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00:00And now on BBC2, we present the first in a new season of films by the celebrated Finnish director, Alexi Sayle.
00:10Tonight's film is introduced by Alexi Sayle's father, Alexi Sayle Jr.
00:17Tonight's film is the sixth and, to my mind, most resonant remake of the silent movie classic, Alexi Sayle Stuff.
00:25First filmed in 1927 with Rudolf Valentino.
00:30It was made again in 35 by Howard Hawks as a screwball comedy with Alexi Sayle as a woman, played by Carmen Miranda.
00:38Cecil B. DeMille then made a third version in 1941, a fourth version two days later,
00:44and a fifth version a week before that, shooting back-to-back, upside-down and with his head in a bucket.
00:51The version you're going to see tonight is the 1989 remake and contains for the first time on British television
00:57the controversial Gloria Hunniford porcupine scene completely uncut.
01:03Some porcupines may find it distressing.
01:05No, it's very funny.
01:12No, it's very funny.
01:13Yes, no, it's very funny.
01:17Do you have any of these things that are missing?
01:17No!
01:17No.
01:18Oh, my God.
01:48Oh, my God.
02:18Oh, my God.
02:20Oh, my God.
02:22No, thank you.
02:23I've just spent the morning crawling about on a dead fish,
02:26regurgitating my gastric juices
02:28and spreading dysentery in Lady Marjorie's kitchen.
02:31Oh, you must be perfectly exhausted.
02:35Did you have a good morning?
02:36Yes, I laid 40,000 eggs on a dog turd
02:40while Emily did some sketching.
02:43Ah, here comes Major Allsop.
02:45Profuse apologies for being late, everyone,
02:48but I've been stuck in a jam jar for seven hours.
02:51Oh, it's so fearfully sticky.
02:55How's Lady Allsop?
02:57She was eaten by a tarantula.
03:00Otherwise, quite well.
03:03Are you free after tipping, Major?
03:05We were hoping you might join us in a rubber up a horse's bottom.
03:08True, fine.
03:11I'm most flattered, my dear,
03:14but it's the time of day I set aside for my constitutional exercise.
03:18Pray do excuse me.
03:20Yes, it's 50 years of that colourful cartoon character,
03:36Alexei Sayon.
03:38Who's the leader of the gang that's great for you and me?
03:41A-L-E-X-E-I-S-L-Y-A-L-E
03:44Who's the lovely bastard that's great for you and me?
03:48A-L-E-X-E-I-S-L-Y-A-L-E
03:52Alexei Sayon.
03:54Alexei Sayon.
03:56We love to hear you swear on the TV.
03:58Heep, whoop, whoop.
04:00Heep, whoop, whoop.
04:02Everybody gives me two except the BBC.
04:05A-L-E-X-E-I-S-L-Y-A-L-E
04:08Alexei Sayon.
04:10Alexei Sayon.
04:11Who is that fat bastard?
04:13LAUGHTER
04:14Thank you, thank you very much.
04:23Now, the big thing in comedy these days is improvisation, isn't it?
04:26That's where a comedian gets suggestions, say, from the audience
04:30and improvises comic routines from the suggestions of the audience.
04:34Now, what I'd like to do is I'd like to do a triple impersonation.
04:37That's three people impersonating each other
04:39and I'd like some suggestions from the audience
04:42about who I should do the impersonations of.
04:45Alexei, why don't you do your impersonation of Mussolini?
04:48Alexei, do George Formby.
04:50How about the St. Winifred's, uh, school choir?
04:53Oh, no, you bastards.
04:54Oh, no.
04:56I mean, that's just...
04:57Oh, that's awful.
04:58That's...
04:59Oh, God, how am I going to do that?
05:00I mean, Mussolini, I'm...
05:02OK, I'll try the Mussolini impersonation first.
05:06I just happen to have this hat here.
05:10Ooh, where did that come from? Ooh!
05:13OK, let's try the Mussolini impersonation, shall we?
05:15LAUGHTER
05:17APPLAUSE
05:19OK, and now, um, George Formby.
05:25Sing as we go, we'll let the world go by!
05:29That's Gracie Fields, isn't it?
05:30Yeah, some Lancashire half-wit, anyway, and...
05:33LAUGHTER
05:34And the St. Winifred's School Choir.
05:38Miss, miss!
05:40OK, that's that out of the way, so...
05:42LAUGHTER
05:43In reverse order, then,
05:45the St. Winifred's School Choir,
05:47then George Formby, singing a song about Mussolini.
05:50Right, here we go.
