I was yakking on the phone recently to another writer, about whom I'm going to write an article, and he told me that several publishers in the US have recently failed to answer his correspondence. Eh?

"But you're a best selling author who's been long-listed for The Booker!" I protested.

"Obviously counts for nothing." he said, glumly.

I was under the impression that once you've had some professional success, doors would magically fly open, and that various dimwits would suddenly spring to the realisation that hey! actually, you're worthy of their courtesy! So you would get treated with respect, your emails would get answered, and you would be given the opportunity to display your work to as large an audience as possible.

Obviously not.

According to the wise wizards (I'm being sarcastic) on the main UK TV discussion forum, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse had to persuade the head of comedy at the BBC to commission their new sketch show, "Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul"

I find this almost impossible to believe. Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse are two of the UK's most important comedy writers and actors, and their track record is second to none. The pics below, by the way, are imageshacked YouTube stills. It's not a playable YouTube unless it's got a white arrow in the middle, geddit? :)



I've already written a blog entry about Harry Enfield's brilliant character, George Whitebread, The Yorkshireman who is my favourite comedy character of all time. My beloved Brian is a Yorkshireman, and he regularly smacks my arse on my way to the oven, and says things like "Oooo, tha's got eh-gents interested in thee nah, who's a clever lass, then! Not many birds can write, tha knows, specially posh 'uns!" (No, I'm not joking.)


Harry Enfield's Television Show and Harry Enfield and Chums were groundbreaking and influential, and the sketches have stayed fresh with time, there's YouTubes of some of my favourite sketches at the end of this blog.


After co-writing and appearing on Harry's shows, Paul Whitehouse went on to write and appear in The Fast Show along with Charlie Higson. Like Harry Enfield's programmes, The Fast Show is now legendary, but when it was first released I seem to remember many people being confused about the format and condemning the show as a failure, but then most people don't recognise talent until everyone else is raving about it as most people are stupid.*

*As proven in clinical trials.

So, now Paul and Harry have teamed up once again, along with Morwenna Banks and Laura Solon, in Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul which was broadcast for the first time on Friday 13th April, 2007.

The show is being panned in the red tops*, but then if you must read the red tops you know what to expect by now. It is also being slaughtered on the main British TV discussion forum, but then so was Extras after the first episode of series one, and I had to go over and defend that, as well (in fact The London Evening Standard used one of my postings on their letters page, gorblimee guvnor!)

But they're all wrong. Ruddy Hell is fucking brilliant.

* EDIT a year later - The show got recommissioned for another series so who knew best, eh?

Like the monologues of Lenny Bruce, hailed by Eddie Izzard as the Jesus Christ of alternative stand-up, truly brilliant comedy is so accurate that it's painful. That's what makes it funny.

We live near a secondary school and the fat kids, Jamie and Oliver, are EXACT PORTRAYALS of the little buggers who walk up to the chippy every lunchtime and leave the street looking like the last day of Glastonbury. And of course the writers are paying respect to Jamie Oliver, who deserves a knighthood for his work in standing up to the huge catering companies who have kidnapped school lunches in order to profiteer from our nation's children, in place of feeding them with adequate nutrition. Anyway, watching the fat kids made me nearly puke with laughter.

Similarly, the Nelson Mandela promoting alcopops sketch is a tribute to Nelson Mandela and also a comment on the disturbing way that our government reaps millions of pounds in taxes from the sale of a lethal and addictive drug to children. It'd be like the government skimming millions in taxes from the school dinner oligopolies selling BSE infected meat to our children rather than just pizza and chips. Yes, it's that bad. And true comedy genius, again, like Lenny Bruce, uses comedy to comment on the serious problems currently condoned in our society.

Like most of the sketches, I laughed all the way through The Slavic Waitresses, although I didn't understand why at first - I just thought it was funny. On thinking about it afterwards, though, I realised why it is satire at its very best.


The premise behind the first episode of The Foreign Coffee Shop is that the customer, played by Harry Enfield, is goofily dazed by the younger waitress, played by Laura Solon. She and her colleague, played by Morwenna Banks are grossly rude to the customer as they discuss him in a gobbledegook hybrid Slavic language. But once resorting to English to serve the customer his coffee, the waitress is the epitome of politeness.



This is basically a satire on the way people use thinly veiled coded language to conduct themselves in business. "My very best wishes" at the end of a courteous email can actually mean "Yeah right, fuck off and die."* in the right context. People are able to get away with the grossest rudeness in business by being superficially polite. I think we imported this practice from America. I hope my American readers won't be offended by this, but, yanno, it's true. In fact, American readers, until Ruddy Hell gets onto DVD, check it out on YouTube because I think you'll like it! Don't take the parody of the American tourists seriously, though, us Brits are wont to behave appallingly when abroad, as you all know.

