the memory kinda lingers (Not Nine O'Clock News)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Not Nine O'Clock News
Date:	23/08/01 (2978 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funniest sketch show there ever was, say I.

Disadvantages: After twenty years the topical gags lack currency.

There were only four, all-too-short, series of the post-punk satire Not The Nine O'Clock News (NT9OCN), and they were first shown between October 1979 and March 1982.

The pilot show was originally scheduled for April 1979, inheriting the nine o'clock timeslot on BBC2 from Fawlty Towers, which had ended prematurely the week before - industrial action prevented the last episode (Basil The Rat) from being filmed in time.
NT9OCN was to be introduced by John Cleese saying that his show wasn't ready, and suggesting the BBC put on a 'cheap tatty revue show' instead. However, it was shelved at the last minute when the General Election was called.

The first show proper opened with Kenny Everett (who had been banned from the BBC) announcing that the Beeb had relented and given him his own show... " as long I don't say 'pubes...' "
At which point he is ordered out by the floor manager...
...for saying the word pubes. Well, he was warned!

Look, I was thirteen, this was the funniest thing on the box then.
It was so good that someone even wrote to the Radio Times
to complain that: "Seldom has so much profanity, vulgarity
and sheer lack of inventiveness filled my screen." Praise indeed.
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CAST
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It may seem hard to believe now, but the stars of the show were complete unknowns at the time.

Rowan Atkinson
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Rowan Atkinson went to Durham School with Tony Blair (who was two years above him) but, of course, only one of them went on to become internationally successful as Blackadder and Mr. Bean.

One memorable sketch (inspired by a scene in the Jacques Tati film Mon On
cle) offered a foretaste of Mr. Bean... Rowan, walking down the street, first gawping, and then waving, at the camera on the other side of the street, walks into a lamp-post.
Then in a follow-up sketch, the same thing happens, except that he stops just before the lamp-post, grins smugly, walks round it, and falls down a man-hole.


Mel Smith & Griffith Rhys Jones
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Griff's finest moments were his impersonations of John McEnroe (which gave us the catchphrase: "You CAN-NOT be SERIOUS!!!") and Bamber Gascoigne of University Challenge, which he later repeated in the classic Young Ones episode 'Bambi'.

After NT9OCN their partnership flourished with Alas Smith & Jones before Mel became a successful film director and Griff went on to present Bookworm. Perhaps one of them had a better agent.


Pamela Stephenson
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The producer, John Lloyd - who wisely turned down the chance
to be one of Esther Rantzen's co-presenters on That's Life for this - was determined that the show shouldn't be an all-male affair (one criticism of Monty Python) so he tried to get Victoria Wood
as one presenter (this was before she became a big star).
Others he approached included the actresses Susan George and Alison Steadman (cheesy pineapple anyone?)

In the end it was Pamela Stephenson, an unknown Aussie,
who got the gig. She parodied Tomorrow's World's Jud
ith Hann, Angela Rippon's exaggerated pornunciation of foreign names
and words like "guerillas", and filled her gob with outsize false teeth to cariature Janet Street-Porter and Esther Rantzen.

She married Billy Connolly (who she met when he made a guest appearance on NT9OCN) and these days eschews showbusiness in favour of a career as a psychiatrist down under.


Chris Langham
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A member of the cast for the first series only, he is better known these days as Roy Mallard in People Like Us.
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SKETCHES
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A successor to That Was The Week That Was and Monty Python and a forerunner of the Fast Show, the sketches were a mixture of topical satire and silliness. It certainly built on Python. In fact,
I doubt that the Dead Parrot Sketch would be as universally renowned if it weren't for the skit that established NT9OCN...

THE GENERAL SYNOD'S LIFE OF CHRIST
was a spoof of the controversy over Monty Python's Life of Brian,
in which a Python-worshipper (Smith) attacks a film-directing vicar (Atkinson) whose character 'Jesus Christ' is a blatant parody
of Our Lord John Cleese ("even the initials - J.C. - are the same!")
CONSTABLE SAVAGE was the most politically significant NT9OCN sketch. It was a TV landmark in that it was the first to satirize the endemic racism in the police force. Society needs satire like this
to bring unpleasant aspects of society into sharp focus.

