blogcaa

Oh, actually, you can’t. It’s still unreleased. Never mind…

The Unaired ‘And Now, In Colour’ TV pilot

Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2000 00:29:52 To: SOTCAA From: David Tyler Subject: Re: Reply from SOTCAA: Some Thanks > David, > > Thanks for your kind words re: the Ed Fringe silliness.  Has William > Vandyck read it?  Please pass on our adoration to himself.  We hope > to be running an ‘And Now In Colour’ retro piece on the site soon. > Any words to that effect will be of great help. Aha. Well now. I was approached by Tiger TV many moons ago to produce a pilot of “And Now In Colour” for BBC TV. I’m not sure what Lissa Evans felt about this - she being its then radio producer, and, of course, not only a mate and a good soul, but a future BAFTA winner for producing “Father Ted”s second series, anyway, as I was saying … The BBC gave us 13p to do it with, so we decided to try and shoot the stuck-in-the-Post-Office-Tower episode, but interspersed with a couple of sketches, like the angry jingle singers song (”Rowena”) and the playing bridge/snap sketch. We thought it was dead good, and in truth, a very fair representation of the radio show’s personalities; Mike still playing the grumpy Stephen King-reading cynic, Tim De Jongh (Tim Scott) the child, William the put-upon English anal retentive and Tim Firth the mover and shaker (and indeed, it was Tim F who supplied the narrative strand whilst everyone else wrote the sketches alongside him). The BBC hummed and ha-ad (spelling?) then decided to give us *another* pilot, this time to be transmitted, but demanding a shake-up of the cast. So in stayed Tim De Jongh and William; out went Tim Firth and Mike, who kind of lost interest at that point - not unreasonably. So we cast some other people; you know, relative unknowns like Alistair McGowan and Caroline Aherne, and also Flip Webster, who I’d worked with on Radio 4’s “Live On Arrival”. We called it “It’s A Mad World World World World” after the 60s caper movie “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World”. Yes, so it was the worst title ever, but not as bad as its working title which was, if I remember correctly, “Half A Sixp”. This time, I managed to get Geoff Posner (my other half at Pozzitive) to direct it, although we weren’t allowed to make it a Pozzitive production, and he was halfway through shooting a Victoria Wood special at the same time. We thought it was fab; it had a very good blues-y sig tune by Absolutely’s best baldie, Monsieur Pete Baikie and a couple of really dead good sketches, like the Late Show spoof on a greeting cards poet and William’s Open University mathematician (yes, I did recognise that photo). And I still have some of the Subbuteo men from the Subbuteo sketch at home, if anyone’s interested … Alas, the then Controller of BBC 2, Michael Jackson thought it was good, but not good enough. In truth, sketch shows were in very bad odour at the time; The Fast Show hadn’t happened, and the assumption was that sketches were pointless dead things best left in the bin. And of course, if you saw “TV To Go”, you might think he was right. Now stop it. So there you go. Any pointless obsessive questions (like “What were the lyrics to the “James Bond theme tune as written by Richard Stilgoe”) are welcome, but I probably won’t remember anything. The truth is, that if you showed the pilot again on BBC 1 today, it would blow most of the current efforts out of the water. And yes, I still think William is a talent waiting to happen. We must find the right vehicle!! Lots of love, dave >Soz about Absolutely comments.  I was in a right old mood that day. Ps you’re forgiven. They still talk to me you know. – David Tyler   > Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 00:04:50 > To: SOTCAA > From: David Tyler > Subject: Oh, things … > > Your Edinburgh preview made me laugh like a pig, even though you > were rude about everyone I’ve ever been friendly with ever. > Do more stuff that funny, and I won’t get cross about you saying I > fucked up Absolutely … > dave > – > David Tyler

Postscript: Clips of It’s A Mad World World World World can probably be found on YouTube if you look hard enough and squint a bit. It is indeed fantastic. As for its never-screened precursor, we’ve whacked a crappy old Real Video capture up on Sendspace here (link updated 04/04/09). Not exactly a ‘lost classic’ (it was of course much better on the radio) but a nice enough way to kill half an hour.

[Note: First ten minutes above - the rest is up at our YouTube page.]

Text from our old Edit News article:

The TV pilot of Fist Of Fun was recorded in May 1994. All the pre-recorded sketches were eventually used in the series the following year (with the exception of a short piece about going to prison), although some small changes were made - the ‘Pestilence’ sketch was originally on raw videotape but was field-removed for the series, and the ‘Dating Agency’ sketch originally had a brief OB introduction by Herring (culminating in his idiotic grin before he enters the agency). The latter also included the arguably more effective Katrina And The Waves’ ‘Walking On Sunshine’ as the incidental music rather than Take That’s ‘Could It Be Magic?’.

Some studio footage was also seamlessly edited into the series. Show 1’s ‘Gall-ery’ sequence was first presented (without the onscreen caption) in the pilot* as was the chat with Sue Perkins (as an audience member) talking about imaginary friends from Show 3. Ben Moor, who also appeared in the pilot version, re-recorded his section. Amusingly, Danny O’Brien, a friend of the team, is sitting near Moor and Perkins respectively in both recordings of the sketch, and this allowed Lee and Herring to put a wry caption on the screen alerting viewers to the break in continuity.

* Shows 1 and 2 of Series 1 were recorded at the same session so it probably made more sense to simply re-use the ‘Gall-ery’ sequence from the pilot rather than rearranging the set. Quite apart from anything else the pilot ‘Gall-ery’ is very funny.

The titles were also re-shot for the series: in the pilot, they look a little stilted and are presented in normal video (as opposed to the series titles which were field-removed and given a fake letterbox effect. The little boxing girl (Lucy Edis) also announces the show as ‘Lee and Herring’s Fist Of Fun!’, as per the radio version.

