It's Fist of Fun and please welcome your hosts...

Richard Herring and Stewart Lee

From here you can find out about the hosts, the guests and all the shows inside details. You can ask questions and discover whos complaining about the show and why. You can also get details of how to find out more about Richard and Stewart and how to get in touch with them. You can e-mail us at [email protected] Fist of Fun is currently off air Hello. It's us. Richard Herring and Stewart Lee. We write Fist of Fun (apart from the bit Peter does which he writes down on a piece of paper and then says himself). We have been writing together for over 8 years since we met at college (Oxford University, but we're just normal people who got good A levels. We're not posh or anything, as you'll see). We've been doing shows in Edinburgh together and separately ever since. It's like a marriage, but unlike in a marriage when things get tense we can't release that tension with good loving sex. Well, we could Stu. No. We can't. We've done loads of shit in the past and the only surprise is that we have somehow managed to get our own TV series on BBC2, in fact there's a page from our forthcoming rip off comedy book (available October 95) detailing all the crap things we've done. Fist of Fun is the new BBC 2 comedy show that has been described as 'Why Don't You' for grown-ups. With swearing. Through studio guests, filmed inserts, an overload of visual information and a microscopic analysis of their own wasted lives, hosts Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, that's us, aim to help you fill all those long empty hours between your birth and your inevitable death. We also have a hidden agenda to establish ourselves as gods of a new world order through the use of flash frames of us naked in Stu's garden in Tooting. We are two emotionally stunted and over-educated men in their mid-to-late twenties, who've never

done a decent day's work in their lives and rarely venture out of our homes for fear of missing an unscheduled episode of Going For Gold. But we're more than trivia junkies. Over the series we'll be investigating at the nature of time exposing the hypocrisy of Christ and willingly dancing into the abyss of the unknown. We're not Generation X. We're not Generation Y. We've gone all the way round the alphabet four times since then and we are Generation L. Or something. Or M. Each week we're assisted by someone even sadder than us, South London's Welsh bon-viveur., Peter, with bed-sit lifestyle ideas for the young, single Balham man-virgin of 31. There'll be regular reports from hobby obsessive Simon Quinlank, a weekly look at the Gallery, a migraine-inducing collage of bizarre images that we and public contributors have made, drawn, cut out of magazines, or found in a plastic bag in a wood, as well as fly on the wall documentary packages, fables, and supa-fast information packages. In this internet space we're gonna leave some weekly inside details, answer any questions that you might have, and print up the best of the complaints letters and phone calls that we will inevitably receive. Please do not abuse this last service by sending in false complaints, as the real ones are funny enough. If you want to send anything in for the gallery or just to write to us using the old earth tools, pen at paper then our earth address is: Fist of Fun Rm 3301 BBCTV Centre Wood Lane London W12 Or you can E-Mail us stuff on [email protected] Or after the series has finished you can write via: Fist of Fun Mailing List PO Box 168 London WC29NX Let us know what you like and dislike about the series and if we ever sell-out or let you down in any way, please write or send us an electronic message on whatever system of communication the future will have that we as yet have not even dreamed of. "Who controls your destiny? Fans" as Ice T correctly observed on the Original Gangster album. The programme's broadcast dates are: Tuesday 11th April 1995, 9pm Tuesday 18th April 1995, 9pm

Tuesday 25th April 1995, 9pm Tuesday 2nd May 1995, 9pm Tuesday 9th May 1995, 9pm Tuesday 16th May 1995, 9pm

Stewart's Bit According to the press release I am "a cherub faced, cynical pedant who keeps all his possessions in alphabetical order". This is an exaggeration of my character which we attempt to exploit for comic effect. I met Rich in a Cricket pavilion in 1986, at night, although he apparently saw me about a week before that through the window of a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop when I was on my way to a Suzanne Vega concert, but I did not see him. Watching. In 1990 I won the Hackney Empire new act of the year award. Previous winners have included disabled comedian Jag Plar, and David Baddiel. I slogged about the circuit for years at the same time as writing with Rich for Radio. I did a stand-up show on my own in Edinburgh last year and was finally recognised by the press as the genre-busting stand-up genius that I am. This year I am doing a Fist of Fun show in Edinburgh with Rich and Pete, and a weird cabaret show called Cluub Zarathustra with Simon Munnery, who is the man behind Alan Parker Urban Warrior and is the best comedian in the UK, and that is not open to discussion. I have a bigger record collection than anyone you know, and am an avid and frequent reader of hardback books. Thank you and goodbye.

