Oh no! Little Britain 'not funny' oh no.

hillarious last week.

I would find it a bit funny if it wasn't for the point I made uptop. But I guess it's not funny enough.

It's just a crap League of Gentlemen really isn't it?

OTM

The other chap in Little Britain was funnier in the Xmas EastEnders than he is in his own programme.

And yes, Catterick should be on BBC2.

Lou & Andy are the Ted & Ralph of LB - richer than everything else in the show but still no funnier than a good Bob Fleming.

Basically if you don't like the TV series then there's no point in getting the radio eps.

I didn't find the first series repetitive at all and I think it's only this second series where it's become that.

I'm not sure if the skit where the guy administers the Heimlich Procedure to the friend's grandmother he's keen on was the funniest or most violating thing I've ever seen.

I laughed twice. Can anybody beat that?

The incontinent old lady is presumably the 'same joke every week' character for this series (the vomming old lady was last seasons)

The Daffyd one seems to be the only actually funny 'sitcom' part worth watching.

Vicki Pollard is now over, it seems.

Oh, and Andy and Lou is this seasons 'right, let me guess what happens' 'Oh, I'm right' scenario.

Boot boot boot.

Except it isn't funny

I was watching it simply because Little Britain is pile of steaming shite that is hugely popular in primary schools up and down the country.

I think he meant it in a "I was one of the lucky ones" way, but came across as a classically British "musn't grumble" attitude.

That made me laugh a little.

Did you know that the whole disaster was basically caused by an illogical filing system that required two permits for repair work on two linked pieces of equipment to be filed in two different places?

yeh! i knoe.

I don't find ken c funny. I like the ideas of a few of the characters, but the execution just leaves me cold.
He's just a crap League of Gentlemen really isn't he?
-- Steve.n. (pseudonym786...), November 11th, 2004.

My overall impression is that it seems to be a lot of stuff to do with ken c's background/upbringing.
-- mark grout (mark.grou...), November 12th, 2004.

what was his background/upbringing?
-- debden (debdenherringbon...), November 12th, 2004.

"the only gay in the village" fill the rest in yourself..
-- mark grout (mark.grou...), November 12th, 2004.

I don't watch ken c because he doesn't look funny. I saw Richard & Judy reciting lines from him and guffawing and saying "it's so funny because it's true" and that put me off.
-- Cathy (cathyleec...), November 12th, 2004.

It helps that I haven't watched series 2. I got it out of the library, but it was shit.

I did not approve of Tom Baker's leakage or seepage into the intro for the next programme, mind.

So did I.

So, ML&DW's new prog "Come Fly With Me" is forthcoming.

Of course, to complete the circle, the theme song needs to be "Airport" by the Motors...

The trailer for it makes 'The High Life' look funny.

The high life was funny :(

the high life was funny

Even if the High Life isn't as funny as I thought it was aged 14, it's worth it for when you see Alan Cumming being an ac-tor and the theme tune starts to loop round your head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNUEYm0OqW8

It has Matt Lucas in blackface ffs.

Can someone explain to me why David Walliams' sponsored swim is so "heroic"?

This, for a start:

Comedian David Walliams has been advised not to swim through the London section of the River Thames due to the amount of sewage dumped in it recently.

He is swimming along the river for the Big Splash Challenge for Sport Relief and is due to arrive in the capital in the next few days.

However, Thames Water said about 500,000 cubic metres of raw sewage had entered the river since Monday.

Sport Relief said Walliams still intended to swim the London section.

It's very difficult, especially in London - lots of boats, horrible currents, the aforementioned poo (although tbf to The Thames it's a lot cleaner than it was say in the 50s when people used to more regularly swim in it) - and it's a long way. The tide would be the worst thing I should imagine. I once went out onto one of the piers on the Thames Barrier and stood next to a raised section of the barrier (which they were cleaning) and it was completely terrifying watching the water pile past. Swimming in that does seem quite heroic (and silly).

So he wasn't swimming down the really difficult bit. Still, quite heroic I think.

I see that it's a challenge requiring some degree of sacrifice but I think I need quite a lot more for it to qualify as heroism.

Even if I'm able to keep my deep-rooted cynicism (regarding his motives and not based on an awful lot if I'm honest) out of it, shouldn't the standard be a little higher than a sponsored swim for the sake of a tv show?

