Comedy Showdown II: Horne and Corden and Hale and Pace

It’s that time again.

Horne and Corden (series one, episode three, BBC Three 2009) versus Hale and Pace (series four, episode one, LWT 1991). The first five sketches from each. Best sketch of each round wins a point.

What with H&C soundly ruining our comparison of them with Cannon & Ball during last week’s bondage and piss infused episode (although Tommy and Bobby outscored them when it came to unabashed homophobia), we’ve upped the controversy stakes for round two. We’ve decided to pair the duo up with the much-maligned Hale and Pace, First thing to point out here: we never really had much time for Hale and Pace, as them taking up the coveted 10pm Sunday night slot meant there was no room for Hot Metal, Not With A Bang or Spitting Image. Second thing to point out here: we’d never really noticed until now, but physically Hale and Pace were very much the Tim and Eric of their day. Go on, pencil a moustache onto a picture of Eric Wareheim, you’ll see the resemblance. But tish and fipsy, on with the scoring.

 

ROUND ONE:

Horne & Corden:
Mr H and Mr C bound onto the stage in jeans a T-shirts and high-five their audience, as per usual, and as per that episode of Larry Sanders where an ailing Larry finally sold out to the network for a few more viewers. After customary greetings, the pair welcome a ‘special audience member’, who turns out to be in a wheelchair. Uh-oh!

There’s a heartfelt appeal from Corden about the need for Josie to get a motorised wheelchair. Event go all Noel’s HQ on us when it reveals Corden and Horne have stumped up the cash for a brand new, erm, electric chair…

Oh dear. A misunderstanding had happened. Corden is dismayed, and Horne expresses his similar dismay over his faux-pas, having misunderstood the meaning behind the term “ease the pain for her parents”. There is a mention of how the chair had to be shipped in from Texas especially, so there are a few consolation points on offer for hugely mistimed satire. Take that, Texas Governor George W. Bush!

Hale & Pace:
Over to H&P@itv. After the into which sees the pair impressed by CGI fish, then perturbed by a CGI shark bearing the H&P branding, we’re into a police line-up. The camera pans across several men, before cutting to an old dear (the witness) being asked to take her time before picking out the perp by N. Pace (a detective).

Subsequent politically incorrect hilarity duly ensures when we discover the suspect is the solitary tall black man in the line-up otherwise composed of short-to-medium-height white men. The old dear picks out one of the white men as the crim, only for N. Pace to suggest she might have meant the tall black man after all. The old dear isn’t sure, so N. Pace suggests she take a bit of a rest and try again.

Fade to black, and fade to a shot of the old dear trying again. Only – my stars! – the remainder of the line-up is now comprised of white women. The old dear still isn’t sure. Fade-black-fade-back, and it’s third go for the old dear. Now the line-up is made even easier for the old dear:

Still not sure, so time for one last fade-to-later:

The old dear still isn’t sure, so the police nick the black guy for wasting police time.

 

The scores:

Both skits stomp all over the cabbage patch of Perceived Good Taste, but while H&C got their bit out of the way that bit sooner, at least Hale and Pace had a kind of escalating multi-gag in their sketch. Plus it was clearly more of a go at institutionally racist policemen rather than being in any racist itself, in a similar (though less amusing) manner to Not The Nine’s Constable Savage sketch.

Horne and Corden: 0, Hale and Pace: 1

 

ROUND TWO:

H&C:
Corden and Horne are both plastered in fake tan and have HTML colour code ffffff level teeth. They chastise the viewer for their shambolic body, and recommend a Power Shake to everyone in the shoutiest manner possible. Circuitous language leaves the pretend-infomercial viewer unaware of how good or bad it actually is for you.

At the end of the advert, a voiceover announces that said product has no positive aspects whatsoever.

H&P:
A pair of heavy metal roadies, who speak in Bad Keith Richards Impersonation voices. They mention, in a stoned drawl, how they see a lot of gigs by The Stones (“we got Stoned”), Wet Wet Wet (“we got Wet”), and Big Country (“we got lost”). The audience erupts. For some unfathomable reason.

The scores:

Ach, what the hell. At least the Horne and Corden sketch made a vague sort of comedic sense in relation to the audience reaction (i.e. more muted), and it won’t hurt to level the score out a bit.