Richard's Bit My role in the show is to mess around a lot, act like a child and say "Nice!" when anything to do with sex is mentioned. It is a difficult job, but someone has to do it. I was born in Yorkshire, but lived in Cheddar in Somerset since I was 8. Stew thinks people from Somerset are twats, but then he comes from Solihull, so he can't really talk. On the radio I was in Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World, Fist of Fun and Lee and Herring. I wrote for award winning show On The Hour. In Edinburgh I've done shows with Stew, plus shows called Ra-Ra-Rasputin in 1993 and Richard Herring is Fat and This Morning With Richard Not Judy in 1994. This year we're doing a Fist of Fun stage show and I'm doing a show called Richard Herring is All Man. I am bored with writing this and should really be writing the show so I am going to go now. I hope you have enjoyed reading about me. I am better than Stewart.

Peter's Bit Peter is written and played by Peter Baynham, the unheralded genius contributor and script associate of The Day Today and The Chris Morris Show. He wrote The Harpoon on Radio 4 as well. He wouldn't like us to say this but the Peter character is really just an exaggeration of what Peter Baynham himself was really like when we met him five years ago as a contributor to Weekending, Radio 4's shit topical humour show, who had black dyed hair and had just left The Merchant Navy. Patrick Marber owes him about GBP 200. He really does stink however.

Show One - 11 April 1995

An Introduction Here are some interesting facts about the first show that you might like to know if you are an obsessive comedy idiot, as you obviously are if you are reading this. Don't worry. So are we, although at least we have our own TV series so it is less embarrassing. Or more embarrassing. The Opening Titles The opening title sequence features loads of photos our friend Dave Tuck took specially which flash up at high speed. They're mainly photos of Balham, our personal belongings, and historical sculptures and artefacts. See if you can spot them all and write a list of what they all are, but then keep this list a secret. The girl in the titles sequence is only 8 but is a better actress than anyone else in the series, especially Pete. The swordfish nose and starfish both once belonged to Stu's dad and Stu's hands and body can be seen displaying them. The Set After the opening titles we come on and stand around on the set speaking. The set was designed by Harry Banks and his team. We were worried it would look a bit like the set of a bad early eighties youth programme and that we would have to have A Flock of Seagulls and Landscape on the show playing live. Instead it looks like a giant urinal, which is excellent. Note the clever use of space, depth and light. Well done Harry Banks!!! Simon Quinlank The first film item is Simon Quinlank's hobby spot. He'll be in it a lot and is based on people we've met from mad comedy fans to fanzine editors and other obsessives, including us. He is played by the comedy actor Kevin Eldon, but we wrote it. Kev is lots of other things in the series too. He used to be in a band with a stupid name that I've forgotten back in the early 1980's and once had a John Peel session which Peel himself described as "sub-Kenny Everett whimsy". His band also supported the Jags. Kev was in

"Packing Them In" which is now on Channel 4 sometimes at about 4 in the morning. He is one of the finest comedy actors of his generation and went to drama school and everything. Nowadays he plays in a blues band for fun and has supported BB King. He also does a cool stand-up act and toured with TV's Frank Skinner. The Tortoise and The Man Bill Cashmore, who plays The Man in 'The Tortoise and The Man', quite honestly and genuinely actually really collects baked bean tins. He has 37 different ones. If you think he's great, why not send him some c/o the Fist of Fun TV address. Address your beans to Bill Cashmore The University of Life The University of Life sketch features top comedy actor Peter Jones from off of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He's really good in this skit as a Professor teaching students to commit crimes and be ill-informed. Well done Peter Jones. The girl in it, Kate Ashfield, who plays Jill Edmonds, was in the film Princess Caribou. No, we haven't seen it either. But apparently it's quite good. Look out for appearances over the series by Annabel Giles from off of Hit the Road and loads of other rubbish, Paul Ross from off of The Big Breakfast and most good tabloid newspapers and Carol Cleveland who, as you will all no doubt know, played the women in Monty Python when Terry Jones couldn't be bothered to dress up and shout in that stupid shrieking voice. In many ways Monty Python were twats. Carol Cleveland is an excellent and very funny actress and it would have been nice if they'd used her to do more than giggle in a silly way and show her cleavage off. Yes, we smash our icons although secretly we are able to recite all their sketches, even the ones off the Contractual Obligation album. Apart from Stu. Who can't. Look out for the flash frame graphics such as our celebration of mediocrity pages. Set your videos and use your pause button to read them. Also, it's worth videoing all the shows as it will save you GBP 20 when the BBC inevitably bring out rip-off videos of the show which are exactly what was broadcast, but in nice boxes. Why not make your own box, cut a picture of us out of a magazine and write some things about the show on a piece of paper and stick them on a blank cassette box. Sorted. This is strictly illegal, but no-one is going to get you and we don't care. They pay us too much as it is. At the end read the listings on your video. They are funny. See if they've let us leave in the words "Men's Big Cocks" or whether they have ruined the joke by censoring or deleting it. Apart from that we've been able to do pretty much anything we want. cf. the Jesus Knocking sketch in show 2 . Our producer Sarah Smith also did Jim Tavare's films. She has worked incredibly hard on the show and her efforts are shown in the final edit of this programme, which would be rubbish without her. She thinks we don't appreciate her, but we secretly do. Except Stu. Who doesn't.