But he rescued a dog!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-14877856

Although the dog jumped in after him so I suppose technically he nearly killed a dog.

i can't stand the guy and his swim seems more stupid than anything else. "heroic"? don't make me laugh. it raised money for charity, yes.

he could have raised more money by auctioning dogs.

he could have raised more money by amending his will and then KILLING HIMSELF

Yeah, I basically agree with Jed and guiltily lolled at nak.

I think you're being harsh. He may not be funny but I think this was a pretty courageous, difficult swim and he made quite a lot of money for charity. Nothing wrong with that.

Good for him for raising money but can't help but feel there is some karma in him having shitty sewage floating in his face making him rather ill. Pretty much how I felt about Little Britain.
Good to see someone raise money for the poor in Africa. But didn't he make his fortune by mocking the poor in the UK?

I can't stand Walliams or Little Britain but comments like Proger's instantly put me on his side despite myself. No, Little Britain was not predominately about mocking the poor (even Vicki Pollard was a Lucas character) - and even if it were, there's zero equivalence between bad comedy and African poverty.

I'm more interested in the psychology behind this. It's such an extreme, obsessive thing to do, yet as soon as you wrap it in charity it becomes normalised, as if he's only doing this to raise money. There are easier ways. I think I read a quote to the effect that this obsessive swimming is his way of channelling energy away from "partying" (ie cocaine).

he seems to be very unhappy

'serves him right for making a tv show i didn't watch 10 years ago' - an angry person on the internet

I think you're being harsh. He may not be funny but I think this was a pretty courageous, difficult swim and he made quite a lot of money for charity. Nothing wrong with that.

No, I think I'm being overly harsh as well, which is why I asked initially and appreciate that you didn't read it as a sneer. It's not the deed itself that I object to, even if I do find Walliams himself somewhat objectionable, but the response. Something being challenging isn't, in my opinion, sufficient to make it courageous, especially when there's that much choice involved.

by "the response" I really just mean the response of a few of the more famous people, who I respect to one degree or another, who I follow on twitter.

Ha, exactly - the response rather than the act. The more TV/movie people on Twitter (and I don't even follow that many) who told me to salute the breathtaking courage and altruism of David Walliams, the more I thought "fuck that guy".

Funny how much people (and I'm guilty of this) get rankled by celebrity altruism. David Walliams, Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting - they've gone to great pains to draw attention to the causes they support. So why is it that they just happen to constitute a fantasy line-up of people I'd like to punch in the balls?

cos celebrity charity work doesnt mean you're not still a wanker

I don't see Walliams fitting into that unholy trinity at all. Smugness and pomposity ooze from every pore of the other three. Maybe I'm missing something cos I don't read the tabloids but to me Walliams is just a bloke who has done a lot of funny comedy sketches.

As DL, it's more Armando Iannuci, Edgar Wright and Graham Linehan that I want to punch in the balls tbh.

Well, put it this way:

If Bono asked you for money for charity, you'd likely say "No" and "You're a multimillionaire, you could sort it out yerself"

If Bono gave the money himself, it would look like self-servism done publicly, and would not be 'promoting the charity' if done privately.

If Bono said "Please give money, I'll swim the foul waters of the Thames for you", you'd feel like he was doing something that actually affected him directly rather than chucking away a chunk of spare change that his accountants were more than likely writing off against some tax bill or other.

Smugnes and pomposity ooz from Walliums too, but with him you sense it's part of his 'public persona' and off-camera he is more, um... alright?

With Geldof, pomposity be his midname.

xxpost I've always treated Little Britain with suspicion. Matt Lucas has made me laugh in nearly everything else I've seen him in, but there's a nasty streak running all the way through LB. The way it pilfers from and dumbs down ideas from League of Gentlemen and Fast Show; the mean-spirit of the sketches; the formulaic way that jokes and catchphrases are trotted out every week. LB became the go-to comedy for red tops and the Daily Mail to reference in any story involving the disability rights, chavs'n'youths etc.. etc..

Walliams has made some utterly shit, completely derivative comedy in his time - the aural equivalent of Bono, Sting etc at their worst - so I don't see how it's that different. I guess Walliams' presents it in a better light by actually doing something notable to raise money and not shoving his Messiah complex in people's faces like many of the others.