AMERICAN EXPRESS
An AmEx commercial at that time featured beautiful women who, on seeing an AmEx card, smiled and said: "that'll do nicely, sir!" W
hereas the NT9OCN spoof ended with Pamela Stephenson uttering the immortal line (remember, I was thirteen at the time) "that'll do nicely sir, and would you like to rub my tits too?"

Another of my favourites was that great old chestnut,
THE SWEDISH CHEMIST'S SHOP:
"Hellooo I would like som de-odorant please."
"Certainly sir, ball or aerosol?"
"Neither, I want it for my armpits."

...and of course there was the legendary THE HI-FI SHOP sketch:
"Excuse me... I want to buy a gramophone..."
"I don't think we've got any gram-o-phones here Grandad..."
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WRITERS
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The beauty of a sketch show is that it can use material submitted from a variety of writers and many of those who contributed sketches have since gone on to greater things. For example, the aforementioned Hi-Fi shop sketch was written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall who went on to write two of my favourite 80's comedies: Whoops! Apocalypse, and Hot Metal (both with Richard Wilson) and then One Foot In The Grave and 2point4 Children respectively. And Andy Hamilton went on to Drop The Dead Donkey and Old Harry's Game.

But the most notable writer was a pal of Rowan's by the name
of RICHARD CURTIS. The co-writer of the Gorilla Sketch ("Wild?
I was absolutely livid!") and a wicked spoof of Game For A Laugh, went on to write Blackadder, Four Weddings and A Funeral and The Vicar of Dibley (well, no-one's perfect.)
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NEWS ITEMS (i.e. jokes)
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Since the programme went out on BBC2 while the Nine O'Clock
News was on BBC1 (hence the title - Doh!) there were always spoof news items, usually presented by Mel Smith and Pamela Stephenson in the style of contemporary newsreaders.
Four examples:-

Unconfirmed sources report that Colonel Gadddafi of Libya has survived a second assassination attempt. Doctors say that the bullet went right through the middle of his head, missing his brain by six feet.

At a party to celebrate her 55th birthday last week,
Mrs Thatcher blew on the cake and lit the candles.

We must apologize for an error in one of our earlier bulletins in which we said that Ronald Reagan had been hitting the coloureds and putting the balls on the table. We were of course referring to Ray Reardon.

The Italian entry into the Eurovision Song Contest - "I Can't Get No Contraception" - has been withdrawn, after the Pope advised them to pull it out at the last minute.
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SONGS
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The show usually ended with a song, some of which were parodies of acts from the pop charts (ABBA, Kate Bush etc.)
while others were more original...


Confrontation Song
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~ If I had a bomb, and a plane to drop it from,
~ I'd drop it on you, world leaders.
~ I've had it up to here with your verbal diarrhoea
~ you power crazy bleeders!


Gob On You
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was a glorious, but not very subtle, encapsulation of punk rock:

~ I live on the fourteenth floor of a tower block
~ and when I get bored I call coo-ee
to the passers-by
~ and when they look up I gob in their eye...
~ Gob on you, 'cos I hate your guts
~ Gob on you, kick you in the nuts
~ Gob on you, 'cos your a stupid old git
~ Gob on you, 'cos you're full of shit!


Nice Video Shame About The Song
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A pastiche (or do I mean pisstake?) of New Romantic pop videos.

~ This must mean something to me


(I Like) Trucking
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which caused controversy for suggesting that truckers ran over small animals such as hedgehogs for sport. As if!


and of course, the song that ended the final programme:

The Memory Kinda Lingers
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~ goodbye is the hardest word to say
~ so let's just say: kinda lingers

well, that's what they said they were singing, but it didn't exactly sound like that, it sounded kinda more like... erm, something that went way over my head at that age of course.
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I was such a fan of the show that I spent my hard won record vouchers (anyone remember the competition where you had to predict next week's top three on the Radio One Top 40
?) on the three LPs of sketches from the series. No, I take that back, I got one of them for Christmas. I remember, because one of my older sisters (Maureen) bought it and wasn't amused by the picture on the cover... a hedgehog sandwich.
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[ No hedgehogs were harmed during the writing of this opinion. ]
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