| History Archive
|
1997 - 2002
1997
In late February me and Stew head for Adelaide in Australia to bring our unique brand of comedy to the colonies. The festival was quite badly organised and we were on quite early in the evening. Despite this we did OK and made some great friends (most notably Greg Fleet who would later appear as Dave-o in TGP) It was an amazing experience and a mixture of the sunshine, some unusual cakes and a trip to Uluru sent me a bit mad for a couple of months (but formed the basis of my later play, "Playing Hide and Seek With Jesus". Made some great friends from the UK circuit there too and I started to feel less ostracised from the stand-up comedy thing (most of my problems with it were imagined or came from paranoia anyway). I wanted to write a Auf Wiedersen, Pet style comedy drama about the experience, but so far it is still just a treatment.
In July Stew and me headed out to Montreal in Canada to front the Channel 5/Paramount show "Festival of Fun". I've found all the second drafts of the scripts for those, which can be seen here if you can be bothered. We did a few gigs out there too and were working about 16 hours a day. I found the whole experience disorientating and frightening. The American comics were very ambitious and I felt like that student back at the Edinburgh Festival in 88. I also had a big beard for my play and looked like a madman (and still was a bit) Also Stew was doing gigs on his own and being courted by the American networks, which was both exciting and strange.
I returned to Edinburgh to perform my new play Excavating Rita, another semi-autobiographical number, based on my time on archaeological gigs in the mid-eighties. I was in it, doing an unpleasant full frontal nude scene and the other actors were Paul "The Putt" Putner, Trevor Lock and Natalie Brandon who would later become Trevor and Natalie from TMWRNJ and Catherine Hood who'd been in the Oxford Revue all those years ago. It was directed by Dan Milne. You can read the script here. I think it's a really good and commercial play, where the fact that nothing much happens is the strength of it. It's about how people pass time as much as anything. Again I was incorrectly accused of stringing together stand up routines. Again I say that every conversation fits in with the themes of the play. The effect the full frontal nude scene has on an audience is hard to glean from a reading. I am glad that I did it. It was very liberating.
We also revived This Morning, now much more of a two hander with me and Stew. I think by this stage we knew that it was going to be made into a series. Trevor and Natalie assisted us for a fiver each a day and Richard Thomas played the music. We were writing it the day before we started and made most of it up. It was extraordinarily good fun and sold out every day. I think a ticket went for £75 in one auction! Les Dennis was in the audience one day and I said to him "Can you do a Mavis Riley impression?" and he said "No!" and I said, "That's right, you can't, can you?" He laughed along with everyone else. I really like Les.
I'm not sure what, if anything, I did for the rest of the year. Something probably. Maybe it'll come back to me! Probably some warm up gigs for TMWRNJ.
Oh yeah and I script-edited some stuff for Boothby Graffoe, but nothing came of it.
I appeared in two episodes of the Channel 5 show Jenny Eclair Squats and was drunk on both occasions.
1998
We did the first series of TMWRNJ in February. Jo Unwin, Kevin Eldon, and Paul Putner joined the Edinburgh cast, with Charlie Hanson producing and Gareth Carrivick directing.
We also did a tour show of This Morning, and I think there's my diary from that up on the Lee and Herring website if you're that interested (See the "98 Tour Diary" section - Rob).
We were also commissioned by some American TV company to write a sit-com idea of ours called Hostages, about people being held hostage in a basement. They didn't decide to make it though.
We returned to Montreal in July for a second series of Festival of Fun. We did more gigs together, which went much better this time. I was a bit less mad and had no beard. I didn't stay til the end though as I had to get back to finish work on my new play Playing Hide and Seek with Jesus. This is my personal favourite of the plays I've done. You can read the script here. I wasn't in this one (except for a couple of performances that Paul Putner couldn't do it). The cast was Emma Kennedy, Matthew Pidgeon, Paul Putner, Selina Boyack, Amelia Curtis and Matt Wilkinson.
My guess is that I spent the autumn working on stuff for TMWRNJ II.
1999
We did the second (and of course being us, second means final) series of This Morning. I think it was our finest work and we had really reached a place where the double act was really firing on all cylinders and was a double act in the true sense of the word. The public seemed to agree. Unfortunately the new controller of BBC 2 , Jane Root, seemed less keen and the schedulers messed around with us and the repeat.
We didn't hear for sure that the show wasn't going to get recommissioned for a while, but I got a fairly good idea that it had been when I was introduced to Jane Root at a party in Edinburgh and she immediately turned her back on me without saying a word. Stew and me had been working together for over 12 years, and now it seemed to be over.
