Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #36
Last week I discussed my love of Christmas specials – if you missed it there’s a link, here.
Ha! There is no hyperlink, but I bet you still clicked it though, didn’t you? Ha, ha. Genius. But seriously please keep reading.
Last week I discussed my love of Christmas comedy specials, as it’s at this time of year (Christmas) that I re-watch them.
That’s only to be expected, I suppose. Just like binging on horror films at Halloween and at Easter watching Battlestar Galactica.
It was during one of these festive telly instalments that I returned to an old favourite of mine – The Fast Show Christmas Special.
I originally saw The Fast Show Christmas Special back in 2000, having just been released on VHS. It was a Christmas present and one I got a fair bit of usage out of, unlike that ceramic shoe horn and a bottle of Avon’s Signature aftershave (thanks Nan).
I watched it that Christmas and since then it has been a firm favourite of mine, managing to be both a consistently brilliant episode of The Fast Show and an feel–good celebration of all things Christmassy.
It seems to me that some people think The Fast Show should have dated quite badly. I guess this is partly due to its short sketches and the incredibly high catchphrase hit-rate. To think that is to woefully ignore one of the best sketch show’s Britain has ever produced.
Always consistently funny and packed full of utterly memorable characters. Yes, all the sketches work their way to the same conclusion – “I’ll get me coat”, “Which was nice”, “I was very, very drunk” but the beauty is in the way each sketch subverts what goes before.
What’s funny about Rowley Birkin QC is not that he was constantly drunk, but the wonderful nuggets of clarity in an otherwise indecipherable haze of half-remembered nostalgia.
It’s always hard to write one of these types of column – how can you be funny when all you’re doing is heaping praise on something? Nothing I write here can accurately portray just how successful this outing is, I genuinely urge you to seek it out if you haven’t seen it.
But before I begin to sound like a member of BBC Worldwide’s marketing devision, on with the Christmas special. And what a special it is.
What’s been interesting about revisiting it, as hardened fans of this column (thanks again Nan) will know, is that I’ve been re-watching these Xmas comedy editions whilst trying to write the festive instalment of my sketch show – Jolly Mixtures.
We have a couple of recurring characters in our show and my aim was always to try do something a bit special with them for those people that keep coming back. There’s always something warming about seeing characters you know and love doing something with an extra bit of yuletide magic to it. While we just about got away with it, it is something that the Fast Show does beautifully.
It’s been great to see at the recent Comedy Awards, that Paul Whitehouse has been celebrated for his contribution to comedy and it is indeed, much deserved, but the real shame is that in giving the award to Whitehouse on his own, it over looked the achievements of Charlie Higson.
The two are a powerhouse when it comes to creating instantly recognisable and memorable characters. Every one of them works. As a writer and performer, you never get the sense that they’ve wasted certain character’s potential. Even within the confines of short, snappy sketches, every character soars.
However the Fast Show is nothing if not an ensemble comedy, and like the great ensemble comedies – Monty Python and The Leveson Inquiry – the show is at its best when the performers are firing on all cylinders.
John Thompson, Caroline Ahern (before she went all sitcom-y) and Arabella Weir are all on fine form, while Simon Day provides his constant razor sharp characterisations – often lost on me when I was younger, but now I have aged like a bag of old sprouts; I can really appreciate the brilliance of what he does.
And a special mention to Mark Williams who, while being the only non-writer/performer in the group, actually created a back catalogue of creations that would make any character comedian (me) jealous.
This is turning into quite the love in, apologies for that, I’ll be back to my usual train of slightly arsy hyperbole in the New Year, but for now; I leave you with possibly the best re-imagining of The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Merry Christmas.