*Apart from when I use it.



The Posh Scaffolders makes comedy writing look easy. And the hardest climbers make soloing an E9 look easy, too. That's what happens when you're really good. It looks effortless. The sketch involves a couple of builders wolf-whistling at women and shouting at them in a Cockney accent as they walk past...but once the builders are talking between themselves, they revert to being posh blokes discussing the arts, literature and the merits of Stephen Fry's work. Absolutely priceless.


Possibly my favourites were the Surgeons, though. Despite the fact that surgeons wear bow ties, no-one has seen fit to rip the piss out of them yet, and Paul and Harry have done it brilliantly. Absolute genius. The way "long-listed-for-a-Booker" tripped off Paul Whitehouse's tongue made me realise what a pretentious little trollop I am once I start banging on about the merits of Dostoevsky and Hunter S Thompson. Yes, there's a little bit of surgeon in us all. There's a YouTube of the surgeons below, so judge for yourself.

Brian said that the football manager based on Jose Mourinho was brilliant, and he's a Leeds supporter so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to footie.

And The Computer Billionaires, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs was spot on. I really love beta masters, I must admit, which is why they get a whole acknowledgement section on the sidebar of my blog. They can be as anal as climbers when they're talking geek, but they're just generally lovely people.

The Brokeback Mountain sketch with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy I must admit, didn't make me laugh, but I can still recognise its quality. The real Laurel and Hardy were beyond genius, I can see that, but I can't bear to watch them, along with nearly every woman I've ever met. Similarly, I recognise that Paul Whitehouse's Fast Show character Archie Atkinson is a brilliant parody of Arthur Askey, but I cannot abide Arthur Askey, or the entire music hall genre, so it's a bit woosh over my head.

However, I'm very reluctant to say anything negative at all about Ruddy Hell, because in my books, armchair critics are losers. If you're not out there doing it yourself and you haven't got anything positive to say, then shut the fuck up.

Congratulations to all the cast, crew and production team. I absolutely LOVED Morwenna Banks and Laura Solon's work in this show, too. Perfect.

Below, some YouTubes from Ruddy Hell! and also from Harry Enfield's Television Show, Harry Enfield and Chums, and The Fast Show.

Ruddy Hell - The Scaffolders




Ruddy Hell - The Surgeons



Ruddy Hell - Clive The Posh Peoples' Pet




Ruddy Hell - The Computer Billionaires, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs



Brokeback Mountain Laurel and Hardy (proof, if we needed it, that all comedy double acts are gayers)*



*Sigh...yes I'm joking. But they are all in love with each other. Not the women though. You don't get rug munching in the girls Green Room.


Harry Enfield - George Whitebread The Yorkshireman. With the Charlie Higson character prouncing his "T"'s like a "D", which, for English people, is the sign of being a complete wanker.



Harry Enfield - Women, Know Your Limits. Including ahead-of-their-time-graphics accurately depicting my brain.




Harry Enfield - Kevin and Perry, Manchester



The Fast Show - Colin Hunt "I'm an Alien". I think the Colin Hunt character was an influence on Ricky Gervais's Extras character, the foreman Ray Stokes played by Andy Millman (played by Ricky Gervais.)




The Fast Show - The Offroaders.



The Fast Show - Denzil Dexter, University of California. Anyone who's done a Photoshop CS "Watch and Learn" tutorial video will know that DENZIL LIVES!!!!!! Here's the proof - "Turning Your Friends Into Statues With Photoshop."




Above: My mate Fex Wazner, not only a writer and artist, but also a REAL OFFROADER with his own Pinzgauer!

Here's my blog article about Harry Enfield's Yorkshireman

And finally, guess what got slagged off when it first appeared on British TV?

Monty Python.

I rest my case.

EDIT: Thanks to jamied132 for uploading my favourite sketch so far, "Important man on a night out." I have been in the Ingrid "Oh you're just a mother. Not important then" situation so many times, with some arrogant wankstain being condescending and smug. A brilliant sketch.




ps Can someone please tell Charlie Higson that I've just found a contact sheet of an entire reel of film I shot of him at The Higsons' debut gig at the ICA in December 81. I'm going to post a blog entry about it as soon as I get prints done, as part of the My Time on the Turn of the 80s Music Scene series of articles. Oh yeah, tell him it was me that sent that Valentines Card in February '82 as well...and tell him that im not gonna go out wiv him nyway coz iv got a bf now so ner.