This is the thread where you talk about Chris Morris - genius, and the finest satirist of modern times

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Considering that certain ILMers seem to go into a mad panic and label me a misogynist for saying Emma Bunton looks hot in her new video I'm wondering what the opinion is on the great Chris Morris. If anyone who has ever gone: "Calum is soooo out of order for his threads" comes on here and tells me they agree that Chris Morris is a genius then I'll have to be very shocked indeed.

But he is. He's a God. Agree?

― Calum, Thursday, 17 April 2003 23:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha! Knew this would be a bit too difficult for the typical bunch to tackle...

― Calum, Friday, 18 April 2003 11:08 (twenty-two years ago)

don't compare yourself to chris morris! hahaha how ridiculous, you are more similar to sarah jessica parker in sex in the city, except male and less articulate, KEEP THE SEX OBSESSION IN CHECK. can you please throw in another "me and the boys" reference or post as "cal's mate" again just to remind yourself you have no friends

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 18 April 2003 11:22 (twenty-two years ago)

What? Hahahaha! You fool Ronan!

I wasn't comparing myself to Chris Morris. And that was a very real friend of mine that posted you twat.

― Calum, Friday, 18 April 2003 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

ooh tetchy! if you want to do a morris thread then do one, and make it about Morris not about your psycho desperation about failing to be one of the boys.

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 18 April 2003 11:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Failing to be one of the boys on an online forum? Fuck off Ronan - like I've ever gone online to try and make cyber buddies!!! Hahahaha! This thread is about Chris Morris - so please tell me why you like him/ or dislike him as it may be.

My fave episode of Brass Eye was the Cake one.

― Calum, Friday, 18 April 2003 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

It is pretty lame that you try and be "one of the boys" on an internet forum yes, glad you're able to point that out, don't you think it's lame? I mean when you really think about it do you look at your posts and think what a knob you are? if you really were what you're so desperate to paint yourself as you wouldn't be online would you, that's the "hahahaha" here I'm afraid.

The paedo one was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, no exaggeration.

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 18 April 2003 11:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Ronan you are a cock rocket.

The paedo (sic) one was indeed very funny, but I thought it paled in comparison to the Cake one or the society going down the tubes one. Git surfing is classic.

― Calum, Friday, 18 April 2003 11:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I actually pretty much agree with the title of this thread, it's nice to see some common sense backlash to all the absolute shite in the press about paedophilia.

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 18 April 2003 11:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Chris Morris makes an intentional effort to be shocking, and for that reason, he really isn't. Finding something funny because you imagine how appalled all the tories and old farts will be is... totally adolescent.

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Friday, 18 April 2003 13:37 (twenty-two years ago)

his storytelling on blue jam is masterful though. "he coughed up a small laugh, and spat it into the ground."

― matthew james (matthew james), Friday, 18 April 2003 13:40 (twenty-two years ago)

i saw the brasseye video the other day,prior to that i had only seen the paedophile episode
the whole thing is absolutely brilliant
up there with twin peaks and the simpsons in justifying the existence of television
invisible lead soup,children smelling of hammers,an area of the internet bigger than ireland,etc...

― robin (robin), Friday, 18 April 2003 14:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"terribly difficult for thee'usual bunch' to handle", no doubt, though clearly not as terribly difficult as using thee search function:

Brass Eye - is that what all the fuss was about?

Brass Eye / Chris Morris...

Newnight & Brass Eye are now one and the same

Brass Eye DVD

BRASS EYE - 8/8/01

BRASSEYE 26/7/01

classic, obv, "jam stuf up cowes twat" et all, though i must confess i thought thee tv vers of "jam" was a bit naff.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 April 2003 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

nine months pass...

One wonders where Morris is going to go with his next project...
Hopefully another 200 degree turn from previous projects, as "Blue Jam" was from his televisual satires.

Though I have little doubt he could still do TV satire that would surpass any others' efforts, I would actually really like to see him branch out into a completely new area.

