Alexei Sayle's Stuff
Encyclopedia
Alexei Sayle's Stuff is a comedy sketch show which ran on BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 for a total of 18 episodes over 3 series from 1988 to 1991.

Cast

Alexei Sayle's Stuff stars stand-up comedian Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle
Alexei David Sayle is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007...

, with a recurring cast including Angus Deayton
Angus Deayton
Gordon Angus Deayton is an English actor, writer, musician, comedian and broadcaster. He is best known for his role as Victor Meldrew's long-suffering neighbour Patrick Trench in the comedy series One Foot in the Grave...

, Mark Williams
Mark Williams (actor)
Mark Williams is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter and presenter. He is best known as one of the stars of the popular BBC sketch show The Fast Show, as well as for his role as Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films....

, Arabella Weir
Arabella Weir
Arabella Weir is a British comedian, actress and writer.The daughter of former British ambassador Sir Michael Weir, she is best known for her roles in The Fast Show and for writing several books including the international best seller Does My Bum Look Big In This? Arabella Weir (born 6 December...

, Tony Millan, Jan Ravens
Jan Ravens
Janet "Jan" Ravens is an English actress and impressionist, famous for her voices on Spitting Image and Dead Ringers.-Early life:...

, Owen Brenman
Owen Brenman
Owen Brenman is an English actor best known for his role as next-door neighbour Nick Swainey in the multi-award-winning BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave, which ran for ten years and was written by David Renwick. He currently plays Dr...

, Harriet Thorpe
Harriet Thorpe
-TV:She was in the mid-to-late 1990s British television sitcom The Brittas Empire, playing Carole Parkinson, the receptionist who was prone to depression and fits of emotion who permanently kept her children with her, in drawers under her desk and would sometimes be seen feeding them or washing...

, and Felicity Montagu
Felicity Montagu
Felicity Montagu is an English actress, known for her performances in radio and television comedy series and films.Educated at Loughborough University and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, Felicity Montagu has played the foil to a series of prominent comedy characters.-Television:Montagu...

.

Synopsis

Sketches are interspersed with Sayle's trademarked angry stand-up monologues delivered from increasingly odd locations about England> Sayle is seen traversing the country on a moped
Moped
Mopeds are a type of low-powered motorcycle designed to provide economical and relatively safe transport with minimal licensing requirements.Mopeds were once all equipped with bicycle-like pedals , but moped has been increasingly applied by governments to vehicles without pedals, based on their...

 in a vague attempt to catalogue and comprehend all the "stuff" about him. The style of humour is often surreal, blunt and offensive to many. The bulk of the content was written by Sayle himself, with Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall (writer)
Andrew Marshall is an English comedy screenwriter, most noted for the domestic sitcom 2point4 children. He was also the inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

 and David Renwick
David Renwick
David Peter Renwick is an English television writer, best known for creation of the sitcom One Foot in the Grave and the mystery series Jonathan Creek....

. Additional material was contributed by long time collaborator David Stafford
David Stafford
David Stafford is a writer, broadcaster and occasional musician born 1949 in Birmingham, England.Stafford began his career in fringe and community theatre in the 1970s...

 and comedian and promoter Huw David Thomas. Although Sayle's humour in the programme covers many bases, politics is always a favorite target: "Recently I had to get married, 'cos I got my girlfriend into trouble - got her involved in the civil war in Angola." Various episodes also feature sketches based around BBC2 presentation, including satirical continuity announcers and faux-pas trailers; this humour is similar to Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett was an English comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Born Maurice James Christopher Cole, Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for the Kenny Everett television shows.-Early life:...

's jokes towards Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....

 and later, BBC1.

At the beginning of series 2 (in a sequence spoofing the creation of Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

's Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...

) it is revealed that Alexei Sayle is in fact a cartoon character. Viewers are shown a short extract from Sayle's very first animated appearance from 50 years previously, named 'Steamboat Fatty' (spoofing Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...

, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon), as well as Mouseketeer
Mickey Mouse Club
The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that began in 1955, produced by Walt Disney Productions and televised by the ABC, featuring a regular but ever-changing cast of teenage performers. The Mickey Mouse Club was created by Walt Disney...

-esque children dancing around wearing bald wigs. An edited down version of this sketch becomes the title sequence for series 2.
Series 1's titles feature a young fit hunk being turned by prosthetics into Mr Sayle, to the accompaniment of Dion
Dion DiMucci
Dion Francis DiMucci , better known as Dion, is an American singer-songwriter whose work has incorporated elements of doo-wop, pop oldies music, rock and R&B styles....

's hit The Wanderer
The Wanderer (Dion song)
"The Wanderer" is a song written by Ernie Maresca and originally recorded by Dion. The song, with a 12-bar blues-base verse and an eight-bar bridge, tells the story of a travelling man and his many loves...

.
Series 3's title sequence are a pastiche of Zorro
Zorro
Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by New York-based pulp writer Johnston McCulley. The character has been featured in numerous books, films, television series, and other media....

 meets Juke Box Jury
Juke Box Jury
Juke Box Jury was a musical panel show which originally ran on BBC Television from 1 June 1959 until December 1967. The programme was based on the American show Jukebox Jury, itself an offshoot of a long-running radio series....