So what I'm saying is, yeah biggup Walliams for what he's done. No "heroic" is not quite the right word, but it's better than screening pictures of starving African kids at the end of Little Britain. Linehan, Iannucci and co are simply helping a mate out and spreading the word of a good cause at the end of the day.

xp I don't know why this - or Eddie Izzard's marathon of marathons - is any more admirable or less narcissistic than the kind of hands-on activism or advocacy practised by other celebrities. I'm not knocking it - I don't care about mixed motives or ego if good things are achieved (in fact I tend to think mixed motives and ego are virtually essential) - but why is something this theatrically difficult automatically better than the alternatives?

if he quit comedy and got a job in a call centre i'd be like wotta hero

dl otm about ego/mixed motives i think

but why is something this theatrically difficult automatically better than the alternatives?

You'd have to say what those alternatives are before we could say, automatically or no.

It's certainly better than turning up to "Children in Need" show and singing yr latest single and then reading out the phone numbers etc.

Not to say that's a 'bad' thing either, but it's automatically not as good as swimming the thames, etc.

million quid is pretty amazing tbf

<stewart lee charity bit>

LB became the go-to comedy for red tops and the Daily Mail to reference in any story involving the disability rights, chavs'n'youths etc.. etc..

Not Walliams' (or Lucas') fault that the Daily Mail & other media (notably the BBC itself) ran LB references into the ground.

It probably is to be honest if you create a chav parody as grotesque as Vicky Pollard.

it's heroic because it's physically dangerous and helps others.

no, i don't think he's very funny. perhaps he has found his metier!

<stewart lee charity bit>

yeah this fell flat when i saw it -- it's probably 'meant to' but anyway, he was like, yeah we all give 5% of our income to charity and i guess uh no we don't

tbh i don't quite understand why "being sponsored to do x for charity" is a thing that works. why would it take a terrible comedian swimming down the thames to make me donate money? or even a friend running a marathon? i'd be as likely to donate money if that friend just asked and said the cause meant a lot to them, why do they have to run a marathon to prove it? would i care if they didn't run it? it feels like the act of running or swimming have nothing to do with why you'd give money (unlike say a club night where the proceeds - ie the money you'd spend anyway - are donated)

i would probably pay money to see david walliams burned at the stake though

lik, whether for charity or not, i just want to see that happen

I guess it draws more attention to the cause than simply saying "I support this cause, give us your fuckin' money"

it's a way of making a big deal about something without 100000000 impassioned soliloquies and some people will talk about it and that means that some more people will hear about it and some people like famous people understand now but you're doing a funny thing I guess

also highlights the pressing need to do something about london's sewerage system

I share Lex's misgivings. I know some people train for their first ever marathon to raise money for a specific cause but many just like running and have to pick a charity almost as an afterthought. Just run already. Though in this case I'm not at all proud of my irritation - it has more to do with disliking Walliams than anything else.

It's because they are 'putting themselves out of their way/comfort zone" to do it.

Say, dude goes onto "Who wants to million pounds drop" but nauses it up and wins 'less than their appearance fee' (tbf, they prob donate that too).. It's not exactly puting themselves out, is it?

lex i've often wondered that too. there is this whole genre of physical-exertion-for-charity (as a counterbalance to kids selling chocolate bars door to door for charity...)

my tentative theory is that the hard physical work is a placeholder for the direct sacrifice that the donation gatherer feels themselves too busy or too incapable of doing

which makes you wonder, well, what if the donation gatherer ENJOYS running? would it not be better to do something really unpleasant? otherwise i could just ride merry go rounds for charity, or, i dunno, have a charity pub crawl

Imagine Chloe from Atomic Kitten teams up with a smart mate to go onto Millionaire to win bigtime for a good charity.

Would they do well?

No: Not famous enough to get on in the first place.

why do i need someone to put themselves out to donate to charity?

giving up their very precious time to reveal themselves as dummies

xpost to Mark G

Yeah.

if they're really a n00b runner, they may as well give the £70 or so they dropped on running shoes direct to charity surely? and if they already owned running shoes they'd likely b doing the run anyway?

i mean, it does seem like a waste. if you're going to do something onerous for a good cause, why not have that actually involve direct work with the community you're trying to help. then you'll get your donations plus the direct work you've done. of course your legs won't be as toned, which is probably the dealbreaker

there is this whole genre of physical-exertion-for-charity (as a counterbalance to kids selling chocolate bars door to door for charity...)