I'd like to see him do a genre-defying show, whether it be initially classed as sitcom, comedy or drama, that would take off and become an institution like "The Prisoner" or "Twin Peaks"... there is clear ground in the new sort of sitcom ("Phoenix Nights", "Office" et al) for darkness, and I feel Morris could push things into very unexpected depths here. Such a project would be a real about-turn, granted... but his last project was moving more towards a fictional, dark comedy narrative vein: "My Wrongs", which I have only partly seen.

I think he has perhaps just about exhausted the 'shocking' element, and I'd like to see him do some very charming and yet deeply odd work. Take his satire onto a broader canvass than "Brasseye" and a less entirely oblique one than "Jam"...

― Tom May (Tom May), Monday, 19 January 2004 22:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Ianucci, Morris and Coogan were peddling that fly on the wall piss take stuff in 1995 on 'the day today' with their bits about the bureau de change, swimming pool etc.

― see ar (see ar), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 02:44 (twenty-one years ago)

"This isn't so much the nineties, as the Ja danke-ties"

And in reference to 'Bureau de Change' i always cracked up at Coogan's expression as he says 'You better pack your bags.......
..YOU'RE OUT!'

― pete s, Tuesday, 20 January 2004 03:03 (twenty-one years ago)

'YOU'RE AAAHHHHHT!' ;-) Great stuff!

― Tom May (Tom May), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 21:53 (twenty-one years ago)

what? just because i'm GAAAY?

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:07 (twenty-one years ago)

'YOU'RE on borrowed TIME, SUNSHINE!'

― Tom May (Tom May), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm trying to run a high class bureau de change here

― see ar (see ar), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

'I'm closing the bureau.'

'for an hour'

― pete s, Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

"MARIAAAAAA!"

― zappi (joni), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

The BBC have denied that touring 'the bureau' around the west counties on the back of a lorry is due to it's falling ratings, and insist that it's standard practice for all programs.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

This is where I thank Andrew again for sharing the wonder with me. :-) So there's a DVD version about to come out, I gather?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 21 January 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

26th of April, Ned. Supposedly Morris is working on a sitcom with the creator of www.tvgohome.com

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Will it be featuring one Nathan Barley?

― Ricardo (RickyT), Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:16 (twenty-one years ago)

ohhhhhhhh yessssss pleaaaaaase.

― hmmm (hmmm), Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Nighty Night, toe-curlingly brilliant as it is, strikes me as an unsettling midpoint between the darkest end of Big Train and the more coherent bits (maybe bit, there might've only been one) of Jam.

I fucking love Chris Morrris, but his BAFTA-winning film wot came out on Warp a couple of years ago was a bit rubbish.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:28 (twenty-one years ago)

You wanna watch it with the commentary on, Charlie. Although, working with film students as I do, I might be in a unique position to find it funny. "Using the dog is a bit like when the Lumiére brothers first used a dog in a film, in 1904..."

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 March 2004 11:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Jesus - couldn't you have revived a better Chris Morris thread than this one?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 11:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I was intending to, N., but then I forgot and answered Ned's query instead. I'll find a good one this afternoon.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 March 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Nighty Night, toe-curlingly brilliant as it is, strikes me as an unsettling midpoint between the darkest end of Big Train and the more coherent bits (maybe bit, there might've only been one) of Jam.

Hence classic, surely?

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Thursday, 18 March 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

oh fuck yeah, it's amazing. i just didn't expect it to be quite so relentlessly bleak. all the characters are utterly horribly unsympathetic, the main storyline comes from the bits left out of the Little Book Of Gallows Humour cos they were too dark; god, even the presence of Marillion seems to add a surreal dusting of otherworldly oddness. I fucking loves it, me.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Thursday, 18 March 2004 14:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I must watch this. When's it on?

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 March 2004 15:29 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah ive never heard of this.