05:51MUSIC PLAYS
05:53Mussolini, we love you!
05:58LAUGHTER
05:58Here you are.
05:59We love you a lot.
06:04When you left your home for a wander round Rome,
06:08you were hung from a lamppost and shots.
06:11LAUGHTER
06:12Oh, I'm hanging from the lamppost at the corner.
06:16LAUGHTER
06:17In case an economic recession comes back.
06:20LAUGHTER
06:21APPLAUSE
06:22Another thing you've got to be really good at, actually, when you're a comedian,
06:31is dealing with hecklers.
06:33When I was compere at the comedy store in Soho years ago, I was the absolute master of the put-down.
06:40There wasn't anybody that I couldn't deal with.
06:42LAUGHTER
06:43Now, this is a folk song, right, this is a folk song about whale smuggling in the 19th century, written by a civil servant three weeks ago.
06:51OK, here we go.
06:52A-ring-a-tee-tool, ring-a-tee-tool.
06:54Funnier faces drawn by semi-comatose midgets urinating in the snow.
06:59Well, you'd know all about doozy little piss artists, wouldn't you?
07:03LAUGHTER
07:04So anyway, right, can you imagine?
07:09All you ever do is loudly assail the audience with stentorian malevolence.
07:14Well, I'd rather be up here shouting spite than down there spouting shite.
07:21LAUGHTER
07:22So anyway, right, can you imagine the folk songs they're going to be singing in a hundred years' time?
07:27Oh, I am a computer programmer from Charlie Milton Keynes.
07:32That line doesn't even scan.
07:34Your elegiac couplet's so overloaded, if it had any more feet in it, it would be a centipede.
07:40Well, I'd rather be a member of the species Scolopendra forficatus than scoll-lagered-boring-fartus.
07:49LAUGHTER
07:50Anyway, on Wednesdays, I will...
07:52Who are we supposed to laugh?
07:54Where's the comedic trigger that Schopenhauer defines as the sudden incongruity between concept and percept?
08:03All right, concept.
08:06I like hecklers because they keep me on me toes.
08:09Pearset.
08:10LAUGHTER
08:12LAUGHTER
08:13LAUGHTER
08:14APPLAUSE
08:17MUSIC
08:19MUSIC
08:21MUSIC
08:23MUSIC
08:24MUSIC
08:25Hello, and welcome to the world this Tuesday afternoon, just before you make a cup of tea.
08:30With me this afternoon is the Right Honourable Mr Norman Nimrod AWACS MP,
08:35a junior minister at the Treasury.
08:38Minister, can I just begin by asking why, with manufacturing output down and sterling showing a steep decline on world markets,
08:47are you wearing a giant rabbit costume?
08:50LAUGHTER
08:51I'm sorry, this is trial by television, and I'm not standing for it any longer.
08:54I'm sorry, I came here in good faith to discuss real issues, not to be pilloried by some BBC Pinker, or other way.
09:00LAUGHTER
09:01All the excessiveness of versions!
09:03LAUGHTER
09:04LAUGHTER
09:05MUSIC
09:06MUSIC
09:07MUSIC
09:08MUSIC
09:09MUSIC
09:10MUSIC
09:31Okay, I'm fine!
09:46Inanimate objects. Do they have feelings? Souls, even?
09:51Well, certainly, they've got a cruise missile now that if it's lost, it stops Nass the Way.
09:57I personally have got a great empathy with inanimate objects.
10:01Some of my best friends are young Conservatives.
10:05Buddhists believe that things have feelings and souls because Buddhists believe in reincarnation.
10:11Now, what reincarnation means is that when you die, you come back as a tin of condensed milk.
10:17Buddhist religious practices are actually very interesting because what Buddhists do is they chant.
10:22A load of Buddhists get in a room or a temple and they sit down and they go,
10:26Here we go! Here we go! Here we go! Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!
10:34At the moment, I'm involved in a new experimental government identity card scheme.
10:39Now, the government says that identity cards don't restrict people's personal freedom, but I'm not so sure if that's true.
10:47Good morning, sir. May I help you?
10:48Yes, I'm a shallow-minded cretin from the Sunday Times who writes reams of dross each week about where to eat out in London.
10:53I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't realise. I'll just tender my resignation and drown myself in a butt of malmsy, sir.
10:59Good morning, sir. May I take your coat, sir?
11:00Thank you. Where would you like me to take it, sir?
11:03I'm a shallow-minded cretin from the Sunday Times
11:05who writes reams of dross each week about where to eat out in London.