Show Two - 18 April 1995

An Apology

You might have heard/read that we were going to do something with CEEFAX sub-titles. Well, we didn't. So, sorry if you spent the show having all punch-lines pre-empted for you by the deaf subtitles. Unless you are deaf, in which case, hope you liked it. Basically, we needed a whole screen of our own for any captions we wanted to do, as otherwise we'd had to squeeze them in with the deaf sub-titles. No good. The other option was to have no deaf sub-titles and just use the screen ourselves, which was obviously bad too. Hopefully we'll be able to sort something out by the end of the series. Urban Men We wanted a mangey stray dog to eat the corpse in this film. Instead of going to some Animal Actors Place and getting a coiffured false stray dog, the BBC animal handler woman went to the car park in Aerial Way in Shepherds Bush and made friends with a big friendly stray dog who has lived there under the car-park attendant's caravan for about 12 years. He lives off scraps from the transport cafe and food given to him by people who park their cars there. The animal handler woman took him home for a night to see if he was friendly and he was, so they used him. We felt a bit sad, and that if all the BBC car park users loved him so much why didn't they take him in. The woman said he obviously loved living in the car park with loads of free food and attention, and that as he was never bathed, he'd built up a massive oily coat-skin that would have been really warm. They didn't feed him for a day and then filled the hole in the corpse up with fresh meat. It was freezing running about in pants at night and the temperature was minus 2 degrees. Kevin Eldon and Stu drank loads of whisky and were virtually hallucinating by the end of the shoot. It was exhilarating and bizarrely liberating to be able to behave like someone with a serious mental illness on license payers' money. Rich and Stu have appeared naked and fat again in a desperate bid to escape the terrible responsibility of being international sex symbols. Drugs Car The Drug Search is based on a true incident of Stu being stopped by the Police at Elephant and Castle and searched. "I didn't realise how ridiculous, confrontational and self-defeating my behaviour had been until I came to retell the story to Rich who just laughed at my own self-righteousness. But, all the same, I do hope the policeman who stopped me, took the piss out of me for being a comedian, said all new stand-ups were shit, and that he expected I'd be able to write something about being stopped by him... sees himself and recognises himself. It happened in January 1993." - Stu. John Thomson, from The Fast Show, plays the grumpy policeman. There was a sub-plot about the cops putting a bag of cocaine in Stu's crate and then beating him up at the end, the just-desserts for Stu's anti-religious prejudice, but it got cut due to time and the course of events. The Bishops The Bishops auditioning the vicars thing came out of a habit (ha!) Rich and Stu picked up from accepting or rejecting each others ideas by shouting out "Next stupid comedy idea!", "No!" etc. at each other like camp directors doing Broadway auditions, but we could never think of anything to do with it. One day Stu was doing a stand up show at Anglia Uni with Kevin Eldon and we went and hung out in Ely Cathedral for an afternoon to pass the time.