- the theme song being sung mariachi
Mariachi
Mariachi is a genre of music that originated in the State of Jalisco, in Mexico. It is an integration of stringed instruments highly influenced by the cultural impacts of the historical development of Western Mexico. Throughout the history of mariachi, musicians have experimented with brass, wind,...

 style ("This fat renegade / Carves a 'B' with his blade / A 'B' that stands for 'Bastard'.")

One episode in series 2 begins with a lengthy spoof of Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo is a British television series, which ran on BBC1 between 1980 and 1985. The theme of the series concerned a female police inspector who took over control of a police station in the fictional town of Hartley in Lancashire.-Programme name:...

featuring actress Anna Carteret
Anna Carteret
Anna Carteret is a British stage and screen actress, born in Bangalore, India the daughter of Peter John Wilkinson and his wife Patricia Carteret . She is married to the television and film director Christopher Morahan and has often worked with him...

.
Viewers are fooled into believing that the first few minutes of the programme are a Juliet Bravo episode, the illusion being broken only when one of her male colleagues appears not to "know what a woman is".
Similar blending and bending of the boundaries of TV formats continues throughout the series.

As one might expect from the "Marxist" comedian and "Godfather of alternative comedy
Alternative comedy
Alternative comedy is a term that originated in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era, and typically avoids relying on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt defines it as "comedy where the...

," sketches involve many historical characters (particularly socialist ones) interspersed with biting comments on contemporary British politics. Large volumes of venom are projected in the direction of the "arch-nemesis of 1980s alternative comedy," Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

.

Memorable sketches

  • Beauty Miss - personal beauty products, as used by George Bernard Shaw
    George Bernard Shaw
    George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

     and Berthold Brecht
  • Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

    's "The Noble Art of Verbal Abuse" - for protection against Millwall
    Millwall F.C.
    Millwall Football Club is an English professional football club based in South Bermondsey, south east London, that plays in the Football League Championship, the second tier of English football. Founded as Millwall Rovers in 1885, the club has retained its name despite having last played in the...

     fans
  • An interview with "Sir Freddy Krueger
    Freddy Krueger
    Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...

    ," new head of the English National Opera
    English National Opera
    English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

  • Joan Alone - Joan of Arc
    Joan of Arc
    Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

     plugging her autobiography, record, etc., during interrogation
  • Unemployment
    Unemployment
    Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

     and Teletext
    Teletext
    Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...

     - twin scourges of the 1990s
  • Issues - A treatise on Islamic politics with waitresses Samantha, Tina, and Babs
  • Hooray for British Films - a satirical attack on the then dire state of the British film industry
  • International Olympic Committee
    International Olympic Committee
    The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

     looking round a council house
    Council house
    A council house, otherwise known as a local authority house, is a form of public or social housing. The term is used primarily in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at...

     in London with a view to staging the games inside it
  • A drinks party with Triffid
    Triffid
    The triffid is a tall, mobile, carnivorous, prolific and highly venomous fictional plant species—the titular antagonist in John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids and Simon Clark's 2001 sequel The Night of the Triffids....

    s
  • Firemen get dainty new uniforms and prance around like fashion models while out on the job
  • Santa Claus : Polar Czar - World At War-style expose of Father Christmas
    Father Christmas
    Father Christmas is the name used in many English-speaking countries for a figure associated with Christmas. A similar figure with the same name exists in several other countries, including France , Spain , Brazil , Portugal , Italy , Armenia , India...

     as murderous dictator.
  • A Few Moments With Lord William Rees-Mogg
    William Rees-Mogg
    William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg is an English journalist and life peer.-Education:Rees-Mogg was educated at Clifton College Preparatory School in Bristol and Charterhouse School in Godalming, followed by Balliol College, Oxford...

    - in episode 2 of series 3, on seven occasions throughout the show a photograph of Rees-Mogg was displayed on screen while Herb Alpert's The Swinger from Seville (burlesque
    Burlesque
    Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

    -style music with an audience clearly audible in the background) was played over the top. After the first time it was shown, the BBC2 voiceover (Angus Deayton) apologised and assured the viewers at home that it would not happen again. It was then immediately brought back to the screen.
  • A man who was decapitated and had to have an artificial head attached, in a documentary called "Man or Chess Piece?".
  • A spoof news broadcast detailing how Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

     uses the TARDIS
    TARDIS
    The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...

     from Doctor Who
    Doctor Who
    Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

     to go back in time and visit a Black Plague clinic, then goes forward to visit an NHS
    National Health Service
    The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

     hospital in the future, which looks exactly the same. She is quoted as saying that people should stop worrying about the Daleks exterminating people and instead focus on the opportunities they bring to electronics industry.
  • Most episodes in Series 3 feature the recurring character "Monsieur Aubergine", a mime artist who is part Mr Bean and part Marcel Marceau
    Marcel Marceau
    Marcel Marceau was an internationally acclaimed French actor and mime most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.-Early years:...

    .

Legacy

Alexei Sayle's Stuff was a critical success and a prelude to his 1994 series The All New Alexei Sayle Show
The All New Alexei Sayle Show
The All New Alexei Sayle Show was a comedy sketch show broadcast on BBC2 television for a total of twelve episodes, over two series in 1994 and 1995...

, which was remarkably similar in content and was likewise followed by Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round
Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round
Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round was a comedy sketch show which ran on BBC2 for a total of 6 episodes over one series in 1998.Alexei Sayle's final series was almost identical in format to The All New Alexei Sayle Show...

in 1998.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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