The BBC did offer to commission a pilot episode of Hostages, but we felt they were unlikely to make the series or give us the backing we felt we deserved so we politely declined.
That July I flew to Fiji with some actors to write my new play "It's Not The End of the World" about Nostradamus's prediction that the world would end in July 1999. The trip was paid for by UK Play for whom we made a documentary about the experience. The actors who came to Fiji were Paul Putner, Selina Boyack and Ruth Gray, though only Ruth and me were going to be in the play, the other two parts had not been cast. In the end they were played by Rebecca Lacey from Casualty and Paul Bown from Watching.
For me this was the least successful play, though it is possibly the best written one. The script is here. We had fun doing it, but I just think it wasn't quite right somehow. Funnily enough I got more interest about this play than any other. There was to be a radio version, but they wanted it to be 45 minutes long and have no swearing in it. I tried to do it, but couldn't.
I had been working as a script editor for Al Murray who was writing a sit-com for his pub landlord character. In the end it was decided it would be better if we wrote it together. We had completed the script and had been trying to sell it. In August, the day before Al won the Perrier, Sky decided they would like us to make 13 episodes. The day after Al won the Perrier everyone else came with offers. The BBC asked why they hadn't been offered the script. The fact was they had had it for about 10 months.
2000
In the spring we did a reading of Excavating Rita at a theatre in the West End with the hope of getting it put on in London. Julia Sawalha read one of the parts (I had sent her the script years ago, when there was talk of making it into a film). The play didn't end up getting put on, but I did end up dating Julia for 15 months, which is a constant source of enjoyment for anyone who saw Fist of Fun.
The whole year apart from that was spent writing what turned out to be 22 episodes of Time Gentlemen Please, which was broadcast on Sky towards the end of the year. Although Al and Stewart did work on the scripts I think they would both agree that I did the lion's share of the writing. It was one of the most difficult and arduous things I have ever done. The extra 9 episode were sprung on us and I pretty much had to write them all in about 12 weeks. Personally I think the show gets better as it goes along, but it was very wearing to actually do. I also played a sarcastic bean-faced postman in the series. I am very proud of the scripts, though it seems to divide the few people who have seen it right down the middle. We sold the show to Australia too.
My only other performing was in "The 99p Challenge" for Radio 4. I recorded two shows on one night and was meant to return the following week to do another two, but was told that I hadn't fitted in to the tone of the night and was asked not to return. I was a little over-excited perhaps, but it seemed a shame.
2001
Sky delayed a decision on the second series of TGP which gave me time to do other work.
I wrote a sit-com based on the characters from "It's Not The End of the World" provisionally for Frank Skinner, called "Jammy Bugger". ITV commissioned a pilot. I was to play Frank's younger half-brother. But Frank decided he didn't want to do it. The show may well be made at some point in the future with a different leading actor.
I also took a step back to solo stand-up, by writing and performing Christ on a Bike. It was a very last minute decision, with about 24 hours left on the fringe deadline before I even suggested the idea. I found an empty slot at the Pleasance Dome and came up with the title and that meant I had to do it.
It was very weird going back to a solo show and for a long while I wasn't sure I was going to pull it off. Some of the previews were pretty dodgy, both in performance and in lack of preparation. Basically the idea was that I was 33, the same age as Jesus when he died and I wondered had I achieved as much. I also speculated that I might be Christ returned to earth. I managed to get my two hours of material squeezed into the hour slot and in a gig in Nottingham about two days before Edinburgh began I felt I had finally cracked it. I played at a stand-up venue and it went down a storm. I felt I had defeated some of my demons.
The show was a big success in Edinburgh, especially a 20 minute section all about the genealogy at the start of the New Testament. The Gospel according to me can be viewed here. I got pretty good reviews, but a fantastic response from the audience. It was an amazing feeling to be doing stand-up (ish) material and having the crowd in tears of laughter. I wished that I had done it years before. But maybe I was a bit older now and had found my own voice. I had something to say, which I certainly didn't in 1992.
I reprised the show in London at the Arts Theatre in October. It was harder to get an audience, but I got some good reviews and by the end of the three and a half week run the word was spreading. The last night was quite full and the show went very well. Even after 60 odd performances I was finding new ideas, new places to go. I had taken a leap forward as a performer.
I was sharing the theatre with the Vagina Monologues. A lot of people suggested that I do a male version of the show. I told them it was a rubbish and obvious idea.
The rest of the year was spent writing the second series of TGP, only 15 episodes this time and it was a lot easier this time round. Again I think the scripts and performances were much better in this series. Again alas the second series was to be the last (though in this case after 37 episodes, which isn't a bad run) The series has been largely ignored in the media, probably because it is on satellite and thus can't be seen by most people. I hope one day it gets a terrestrial showing. I like it very much.