I watched all these different priests going into the pulpit for some reason and felt like they were auditioning for me. We mentioned the idea to our producer Sarah Smith for the pilot last year but thought it would be impossible to get the Church and congregation etc., but she said "No, we'll do it" and somehow they pulled it off. We want to make the Auditioning-Vicars a running thing, with them auditioning other things too, it depends on if you lot get the hang of it or not. Jesus Came Knocking Jesus parable thing is a triumph of costume and make-up, and features Annabelle Giles, who is one of our 2 showbiz friends, the other being Dale Winton. The alien thing man is cobbled together from old Dr Who costumes. Jesus was slapped in the face by the Man at the end, which got a massive round of applause from our studio audience, but our executive producer John Plowman, who produces Fry and Laurie and Absolutely Fabulous, said that it had to be taken out as people could loose their jobs over it. Hopefully we'll be able to reinstate the slap for a possible video release as it is really funny. The film works without it, but once you know it should be there it just isn't the same and you feel like there's something missing. This is the first thing we've wanted to do that we haven't been allowed to, but other than this it's been fine as far as censorship is concerned. The Guardian This week, the Guardian called us "semi-surreal". That Salvador Dali sculpture of a telephone with a lobster where the receiver should be is surreal. Semi-surreal is the same but with only half a lobster.

Show Three - 25 April 1995

Could I just apologise at this point... I was tired and emotional before the recording of this show and did it really badly - Stu. You weren't that bad Stew, don't worry. No-one would notice. You're shit every week anyway - Rich The Gimp The man playing the Gimp from Pulp Fiction is called Fabian. He has his face pierced dozens of times, has a perspex thing in his chin and apparently (according to costume) things all over him. It looks great! It's a shame to have covered him up. The Pied Piper The Pied Piper thing came from Rich's house in Brixton being mouse-infested. John Thomson played the Pied Piper and had been up all night drunk so was able to bring a genuine world weary grumpiness to the part. The mice were provided by an animal agency. One of them escaped into the country house we were filming the scene in. He is now a legend amongst his fellow encaged mice, as the mouse who got away and lives a life free from imprisonment. We were worried the mouse would die without a woman to look after him, but it seems he'll be fine. The mice were made to appear to follow the Pied Piper inside the house by being shot at with a compressed air gun. Don't worry though,

they weren't hurt. Probably. The mice in the road aren't real. Really! The squashed ones were made of rubber and were filled with condoms filled with jam to give the impressions of crushed mice innards. No mice died in the making of this sketch, apart from the ones in Rich's flat which he killed with poison (apart from the one he trapped behind the spice rack- watch the show for details.) Captain Oates The Captain Oates character is based on Rich, Stew and our producer Sarah. And Captain Oates of course. It's about how people get all sulky and childish with one another when they feel they are not being appreciated. Also it is funny to belittle the heroic achievement of a man far better than us and turn him into a stupid comedy character that small children will use as a bench-mark of how crap their friends are. The potato incident (starring Carol Cleveland off of Monty Python) is based on when a bloke was staying at Stew's house and ate all the potatoes when Stew and Rich had had only about one each. There is a third part to the skit which might be cut with Capt Oates in bed with a girl. Nosey Neighbours The Neighbours sketch was recorded ages ago for the pilot. Rebecca Front is in it, as well as lots of other people. We really like it, but our producer thinks it isn't as well shot as the stuff she's done since. Who gives a toss. It's whether it's funny that is important. It was put in to replace a skit we did about ill supermodels. We didn't like the way it had turned out as we had written it wrongly (everyone else did their jobs correctly). We argued about it with our producer (who liked it) before the recording and that's why Stew was in a bit of a bad mood during the show. Maybe the supermodel thing will turn up somewhere. There was also going to be a dark skit about parents stifling a child's imagination. We liked this. Our producer didn't. We've dropped both sketches as a compromise. Maybe they'll turn up at a later date. With a bit of editing the models one might be OK. Simon Quinlank The Simon Quinlank hobby spot is excellent mind you. Kevin Eldon has worked very hard on realising this character. Peter Peter is shit as usual. I don't know why we have him on the show. He makes us look good. Rich Rich's shirt is a bit horrible and dark this week. Rich didn't choose it. He liked the other shirts that he's worn so far though. Stu Could I just say at this point that I have been forced to wear my hair up like an anti-gravity Dale Winton by our producer who says my real hair is "vain and pretentious". I know it seems vain ... er ... to discuss this but .... ah .. mjggfuydfhtjf. The Mice

The blokes playing the mice had to stay dressed up like that for ages. Ha ha.

