Fat Handed Twats

I think "The Office" is great, even if I've seen the series already.

Smack The Pony is much more consistent than Big Train whose sketches go on far too long and has a rubbish title & theme tune.

to be honest i don't think there's much to choose between em (except rowr factor)

...which I love, especially as watched by a woman sharing a sofa with a male, where the enormous gaping void between Mars and Venus will be revealed in all its hilarious and hopeless glory. I have, in fact, never seen a man watch STP while wearing anything other than, at worst, an expression of pained bafflement - or a best a slightly embarassed but indulgent semi-smile. Truly STP is a girl thing...

I have to ask, who are these men she watches telly with? Enjoyment of STP seems to be fairly gender neutral amongst people I know.

Can only watch The OFfice in small doses because the possibility of Ricky-Gervais-person existing makes my stomach twist around in embarrassment and horror, and I get distracted by the receptionist woman actually being Hayley out of the Archers. (Also problem w/ Black Books: the shop woman next door is Debbie Aldridge. Also it's not funny. But then there's Dylan Moran).

: I think StP is OK, sometimes v.good, sometimes v.ordinary. If that's something to do with my being a man then so be it. The gender test on thespark.com was 86% confident that I was female, so I don't really mind finding some 'typical bloke' evidence.

DG - you are a funny fella... How are the Uni applications going?

'The Office' is just superb. Not just the funniest show of last year, the single best programme of last year by a chalk as long as a country mile. Exquisite, laser-beam accurate writing - that man was my boss from '91 - '94 (Yes YOU David Ash, you small minded little prick) - most brilliantly realised comedy-of- embarressment charecter since Alan Partirdge, best comedy show since 'The Day Today'. Easy. No contest. Genius.

Smack The Pony: Pretty dire. Why aren't women on tv funny? I know funny women. The funniest person I know is a woman. Possibly the second funniest too. So why are they all so shit?

Big Train: Only saw half of this week's episode due to someone talking to me throughout, but it certainly seems to have lost it a bit. Seems to be just going for weird now, working on the assumption that weird=funny. And yes, traffic lights and potato sketches appeared to be much the same. The best thing about it is the acting of all involved, but even that can't pull them through with rubbish material.

The Office: Stopped watching after the first episode last time believing it to be just a Partridge rip-off. Have since reconsidered, realised that this kind of thing, though not original, is very hard indeed to do well. Gervais' looks to the camera are spot-on. Will now watch rest of the series and enjoy it.

Office: seems in my limited experience to be pretty much spot on, so good but uncomfortable viewing. I much preferred People Like Us for my is-it-isn't-it docuspoof thrills, though. This is probably because I'm a bit simple and I need blatant over-the-top bits from time to time.

Ally's question is interesting: is female humour different? If so, does it translate out of the jokes-in-pub scenario to a wider audience worse? At first I thought the answer might be "slightly, yes" to both, but I think I'm just comparing the mostly male comedians I see on TV with the (50-50 male/female) people I've enjoyed pub conversations with and not actually answering the question. Still, going in the other direction (and thus probably becoming entirely irrelevant), lots of the women on TV I see that just seem mildly amusing but a bit embarrassing would probably be hilariously good fun to get pissed with.

Before anyone else reminds you, my opinions on comedy are rubbish and completely at odds with those of anyone else on ILE, I mean, I like Bill Bailey. So, er, another hugely overlong post from me that wasn't actually worth reading. Sorry. (Black Books = not great but not that bad, and better than the last thing I saw Dylan Moran in, plus his character is closer to his old neurotic stand-up persona. Mm, Dylan Moran...)

truly funny is the idea that there are significant mentalists at large who believe women cannot be funny on TV but !!!!RICKY GERVAISE!!!! can?!?

'The Office' = v. mediocre Partridge rip-off that anyone on this board could write; 'Smack The Pony' - better performers than they are writers?

Two things arise. Can you be a nice person and not give a shit what people think of you? Not in my experience. You could be a great artist maybe, but still an arsehole. Second, what about that celebrity poker story where the losing Gervais was losing and stormed off shouting "At least I'm not gay, or a woman" to Stephen Fry et al.? Not that I like Stephen Fry or anything, but it's a good story and I don't want anyone to tell me it's not true, or that Gervais was only joking.

I think the Office was fantastic, by the way. The plight of Tim (played by the divine Martin Freeman) at the end of the series (staying with the firm 'cause of a £500 pay increase and crappy promotion) was a heartbreaking Billy Liar moment for our times.

Comedy industry tends to be very, very male-oriented, the women working in it are in 'mother' roles eg. managers, agents and tend to be a bit male-directed, eg. they'd fuck over the sisterhood for a wrap of coke. The men you meet in it tend to be nice as individuals, crap in groups. It is not structiured to allow women the chance to succeed, eg. a woman as confrontational as a Chris Morris figure would be judged difficult. I know this sounds like Sexism 101 but honestly, that's where they are at. If you look at the girl-baiting on NMTB you should see that.

Oh, on Graham and Arthur...Arthur was originally a cartoonist, Graham is the writer and has been since about the age of 16. Last time I saw G I didn't know what he was up to apart from doing a few extracurriculars for the Idler posse, as they seem to have returned Sean Hughes to the Irishman Store. Lovely man. Meaning G (and S too, when not with a group of mates).

