G&TV: Carrott’s Lib (22/10/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 6th November 2024, 09:50 As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years, let’s take the opportunity to hark back to a far happier time, ie before many of us were even sodding born. We’re heading back to 1983 to take in a crucial component of the Grant Naylor oeuvre. Having pretty much mastered the art of radio comedy with the first series of Son of Cliché, it was time to take on television, and the pair began successfully submitting sketches for the likes of Paul Squire, Cannon & Ball and Three of a Kind. But arguably the most quintessentially Rob-and-Doug feeling project of this era was Carrott’s Lib. Starring Jasper Carrott, one of this country’s greatest ever stand-ups, this was a pre-Spitting Image topical, satirical comedy, broadcast live on Saturday nights on BBC One. Paul Jackson produced the first series, but we’re going to focus instead on the first episode of series two, for reasons that will become apparent. The first thing to note is the date – the series started just eleven days after the first series of Son of Cliché concluded on Radio 4, and given how last-minute a lot of those scripts were, Rob and Doug presumably had very little time to breathe between projects. This series also established a new supporting cast for Jasper: future Cadbury’s Caramel bunny Jan Ravens, alongside the trio of Nick Wilton, Nick Maloney and Chris Barrie. Now where have I seen those guys together before? Huge thanks to Jonsmad for pointing us in the direction of this YouTube upload: Be honest, how many of you assumed the newsflash at the start of the YouTube video was going to be part of the show? There were other Dwarfy figures associated with the show, of course – Kim Fuller and James Hendrie among the writers, editor Ed Wooden and music from Son of Cliché‘s Peter Brewis – but you can really see the Grant Naylor DNA coursing through the script. There’s a simile joke about someone’s sexual appetite (in this case a cabinet minister rather than a mountain lion or first year nursing student), and lines about a group of people with an IQ of 6 (in this case National Front members). Chris Barrie does his Richie Benaud at one point – familiar to anyone who’s seen Universe Challenge, but this particular sketch has several of the exact same lines as a similar one in the first ever episode of SoC. Plus, of course, we’ve got Chris playing an actual puppet version of Ronald Reagan, while Spitting Image was still just a glint in Fluck and Law’s eyes. None of which can top the ultimate crossover – the sketch in which Nick Maloney plays Fred Gorman, a company boss appearing in his own advert, is lifted directly from episode six of Son of Cliché, which aired on 29th September, just over three weeks earlier. Other than a few additional acknowledgements of the visual medium, it’s pretty much word for word, with Maloney as the lead in both sketches. An early example of Grant Naylor’s ability to upcycle their existing material to reach a wider audience. Other highlights of the episode include a Mastermind sketch where the specialist subject is video nasties (which has Rob’s fingerprints all over it), a performance from The Animals, and gags about both Jimmy Savile and Prince Andrew that seem incredibly tame compared to the jokes that you’d make about those two today. While not quite the complete set, there are more episodes on YouTube, and I for one am looking forward to searching for more golden nuggets from the start Grant Naylor’s imperial phase.
I might have to watch some of these as I’ve never really watched it before. At the screening and Q&A with Chris that I went to last week, they played a clip of the Carrott’s Lib 1983 election special, with Chris playing Robin Day in a Question Time sketch (that included among the cast a young Emma Thompson!) which was fun to see. Chris also made some interesting comments about working on the show suggesting that Carrott was often reluctant to have the supporting players get the best material in their sketches, and that the shows would often get rewritten and reworked during writing rehearsals, with some of the best material from the sketches finding its way out of those sketches and into Carrott’s monologues instead, which I thought was interesting. I should really write up the whole evening while it’s fresh in my memory, it was a fun night.
“As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years” I think this government will cling on for the full term of five years to be fair. Though to be honest among the plush million pound houses many elderly fingers are likely to be frozen by the Spring.
I’ve been watching the first three series of Spitting Image and spotted loads of Easter eggs. My favourite is the puppet of Tracey Ullman saying ‘bloody smegma’
Enjoyed that smooth segue from the topical bit into general observations. “I was on holiday when most of it was on, and I had a problem with holidays…” I remember his late 90s Back to the Front show of straight stand-up very fondly.
“As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years” I think this government will cling on for the full term of five years to be fair. Though to be honest among the plush million pound houses many elderly fingers are likely to be frozen by the Spring.
