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The Mary Whitehouse Experience
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The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a British topical sketch comedy show produced by the BBC in association with Spitting Image Productions. It starred David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Steve Punt, and Hugh Dennis and was broadcast on both radio and television in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It started in 1989 as a radio show, devised by Bill Dare, on BBC Radio 1. The two pairings of Newman and Baddiel and Punt and Dennis were central to the show and led to spin-off television series of their own.
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Encyclopedia
The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a British topical sketch comedy show produced by the BBC in association with Spitting Image Productions. It starred David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Steve Punt, and Hugh Dennis and was broadcast on both radio and television in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It started in 1989 as a radio show, devised by Bill Dare, on BBC Radio 1. The two pairings of Newman and Baddiel and Punt and Dennis were central to the show and led to spin-off television series of their own. Guest performers included Nick Hancock, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, and Mark Thomas.
The show was named after Mary Whitehouse, a prominent campaigner against what she saw as a decline in television standards and public morality. She became famous in the UK for her morality campaigns against shows including Monty Python's Flying Circus and Doctor Who.
Format
The series was a mix of surreal sketches and monologues, in a format similar to shows such as Mr. Show and The Kids in the Hall. The show featured a lot of satirical takes on famous people, films and TV shows of the day along with original character material.
Each show was made up of sections usually headed by a caption related to the topic about to be discussed. The caption took the form of 'The [topic] Experience'. One of the performers would begin talking about the topic in monologue form, sometimes with input from another performer who appeared in character. The monologue would make reference to a humorous scenario which would be played out in sketch form, returning either to the same topic or moving on to a different or loosely related one. Lines or characters from sketches might recur throughout the show either as a continuation of the original sketch or an invasion of another one.
The pace of the show was fairly rapid, helped by the inclusion of a boom camera in the studio which panned quickly around the audience and back to the stage at the beginning of each monologue. Each section was punctuated with a small excerpt of the theme music.
Recurring characters
Ray (played by Rob Newman)
A man afflicted with a disease that gives him a permanently sarcastic tone of voice, so that everything he says comes out sounding sarcastic, no matter how sincerely he means it. This sketch is presented as a medical case history told by Ray's psychiatrist (played by David Baddiel), who gives accounts of various situations in which Ray's affliction has got him into trouble. These are usually sensitive situations such as speaking out at a funeral, apologizing to an old man after running over his wife in his car, and complimenting a suicidal child on his drawings. At other times Ray has experienced near-fatal accidents, such as having an arrow shot through his brain, which are ignored by passers-by given that even his cries of pain sound sarcastic. Ray's disorder also affects his body language, as demonstrated in one sketch in which he converses with his deaf foster mother. Ray's psychiatrist discovers that the only things Ray's voice can say normally are those that he means sarcastically. In one sketch he makes friends with some media types, who appreciate his seemingly endless sarcasm when talking about the film Edward Scissorhands. In the final episode, on being given a Cure album as a present, Ray cannot bring himself to sound sarcastic when thanking his friend and, bizarrely, starts speaking Flemish (Dutch). Ray has quite a successful run of appearances on Flemish chat-shows, before the inevitable happens, and he begins speaking Dutch in a sarcastic tone. Ray often uses the phrase "Oh no, what a personal disaster" which became one of the show's most popular catchphrases.
Ivan (played by Rob Newman)
Ivan is a daytime television presenter who hosts a show similar to the BBC's Pebble Mill at One. His appearance became increasingly unusual as the sketches progressed (his hair ends up extremely ruffled and he has plasters on his face), however he appears at first glance to be like any normal daytime TV presenter. But Ivan is very over-emotional and will fly into a tormented rage at the slightest mention of anything vaguely bad. One such example is when a professional gardener he is interviewing tells him in passing that someone has trodden on and broken a garden cane he was going to use, and Ivan proceeds to fly into a hysterical rage and smash apart the whole greenhouse. Likewise, when informed that the situation is not so bad after all, Ivan will similarly react in an overly ecstatic manner, much to the annoyance of his guests.
Mr. Strange (played by Hugh Dennis, better known as the 'Milky Milky' sketch)
Mr. Strange is the archetypal 'man your mother warned you about', the weird man who walks around town in a dirty old mac, indulging in disturbingly eccentric behaviour. Mr. Strange's main trait is that he has an absurd addiction to off milk, and is constantly carrying cartons or bottles of milk with him, not only drinking from them but obsessively sniffing them before uttering the words "Lovely- Milky Milky" (which became another one of the show's most popular catchphrases). This in turn led to a novelty tie-in single, Milky Milky (Take Me To The Fridge) released as "Mr Strange and the Lactose Brotherhood" in 1992, as well as Punt and Dennis' tour of that year being named "The Milky Milky Tour".
One sketch features Mr. Strange as a contestant on Mastermind whose specialist subject is 'Milk and the way it smells' while another features him presenting a Party political broadcast offering himself as an alternative to the main political leaders because "I don't wash my pants - it's not nature's way".
History Today
Probably the show's most popular and well-known sketch, which made its debut in the second half of the show's second TV series. History Today is a historical discussion programme presented by two elderly, scholarly professors, both well-spoken and well-groomed. The first of these professors, who introduces each 'episode' and its topic of discussion, is played by David Baddiel although the character is never named. The second is Professor F. J. Lewis, Emeritus Professor of History at All Souls College, Oxford, who is played by Rob Newman. Each 'episode' begins as a standard historical debate, but quickly degenerates into a plethora of insults and playground-style name-calling as the two professors fling all manner of typical schoolboy-like insults at one another. The humour lies largely in the manner in which the professors maintain their well-spoken, formal tones despite the childishness of their insults. This sketch spawned perhaps the show's most popular catchphrase "...That's you, that is", spoken after they had described someone/something completely pathetic and/or disgusting. This sketch was later carried over into Newman and Baddiel's own show, Newman and Baddiel in Pieces.
Parodies
Robert Smith (played by Rob Newman)
A parody of the singer Robert Smith, front-man with the British rock band The Cure. Each sketch features Robert Smith and The Cure performing a particularly happy, cheery song or nursery rhyme in their standard downbeat, 'doom and gloom' Gothic rock style. These songs have included "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" originally by Rolf Harris, "The Laughing Policeman" and Tommy Steele's "Flash Bang Wallop". Robert Smith himself also made a guest appearance on the final episode of the show, in the last of the 'Ray' sketches, in which he was seen to sing "The Sun Has Got His Hat On".
Edward Colanderhands (played by Rob Newman)
A parody of the Tim Burton film "Edward Scissorhands", which featured a similar character but with colanders for hands instead of scissors. He was seen in a sketch helping a housewife to drain vegetables. He was also present in the Robert Smith sketch as an audience member clapping to the beat of the songs, instead of clapping his hands he clapped his colanders together and unlike the rest of the audience he showed immense enjoyment of the performance. He later returned as "Edward 'Good Movie Guide' Knob".
Mark and Tim
A parody of Mark Gardener and Tim Burgess. Rob Newman admits to growing his hair to look like Mark Gardener and Tim Burgess, out of respective bands Ride and The Charlatans, and while praising their musical accomplishments he demonstrates why you wouldn't want to 'hang out with them' in several scenarios. These include playing soccer, helping to check if Rob's car brake lights are working and as backup while Rob is being held at knife point. In each event both Tim and Mark remain silent and motionless apart from moving their head slowly from side to side.
Other notable sketches
Other memorable sketches and jokes from the show include:
- The dad with the inability to dance - "Hey, what's this?! It's got a good beat!"
- Rob Newman's impression of Jonathan Ross
- A criminal who roamed round town robbing banks and mugging people while wearing a Postman Pat mask
- Hugh Dennis' impersonation of Dr Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs
- A 70's German porn film poorly dubbed into English.
- The use of the phrase 'M Khan is bent'- referring to an actual piece of graffiti on a railway bridge in London, which was written in huge letters on the bridge for over a decade. The joke focused around the fact that thousands of cars pass under the bridge each day, and so whoever M Khan is, his 'bentness' must have been made known to at least half the continent. Therefore, references to M Khan and his 'bentness' were inserted into numerous sketches within the show, in passing. The final demonstration of just how widespread this knowledge was occurred in a closing sketch to one episode in which a group of aliens land, offer mankind peace, and technology to end all hunger and war. However, upon discovering that the man they have encountered is M Khan, they return to their craft and depart.
Versions
The show had four series and a pilot on BBC Radio 1, building up an audience and peaktime profile, having initially started out in a midnight slot. A BBC 2 television pilot aired shortly before the fourth and final radio series, on 3 October 1990. The television series proper started on 3 January, 1991. A second set of six episodes aired in 1992.
The majority of the first three radio series were repeated on BBC 7 in 2003. However, rights issues forbade further transmissions, although there are very occasional one-off airings in the Saturday morning Comedy Controller slot.
The television series has never been released nor repeated by the BBC. An online petition has been set up to lobby the BBC to release the television series on DVD.
A companion book to the series, The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia, with references to some of the sketches featured on the show and much new additional material, was released in 1991.
See also
External links
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