers.

, or conciously stealing material from things people already like

Fair enough, but i think one line in the magistrate sketch is lifted exactly from the Fast Show. I realise you can't answer this question, but anyway, so no one listened to the Magistrate sketch and went.. hmm thats a bit similar to what was on the fast show. You would have to be blind and deaf not to notice.

Personally I don't care what you've written (and yes i looked at your website when it was mentioned you knew the people involved). And this comment isn't aimed at you or your friends personally, but how long does a wrtier or performer need to churn out sub standard tosh or rest on their laurels before calling it a day?


If its any benifet i thought CC had some of the most bitter and twisted posts i had read in a long time. (I signed up when the boosh thread and gervais thread were at full force). But then I released these people were just passionate about comedy. If you can look pass you/he/them/Gervais is a cunt (and there is a lot) there are some good disscussions here. This the internet not a fight in a pub.

[infinitemonkeys]

Our users have posted a total of 491877 articles
We have 5422 registered users
The newest registered user is Robert Webb

I'm disappointed to be honest - I was holding out for Rebecca "Johnnie" Johnson at the very least.

What are you actually saying, Brutus? That you think they should be physically hurt? What? WHAT?

But you know perfectly damn well that they weren't saying that, James.

'Violent abuse' = your own words to describe some papery invective. 'A lot more besides' = a few more pages of the same? Makes sense to me.

In your position I guess it's easier to suggest that people who spurt offhand negative critiques are really sadistic psychos intent on physically attacking comedians.

No of course I don't really think that. But, hey, sometimes it feels like it.

Oh, and on this forum, surely anybody could take the username 'Robert Webb'?

[alan strang]

Oh, and on this forum, surely anybody could take the username 'Robert Webb'?

They could - you'd think they'd have a bit more imagination though, wouldn't you?

[infinitemonkeys]

Me, Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, whoever, we don't sit around reading audience and focus group research trying to come up with something we think will appeal to ABC1s.

No you probably don't but commissioning editors are. Last year we saw the farming out a concept to production companies that resulted in 3 (spoons, man stroke woman, that channel 5 one) similar sketch shows on at the same time.

You see - you do find it as frustrating as I do.

I think one line in the magistrate sketch is lifted exactly from the Fast Show. I realise you can't answer this question, but anyway, so no one listened to the Magistrate sketch and went.. hmm thats a bit similar to what was on the fast show. You would have to be blind and deaf not to notice.

You're right - I don't know the answer to this. But then I'm a fan of the Fast Show and I don't know what line everyone's talking about. If anything it reminds me of 'The Bishop', which others mentioned earlier. So who knows where it came from.

I think that was always the problem with Footlights. We wore our influences very much on our sleeves. But one of the advantages of it was that we had three years to try to get that out of our systems, while out of the public eye. Unless of course we foolishly ended up in a documentary...

How long does a wrtier or performer need to churn out sub standard tosh or rest on their laurels before calling it a day?

I don't know. How long should anyone work in a job they're not very good at until they call it a day? In other jobs you get fired. In comedy you just don't get hired, I guess. But if the work's there and you need to earn money and it's too late to do anything else...?

[gloria]

I understand he and alan strang wrote a pilot for a Radio 4 comedy show that wasn't accepted.

Oh really? And what was that then?

Wasn't it the one included as an easter egg in the SOTCAA Christmas book?  Or am I being very, very stupid?  Of course it's entirely possible that both those things are true.

[Jemble Fred]

Listen, people like me, we don't want to make bad comedy. Honestly. We didn't get into it for the money. We got into it for the making people laugh.

Splendid, brilliant, admirable, agreed. So why do you find it risible that somebody should lose sleep because they see what they personally consider to be derivative low-par comedy getting an audience? Surely that's the exact kind of passion that you should have before you even dream of writing or performing comedy?

For a start, that level of commitment would have prevented any echoes of plagiarism, which does seem to have been genuinely unintentional, but at the same time, you should be able to spot such things, having enough knowledge to trace suspect gags back to the original shows, and (obviously) cut them. It's the same for any creative 'industry', surely? You have to know what's gone before pretty well before you start, and there's almost never any excuse for accidental plagiarism. It either comes down to theft or ignorance, neither of which are lovely things.

But hey, the sun's shining, I'm feeling optimistic and I haven't seen the documentary, so I'm guessing the unoriginal gag under advisement was a fluke.

[alan strang]

Wasn't it the one included as an easter egg in the SOTCAA Christmas book?  Or am I being very, very stupid?  Of course it's entirely possible that both those things are true.

That was never submitted to or rejected by Radio 4.