2002
As well as finishing off the second series of TGP I was doing a few gigs of Christ on a Bike at various arts centres.
In March I headed out to Melbourne to perform at the Comedy Festival. Again, Australia was a wonderful experience, though my venue was a little out of the way and I was a new-comer to the city so audiences were slow to begin with. I got a bad review in the one paper that matters which didn't help. But slowly it built up and there was a lot of positive feedback. Plus I was in Australia!
In March Stew and me were asked to appear in an on-line Dr Who adventure called Real Time. We could hardly refuse that could we? Colin Baker was the doctor and we played space electricians who get set upon by cybermen. I had my head crushed by one, Stew became one. The CD is now available in slightly weird shops and may also be on-line still at the BBC website.
On my return I began work on my new show, Talking Cock. I had finally relented and thought that maybe there was a way to do the idea without it being obvious or rubbish. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that men needed a show like this, just as much as (and possibly more than) women.
Thanks to the badgering of the wonderful Rob Sedgebeer I set up a web-site at www.talkingcock.co.uk with two anonymous questionnaires about the spam javelin (they are still running, please take part if you haven't already) and was swamped with responses. They formed the basis of the show.
I previewed extensively and again it wasn't until the beginning of Edinburgh that it all seemed to come together.
Critically it was my most successful Edinburgh show I have ever done and very quickly it became a hot ticket.
I did another three and a half week run, this time at the Soho theatre and again, it was a little slow to start in audience terms, but by the last couple of weeks was selling very well. I got a deal to write a book on the subject and the show is also being translated and performed in ten or more European countries. For more info, please visit the web-site.
Coincidentally I have also been commissioned to write a film about a man who gets a mystery sexually transmitted disease, based on an idea by comedian Glen Wool, called "I Don't Know Who I Did Last Summer."
In October I did a cameo comedy acting role in a new BBC drama called "Servants". I play Percy the shepherd and the series should be broadcast in the Spring of 2003.
BACK TO PRE 1985 - 1990
BACK TO 1991 - 1996
GO TO 2002 - 2005
GO TO 2006 - 2007
| |
| |
| FORTHCOMING EVENTS
POSTERS:
You can now buy a copy of the poster of "The Headmaster's Son" from the good folks at gofasterstripe.com. Along with many of my recent Edinburgh show posters. Only five pounds each, or buy three for ten pounds!
LYRIC AUTUMN SEASON:
The November TMWRNJ special gig is now sold out.
Sun 26 October - SPECIAL SURPRISE HEADLINER WHO WE CAN'T NAME YET, BUT WHO IS BRILLIANT, Stewart Lee, Ivan Brackenbury and Wilson Dixon. BOOK NOW. LESS THAN 30 tickets left. Don't leave it until the last minute!
Call 0871 22 117 29
Or visit The Lyric website.
GIGS:
These are my upcoming gigs.
Click GIGS above for more details
Oct
4th Belgium
9th Birmingham - Headmaster's Son
10th Brighton - Headmaster's Son
11th Amused Moose
13th Comedy Store - Charity Gig
15th Islington
17th Charity gig somewhere
19th Manchester - Headmaster's Son
20th Manchester - stand up gig
26th LYRIC Hammersmith - less than 30 tickets left - SELLING FAST
31st Chesterfield
Nov
1st Witney - Headmaster's Son
PODCAST:
Collings and Herring PODCAST number 31 was recorded live and drunk in front of an audience on Thursday and is up at the usual website or you can subscribe through iTunes.
NEW DOWNLOADS/PRESS:
23 09 08 PRESS Review of Lyric gig
22 09 08 DOWNLOADS - My Guardian Guide to writing comedy (including earlier draft)
11 09 08 PRESS Guardian article about stage rage
10 09 08 DOWNLOADS - Express story about me in my pants + Time Out Review of meange a un DVD
YOUTUBE:
See a bit of my drunken gig from the Frog and Bucket on July 2nd here and watch as I effortlessly appropriate material from both TMWRNJ and Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World!
NEW STATESMAN:
I write a fortnightly blog for The New Statesman website, which occasionally has stuff that hasn't appeared in Warming Up in it.
LEE AND HERRING VIDEO:
Why buy the audio version of the slightly disappointing Lee and Herring video, when you can hear AND see it here for FREE.
TMWRNJ:
The first episode of TMWRNJ has been posted on google video. I suspect more might follow - Click here to see it
Or you can access loads of episodes on the website of Stewart Lee.
| |
|