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 18 March 2004 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

BBC2 Monday 10pm, only started this week -- it's a BBC3 thing. Looks achingly shit.

― Strachey, Thursday, 18 March 2004 16:21 (twenty-one years ago)

We had a big discush about Nighty Night when it aired on BBC3. I leave it to the immensely capable N. to find it.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Thursday, 18 March 2004 16:38 (twenty-one years ago)

It was on the Little Britain thread. I still haven't watched it properly.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 18 March 2004 16:46 (twenty-one years ago)

six months pass...

You know, I thought I was an anglo-phile before, but the Brass Eye goes beyond what I thought the english language was capable of.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 2 October 2004 09:21 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

Chris Morris is the finest media figure of modern times period. And Blue Jam is his greatest work.

Can we talk about Blue Jam a bit more, please? It's my favourite programme, radio or TV, ever, and it ascends levels of storytelling, musicality, and comedic brilliance that no other show has even contemplated.

Favourite 3 Blue Jam moments:

3) Series 1 Episode 4, 25:10. The sprightly, uptempo groove accompanying Michael Alexander St.John's dance countdown suddenly morphs (in the radio equivalent of bone-spaceship in 2001:ASO) seamlessly into Lennon's '#9 Dream'.

2) Series 2 Episode 4, 27:59. The Rothko monologue ends. Accompanied by the melancholic, chilled middle-eight of Madonna's 'Ray Of Light', although you don't know that at this stage. As the monologue ends, the building, throbbing intro to the actual song bounces into gear, and as the last word is spoken, Madonna's heavenly voice takes up the baton. As a moment of sadness into happiness it is unparalleled.

1) Series 2, Episode 1, 34:18.

"Well, we'll just have to get used to it being just the two of us again."

"Mmmmmmm..."

― Scourage (Haberdager), Friday, 18 August 2006 00:47 (nineteen years ago)

I have never seen anything he has done, but I know that the lyrics to this Stereolab song are based on some sketch of his:

Nothing To Do With Me
(aka Moonflies (aka Chris Morris))
absurd and sensible
quite unacceptable
let go
pull your leg off
control
out of control

it's the bed wetting thing
that brought us here, doctor
it's the bed wetting thing

you tripped
dog on a leash
you had never noticed

nothing to do with me
says he weeing his feet

well it won't go away
overnight but it will go away
in the end

you did such a great job
with the boiler last time
please, can you mend my baby?
he hasn't moved for three weeks

don't they use coffins
when they are that small?
I don't want lizards
boring my house

sir my chin
has been getting rather hot lately
sir if you just
stand on a tall building in the stiff breeze

don't know what to do
it's saturday night
I seek good advice
from who knows what's right
why don't you ring friends up
go for a few drinks
and then go see a movie?

did you prescribe my daughter a pound of heroin?
I'm sorry I can't see a thing I've blinded myself
did you prescribe my daughter a pound of heroin?
I'm sorry I can't see a thing I've blinded myself
it isn't a spot
it is a baby
you're not a doctor
you're a wanker

-------------------------------------------------

Can anyone on here explain what this is about? Does anyone have a link to the original sketch?

― Matt Olken (Moodles), Friday, 18 August 2006 01:35 (nineteen years ago)

http://wfmu.org/onthedownload.php/0412

First mp3

Genius

― S- (sgh), Friday, 18 August 2006 06:31 (nineteen years ago)

"Genius"

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 18 August 2006 06:35 (nineteen years ago)

http://chilled.cream.org/mp3/Chris%20Morris%20-%20Hutchinson%20Mobile%20Phones%20Ad.mp3

Chris Morris: mobile phone shill

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 18 August 2006 06:51 (nineteen years ago)

matt, it reads like a whole load of quotes from different episodes of blue jam

― wogan lenin (dog latin), Friday, 18 August 2006 07:04 (nineteen years ago)

Oooh, I didn't know that about that Stereolab song. I like that song (although the only lyrics of it I knew were the final two lines)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 18 August 2006 07:07 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, Matt, that's got about 15 or 16 different BJ sketches all mashed into one song! Stereolab must have been fans; I know myself that some of their music featured on the radio show itself, so this sounds like some sort of mutual love-pact. Think of it as a trailer for the series which jams all the highlights together in one place.