Horne and Corden: 1, Hale and Pace: 1

ROUND THREE:

H&C:
News spoof. Will the Comedy Stereotypical Gay Man character be there? Yes, this time at a hostage siege.

Going by the mindset of a lazily-stereotypical gay man, sieges are ‘dead boring’, and hostages having bombs strapped to them are an underwhelming fashion statement. It turns out that one of the terrorists is “so fit” and that CSGM wants to get his number, so he runs off camera. Off-camera carnage ensues.

H&P:
Pub sketch. Hale is with his new girlfriend, who is refusing to use various types of contraceptive (“what, you reckon a hysterectomy is going too far?”) as he doesn’t fancy wearing a condom. His protests continue, as he tries to persuade her to relent. It then turns out he’s been re-using the same condom for years. No, hang on, that brand! Not the same,,, boh.

 

The argument continues, and Hale’s new girlfriend remarks on how lucky he is chaps aren’t expected to just use half a lemon in this modern age. Hale relents, and agrees to get some drinks. He asks the barman for “a bitter and a Martini with ice and lemon”. The barman retorts “lemon? Your lucky night again, is it?” Hale looks suitably admonished, and the sketch ends.

The scores:

The hysterectomy line drew a reluctant guffaw from the BrokenTV panel. meaning it automatically wins the round. Such is the way we roll.

Horne and Corden: 1, Hale and Pace: 2

 

ROUND FOUR:

H&C:
Another one of Corden’s blatant copies of The Fast Show’s “Jesse’s Fashion” sketches. This time:

“A tril-by hat.” Oh dear.

 

H&P:
Hale and Pace, on a sofa, playing themselves. They modestly address their own famousness, and vow to ‘touch base’ with the populace, relating how they used to be teachers before they were famous. Hale remarks on how terrible Pace was as a teacher, and how he still made it to The Big Time. Pace winces a little, then relates a tale of how Hale was also a teacher, and how he’d somehow circumnavigated his side-career as a porn actor to make it to that very same Big Time. Hale tries to laugh this off as matey banter, only for Pace to produce a copy of the sordid VHS in question. “The Adventures Of Captain Hornblower.”

“I was passing the Hot Rod video shop the other day, and I thought, ‘I recognise that moustache’. Then I realised, ‘that’s not a moustache’, but I still recognised it!” Said grotflick is revealed to also include a goat and a bath of custard.

Hale discovers that the tape is missing from the case, leading to Pace’s revelation that the incriminating tape is in the video recorder in the corner of the room, which in turn is linked to the transmitter of the '”entire ITV network". Pace goads to audience into requesting a viewing of this spuff epic, leading to a huge reaction from the studio throng.

Pace presses a button on the remote, but all that appears is an interference-filled screen with a green “AV1” caption in the corner of the screen. He proclaims that, as a friend, he is actually wiping the tape. Hale extravagantly counts his blessings, but then asks why Pace would do such a thing. Pace reveals that his actions have only increased the marketable value of his other tape “The Adventures Of Gareth and Neddy”. The subsequent argument reveals “Neddy” to be a donkey.

The scores:

Bestial shenanigans aside, mentions of “a bathful of custard” and “the entire ITV network” clearly reign supreme over blatantly copying a short sketch from The Fast Show, and even then failing to deliver the lines in anywhere near as supreme a manner as Mark Williams.

Horne and Corden: 1, Hale and Pace: 3

 

ROUND FIVE:

WILL NOT BE NEEDED. Another epic fail for Horne & Corden. Tune in next week for another battle between H&C and… well, whatever we can dredge up.

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Fingers Crossed For Imperial Phase Bob Greaves

The ITV Sport website seems to have had a bit of a facelift, and with it a move to proper Flash video. That’s good news for us, for a couple of reasons. One, the embedded video player they used to use just resulted in us getting a Directshow error. But the more interesting Two is: they’re using it for some pretty interesting things. Like doing something with their archive, instead of just stomping around YouTube insisting archive clips from the network are removed.

It’s the Yorkshire Television logo. What could be behind it, we wonder.

Oh hells yeah. The full – that’s FULL – edition of Calendar from 1974 where Brian Clough tussled with Don Revie just after his dismissal from Leeds United. All 26 minutes and four seconds of it.