Almost tangential. I've only read one Dostoyevsky. A short story called "Nasty Story" and that's probably the modern archetype for this sort of thing.

ian lee is OK on thumb bandits to be honest

I was very surprised when Doon Mackinchen got the Smack The Pony gig, considering that she had been round for ages (fifteen years?) and hence was not hip young cutting edge. FIona Allen came much more out of left field. Sarah Alexander of course was the unoffical 4th member for the first two series which I always thought was odd as she had almost as much screen time. Of course her daliances with Coupling and the 11 O'Clock Show have buried her career stone dead for a few years.

The 11 O'Clock Show did display how hard writing that much material is, and presenting it in a schoolboyish fashion. I wonder - did Schoolboys like it?

But actually I think some of our best comedians at the moment are female. And way back when, the first series of The Sunday Show were fucking funny.

I refer you to the ILE awards, 2001.

Daisy Donovan is a nasty braying talentless yah who only got the gig because of nepotism (which is 90 per cent of how she was working as a researcher at TalkBack). Her father, Terence Donovan, was the '60s photographer who committed suicide a few years back and Mummy is very societyish. I know of nobody who likes her work who actually does the same kind of job. I assume the StP 'slut who swallows' Personal Ad is about her - she's THAT popular.

The Jenny Ross Pop Tart stuff on the The Sunday Show was about as good as proper pop Tv ever got - ie fantastically bitchy.

hmm, maybe that'll just freak her out.

I think what happened to Jen is that her agent also had Sara Cox on the books at the same time and Jen wasn't willing to work on dross like Exclusive! Also she was probably allocated penalty points for having an opinion AND breasts, especially about things like politics (cannot say the word 'Tory' without immediately following with 'scum'). There is also the whole thing about only one Comedy Northerner Girl allowed to succeed at a time and guess what, it ain't EVER the one with the university degree. We've worked on a few things together, inc. a satirical thing with Steven Wells where we invented an artist, Stacey Vermin, who was a bit con-cept-chule, innit?

By the way, when you do a book launch do you smash a bottle of wine over it?

also, rebecca mentioned billb bailey. hes well funny too i reckon. but, fuck! i would loke to see people like us on video or something. what happened to it?

ps i havent had a telly for 2 yrs so maybe it has come on again or something

pps how do you spell it? tele, or telly? i know the former may be more 'correct', but the latter is funky.

Also I like Bill Bailey, I don't care about his (comedy) hair and comedy songs. I suppose he just seemed kind of an ill fit in Black Books.

Also I loved dinnerladies.

Also I wonder if what I'd call 'wig-based' comedy (hilarity and absurdity of dressing up and letting character-stuff follow) is mainly a female thing (gender as drag blah blah), but also a very hit and miss thing; inexplicably brilliant when it works and insufferably dull when it misses. I see this in StP.

Talking of Radio I heard a show called Losers last night which was surprisingly funny and would probably die a death on TV. Much like my not very good unprodued radio shit-com Tora! Tora! Tora!

Though as I've said before offices ARE awful, it's the people in them that generally aren't.

explain inherent snobbery please?

amen to that, it's a hundred times better

the office is the funniest thing since oz!!

Sure sign of an idiot: someone who says 'oh, it's just an Alan Partridge rip off' (I hope no one has said this upthread as it's not meant to be personal, umm..) And I love Alan Partridge.

What impressed me most about it was how it well it pulls off comi-tragedy. The last episode of the first series, with Tim (the brilliant Martin Freeman) deciding to stay with the firm after all is like the At what age [did you]/[do you expect to] give up on your dreams? thread played out on screen. I was in tears.

("the only time u feel down is when yr watchin' oz" yes yes, i know)

Having watched the first ep of the new series last night, I'm still mystified abt all this talk of 'reality', 'attention-to-detail' and - esp! - inclusiveness, when all I saw was a moderately funny, moderately sneery sitcom w/ some rather obvious, two-dimensional leading characters. There were looong stretches with, like, NO LAUGHS AT ALL, and the subplot abt the dreamy guy and the receptionist wouldn't have looked out of place in an episode of Hollyoaks (which is generally more humane, touching and 'real' than anything I've seen in the Office.)

It's neither as bad as the unspeakable 'League of Gentlemen' nor as good as 'My Family'.

and league of gentleman is really funny too.

''No, 'My Hero' is crap, you can't catch me out there!''

OK I'll give you that.

I love how they seem to be setting up the cruellest irony of all: Tim will eventually turn into Brent.

One picky point: any manager like Brent would surely have been disciplined/sacked by now. It would be more believable if it was Brent's company, rather than him being some middle-manager PeterPrinciple. (cf: the guy who ran the holiday car hire firm in BBC2's 'The Real Life Office' [or whatever it was called] a few months back).

I have a gentlemans bet with Emma that one of the episodes of this series of the Office will involve a fire alarm.

this thread doesn't seem to be about people with fat hands but http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/705993

mostly because look!

"If that's the case, people could go without gloves and just stick their hands in their pockets," said Carol Burdge, executive director of the International Glove Association, sounding more intrigued than concerned. "You could use your hands like thermometers."

Figures. I'm a skinny bastard and my fingers are always freezing.