11:08I'm so sorry, sir, I didn't realise.
11:10I'll just tender my resignation and drown myself in a butt of mums, sir.
11:16Morning, sir. May I take your coat, sir?
11:18Thank you. Where would you like me to take it, sir?
11:20The Outer Hebrides, please.
11:22Morning, sir. May I redecorate your spare bedroom at all?
11:25A certain eggshell for the ceiling?
11:26Please.
11:27Table for one, sir. Let me show you to your table, sir.
11:30And if you'd just allow me to refresh your ashtray, sir.
11:35Just allow me to refresh your table, sir.
11:44Thank you. Let me see.
11:46Braised underpants in syrup.
11:48I had those last time, didn't I?
11:50I think you did, sir, yes.
11:52May I recommend the Edentato Molto Congesto?
11:56What's that?
11:57It's a giant sloth with two apricots rammed up each snout,
12:01lightly flattered on a late-night talk show,
12:04and then dropped from the shadow cabinet as front-base spokesman on education.
12:09I think I'll go for the clams filled with laughing gas.
12:12As you wish, sir.
12:13I'll have two of those, please.
12:14I'll do you a carbon.
12:16Do you do Brazilian anacondas with pineapple rings and coconut doughnuts
12:20threaded along it in alternate sequence?
12:22Yes, sir?
12:23Oh, what a shame.
12:24In that case, I'll just have some ice cream.
12:26What flavours do you do?
12:28Koala, Yam, Yeti, Fruit Bat, Limpid, Lamprey, Giraffe, Jellyfish, Fairy Liquid, Beetroot, Bitumen and Bing Crosby, sir.
12:37No tetracycline?
12:38Not on a Wednesday, sir.
12:40Yeah.
12:41I know.
12:42Why don't you try one of these?
12:44What's that?
12:45It's a ballpoint pen, sir.
12:48Mmm, delicious.
12:49No, no, no.
12:50I think I'll go for the 1,500 weight of industrial spanners on my head.
12:54A wise choice, sir.
12:56Oh.
12:57Oh.
12:58Dinner parties.
12:59Aren't they the most boring, tedious thing you can imagine?
13:16I'm always stuck with these really boring people.
13:19I mean, if I was stuck on a desert island with this lot and a big tin of corned beef, I'd kill and eat them and keep the tin of corned beef to talk to.
13:29The nearest this lot have got to life in the fast lane is the six items or less queue at Safeways.
13:37And they're all these couples, aren't they? Married couples at these dinner parties.
13:41Oh, yes, this is Bob and Vicki.
13:44This is Terry and Mandy.
13:46This is Bob Calgees and Spit the Dog.
13:49And you already know Trinidad and Tobago, don't you?
13:53And the food.
13:55Oh.
13:56Sometimes seems like the hostess has got the food, got the recipes out of a book called A Thousand and One Things To Do With Cling Peaches.
14:06A thousand and two if you eat them.
14:08When I have people around, I do a lot of cooking. I spend days buying and preparing the food.
14:15And then what I do is, I tell everybody that I bought all the food from Marks and Spencers.
14:21Just so they can all go,
14:22Oh, Marks and Spencers, oh, Marks and Spencers, oh, they're fabulous Marks and Spencers.
14:26What would we do without Marks and Spencers?
14:31That's so boring.
14:32Dinner party.
14:33Dinner party.
14:34About as exciting as Sweden on early closing day.
14:39It's a really exciting place, Sweden.
14:41Hello, Sven.
14:42I've just bought a Volvo.
14:44What have you got, Sven?
14:46Oh, I've got the Volvo.
14:49Dinner about as exciting as an award-winning cartoon from Poland.
14:54It always seemed to be about a plasticine man being chased by office blocks.
15:01Yes, it's time once again to go Up The Chimney.
15:17Hello, and welcome to another edition of Up The Chimney.
15:26With our reigning champion, Roland Gonad,
15:28who so far this series has been Up The Chimney 24 times.
15:32And if he makes it through again today,
15:34we'll automatically go through to our all-winners final,
15:37Up A Cement Works chimney in Hollyhead.
15:40Alongside him, Up The Chimney today,
15:42we have two new contestants,
15:44Dr. Damien Sponge from Sunderland
15:47and Mrs. Janice Anthrax,
15:49a dental hygienist from Wendover in Buckinghamshire.
15:58So good luck to you all,
15:59and now on to our first question,
16:01Up The Chimney.
16:03With what achievement is the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen credited in 1895?
16:10The discovery of X-rays.