― Scourage (Haberdager), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:38 (nineteen years ago)

But is calling Morris "the finest satirist of modern times" falling for it?

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:43 (nineteen years ago)

for what?

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:46 (nineteen years ago)

Hahaha, of all the chris m threads to revive.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:49 (nineteen years ago)

Those were not my words. "Finest media figure period" is far safer ground with Morris, as there's no doubting his enormous intelligence when applied to the media, regardless of his motives and his style.

Your sentence applies superbly, MC, to Nathan Barley, which I don't think any critic I've read has understood correctly yet. ON THE SURFACE it is a 'satire' of the Shoreditch media community, where everybody is an idiot and where fashion has become increasingly vapid, but my own theory on the program is that it ascends such levels of idiocy, and picks on such easy targets, that it almost dares the viewer to tear off the mask and say "This programme is AWFUL!", as many have indeed done. What they have not done subsequently, though, is to realise how such an outwardly 'awful' programme is making most of us, the watching public, laugh. Thus does Nathan Barley introduce the queasy concept that the viewer him/herself is an idiot, an active participant in some sort of televisual scam. It's brilliantly done, and honestly does raise some pressing questions about the role of television, not satirising its subject-matter, but the medium through which it is broadcast instead.

xxpost

― Scourage (Haberdager), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:52 (nineteen years ago)

Bollocks to all that, fact is he's served up two disappointing TV series on the trot, "Nathan Barley" and "Jam", neither of which have been funny enough. So it's about time he came up with something to justify the genius tag

― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:54 (nineteen years ago)

what about his GENIUS turn in the MASTERFUL sitcom The IT Crowd?

― Konal Doddz (blueski), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:56 (nineteen years ago)

Gumph!

― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:56 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't seen "Nathan Barley", but "Jam" was piss-poor. The other stuff, I liked.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:58 (nineteen years ago)

"Jam" was much funnier than "Nathan Barley"

― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 13:59 (nineteen years ago)

For which I hope royalties were paid to the estate of the late John Barron (xpost x 2).

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:00 (nineteen years ago)

my jejeune (sp) review of 'nathan barley' in the now pissporr and irrelevant 'plan b' did what scourage said it should, kind of.

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:00 (nineteen years ago)

Nathan Barley Series 2 is his next project, is it not? I'll say it again, 'Jam' was only a disappointment because of what it was trying to follow up/shamelessly rip-off. 'Jejune' was my old English teacher's favourite word, don't see it used often.

― Scourage (Haberdager), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:02 (nineteen years ago)

i do hope they do 'nb2'.

not sure about 'the it crowd'.

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:03 (nineteen years ago)

i'm sure it wasn't as good as it should have been.

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:03 (nineteen years ago)

I imagine he will have to direct a movie some time soon. I'm hoping it'd be more Will Hay than Todd Solondz, that would be admirable

― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:07 (nineteen years ago)

I'd like to see CM direct a romantic comedy.

― Scourage (Haberdager), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:08 (nineteen years ago)

i'd like him to direct an episode of 'lovejoy'.

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:10 (nineteen years ago)

sorry i mean 'present 8 out of 10 cats'.

― Bashment Jakes (Enrique), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:10 (nineteen years ago)

I think he should direct Ant & Dec's next movie

― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:11 (nineteen years ago)

I think he should direct Dog Latin's sitcom.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:39 (nineteen years ago)

isn't he going to do something about suicide bombings? that is what i heard. also the it crowd >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> time trumpet. i lieked it when the fat man got stuck under the table.