Show Four - 2nd May 1995

Things That Haven't Gone In Show 4 is the one we're most pleased with so far. We were a lot more relaxed in the studio and had fun doing it and we think that shows in the final cut. Unfortunately we had to lose some good stuff, the reappearance of the gimp with his girlfriend and another true fable (you'll see Stew putting down his fable coat at the end for no reason!), but this will probably be shown in show 5 or 6 instead. Unfortunately we're going to have to lose some good stuff, but it will doubtless resurface in video format or in series 2 (if either of these things ever exist). Or in a big bin. Things that have bitten the dust so far in the series include: A sketch about supermodels with serious illnesses (the next step on from thinness). A sketch about parents stifling the imagination in their small child in a very cruel way. A third part to Captain Oates with him in bed with a girl who he has satisfied, although he is as yet unfulfilled. A sketch about Anthony Hopkins sending obscene letters to Anne Bancroft. The bishops from show 2 auditioning other things, including a young girl's boyfriend, cans of beer and sperm donors. Little scenes in almost every sketch.

Hey it's sad, but that's show biz! Let us know if you think any of those things sounded good. Back to show 4... There's the usual load of rubbish about Somerset. Rich's dad makes an appearance in the show and has a few adventures and there is an appeal to legalise the showing of aardvarks on terrestrial TV. Pestilence The first skit is about the Horseman of the Apocalypse, Pestilence. We recorded this last year for the pilot show. Pestilence has taken up a milk round to fill up time waiting for Armageddon. The shot of the horses and the milk-float took place in Richmond Park at 6.30 in the morning. We were highly amused that around 30 people, stunt men, horses, milk float owners etc had to get up so early for something so stupid. We have not stopped being amused by this concept in all our filming. After all, these things are just jokes! Rich is Pestilence, Stew plays Famine (though not on the horse). Alistair Macgowen is the voice of War. Rebecca Front plays Mrs Dandfleace and delivers what is Richard's favourite line

of the whole series. The woman is an acting genius. The Pizza Sketch The Pizza skit is based on truth, as most of our best things are. When Rich lived in Clapham 2 years ago he and his flat mate ate so many pizzas that the people at Domino's knew them by their voices. This was an awful and embarrassing indictment of their greed. But was made worse by the fact that Rich's then flat-mate was very thin. The actors who are again very very good are Vincenzo Nicoli, who you may recognise off of the National Lottery advert and loads of other great stuff. He's brill. Annette Badland - We couldn't believe it when she turned up to do such a little part. She's been on loads of great stuff, like "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice", oh and everything else. Wow! Kevin Eldon - is shit. No only kidding. The actor who portrays Simon Quinlank shows his versatility and his ability to play almost 4 different characters. The sketch originally appeared on the radio (yes, like everything else) but was also in Richard's solo Edinburgh show "Richard Herring is Fat" Stew bought the Chocolate T-shirt from America for Rich. It shows the chemical symbol for the active ingredient of chocolate. They probably aren't available in Britain, but if enough people are interested we might try and sort something out. The diets in the studio are both genuine. We cut out the masturbation diet, but we'll probably do it in any future live show. Simon Quinlank Simon Quinlank returns with his stupid face. This week he is photocopying his face and sticking it face inward to the window of a right wing celebrity. What can we say, except that Kev puts in another brilliant performance. Woodrow Wyatt is played by a Woodrow Wyatt lookalike. We would guess that this is the first time there has ever been any call for one. Miscellaneous Peter is rubbish as usual, although there is some good bullying of him at the end The Gall-ery makes a welcome return. Keep sending stuff in, we've still got two shows to record. We've had loads of great stuff already. Incidentally, time is running out if you want to win the pants of a comedy actor. The Vampires The Vampire characters first appeared in Lionel Nimrod, and were brought to life in the 1993 Edinburgh Nimrod live show where they were portrayed (as in the show) by the lovers Alistair Macgowen and (star of Geeks) Ronnie Ancona. There loyalty to us is rewarded by them now doing it on the telly. It looks good, but the blood is not real so don't have nightmares. Rich secretly enjoyed having his face licked by a man, but he didn't tell anyone and pretended he didn't like it. He did though. Other Bits The Julia Sawalha shrine makes it into the show after being cut from the week before. Hopefully you'll get to see inside it to reveal its hidden wonders in show 5 or 6. The fable, the Ant and the Man, has been cut. It's really good though. Generally, look out for Stew's horrible eczema finger and Rich's tongue which keeps on popping out, like an idiot's tongue might. Also look out for the mobilisation of the Fist of Fun child army. Help us to

spread needless confusion and get nothing achieved by following the dictates we give you. These may also appear on the Web pages.