This is what we want, and no we don’t mind having a couple of (modern-day) adverts beforehand, as these things do need to be paid for. It’s not that often people use the word ‘excellent’ in the same sentence as the words ‘ITV’ and ‘Sport’, but in this case doing so is wholly appropriate. More online archivery if you please, Mr Grade. Especially when it comes to local news programmes.

See the full show here: http://www.itv.com/Sport/Football/News/Generalnews/ManualStories/Cloughclips/default.html

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The Truth

Without wanting to seem overly mawkish, we'll just link to a piece from this morning's Today programme. A truly moving account of the disaster from Alan Green, followed by some insipid point-evasion by David Blunkett MP.

Click image to open in new page/tab

After listening to the above, this is well worth reading, and makes it quite clear what a certain soaraway publication is capable of. To those seeking an alternate point of view on the matter, read the comments from 'David Duff' underneath the Bob Piper blog post.

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You Are No Longer Here: Huge Pictorial Update

"The colour of infinity inside an empty glass / It's for this experimental film / Which nobody knows about / And which I'm still figuring out / What's going to go in my experimental film?"

So sang They Might Be Giants on their track “Experimental Film”, the album opener for their underrated 2004 opus ‘The Spine’. Sadly, TMBG have never actually made a film along those lines. But luckily, a British pop duo with a similar sense of longevity have.

It’s generally regarded that The Monkee’s ‘Head’ is by far the strangest movie starring a pop band ever made. However, there is a challenger for the crown: 1988 saw the release of It Couldn’t Happen Here (dir. Jack Bond), a frankly deranged outing for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

We were a sprightly fourteen years old by the time we finally got to see the film, after having to wait for the video release due to being slightly too young to catch the limited cinema release (it was rated ‘15’). Before then, like most viewers of Top of the Pops, No Limits and The Chart Show, we’d seen the trailer-cum-pop-video for the movie umpteen times, used as it was for promoting the Pettoes' 1987 Christmas number one, their majestic cover of ‘Always On My Mind’. Basically, it looked like the best gosh-darned film ever.

Look at all that stuff going on. Joss Ackland playing a Stephen Wright-quoting serial killer. Neil dressed as Elvis. Glitzy London nightspots playing host to altercations with a trio of rappers. Babs Windsor on the phone to Neil. A giggling dummy in an air traffic control tower holding a gun. A biplane. Chris chucking a huge breakfast over Barbara Windsor. Gareth Hunt and a plastic chicken. Loads of other shenanigans. How could it possibly be anything other than a rip-roaring caper comedy to rival the Italian Job and It’s A Mad Mad World?

Then we finally saw it, and found out that all of the events in the promo aren’t actually connected. They’re just a bunch of stuff that happens, with little rhyme or reason attached to their place in the plot, such as it was. The basic story is this. Neil and Chris buy a car, and go off somewhere. Along the way, things happen, many of which make little sense, especially to a fourteen-year-old who doesn’t feel quite so grown up all of a sudden. But, surely when we grew up, we’d know exactly what was going on in this film. We were just too young to ‘get’ it, that's all. Surely.

Twenty years pass. We purchase a VHS copy of It Couldn’t Happen Here from a car boot sale for the princely sum of One British Pound. Earlier on today, we connected up our old VCR, and put the tape on. At long last, with the worldly ways we’ve picked up in the interim, this is all finally going to slide into some sort of coherent…. nope, it’s still utterly bewildering.

There are a few things we did notice upon watching the film, which we are about to outline in bullet point form, because it’s easier than putting them into proper paragraphs, and because then you’d all be expecting ‘context’ and ‘reasoning’ and shit.

* It’s not really a very good film. It is however quite interesting, not to mention oddly compelling. The sort of film that should be watched at least once by everyone who is into this sort of thing (either surreal British films, the Pet Shop Boys, or former Carry On actresses being pelted with fried eggs).

* Throughout the entire film, where Neil and Chris meet up then go off and have adventures on the way to somewhere, they never actually speak to each other. Not even once. For reasons we can’t quite put into place, this is an excellent thing.

* Watching this film proves just how brilliant the album Actually really is. We’d forgotten just how good, which is quite shocking as it was the first album we ever bought with our own money. At Our Price records in Wrexham, in 1987, for £5.99, on vinyl, if you were wondering.

