Comedy Double: Back To The Future

What else could today’s comedy double be? A bit late today, but here’s my magnum opus, a roundup of satirical Tony Blair video clips. Let’s start, as seems only logical, with the early years…

This first is not so much comedy as scandal, but when it’s about Blair getting gay blowjobs, smoking dope and glam-rock it’s good enough for me. From Tony Blair, Rock Star:

What a wanker he was even then. I have to say he seemed like just the sort of posh ‘hippy’ I and my suburban casual friends would’ve wanted to beat up. How he managed not to get laughed out of the Labour party is beyond me but the party was in such internal turmoil then that he just oiled through the ctacks and before you knew it, voila. there he was, party leader. Clause IV was gone and populist socialism was dead.

This next is from 1999; the new Labour party leadership were still seen as well-meaning bumblers rather than the lying, corrupt, greedy authoritarians they were to become. It’s Reeves and Mortimer and the Labour Party Band:

The spiffy Dom Joly lookalike at the beginning of the clip, who appears to have uploaded this and appears also to be quite nifty with brand theory, a videocam and an editing suite, is York councillor and thrusting young New Labour type James Alexander. Who knows, maybe his clever marketing ploy will catch the eye of Gordon, who, as we know, is all about the technology. They never change, these Labour political wannabes, do they? All front. But who knows, maybe Gordon might also notice that young James seems to have put New Labour’s logo on what just might not be its intellectual property to claim. Hmm, didn’t they steal some other online intellectual property before? How very New Labour.

Personally I find it safer to assume that anything found on YouTube has permission – it’s YouTube’s responsiibility, it’s their site. But there are always exceptions and I doubt permissiion to upload means permission to slap the Labour Party logo all over it.

But we’be known for a while how sleazy New Labour and the Blairs were. Here’s eminent QC Cherie Blair done by Dead Ringers:

That minor illegality brings us to the big one – the conspiracy, using the excuse of 9/11, to illegally invade and occupy Iraq. Anti-Bush and Blair satire, or so we thought then, was at it’s zenith. Blair and Bush seemed so close, so sympatico as to be thought lovers . This spawned many an innuendo-laden video mashup, but this is the best. Bush and Blair do Gay Bar:

Blair may have faced many challenges as PM but this may be one of the oddest. Blair faces Paxman, goes blank and gets testy in this Newsnight/ University Challenge hybrid:

Post-2003, and Iraq’s been bombarded with shock, awe and chemical weapons, thousands are dead and the missiom has been declared accomplished. At Westminster relatioins with former BFF Gordon had reached an all time low, according to Armando Iannucci in ‘2004- the Stupid Version‘:

3 years later they’re still bickering like jilted lovers and Iraq is a fucking disaster as a consequence of Blair’s endless lies. Meanwhile the War On Turr rolls on, Blair is still singing an American tune and still a rockstar wannabe, still trying to milk the last drop of applause out of an unwilling audience.

2007, and at this point the nation is so sick of Blair and his crew of mendacious incompetents and war criminals that even such momentous scandals as Cash for Honours and the Downing St memo couldn’t do much more to tarnish them in our eyes. Just go already, we thought. Brown seemed reluctant to put the knife in:

But now, finally, at last, the bugger’s going. But he’s still aping the wannabe rock star, on his last, final, farewell tour ever, playing to ever dwindling audiences.Bremner Bird & Fortune:

And the public still want him hanged. Don’t Watch That, Watch This:

But for Tony it’s all about the legacy, and besides he may not actually be going at all. He is after all a Time Lord, as he tells Nick Robinson on Dead Ringers. A hundred more years, shudder:

Goodbye, Mr Tony Blair, we’ll miss you, in the same way we’d miss suppurating syphilis chancres or steatorrhea.

Hello, Gordon Brown, who isn’t half such good satire-fodder, but boy, does he make a good Dalek:

Mind you, it’s not a done deal yet: Should the unthinkable happen and a general election be called, we might get to start all over again with another posh touch-feely wanker.

More Armando Ianucci, this time from Time Trumpet

Oh, joy.

Comedy Double: When Hecklers Attack

He gets knocked down, but he gets up again – I’ve featured Australian comic Jim Jeffries before: he’s incredibly hilarious but incredibly crude and apparently in Manchester recently he hit on some nutter’s hotbutton issue. Said nutter promptly got up on stage and attacked him. Nevertheless our doughty hero carried on:

Jim Jeffries is funny and so had the audience behind him, but I’m amazed the whole fucking audience didn’t attack this very unfunny American comic. No idea who he is but perhaps it’s best he should remain nameless if this performance is any guide. The lamest wingnut comedian I’ve ever seen. Two women take him on re his racist comments and make him look very silly indeed. “Fuck you!” “Not likely”:

How not to get the audience behind you: take the straight and simple Oklahoma approach to hecklers and nip it in the bud with a whack over the head with a guitar.