16:12Is correct, Damien, and you go 18 inches Up The Chimney.
16:18Which great-grandson of Queen Victoria was born in 1900,
16:21the son of His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenburg?
16:26Jason Donovan.
16:27Correct.
16:28For another 10 inches, Roland,
16:30taking you well past the firebrick and into the flue.
16:33Which symphony in C minor, Opus 67,
16:38was written in Heiligenstadt in 1802?
16:42Beethoven's 9th?
16:44No, it was, I'm afraid, Beethoven's 5th,
16:47so we have to put a starling up your chimney.
16:50And at the end of that round,
16:52we have Damien just dangling over the grate,
16:55Janice still trying to get off the half-tiles,
16:57but way out in front now,
16:59our reigning champion from Radlet,
17:01Roland Gonad.
17:07So, at the halfway stage,
17:08let's go over, as always,
17:10to Giles Brandreth, Up The Chimney.
17:13Thank you, Giles.
17:20And now it's on to our letters round,
17:22and it's you to start, Damien.
17:24Er, six vowels and five consonants, please, Cuthy.
17:28Six vowels and five consonants.
17:30There they are.
17:32And you have five seconds to rearrange those letters
17:34into one or more words,
17:36up the chimney, starting from now.
17:39Time's up.
17:46And Sir William Rees-Mogg is up there,
17:48checking it out for us now.
17:50Oh, dear, I'm sorry, Damien.
17:53I'm afraid both those words are far too obscene
17:55to be used on British television.
17:57So we have to do this.
18:00shot of Jack,
18:01and the Red Bill.
18:02on-fleet and Fitzpatrick.
18:03Kissing Sue.
18:05Why's the Foreign unit?
18:07Hm?
18:09Yeah.
18:10all of the creation of the Cheetah?
18:12We, we, we, we, We,
18:13we, we,
18:21do we, we,
19:51Just call me Dave Harris of Paradise Homes Peckham, who in 1975 sold his own wife 15 trays of ice cubes for £89,000, claiming that they were in fact a self-assembly igloo.
20:07And of course, over here, we have one of the grisly, anonymous letters written by son of Soul Agent Sam.
20:20Ha, ha, ha. You'll never catch me now, coppers.
20:23Last night I sold another one, a delightful three-bedroom semi, offered in excellent condition it was, with rising damp, roof rot and poisonous frogs down the toilet.
20:34Five percent I got on that one.
20:35Then I fried up the couple's kidneys and ate them for supper.
20:38Oh, excuse me.
20:40The headlines this Thursday lunchtime.
20:50Mr. Gorbachev flies to Washington as strategic arms talks flounder in Helsinki.
20:54More prison disturbances! The prison officers you're here to meet today!
21:02The ban has another bad day on the foreign exchanges.
21:06More interest, my eyes is on the cards!
21:09And in the test match at Headingley...
21:13England collapsed under the Australian onslaught!
21:18But first, more from the London Bear Gumpers corruption trial.
21:22Disappoint from Martin Silverman, who's been following the case at the old bat-line!
21:30Bubbly, wubbly, bubbly, a wop-diddley-doo.
21:33Here are seven things I wouldn't much like to do.
21:35Rump for European Parliament, dressed as a frog.
21:40Going up to Mrs. Datcher and asking for a snog.
21:44Eating my brother's dog and blaming the French.
21:48Coming engaged to a 12-pound monkey wrench.
21:53Going on a charter flight and finding out the pilot's a yam.
21:56Yam, bam, bam, bam!
21:59Ever seen or hearing absolutely anything by Tanita Tick-A-Lap?
22:03LAUGHTER
22:04Spending a week down the Turkish loo.
22:09These are seven things I wouldn't much like to do.
22:13They're all really rather pointless.
22:16They're really quite in vain.
22:19If you bid them, you'd be stupid.
22:21You'd have to be insane.
22:23If you pretend it to even do one, you'd have to have lost a screw.
22:29Here are another seven things I wouldn't much like to do.
22:36You've become a sumo wrestler with only fighting clots.
22:40Tick-ta, tick-ta.
22:42Keeping kippers in me hat band and yoghurt in me socks.
22:45LAUGHTER
22:46Needless to be the operation on the National Health Service.
22:48LAUGHTER
22:49So we do a china shop with a whirling German.
22:54LAUGHTER
22:55Playing in the rugby team of orthodox rabbis.
22:59LAUGHTER
23:00I'm thinking of a word that actually rhymes with rabbis.
23:04Ba-da-ba-da!
