The absolute very first time I watched Not the Nine O’Clock News was near the end of the 1st series in 1979. I’m not sure how or why I didn’t see the first few episodes – as I keep on reminding you, there was bugger all to watch on telly at the time so anything half decent was difficult to miss – but, to be fair, Sapphire & Steel was on ITV just beforehand with the young Joanna Lumley so I’d probably gone to my bedroom for a lie-down.
The 1st series of NTNOCN met with mixed reviews but the 2nd series took off when Griff Rhys Jones replaced Chris Langham (later of the Thick Of It and child pornography fame) in the line-up. Griff was not a major star (that accolade went to Rowan Atkinson and, by god, didn’t he just know it) but Griff was the classic hard-working journeyman who provides the heartbeat to any team – the under-rated holding midfielder in a football side or the bassist standing at the back of the band. No offence to Griff (or Mel), though, but we just wanted to see Rowan and Pamela Stephenson, especially when she opened her blouse in the American Express advert parody and asked us whether we’d like to rub her tits too, putting the pause/rewind functions of a million VCRs to the ultimate test.
After just 4 series and 27 episodes (how on earth have we managed to stomach over 60 series and 500 episodes of Have I Got News For You?), apparently the show was brought to an end by a combination of Rowan Atkinson, his publicist and his ego. When the production team and cast were meeting up to discuss taking NTNOCN to the next level, with aspirations of movies and breaking America, Atkinson cheerily announced over dinner that, despite the group being “very nice people”, his agent had told him “not to play with the 2nd XI anymore” and, with that, he left the restaurant and the show - a team player of David Brent proportions. And for those of you who love Mr Bean, poor Rowan was recently quoted as finding the character ‘stressful and exhausting’ and he ‘looks forward to the end of it’. So that’s a thanks for all the support then.
Not to kick the boot in (although why not, he’s a global megastar so won’t give a damn what I have to say) but a year or so before his sensitively-pitched resignation speech, he had offered to edit a 90 minute video to showcase the best bits of each NTNOCN series. Apparently the first draft he showed to the producer, John Lloyd (no, not the tennis player who married Chris Evert and so paved the way for Guy Ritchie, Chris Martin and the artist formerly known as Prince Harry to shack up with US celeb royalty), was basically a Rowan Atkinson highlights package which included absolutely no footage of Pamela Stephenson at all. His initial response was mild surprise, as though he hadn’t actually noticed this omission, but, when pressed by Lloyd, he conceded that he “never really thought she was that funny anyway”.
In the early 70s, when I wasn’t practising Gary Glitter impressions in front of the mirror (by which, for the avoidance of doubt, I mean pretending to sing his hits), I was learning all the Monty Python tunes from the albums we had at home (I had older siblings). I could recite the Bruce’s Philosopher song in full and therefore I did so fairly often to family, friends and, on one occasion, my choirmaster (‘there’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach yer ‘bout the raising of the wrist, Socrates himself was permanently pissed’). It taught me all I ever needed to know about philosophy, excessive drinking and Australians. I'm not sure what the choirmaster learned from it but he kept on looking at me with a leer on his face and so he obviously enjoyed the song too.
NTNOCN took the song-writing to the next level. They may have been parodies of popular musical genres & performers but many were great songs in their own right and, much like the Pythons, filled with clever lyrics and masterful rhymes. Unlike the Pythons though, they reflected music which was currently in the charts. From Kate Bush’s ‘you’re all trying hard to get inside my leotard’ to the Two Tone I Like Bouncing song (‘that doesn’t need announcing judging by the way your balls are bouncing’) and the Mosley-inspired ‘although I cannot claim to be any great authority, as far as I’m concerned the sun shone out of his oratory’. After Grease, I was a big ONJ fan so I loved the 'Bloody Typical' song about how her lack of bedroom action meant she was looking for a young man in a rogering situation....and, as far as my adolescent self was concerned, my home town was surely as good a place for her to search as any.
I always remember at the time thinking how poorly they lip-synched. Did anyone else notice this? Atkinson and Rhys-Jones were particularly shocking. I don’t think they could be bothered to learn the words. Certainly not as well as I had anyway.
One classic sketch was Life of Python about our lord John Cleese which was a reminder of how large a shadow Monty Python cast over every sketch show which succeeded them in the 70s and 80s. They were the Godfathers of comedy but even they presented their women as either token totty (à la Dick Emery and Benny Hill) or battle-axes in drag. It was Terry Jones who got to tell us that Brian was a very naughty boy and not actually the Messiah, leaving Thora Hird and Mollie Sugden to work out how their auditions had gone so wrong.
In contrast the roles which Pamela Stephenson adopted in NTNOCN were on a par with her fellow performers (except Rowan obviously). I loved how her newsreaders exaggerated the pronunciation of the foreign names and her barely-intelligible Janet Street Porter asked Billy Connelly if people found him difficult to understand (presumably, unlike the rest of Britain, he must've been a JSP fan because he married Pam soon afterwards). My favourite was her social worker (“I know these kids, um, I’ve worked with them”) when she weighed in on a heated but erudite debate about hooliganism and concluded that the solution was almost certainly to cut off their goolies.
The writing team were mainly in-house but the Constable Savage sketch was sent in to the show by a police forensic scientist who never had anything else published in his life (one of the better one-hit wonders in a peer group which admittedly includes Joe Dolce's Shaddap You Face). Richard Curtis, one of the principal writers, was a mate of Atkinson’s from Uni and knew which side his bread was buttered so stuck with the rubbery-faced comedian at the end of NTNOCN, firstly making his name on Blackadder and then encouraging Hugh Grant to steal our hearts in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Unfortunately, he felt this gave him the mandate to inflict Notting Hill (not totally awful) and Love Actually (totally awful) on a compliant British public.
My favourite sketch though has always been the Swedish Chemist Shop where Mel Smith asks for deodorant in a heavy Scandinavian accent, Rowan the shopkeeper replies, in equally-thick intonation, “ball or aerosol?” before Mel ends with the classic “neither, I want it for my armpits”. They both turn to the camera with a slightly apologetic look although I’m sure I can spot a glint of jealous fury in Atkinson’s eye that Mel was given the punchline instead of him.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME....WATCH WITH MOTHER
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