None of the above is SFW, due to offensive language, but the next clip is. “I not a girl, I a woman!” 2 year old Sadie deals with a pest:

But best and most stylish heckler response of all comes from Noel Fielding of the Mighty Boosh. It’s shaky cameraphone footage but the sound is OK and he handles the heckler with just his wit and his unique style.

Now that’s the way to do it. And you lot can shut up at the back.

Friday Comedy Double

A roundabout journey this morning, from an impious Scotswoman to a gang of genius scallies, taking in everyone’s favourite daft Brummie uncle and a cute wiggly machine on the way. All but the cute wiggly machine and possibly Jasper Carrott are NSFW really, unless have your boss well-trained, you are the boss, or you just don’t give a shit.

Anything labelled “CAUTION This clip may offend as it contains strong language and religious references.” has got my interest straight away. This is Glaswegian comedian, journalist and occasional blogger Janey Godley on how hard the whole ‘body of Christ’ thing is for a small child to swallow:

Without Sunday school there wouldn’t be half so many bolshy atheists like me about. Thanks, C of E!

Speaking of past times; remember when the advent of Thatcher and Reagan seemed unlikely and all there was to be scared of was complete and utter mutual nuclear annihilation? Ah, halcyon days. Here’s Jasper Carrott‘s 1979 standup show at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Part 1. (Parts 2 and 3). How strangely innocent and sweet it seems now.

Today’s first bonus clip has no real connection to anything at all really, it just tickles me. Here’s Keepon the dancing robot dancing to the Thizzle dance. No idea what the Thizzle dance is but it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. Oi’ll give it foive.

Last but most definitely not least, and short but hardly sweet, are the wonderful Half Man Half Biscuit (Motto: “Satisfying The Bloodlust Of The Masses in Peacetime”), mocking those saddos from Slipknot in a clip titled “A Broadside against the Vatican.” More HMHB here.

Heh. Indeed.

Comedy Double: Maple Leaf Special

A kind pseudonymous person who has my everlasting gratitude has posted up a bunch of clips from “Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show!”, the late, lamented animated sketch series voiced by Bob Monkhouse. It was a UKian/Canadian coproduction that ran for only 13 episodes but it’s my favourite animated series ever. Sorry Simpsons, but it has cephalopods. Sorry Futurama, you don’t have a psychopathic baby seal with a machine gun.

Anyway, on with the clips – and of course I had to start with the poor lonely, giant squid. Arrgh, why do I always do that?

Next up is my favourite character of the series, Serge, The Fashion Seal of Death. Don’t you love it when cute, furry animals hit back against dictators?

“Mama! Papa!” I’ve never understood why Mr Hell wasn’t a bigger hit.

Staying on the Canananadadian theme, here’s an hilarious bonus clip from a Canadian tv comedy “Talking To Americans”, which is, guess what, mocking ignorant Americans.

How dare they? I suggest you guys invade. No, not that way, you fools, go north

Comedy Double – Fantabulosa!

Aha, you thought I’d forgotten… actually I had, the holiday weekend made me lose track of what day it is. never mind, I remembered in time and here’s the comedy double. And have I got a bona selection today.

It’s so nice to vader these dolly old ekes again.First off, a brief history of Kenneth Williams’ camp comic creations, Julian & Sandy, the first openly gay charcters in British entertainment:

You can hear more of the hysterically funny Julian & Sandy on Round The Horne on BBC Radio 7, and a dictionary of polari can be found here.

Next is up is Kenneth Williams’ partner in radio crime, Hugh Paddick, making a rare television appearance in the only video I can find of him. ripped from what looks like a Danish-subtitlled broadcast of Morecambe and Wise. So that’s what he looks like. It’s one of Morecambe and Wise’s naughtier sketches, with a number of wicked little gay in-jokes.

Well, they were wicked for the time, though they’d be completely innocuous to anyone who saw Graham Norton.flirting shamelessly with Dr Who, the scrumptious David Tennant, on his show last week. This is part 1, parts 2-4 can be seen here.

And don’t forget your Dobbyroids, you’ll be needing them after that.

Today’s bonus clips are totally unrelated to the previous two: one’s a trailer for a Ken Burns’ spoof documentary on suburban life to be shown on PBS. It’s only mildly amusing, but it’s set to the Malvina Reynolds song ‘Little Boxes’,. You’ll be singing it all day.

Up next is an ode to the problem of the unibrow, a word I can’t read without thinking of Maggie’s evil Simpsons nemesis, the unibrowed baby Gerald.