Isn't this what Sport Relief is about? A lot of people like sport, same as a lot of people like comedy. The sponsored event is a medium used to draw attention (and therefore donations) to the cause.

what about birthday presents? I mean fair enough occasionally there could be a present of something that someone couldn't just get themselves because they don't know about it or don't know where to get it or whatever but if you're just buying a present out of convention and it's something the giftee isn't really bothered about and then they're going to do the same thing to the gifter when the gifter's birthday comes around then it's all a bit pointless really same thing goes for birthday cards

i mean, it does seem like a waste. if you're going to do something onerous for a good cause, why not have that actually involve direct work with the community you're trying to help. then you'll get your donations plus the direct work you've done. of course your legs won't be as toned, which is probably the dealbreaker

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 12:12 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Sure, but why not do something you're good at to raise that money? Walliams might well be terrible as a community worker, but he's a brilliant swimmer and also a well-liked celebrity, so he's using those qualities in a positive way. I don't see anything wrong with that.

^^pretty much how my family operates now we're all adults lol - well that or we just ask for whatever practical thing we happen to need at any given time

xp

i'm not saying there's anything wrong with it dog latin, i just don't get why it's a thing that works, because it has so little to do with any reason i'd donate to a charity

so tracer, rather than say an organised group of 500 joggers raising half a million for a village in africa

you'd think it would be better if that group did some direct work with the community themselves?

if you're going to do something onerous for a good cause, why not have that actually involve direct work with the community you're trying to help

Instead of raising money for cancer research, why don't you just stay at home and experiment on some monkeys yourself?

better yet just post about the idea of it on the internet

dudes i'm not criticizing it, just trying to figure out why physical exertion and sport in particular have become the accepted way of "helping"

it's a weird thing I agree along with the other weird things

and yes i'll admit there is something a little weird to me about going to great lengths to raise money to help people but remaining at such arm's length from them

i'm not saying there's anything wrong with it dog latin, i just don't get why it's a thing that works, because it has so little to do with any reason i'd donate to a charity

― i asked for "HALF" a glass of wine, because i am TEMPERENT (lex pretend), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 12:20 (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

Well, that is you, to be fair. But this is one of the most high-profile celebrity sponsored events of recent times and it's drawing attention to a cause which many many potential sponsors would be indifferent about if a comedian weren't swimming through a polluted river to raise money for. The sponsored event is the medium rather than the message in this case. People are more willing to part with their money if they feel they're actually paying for something they can see, so there's a kind of psychological effect of "I'm giving money to charity, but I'm also giving money to see Walliams get covered in untreated effluent", which is like a double win.

it's drawing attention to a cause which many many potential sponsors would be indifferent about if a comedian weren't swimming through a polluted river to raise money for

seems to me to have drawn more attention to the swimmer, which is kinda my point.

c'mon lex if it was kerry katona you'd be all over this, fawning over her choice of swimwear, telling us what a megahero she is getting her hair wet

dunno about your arm's length tracer - bet the walliams guy does some more hands-on stuff even if it's just meeting and chatting with the subjects of his charity work but that's kind of an ego thing too

this organised charity stuff makes sense in a way that it's easier to organise and has a cash outcome - maybe birthday presents could learn something from this

lol why would i care if it was kerry katona?

seems to me to have drawn more attention to the swimmer, which is kinda my point.

― Upt0eleven, Tuesday, September 13, 2011 12:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh man. can't believe you 'went there'. my eyes have been opened.

draw it more to the attention of the sheeple

I think it's kind of cynical to see Walliams' thing as self-serving. Sure, it's not going to hurt his reputation, but it's not like he needed an extra boost since he's quite a popular comedic figure. And yeah, there are a lot less excruciating ways to raise your profile than swimming around the Thames.

actually that wasn't really my point. rather I'm questioning the idea that something that serves the self so strongly, and is such a personal accomplishment, can be seen as heroic. nm.

"heroic" isn't the right word, no. "brave", "thoughtful", "altruistic" maybe. heroism implies a more impulsive, selfless kind of act, so I agree on that count.

greek and norse heroes weren't really at all self-denying or self-abnegating or self-sacrificing (or necessarily uncalculating): this is a "christian" revision of the concept

(nietzsche to thread!)

^ troo

to me i think heroism implies risk?

you can drown or catch lymphoma or be eaten by a stray croc if you swim in the thames.

xp I don't think Walliams' swim is self-serving in the publicity sense but I do think it fulfils a psychological need which is not just about raising money. If he did this without fundraising people would think he was having some kind of nervous breakdown and I don't think charity suddenly removes all the weirdness. Maybe this says more about me than about him. When Eddie Izzard did all those marathons the general reaction was "What a hero!" Mine was "What a midlife crisis!"

he has been a keen and highly-dedicated swimmer since at least the early-2000s, well before his career took a big leap.