Show Five - 9th May 1995

Got slagged off by Reeves and Mortimer in the NME today (2/5/95). Never mind. The Amish Thing Stu Lee and Al Murray, who is the man in the conservatory in the Urban Man sketch and who plays in Harry Hill's pub band and does a stand-up character act of a pub landlord, thought this up in a car on the way from Croydon home to Tooting, having gone out to buy some guitar Fx pedals and comics. Al's the only person, not Pete, Rich or Stu, who gets a writing credit for anything in Fist of Fun, although there are 2 other jokes in the series that are copied off things our friends said in conversations. The birdhouse in the drive is a beautiful detail and the whole design of the whole piece is great. Another improvised bit came out sounding really like a classic bit of Spinal Tap, but we left it in anyway. I expect all you twats can spot it. It was f***ing freezing filming this outside in a field in March and it snowed on the day. We were worried the old ladies were gonna freeze. Driving Instructor The Driving Instructor is based on Rich's old driving instructor, but the name has been changed to avoid enormous legal costs. We ended up with enough film to make a 15 minute piece, and hopefully we'll be able to do something with the character another time. Due to having spent all his money on lessons Rich has never driven since and couldn't remember how to drive. The way they film car stuff is to sit the car on top of a low truck called a low loader so you don't have to think about what you're doing at all. God, I've made this sound so boring.... Ant & the Man This features bean tin collector Bill Cashmore and includes a line from a Daniel Johnson song. When we first started thrashing out Fist of Fun for telly we were privvy to a hilarious grown ups meeting at which they discussed the relative merits of using real ants or false ones for this film. Real ants would fry up under the hot studio lights and of course their acting is fairly random. In the end we bluescreened in a BBC wildlife ant. Jesus Behind You Stu & Rich wrote Jesus Behind You eight years ago in the cafe of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. It is the oldest piece of material in Fist of Fun and is probably older than some of our younger viewers. Down the years, Jesus has been played by our friends Mike Cosgrave (who now plays in a folk band called Sin-e, fronted by Stefan Hannigan who plays bohrahn with all manner of people from Marxman and Depeche Mode through to Martin Carthy and folk farts), Tim Richardson (who now writes for Country Life), Alistair McGowan (who was gonna do it but was understandably worried about doing loads of theological figures in Fist of Fun - he was Jesus in week 2 too - and of people thinking he had some kind of grudge), Peter Baynham (Peter, to you), and Kevin Eldon, (Simon Quinlank) who reprises the role tonight that he first played at Lancaster University in 1993,

when he came on and showed his pants as Jesus.

Show Six - 16 May 1995

As we write this it is slightly unsure as to what exactly will be in the show as there is too much stuff and it can't all fit into half an hour. Ho hum. Still, we'll write about it all and then if it's something that wasn't in the show it'll just be tough cheg. The Surprise The show has two top celebrity star guests in our crates at the start. They are a surprise. It is PJ and Duncan aka Ant and Dec. Oh bum, that's blown the surprise. The two 19 year old super pop-stars proved a bit damn popular for our liking, but deservedly so. Plus they are such nice boys and Rich could quite fancy Dec if he ever let his latent homosexual side out to play. Don't worry girls, he never will. (Sorry lads). Stew probably will do one day though. The Cubs The first skit is one of our favourites of the series. A skit which first appeared in Lionel Nimrod about cubs. However, it is much improved and added to by having genuine boys in it and it is a visual feast, so our complaining fans should not be too disappointed. The boys involved were all very excited to be on the show, but by the end of a long day of filming they were fighting and being sick. It was great. The final cub to speak also appears in that great Quality Street ad "Hello, Mr Johnson!". He was in another sketch that got cut about parents stamping on a child's imagination. He was brilliant in it so it's a shame it got cut. Look out Macauley Culkin (who is beginning to look a bit strange have you noticed. His face is morphing). The Scouts are played by Rich and Stew, Kevin Eldon, Bill Cashmore (The Man) and Ricky Grover. It was a lot of fun arsing around and being a thug. The Julia Sawalha Shrine The Julia Sawalha shrine is dismantled this week. Peter Peter ends the series with more of his rubbish. He's actually quite good this week, but don't tell anyone we said so. Everyone likes him best apart from Rich's gran who thinks he should change his awful messy cardigan (!) and a bloke who e-mailed in to say we should drop him. We fear it shall be the other way round. Simon Quinlank Simon Quinlank rounds off the series with an unsavoury item about smashing eggs. Perhaps it goes too far, but this is due to Quinlank's obsessive behaviour. He is so wrapped up with being the best at his hobby that he is unable to see when he transcends the laws of decency. Well done to Kev though for his fabulous portrayal. He has been asked to do an advert for some railway company with the character. We are not going to let him as we will not sell out. However, they will doubtless just do it anyway with someone else and we won't get a penny and people will think we've sold out anyway. But remember,

