7433/19953
Fist of Fun was first broadcast on TV on this date in 1995…. 28 years old, it is.
Admittedly this joke will be funnier in 2026 on the 28th anniversary of TMWRNJ, whibut still.
Absolutely terrifying statistic though. I did a routine in TMWRNJ about remembering the 70s, but the 70s were then closer than the 90s are to us now. It made me wish we’d done an extra bit to that routine where I’d tried to guess which things from the 90s would be funny in 20 years time. Remember CompuServe, remember dial up, remember Stewart Lee’s hair, remember TMWRNJ etc. I could then have said, it’s not very funny now, but in 20 years time this will kill.
Hopefully a Garry Sparrow wormhole will open up so I can go back and write that in. I’ll even know what the dated references will be.
I showed my kids a picture of me and Stew from the time and they couldn’t work out which one was me. Ernie said that Stewart looked like a rock star and Phoebe said I looked like an ugly nerd. Which I took as a compliment as that was the dynamic we were aiming for. In real life, of course, it was the other way round. We actually both look a bit bloated and hungover in that photo, because I think we were. In one of the photoshoots we did around that time (and I was wearing that shirt, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same one) we actually had to do the whole thing again, because I had stayed up drinking the night before and my eyes were barely open in any of the original photos).
As I am 56 years old this year, the first broadcast of Fist of Fun is basically half my lifetime ago. Absolutely terrifying.
Amazing times for comedy. We did a routine about a gnats chuff that I think really contributed to the downfall of John Majors…..
Again a TMWRNJ reference. Maybe Fist of Fun wasn’t any good, however much I want it to be. I guess I want something impossible to attain. If only there was a phrase for that.
Ricky Grover tweeted about the time during filming the series that he’d accidentally knocked out another actor - I only vaguely recall this incredibly. David Wolstencroft recalled the “Next Vicar” sketch, which during filming I thought would be the stand out catchphrase of the series. It was basically bishops auditioning bad vicars and then a good one comes up and they say “I think we’ve found our vicar”. It was a good enough one off, but the twist was going to be that there were several more sketches and in each case the bishops were auditioning people for other things - like it was just a coincidence that the first one had involved clergymen. The only one I remember was the audition for Julie’s boyfriend. And in each case the same old man would be one of the auditionees and the bishops would simply shout “old!”. We filmed some of them and maybe some of them went out - I don’t recall. But due to having way too much material we weren’t able to really have many running characters at all. We were launching around the same time as the Fast Show, which amply demonstrated the power of using the same characters and catchphrases each week. In many ways I am glad we did more one off ideas, but if we’d wanted to be successful it might have been better if we had ensured that the Bishops and Ian News and (maybe not) Seahand and Zemquist (not even sure that was their names, but they were Hollywood producers who ruined good ideas by making a couple of little changes - the main thing I recall is having to have the teeth for the character made specially - don’t know what happened to them) were in every week. Rod Hull, Simon Quinlank and Moon on a Stick and Peter were the most successful items and those are the ones we returned to. The problem with the show was that we just tried to pack too much in. And all our sketch ideas came in at about 15 minutes (the Shrewsbury Pie Pie that went out was cut down a huge amount).
It was an overpacked mess and it’s hard to see how we got even the main bits into a half hour show and it would have been better for us if we’d had fewer ideas and less ambition (or at least learned to crawl before we attempted to fly). It’s nice to see that is still remembered fondly by a few people and the actors, many of whom we put on TV for the first time - most of whom have gone on to much greater successes. It had been one of my ambitions to have a comedy show on at 9pm on BBC2 and I achieved that very early in my career - too early I would argue. It didn’t turn out to be the defining comedy show of its generation, sitting just ahead of the Glam Metal Detectives in the ultimate comedy league table, but maybe it’s success was as a springboard for many of the people involved in it and as a small inspiration to youngsters who would go on to make a career in comedy.
I missed the chance to be involved in the defining comedies of our generation when we withdrew from The Day Today. But I would just have been a writer in that - and then maybe Alan Partridge, but maybe not. All in all I am glad I was a springboard and got to fulfil that ambition. And there was some good stuff in amongst that chaotic mess of talent. The things that that 27 year old craved were not worth having. Nearly 28 years old, he was.
