In late September of 1975, English writer/actor, Richard O’Brien, gave the world the greatest cult film of all time, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Starring fellow Brit, Tim Curry, along with the great Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and Dallas-born, Meat Loaf, I remember seeing this while working at a rock radio station in Austin years […]
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Trolling around the internets today we stumbled on an interview with Eric Idle for the Scotland on Sunday website referencing Idle’s hit musical, Spamalot, was coming to the Playhouse in Edinburgh beginning tonight, 18 October. Having seen the original some years back in Chicago with the likes of Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and Hank […]
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The British comedy team of Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, a.k.a. The Mighty Boosh, were recently presented with a difficult task. Explain the core component of British comedy as we know it. Not too daunting a task to try and put into words. Using their own hugely successful series, The Mighty Boosh, as an example, Barratt […]
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Good writing = longevity in the world of British comedy One can’t help but think of the classics that have stood the test of time such as Fawlty Towers, Blackadder or Monty Python. Excellent writing delivers not only a classic comedy, but one that is also as relevant, or more, today than they were when first […]
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With British Pie Week nothing but a distant memory in our rear-view mirror, how could we have missed this and, more importantly, why were we not invited to be a judge at the Great British Cheese Festival at Cardiff Castle earlier this week! Okay, kidding about the judge part, but would have loved to have been […]
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Much as been printed over the years with respect to the fact that Donald Sinclair, owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, was the model for the most infamous hotelier, Basil Fawlty, in the classic British comedy, Fawlty Towers. As the story goes, the Pythons were staying at the hotel during a May 1970 location […]
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To most, if not all, British comedy fans, there is but one Fawlty Towers. Without question, when one speaks the name, visions of an extraordinarily short-fused hotelier by the name of Basil Fawlty come to mind. While Basil is desperate to join the ranks of the “upper class”, he’s forever at odds with guests and […]
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You just think programs like America’s Funniest Home Videos or full-blown channels such as YouTube are new and original ideas. Not so, say Dan Cruickshank and Kirsty Wark, who are out to prove that shooting a video and showing it off to the public isn’t a new thing. Beginning this week, on BBC Two, Home Movie […]
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One can only imagine, if even only for a brief moment, what our available British comedy viewing choices would be today had the BBC acted on their early feelings regarding Monty Python’s Flying Circus. According to this article in theTelegraph, documents obtained last year under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that BBC management found […]
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Toured the BBC Television Centre while in the UK last week. The BBC, which is considered the largest broadcasting organization in the world, houses its television operations at the Centre in White City and Shepherd’s Bush in West London housing most of the 5,000+ employees. First up, a little history of the Television Centre facility. […]
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