we haven't. The next item might be.... Goldilocks and the Three Men The next item might be Goldilocks and the three men... a true fable. Interesting fact - the girl who is Goldilocks is the sister of one of the cubs. All right it wasn't that interesting. Stew is keeping the furniture from the three men's house. The special honey is available by mail order at the Fist of Fun address. It is honey. It costs GBP 300 a jar as it is hard to produce a whole jar of ... er ... honey. ... or it might be... The Theory of Relativity This skit was dropped from Show 5. Stew really fancied the transvestite bloke in bed with him. See above. Interesting fact, the children in the skit are the brothers and sister (and him) of that Mr Johnson kid from the cubs skit. All right it wasn't that interesting. At this point there should have been a dark tale about Stew selling his soul to the devil in order to appear on That's Showbiz and in ads for pies etc, but the show ran out of money for this overambitious skit and couldn't afford to edit it all together. Maybe it will appear in some future show. It is a shame as most of the darker and strange stuff bit the dust in the series due to the course of events, but it was an enormously difficult task to get all the filming done in 3 weeks so it was inevitable something went wrong. The Finale PJ and Duncan come back at the end. They're great! The pay off As you'll see Rich and Stew get their just desserts and Pete is rewarded for his goodness. So I hope that'll make everyone happy. The End? That's the end of this series of Fist of Fun. If you liked it and you want us to make another series please do write to the following person and tell him: Michael Jackson Controller of BBC2 BBC TV Centre Wood Lane London W12 Especially do this if you are over 14 as they seem to think we have little adult audience. They want to put us on 11.15 on Fridays for another series if we get one. We don't want that really. I know we're childish, but we're clever too. Plus a 75 year old woman in Reading thinks we're great. So answer that Michael Jackson. It's a shame we were up against Peak Practice which people seem to like for some reason.

Thank you for watching and for all your comments, positive and otherwise. We do hope we'll be back again. We think we will. Keep on letting us know what you think by space messages and by post as well if you like. Cheers. Bye!

Your Questions Answered

If you have any questions you'd like us to answer personally then e-mail us at [email protected] and we'll try to get round to answering them. Lots more answers this week. So many in fact that all the old answers have been dumped in the Graveyard Frequently asked questions, at the end as usual, but now...... The New Answers CA Stephens asked about Histor. I'm afraid we don't have any plans to incorporate Histor, the Historical Pirate crow from our R1FM show onto the telly, but we'll do him again on the radio and maybe in a second series? We thought we might do it with glove puppets. Matt/Cannibalise Legalbis, thanks for saying I look like Mark Lamarr. I have one of those all-things-to-everyone faces, and over the years have also been confused with Todd Carty, the other Mark Fowler, Roland Gift of FYC, Terry Christian and a medieval engraving of a human faced lamb. - Stu. Robert Woodman and Alpine Staff at Kew, our Welsh Pete is not the same as your Welsh Pete. Incidentally, I worked about 3 days a week at Kew in the library from November 1989 to Oct 1990 doing research for MacMillan's RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening. I had a brilliant time, suffered from a terrible crush on a blonde science looking woman that worked there who I never even spoke to, and met a gardener called Matthew who now presents a programme on Channel 4. I loved hanging out in the gardens but I'm afraid I can't honestly say the Alpine House was my favourite. liked the big water lilies in the Princess of Wales house. Thanks for writing in. Save all the plants and don't let them economise you out of existence. - Stu. Dafydd Thomas wrote in with a sexual allure table of new comedy. 1) Chris Morris 2) Stewart Lee 3) Patrick Marber 4) No one 5) No one 6) No one 7) Richard Herring 8) Steve Coogan 9) No one 10) No one He notes that we are obsessed with Gay Culture, Religion and Wales. Well, Pete's Welsh, I'm interested in Religion so that just leaves Rich. - Stu.