..........it's a psychological need

wikipedia says his original surname is "williams" - wonder why he changed it?

xxp I was thinking about the Eddie Izzard marathon running earlier and had exactly the same thought.

for the attention

this is not about raising money, it's about getting back in the womb

The "a" in Walliams represents his mother's vagina. It's obvious really.

iirc he changed his name for Equity reasons - there was already a David Williams. More fun to choose a new surname completely, I'd have thought - I like the fact that David Tennant (ne McDonald) named himself after Neil Tennant.

If you give £50 to charity, £50 goes to charity. If you organise a sponsored run and get 1,000 people to do it, and they each get £100 sponsorship, £100,000 goes to charity. I'd wager it's easier and takes less time to organise 1,000 people to do a charity run than it would take to work £100,000 worth of hours building an orphanage in Africa yourself, ergo the return is way, way larger.

I've watched, sponsored, and taken part in charity events over the last several years and wondered why we're, as a society, so happy to chuck £5 at a charity in the name of a vague work colleague doing a run or swim or bike ride or whatever, and you know what? You can be as holier-than-though liberal about it as you like, suggesting they should give the money spent on trainers direct to charity, or go and build an orphanage themselves, or whatever, but the simple fact of the matter is that these events and undertakings capture people's imagination and raise a lot of money that just would not be raised otherwise, trainer-money-to-charity or orphanage-building or whatever else be damned. Doing active, physical things that improve your health is good. Getting sponsorship so that they also improve other people's health too is even better, odious comedy celebrity or not.

What Nick said. I don't see why people doing this kind of thing in the name of charity is such a conundrum.

Two approaches to the "but you'd do it anyway, why invoke charity?" idea: my boss did Land'sEnd to John O'Groats by bicycle earlier this summer with a friend - they'd decided to do it three years ago, researched, trained, set it as a big life goal. Fair enough; I want to do it myself. They hadn't considered doing it for charity until about a month before they set off, at which point they went "well, why the hell not raise some money and do someone else some good?", picked a cause, set-up a Just Giving page, and actually raised a couple of grand or more. Brilliant. Secondly, my mum's doing a 26-mile swim for diabetes research (she has type 2), and has X weeks to do the distance in, in as many individual swimming sessions as she liked. She'd normally do that distance in that time anyway, as she swims to keep fit, but instead of doing 40 lengths a day has upped to 50-60 in order to make it an extra effort. She's raised a few hundred quid. Brilliant.

Easy tiger!

I agree those things are great

but confusing

How is it even slightly confusing?

I don't like it..

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OI0trFw5zCQ/SieR0CMjAUI/AAAAAAAAAf8/zDS_rlAkr-A/s400/Matt-Lucas-as-Andy-1339210.jpg

I've just done a bit of searching and it appears that charity pub crawls are not as rare as I'd thought

:D

pubs are basically charity cases these days anyway.

I'm going out on a bender anyway why not raise some money for charity while I'm at it

If these things result in more money for a charity that's great - we can leave second-guessing motives up to God. I do find it interesting, at least as a thought experiment, that if a friend raised lots of sponsorship to run a marathon, yet twisted their ankle on the way to the starting line, none of us would refuse the promised money (which is usually given in advance anyway. And there are probably some assholes who would refuse payment, especially when the national public is concerned). It seems we don't need the act just the promise of the act? I don't know.

Taking sides, Bono asking for donations "because I'm right about this", or Walliums asking "because I'm making an effort and taking time out to do it"...

I work for a charity that has a lot of high-profile reps, so I'm deeply biased here, but just wanted to address a few things:

** Having seen how our money gets allocated to the field (Pakistan or Haiti, for example), the charity language cliche -- that "sending just a fiver could save lives" -- really is true. People have different personal reasons, good and neutral, why they want to give, but the money really does get used, for mosquito nets, cholera medicine, education programmes. That's great.

** Celebrities generate more media coverage (and therefore donations) for a charity than anything else a charity does. Media coverage of an emergency tends to dry up after a few weeks -- there's still a famine in Somalia, for example, and it's just as bad it was two months ago, but no one's writing about it any more. That can change instantly if -- say, to give a spurious example -- Lady Gaga tweets about it with a link to donation page on your website.

** Sponsored runs/swims/whatevers are work. Celebrities work for charities for free, and in return for the publicity, they're expected to work a certain number of days a year for the charity, or they'll lose their "ambassador" role. Swimming the Thames might seem frivolous, but DW is just doing the work he's been employed by the charity to do.