* The overall experience of watching the film can be explained quite well by putting together snapshots of several choice moments from it, and then trying our best to explain what’s going on. If you haven’t got a copy of it, this might well be as close as you’ll get to seeing it, seeing as it’s now been removed from Google Video (mainly because Google Video doesn’t exist any more), it has long since been deleted on VHS, and there are no plans for it to be released on DVD.

SIX MAJESTICALLY DEMENTED BITS FROM ‘IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE.’

1.

The intro to the tremendous Disco Mix of It’s A Sin swells in the background. Eerie blank-faced men in hats, overcoats and brightly coloured wigs clamour around What The Butler Saw machines, near the seafront of Clacton-on-sea.

One of the machines is being inspected by a youthful Neil and Chris, who have sneaked away from the blind Catholic priest who has taken their class to the seaside. The camera cuts to what is being played on said machine. A maid (played by Babs Windsor) is dusting.

A butler (played by Neil Tennant) mischievously sneaks behind and tweaks her bottom. The maid giggles, and butler Tennant gives her a peck on the cheek. RELEVANT INFO. in the film, Babs Windsor plays Neil Tennant’s mother.

The master of the house (played by Chris Lowe) appears, holding a riding crop. The butler scarpers, as the master proceeds to chase playfully after the giggling maid, practicing the swing of his crop as he goes. Suddenly, the maid grabs hold of the riding crop, and the tables are turned. Master Lowe slips, and falls on a chaise longue. The maid jumps on top of him, and they embrace.

The camera cuts back to the exterior of the machine. Young Tennant/Lowe are nearly spotted by Fr Joss Ackland (well, smelt – he is blind, after all), and they run off. With them departed, Fr Ackland tries looking at the machine, only to declare it isn’t working.

2.

In the scene immediately following, the boys are in a different part of the funfair. They are standing next to a ferris wheel that Blind Father Ackland has stumbled onto.

Occupying the other compartments of the ferris wheel are:

A plump woman in her underwear eating a big cake,

Two members of a motorcycle gang getting drunk,

A pair of mud wrestlers,

Dracula and an unsuspecting maiden,

And a man doing horse.

3.

The bit everyone know about. Neil and Chris stop to pick up a lady hitch-hiker, only for serial killer Joss Ackland to jump her (off-camera), and nip into the car instead. As they drive, Neil sings ‘Always On My Mind’, while Joss Ackland reels off a load of gags stolen from Stephen Wright.

Unlike the ‘Always…’ video (as embedded above), the scene in the film stays with the interior of the car. However, this remains interesting thanks to the cavalcade of wonderful facial expressions Ackland treats us to as Neil sings. If you do get a copy of this film, keep your gaze fixed on Ackland’s fizzog throughout the song. It’s a visual treat that keeps on giving.

4.

A brilliant scene in an all-night cafe. Neil and Chris have just ordered an opulent feast from the waitress (“…and the Chateau La Fete 1942”), when a fastidious ventriloquist (played wonderfully by Gareth Hunt) enters, and sits down at the adjoining table.

His actions cause Neil and Chris to giggle themselves silly, as he very deliberately reels off his order to the waitress in his very best Shakespearean voice (“egg… beans… and chips. Two sausages… one large… one small…” – look, it’s funny when you see it, okay?).

Before his meal is served, his dummy demands to be let out of his suitcase. The ventriloquist relents, and as he scoffs his meal, the dummy trots out an existentialist dialogue on the very concept of time, and whether teacups actually exist. While all this is going on, a biplane pilot (played by Neil Dickson, pretty much reprising his role from Biggles: Adventures in Time) sits in the background, repeatedly trying to calculate two divided by zero on a Speak & Math machine.

5.

After getting annoyed with the expensive feast enjoyed by the Boys in the all-night cafeteria, the ventriloquist’s dummy has now employed the biplane pilot, and tasked him with killing Neil and Chris.

As the pilot reads a book on existentialism (written by the dummy), his wooden paymaster’s voice plays out over a public address system. Sinister Dummy repeats the details of the meal ordered by the boys (“Oysters… finger bowls… on a silver platter…”) with scornful derision. Wowed by the philosophical musings on the subject of chronology, the pilot hops in a plane, and sets out to shoot the Boys’ 1952 Ford Zephyr off the road.

This he does, only doing enough to halt their car in it’s tracks, leaving Neil and Chris alive, but very much hampered in their quest to reach Wherever It Is They’re Going To. This pleases the pilot, who laughs manically, as does the dummy, watching from a nearby control tower.

6.

In an earlier scene, Neil mentions to his mum (played, of course, by Peggy Mitchell, meaning Neil is at least step-brother to Grant and Phil) how “Dad used to leave the house in a flaming temper”. After the Boys fail to get their car fixed (by letting a load of skinheads bang out a tune on the engine with spanners, just after they’ve finished kicking the shit out of a telephone box), we see a scene where a much younger Neil’s Mum (played by someone who isn’t Babs Windsor) looks forlornly across the street to a neighbour snipping off a buttonhole for her husband. She looks down at her husband leaving the house, and thinks to herself why a similar floral accoutrement wouldn’t really work for him:

Yes, Neil’s dad would leave the house in what was – quite literally – a flaming temper. Well, a flaming suit anyway.

Real fire, mind. British CGI at the time could barely make it beyond the odd Quantel spinny box. A man hangs a 'brickwork’ poster on top of an advertising billboard, as Neil’s Dad walks to his car.

The car is, of course, similarly aflame.

Anyway, Neil and Chris get the train instead, which contains a menagerie. But going into more detail with that would involve listing another scene, so you’ll just have to track down a copy of the film if you want to see any more.

In summary: A wholly interesting (if not, as we said earlier, actually that good) little curio, all cobbled together to appease fans after Neil and Chris declined to go on tour. Now, why can’t Girls Aloud do something like this?

[update]
EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS: Thrillingly, we've been contacted on Twitter by Chris Lowe (blimey), who tells us "Very interesting. There are plans to release it on DVD." You heard it here first, assuming that isn't already mentioned elsewhere.

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While Channel Four Had Max Headroom...

Thames' Christmas tape for 1985 couldn't quite stretch to the level of plastering Matt Frewer in latex and digitising him a bit, so don't expect much from this clip. Now, who wants to see Rod, Jane and Freddy being shot at by a BBC Micro Mode 7 phallus? Roll 1:20... (warning: contains Jim Davidson)

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The Big Piece About Britain’s Got Talent

Britain’s Got Talent, eh? Maybe we should write something about that, given that it seems to be even more of a phenomenon than ever this year. Thing is though, we haven’t watched any of it this time round.

This isn’t due to some self-imagined intellectual agenda on avoiding The Light Channel when Harry Hill isn’t on it, or because we’re always too drunk to focus on anything by the time it airs. There is another reason. Conjure up a mental image of this tableau: you’ve got an unheralded, slightly old-fashioned variety act, who have been practicing their mesmerizingly original act for almost twenty years. It could be sword-swallowing, badger juggling, identifying the contents of sealed packages solely by their Amazon sales rank, it doesn’t really matter.

They’ll have been spending as much of their spare time as possible honing their five minute act, with the ambition of one day making the leap onto television (not necessarily in a literal sense). It’s not easy, what with having to work at the hospice on twelve-hour shifts, then getting home to look after the three kids on their own, but somehow they’ve always found a couple of spare hours every evening to nip off to the garage to perfect that tricky triple-somersault onto the vaulting horse of spikes.

Sure, it meant time in hospital, those three months in an oxygen tent after getting distracted by their mobile just as they hit the springboard, that four months without any solids after falling awkwardly off the flaming skateboard, but some lessons are best learned the hard way.

One day, they read an advert about auditions for a new talent show being launched on ITV, former home to the iconic show Sunday Night At The London Palladium. This is wonderful timing, their act has now been honed to near perfection. They go through a number of regional heats. A few bumps, scrapes, arguments and a Soviet-class amount of patient queuing along the way, finally, they are told by a researcher that they have been given the chance to perform on the big televised stage. Launch show for the series. Live. Ten million viewers will see them. This is it. The culmination of all that effort. It’ll all be worth it when they walk out onto the stage, leaving behind the countless hours of practice, the broken bones, the acrimonious splits from three different partners, and into the homes, no, into the hearts of the British public, ready to give the performance of their lifetime.

Only for Piers Morgan to sit there afterwards, oozing with smarm, wrongness, and oily glee, his mad-shaped head having decided that he hasn’t been needlessly nasty about someone for a few acts, so he’ll tell the next act that they look stupid and they should just go back to their day job, whatever that is. Piers Morgan. Disgraced former newspaper editor Piers Morgan. Thin-lipped smugtard Piers sodding Morgan. Yeah, you tell ‘em Piers. They may been able to master the art of riding a flaming unicycle along a greasy tightrope while blowing a glass swan at the same time as looking after a family and doing a sixty-hour-a-week job, but have they ever been asked to appear on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice? No. No, they haven’t.

Mind you, they’d probably be able to recognise an amateurishly faked photograph of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, so it’s all relative, isn’t it?

(We may watch it next week.)

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Let’s Have A Cack Celebration

This week sees the release of Depeche Mode’s one hundredth studio album, Sounds Of The Universe. Despite our disappointment with pretty much everything they’ve done since Ultra, we’ve just bought it. In preparation for the new offering, to rekindle our affection for Basildon’s finest noisesmiths we’ve spent much of the last week chasing down as many DM remix bootlegs as we can find.

As one might expect by their very definition – albums containing unofficial remixes compiled by people with no access to the original components of each track – they’re generally a mixed bunch, but there’s one thing many of them have in common: really bad cover art. With this in mind, we present to you -

THE TOP SIX BAD ALBUM COVERS FROM UNOFFICIAL DEPECHE MODE BOOTLEG REMIX COMPILATIONS

This may seem a little harsh. After all, the intent behind each compilation was to collect together rare, exciting and exclusive cuts from the Dep’s back catalogue. “That may well be,” say we, “but a lot of these were sold through record shops and eBay, so a bit of care when it came to the artwork wouldn’t have gone amiss, now would it?”

“Oh yeah, and I suppose you can do better, bignose?” You may well be saying at this point. Well, taking about five minutes, including the time it took to load Photoshop and type a query into Google Images, we cobbled together the following:

Yep, rubbish. But hey, literally five minutes work. So, let’s see some designs worse than that one. With sarcastic comments as if we’re Mark fecking Farrow or someone*.

(*Mark Farrow is one of our favourite designers of album art and packaging, and not someone who routinely slags other people’s work off, like we’re about to. We should probably point that out. We could just have made a joke about us being the Piers Morgan of album art criticism, but that’d just make us look schtoopid after that previous update.)

6. Bloodlines

An image taken by typing “leaf” into Google Image Search. A Photoshop filter that dicks around with a few colours. A vaguely gothic freeware font. Thirty seconds work. Job done.

5. Only When I Lose Myself

So, you’ve got a folder full of freeware Photoshop filters. Why not try applying them all at once?

4. We Create A Monster

The band name is copy-pasted from the Ultra artwork, meaning this cover was designed some time since 1998. That just makes the background a little bit baffling, as it’s seemingly the result of the demo mode of some public domain artwork generator given away free on a coverdisk from CU Amiga circa 1993. Add on some clip-art and some Word Art from Microsoft Word 97, and you’ve got an album cover. Of sorts.

3. Apologize 4.0

Yeah, you probably ought to.

2. The Butterfly Effect

The image itself could have worked, but when it comes to the lettering… ach. We’ve just tried looking in our ‘fonts’ folder to try and find out the name of that horrid typeface, but come up short because – despite it being a Windows default – we’ve long deleted it. And to compound matters: it’s in pink. Look, if you’re going for ‘dark and moody’, steer clear of pink lettering in a rubbish font. Really. We’re not being needlessly sarcastic when we say that when it come down to this album cover, presumably it’s only a coin-toss that saved us from seeing Comic Sans here.

1. Sounds Of The Universe

Really, now this takes the biscuit. The typeface used for the album title and the ‘epeche ode’ part of the band name is quite nice, but just look at the rest of it! Let your kid sister have a play on MS Paint, did you!? Jeepers H Crackers. Of all the hamfisted stabs at putting together an album cover for your crappy bootleg mix of tracks you’ve copied from other Dep Mode bootleg albums, this is by far the… [checks iTunes ‘Now Playing’ window more closely] ah. Erm. Yeah.

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