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Warming Up

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Tonight we watched last week’s SNL UK with Phoebe. She’s 11 and I don’t know whether that makes us bad parents, but I was listening to Derek and Clive tapes from about the age of 12 (certainly by the time I was 14).

And it was stuff like this that set me on the way to be the man I am today.....

Oh God. We’ve made a terrible mistake.

I don’t know if my parents knew what I was listening to - I am pretty sure I bought the Derek and Clive cassettes myself from WH Smith (probably why they’ve had to shut the place down). We were certainly allowed to get on with stuff alone back in those days - our kids barely have an unsupervised second (though they do have Youtube which makes finding awful inappropriate stuff a bit less of a hassle).

As you no doubt know I wasn’t too interested in music, but my comedy tapes and LPs - starting with my brother’s “Monty Python- Live At Drury Lane” tape and then progressing through all available audio Python, Not The Nine o Clock News and Peter Cook and Dudley Moor, were my comedy education.

I can still recite most of it - and often find myself singing the obscure musical about Freddie Laker even today (about 1 hour 18.30 in)

Gatwick, I’m old and fatwick. I don’t think I could really have understood it back in the 80s, but it will make almost no sense to anyone now (though still works as a Lloyd Webber parody). Burned into my brain. Even though I haven’t listened to it since 1985.

And so just in case my daughter is foolish enough to become a comedian (and she’s got enough talent to do something more admirable than that) it’s good she’s getting a proper education and she seems to be able to discern good stuff from bad stuff.

SNL UK continues to be well worth your time and there’s a good variety of stuff on display. I love how eclectic it is, some stuff aimed at a young audience, some aimed at older people, but for me the mad and obscure stuff is where it takes off.

I was really pleased that they did a parody of a 42-year old advert. Some commentators would no doubt criticise them for not being up to the minute with this, but the beauty of this sketch is that it works if you have no idea what it’s based on (Phoebe was laughing throughout -as was George Fouracres), but if you get the reference it’s extra fun.

I’ve long loved the original ad, partly because it clearly stars the actor Kevin Eldon and thus proves that he is a vampire

The best work he’s done including Norm from the Twix advert

Hope SNL parody those next.

Anyway, SNL UK continues to develop into something exciting, important with a very good hit rate of being funny. Aimee Lou Wood was the best host yet (love that they went for jokes about her being weird, over jokes about her teeth - though they were unlikely to go there after the SNL US debacle), I think and I like that she was in pretty much all the sketches.

For real ground-breaking topical comedy though, check out today’s Craven Newsround.

Low quality doggerel

Behind the Paywall

You can have this one for free

The Milky bras are on me.

(mostly my poems are better than this one)