Alexei Sayle's Stuff on DVD!!

[Melth]

I've revisited the All New Series 1 recently and most of it holds up pretty well, apart from 1.1 which is pretty thin on laughs. The Australian soap spoof was dull and I don't understand why the Gilbert and George parody recurs every week. It doesn't feel as full or experimental as Studd by and large, it's worth watching and its hit-rate is pretty high. Highlights:

-The trip to the sound effects department of the BBC where they generate the sound of lightning by knocking an aerial off a table
- Alexei's  attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher by scratching the warning off a bottle of Domestos
-The way Bobby Chariot says "I don't smoke" at the end of 1.1
- Alexei outside Chessington World of Adventures - "I wouldn't bring a child into the world like this."
-"Yo, dude! Did you eyeball the latest Times Educational Supplement."

And there's loads more, including most of Bobby Chariot. What do people think about "Merry-Go-Round?" I seemed to remember it getting universally slated on here a few years ago.

[Alberon]

Good old Bobby Chariot. Cheap joke I know, but I did like "It's fun to be a Shi-ite"

The All-New show does hold up surprisingly well. Always had a soft spot for Drunk in Time, which apparently was a fairly well done spoof.

http://neolase.lasers.org/TimeTunnel/DrunkInTime/DITmpgDownload.shtml

All the Drunk in Time episodes are there in postage stamp size with poor sound.



Not watched Merry-Go-Round since it was broadcast. Got it on a tape somewhere, and I have a feeling I might enjoy it more now for some reason, (though that may be just because I've forgotten how bad it is).

[Jemble Fred]

This would be where I posit that Bobby Chariot is the number one most under-rated comedy character of all time. His existence seems to account for about 80% of Alan Partridge's character. Just swap 'sleeping in me jag' for the trusthouse forte hotel. You can certainly imagine Sayle watching IAP when it first came out and thinking 'didn't I basically do this years ago? That's it, I'm finished with comedy.'

[Purple Tentacle]

The sound-effects sketch has a strange, guaranteed doubled-up-in-laughter effect on me. Especially the sound of the 'lightning' and Alexei Sayle deadpanning, after listening to a spoof episode of The Goons, "That HAS to be the funniest comedy of all time."


Bobby Chariot has one of my favourite punchlines to a sketch ever, 'I SAID COVENTRY!!!!!'

[benthalo]

A pub on top of a horse, in a swordfight with highwayman. That's fairly WTF. 2.1 of All New is one of a handful of half-hours I can return to time and time again and never get sick of seeing. Actually, a good chunk of series 2 (ie minus the monologues and Arabella Weir) is a clear dry run for Big Train, and on that basis I would have though that a DVD relase is inevitable.

"Azerbaijan?"

Merry Go Round. I've never returned to it, but I remember it being field removed to within an inch of its life.

[Morrisfan82]

Merry Go Round. I've never returned to it, but I remember it being field removed to within an inch of its life.

Didn't Edgar Wright direct it? Maybe they used the same Retina Fucker 4000 system they used on Spaced.

I remember really enjoying MGR when it was on, despite the bizarre feeling that seemingly no-one else in the world watching it. Or maybe because of...

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Bloody hell, S3 is just mad throughout - Marshall and Renwick were really having a ball. Loved the channel surfing bit where they cut to a Late Show presenter talking animatedly about Norman Wisdom.

The Tom and Jerry press conference is very like a Mitchell and Webb sketch, with, fantasy things described in a deadpan way. But what lifts it is the context - the fact that there's so much going on elsewhere, and the knowledge that it could link to something totally unexpected at any moment. It's not just 'Here's our Tom and Jerry press conference sketch'. Greater than the sum of its parts and all that.

[Roger Byrne]

Anyone who can watch the title sequence of Series 2 without a great big silly grin on their face has no soul really, do they? I will never ever ever stop laughing at Steamboat Fatty.

[Jemble Fred]

I had no idea who Shirley Williams was at the time, and have only the basic knowledge that she's a baroness ex-Liberal politician now. Doesn't mean that me and my brothers can help breaking into that song at random moments nearly 20 years on, and still find it funny.

[Morrisfan82]

What's the 'continuity announcers' sketch about? Some industry in-joke about everyone in TV going on skiing holidays or something?

I keep getting the Lord William Rhys-Mogg stripping music stuck in my head as well...

[lazyhour]

Blimey, the 'Word Association' song in Stuff 1.2 invents the pop group Black Box Recorder about 10 years early!  It's uncanny.

[dust]

got  my Series 3 DVD today and can confirm that about 50 seconds of Episode 3 has been chopped out in the photo-processing shop / Candid Cardinal sketch where the Kylie music is playing and gets louder and louder in the background...  Why they chose to keep the bit in where the shopgirl detonated the dynamite to stop the music is beyond me - it would have jarred less to have lost that bit too!