23:05Getting a job as a man who sets fire to his boss on BBC Two.
23:09LAUGHTER
23:10These are seven things I wouldn't much like to do.
23:14They're all totally silly.
23:18Some are really bad.
23:20If you want to do any of them,
23:23you have to be quite mad.
23:26If you feel like doing all seven,
23:28lock yourself in the loo.
23:30Oh, bloody hell!
23:32Here's another seven things I wouldn't much like to do.
23:36Pebble dash my house with cold, lumpy porridge.
23:39Hearing strange things with sheep in the shady part of Norwich.
23:43LAUGHTER
23:45And he's down in the tongan and singeing his sarong.
23:47Carrying on singing this bloody stupid song.
23:50LAUGHTER
23:51APPLAUSE
23:52On Sunday, in Survival of the Fittest,
24:04Julian Pettifer meets a young man of extraordinary courage.
24:09Well, when the doctors first told us
24:12of Michael's condition,
24:15well, we just gave up hope, really, didn't we?
24:20We thought, that's it, you know?
24:22Mm.
24:23Because when people have been decapitated by a charging rhinoceros,
24:27not many of them pull through.
24:30It is such a fighter, even with the wooden head.
24:33He's determined to make a go of it.
24:36Aren't you, Michael?
24:36LAUGHTER
24:37Although the science of cranial lignoplasty
24:42is still in its infancy,
24:44for young men like 24-year-old Michael,
24:47it may represent the only real hope of survival.
24:51LAUGHTER
24:52You were very happy with the operation.
24:56I think you will be, too.
24:57I must go.
24:58Oh, thank you.
25:00Right, this is what we do every morning.
25:04I screw his head round,
25:07and then I polish it.
25:09LAUGHTER
25:10Because of our prejudices about our awkward physiognomy,
25:16our human wrapping paper, if you will,
25:18trying to become socially integrated
25:20with a skull of lightly stained walnut
25:23can be a traumatic experience.
25:26LAUGHTER
25:26What have we got here, then?
25:28Looks a bit of a head case.
25:29They're a nut head, isn't they?
25:30Breaking!
25:31What have you got?
25:33What have you got?
25:33What have you got?
25:34What have you got?
25:34What have you got?
25:34What have you got?
25:35What have you got?
25:35What have you got?
25:35What have you got?
25:36What have you got?
25:36What have you got?
25:37Discover the moving story of Michael, man, or chess piece
25:49in Survival of the Fittest
25:51on Sunday at 3.30 on BBC Two.
25:59But now on to a new 16-part series
26:03celebrating 200 years of the French Revolution.
26:07Democracy in modern Europe was not achieved without a price.
26:14In France, in the 18th century,
26:15thousands paid with their lives
26:17as the peasants rounded on the dissipated aristocracy.
26:20And with Paris in turmoil,
26:22the Republic's interim commissariat stands aside
26:25as the country's nobility are seized by the mob
26:28and thrown to the mercy of the awesome Madame la Guillotine.
26:33Well, the entire aristocratic order
26:36were wiped out in a frenzied bloodbath.
26:38Surely a bad result for you, the Count de Badoire.
26:41No, no, not at all, no.
26:43I mean, any terminally decadent oligarchy
26:45is bound to suffer a certain degree of mid-term blues.
26:48Yeah, but Citizen Robespierre has to prove that you personally
26:51will be executed...
26:53No, no, no, if you'll just let me finish,
26:54I don't think that one can take Mr. Robespierre very seriously at all.
26:59No, I think that we'll see this whole thing bottom out
27:02within a couple of months
27:03and the complete restoration of the monarchy
27:05by this time next year.
27:06In fact, if you look at the actual figures for the masses,
27:10they are much worse than might be expected
27:13at this stage of the game in a routine...
27:16It's still 1979.
27:26It was all a dream.
27:28I never became famous at all.
27:30I'm still an obscure penniless comedian
27:33working me balls off every night at the comedy store.
27:38Are you going on or not?
27:40What do I pay you two quid a week for,
27:42you lazy fat bastard?
27:43Sorry.
27:47And now, ladies and gentlemen, Alexei Sayles.
27:56Thank you, thank you very much, thank you.
27:57Hey, hey, no, no, I'll tell you, look, I'll tell you, right,
28:00my wife's mother, right, she's so...
28:02No, she's so fat...
28:03Call yourself a comic!
28:05Call yourself a comic?
28:07All right then, all right then,
28:08get me a copy of the Beano!
28:11Bravo!
28:11Oh, oh, oh, oh!
28:13Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh