I owe a lot of my sense of humour (and, arguably, my personality in general) to British comedy and comedians.
Whether it was a sitcom, a stand-up show, or a sketch show, if it entered my life during my “formative” years then elements of those shows will be burned into my psyche.
For example, I’ve always had quite a sarcastic and deadpan sense of humour. I attribute this mostly to the character of Edmund Blackadder, played by the (almost literally) inimitable Rowan Atkinson.
As well as that, much of my sense of humour comes from wordplay and surreal, absurdist humour. These I attribute to The Young Ones and The Fast Show, and quotes from both readily flow from my lips in all kinds of situations.
The Fast Show, in particular, is quite rightly held up as the pinnacle of British sketch comedy shows. Obviously comedy is subjective, but for many people the vast majority of the sketches and characters on The Fast Show were hits, with very few misses.
But there is another British sketch comedy show that, in your correspondent’s humble opinion, stands almost as tall as The Fast Show, but is criminally underrated, and it’s called Big Train.
Big Train ran on BBC2 for two series of six episodes, the first airing in 1998 and the second four years later in 2002, and arguably acted as a starting block for the incredibly successful careers of many of its cast. It has, to my knowledge, never been repeated (at least not on BBC2) and although it did get a DVD release, I don’t believe it sold very well.
And this is a crime.
The sketches are far more surreal and absurdist than The Fast Show, and probably harks back more to the Monty Python days. I’ve picked a small selection of some of my favourite sketches (in no particular order) from both series on the following pages, along with YouTube links where possible (which are not mine, so they could disappear at any point!)
These sketches being the ones I consider my favourites might be a fascinating insight into my psyche…
Evil Hypnotist
As you’ll notice over the rest of this post, a common thread amongst my favourites is the presence of The Actor Kevin Eldon. I think I first came across his work as the undisputed King of Hobbies, Simon Quinlank, on Stewart Lee and Richard Herring’s sketch show Fist of Fun.
He is a great comedy actor, and almost everything he does in Big Train has the ability to make me laugh myself silly. His turn as Tim Rowlands, the evil hypnotist, is sublime.
Florence Nightingale
Amelia Bullmore gives us a look into the life of everybody’s favourite Crimean War hero that everybody else seemed frightened to talk about. There are so many good lines here, many of which are bleeped out (and they were bleeped out deliberately, because as any fool knows, in the right circumstances, excessive swearing can be funnier when bleeped out!)
Simon Pegg’s exasperated “I mean, what is that? I don’t even know what that is! What is that?! A jerry bag?” followed by Florence’s screams as she’s dragged out of the room… brilliant.
Matthew Macgillivray
All fantastic, the Hall and Oates one is perfect and I die laughing every time I see someone struggle to open a door a la the smug Simon Peggy character.