― pscott (elwisty), Saturday, 19 August 2006 22:21 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Chris Morris visits the Large Hadron Collider.

More completely WTF than anything he's done comedy-wise.

― James Mitchell, Saturday, 10 May 2008 11:46 (seventeen years ago)

That's actually an oddly lovely and heart-warming story.

― chap, Saturday, 10 May 2008 12:08 (seventeen years ago)

six months pass...

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Juror8/radio-cam1.jpg

― Peter "One Dart" Manley (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:51 (seventeen years ago)

Radio Times, 1987. Stolen from elsewhere.

― Peter "One Dart" Manley (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:51 (seventeen years ago)

Don't sleep.

― Peter "One Dart" Manley (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:07 (seventeen years ago)

My girlfriend sat behind him on the train the other day. His hair was wild and he was incredibly posh she said.

― Enrique (Raw Patrick), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:22 (seventeen years ago)

He's big posh sod with plums in his mouth... and the plums have mutated and they've got beaks.

― Ich Ber ein Binliner (Tom D.), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:25 (seventeen years ago)

let's be honest, the best and most savage satirists have always been posh.

― Shacknasty (Frogman Henry), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:27 (seventeen years ago)

or hobnobbed with the posh.

― Shacknasty (Frogman Henry), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:27 (seventeen years ago)

tbh my g/f tends to say everyone she meets is posh.

― Enrique (Raw Patrick), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:32 (seventeen years ago)

Hogarth and Swift not posh but probably unavoidably hobnobbed with them.

― Oreo SB'd Wagon (Noodle Vague), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:55 (seventeen years ago)

Swift must have been a bit posh

― Ich Ber ein Binliner (Tom D.), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:57 (seventeen years ago)

Not in 18th century terms, nah. Sucked up to a lot of poshoes, tho.

― Oreo SB'd Wagon (Noodle Vague), Friday, 14 November 2008 12:58 (seventeen years ago)

He was a senior church-man wasn't he? That implies a certain amount of poshness?

― Neil S, Friday, 14 November 2008 13:09 (seventeen years ago)

Most British satirists from Swift to Cook have been Tories, i.e. the Establishment on its lunch break.

― Quincy Quick (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 14 November 2008 13:11 (seventeen years ago)

Hogarth certainly wasn't posh (whatever that means - landed? titled? Tory? Whig?). Dad a rather appealing sort who came to London with all sorts of plans for education and dictionaries and the like that all sunk. Ended up in the debtor's prison. Sisters sempstresses I think. Not very prosperous.

― GamalielRatsey, Friday, 14 November 2008 13:52 (seventeen years ago)

Note the opening word in my last post, viz. "most."

― Quincy Quick (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 14 November 2008 14:00 (seventeen years ago)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/kenjuggle3/ww.jpg

― o_O (ken c), Friday, 14 November 2008 14:44 (seventeen years ago)

one month passes...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/wannabe-suicide-bombers-beware-chris-morris-movie-gets-goahead-1228152.html

― DANCE MUSIC STUCK AT RECOMBINANT PLATEAU (special guest stars mark bronson), Sunday, 11 January 2009 14:30 (sixteen years ago)

five years pass...

Knock yourselves out

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sp5pq

― piscesx, Monday, 1 December 2014 09:41 (eleven years ago)

Every time I see one of those Burger King adverts with Richard Blackwood I get "I feel more suggestible already" running through my head.

― the bowels are not what they seem (aldo), Monday, 1 December 2014 10:43 (eleven years ago)

I imagine he will have to direct a movie some time soon. I'm hoping it'd be more Will Hay than Todd Solondz, that would be admirable― Dadaismus (a rattly old puffin who remembers ILX in the days when...) (Dada), Friday, 18 August 2006 14:07 (8 years ago) BookmarkFlag Post Permalink

He did and it was.

― Letsby Avenue (Tom D.), Monday, 1 December 2014 10:46 (eleven years ago)

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