Further to the Python album marvellousness earlier, how do you feel about a never-before-heard-in-any-capacity LP out-take? Sound good? Very well then.

Yes, it’s a song by Eric Idle. Which, if you’ve recently sat through Spamalot or The Rutland Isles or Eric Idle Sits By A Swimming Pool In His Hawaiian Shirt And Generally Misses the Point About What Made Python Great In The First Place: The Album, you might think is a bad thing. But no, this is proper Python. Alright, it’s from Contractual Obligation Album, but it still counts…

Rainy Day In Berlin
(1’54, 192 kpbs, 2.63mb)

It was a rainy day in Berlin
I was just standing around
A rather rainy day in Berlin
Rain on the ground

It rained with rain all day in Berlin
My, it was wet on the ground
It rained on the trains and ran down the drains
Rain all around

Lord, how it poured all over Berlin
Oh my Gawd, how it come down
Cats and dogs all day in Berlin
Rain on the ground

It pissed with rain all day in Berlin
Making a terrible sound
Fucking well, bloody well poured in Berlin
All on the ground

(c) Kay Gee Bee Music Ltd (one must presume)

What a strange song. Even for Python, it seems unaccountably…odd. What’s it about? What’s it a reference to, or a parody of? What’s the joke exactly? The team rarely produced pure whimsy (and, when they did, it was often a self-mocking piss-take of whimsy anyway – eg, ‘Find the Fish’), so ‘Rainy Day In Berlin’ is conspicuous by its lack of an obvious premise. It sounds like it was written for a sketch, rather than meant to be enjoyed as a piece in its own right.

Then again, maybe Idle just had a bad holiday that year. Maybe the ditty became a long-running private joke? Who knows. There’s no obvious Python connection to Berlin, unless you count Jabberwocky being presented at the Berlin Film Festival in 1977. The team produced two German TV specials, of course, but they were recorded in sunny Munich.

Others may choose to wonder why it bears such a strong resemblance to the 1967 song ‘Agency Man’ by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (itself an out-take never released during its original decade). Do both songs reference some famous Nazi marching song which has passed us by? Would a working knowledge of Brecht-Weill in-jokes make the gag clearer? Musically speaking, ‘Rainy Day In Berlin’ wouldn’t sound totally out of place in The Three Penny Opera. As a pastiche, it’s hard to place - it seems to be half-parodying the whole Brecht-Weill thing, but also spoofing lederhosen-slapping German drinking songs of the kind Rusty Griswold might try to avoid in National Lampoon’s European Vacation.

We did once ponder that the team may have been planning some kind of ‘Around The World With Monty Python’ concept for the LP, at least at some early pub-meeting stage (hence ‘Finland’, ‘I Like Chinese’, ‘Never Be Rude To An Arab’, etc). Just a theory of course, but you can smell the potential ad copy: ‘Yes, the Pythons are back, fresh from uniting religious groups under a banner of shared hatred over Life of Brian. Now they’re setting out to offend the entire world, country by country, in the hope of achieving world peace!’

Another tempting theory is that Contractual Obligation Album originally had something akin to a ‘World’s Worst Song Competition’ concept. After all, the joke behind pretty much all the musical numbers is the tasteless, inappropriate or boring nature of the subject matter. Andre Jacquemin recalls that ‘Here Comes Another One’ originally formed part of a longer – and improvised – sketch entitled ‘Audition’, a premise which could well have incorporated many of the other songs. The difficulty with asking the Pythons about this ‘World’s Worst Song Competition’ theory, however, is finding a tactful way of phrasing it…

Anyway, we could come up with nonsensical, crackpot theories about rejected Contractual Obligation Album linking concepts till we’re blue in the tits (try it yourselves – it’s fun) but perhaps we should stick to the known facts.

‘Rainy Day In Berlin’ was actually the breezy opener to Side 2 of the previously much-dissected (but, despite several press release promises to the contrary, still sadly unreleased) Hastily Cobbled Together For A Fast Buck out-takes compilation assembled by Andre Jacquemin circa 1987. For those wishing to re-compile their bootlegs in the light of this ‘new evidence’, it led rather nicely into the announcement that ‘Mr Terry Gilliam’ would sing ‘I’ve Got Two Legs’ (and, in doing so, showcased a delightful contrast in terms of musical styles: Idle’s sweet little tune is as earnest and imploring as Gilliam’s gutteral warble is disrespectful; as meticulously orchestrated as ‘…Legs’ is sparse, ramshackle and throwaway; as relentless in its pursuit of building to a fanfare-tooting crescendo of saying really very little as the following track is keen to remove its offending troubadour with a violent gunshot lest further verses offend).

So why was all reporting of this song absent from our original ‘Hastily Cobbled…’ coverage? The truth? It wasn’t on the tape. The beginning of the cassette had been accidentally wiped - probably by the same member of Motorhead who’d graciously consented to copy it all those years ago (the side effects no doubt of fumbling drunkenly for the high-speed dubbing button while simultaneously trying to chat up Fiona Richmond between takes of Eat The Rich and discussing the contents of his fridge with Smash Hits).

Oh, and since you’re such lovely people, here’s another Python LP out-take, albeit more of the ‘blooper’ variety.

I’m So Worried - original edit
(3’19, 192 kpbs, 4.57mb)

This version of ‘I’m So Worried’ - with Terry Jones stumbling over the scansion and lyrics of the penultimate verse (“…and I’m worried about… is the sort of thing I ought to know”) - was actually released on initial pressings of Contractual Obligation Album, but later corrected (probably around the time that they re-edited the LP to replace ‘Farewell To John Denver’).

NOTE: Any audio or video files illustrating these articles are hosted off-site (Sendspace, usually) and will only be posted once. The editor’s decision is fine.