MP Greenwell and JA Peters both mailed in to say they were at an awful gig we did at Bangor Uni last Autumn, when we were heckled off by drunk sports fans. Crazy night. The Security Staff hassled me at half time saying I was inciting trouble. Thanks for writing. Stu. Paul Laws and Andrew MacCormack both said they were Christians but still loved the show. Thanks lads! Oh yeah, and Andrew has a message for you all - "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." Cheers! Rich Wale warned of the unhealthyness of weak lemon drink and signed off "This e-mail might appear like it was written by a 21 year old Computer Science student. Because it WAS!" Abigail - Thank you for your kind words. I am not going to "dump on you" in anyway, as, even I wanted to, which I don't, I do not know where you are. The me on television is a false television me and must not be trusted. Thanks for writing - Stu. Melissa Davey asks if "David Mitchell who left a message is the one who was in the excellent 'Innocent Millions Dead and Dying'?" We don't know what this is about. Can anyone help? K Lewis, your Julia Sawalha shrine request will soon be answered. Neil Stewart spotted the Star Trek quiz. He's right. The 2 Bussard Ramscoop episodes of STTNG are "Night Terrors" and "Samaritan Snare". We'll post you something soon. David John Patrick asks about Manga reference in show 3 - Stu watches some Manga and Rich has seen "Akira" and "Urotsukidoji - Legend of the Overfiend 1". Overfiend is a truly repulsive and shit film, which uses rapes in the way most films use car chases, as simple action sequences to cause a bit of excitement. Japanese sexual morality is an unfathomably alien thing. Akira is the only good Manga, yet it's also one of the ten best films of all time as far as I'm concerned. The live action "Tetsuo The Iron Man" is brilliant, but Tetsuo 11 isn't as good. I like all the crazy shouting in all Japanese films. Japan is so weird. It's like another planet isn't it. - Stu. Ed Ricketts - someone will call you. Conor MeMenamin asks "Who is Patrick Marber?" Marber was first seen by Stu and Rich wandering around in Edinburgh in 1986, when he was in a double act with a man called Guy Browning called Dross Bros, directed by a bloke called Peter Kessler who now produces the excellent Mrs Merton Show. Stu and Rich were in Edinburgh at the festival in 1987 as students, but Dross Bros were there as grown ups. Stu saw them having a meeting in a cafe with Peter Kessler who was wearing green dungarees. Years later, in 1990, PK rang up Stu to ask him to do something on the rubbish "Up Yer News" for BSB, and Stu freaked him out by knowing he had some green dungarees. Guy Browning left Dross Bros to be a journalist or something and was replaced by Dave Schneider (The Day Today, Up To Something, Adverts, Jewish Comedy Scene etc.). Marber also developed a stand-up act that involved taking children's toys out of a bag and talking about them in high voice. He did this on "Saturday Night Live" in about 1988/9, and compered "Hey Rrradio" for Radio 1 at about the same time, although David Baddiel and Rob Newman wrote most

of his material for this. Then, he left Britain to try and write a novel in Paris, but achieved nothing at all during his year's sabbatical. When Marber came home comedy had moved on a bit. He blagged into doing voices for "Weekending" and the first series of "On The Hour" on the radio in about 1990/91 which went on to become "The Day Today" on TV. At the same time he tried to get in on a children's show that Stu and Rich were writing to do voices. In 1991/2 he got some writing credits for the second series of "On The Hour" and was later to claim authorship of a character that Rich & Stu had made up. In Edinburgh in 1992 he did a show with Simon Munnery (Alan Parker Urban Warrior), and made Simon pay him to support him even though he was much better off than Simon. He stopped doing stuff with Simon after things took off with Steve. He also did the Dum Show with Stu, Rich, Simon and Steve Coogan in which we all fought and got on badly. He was sacked from directing a fringe play called "Revolver" but also directed Steve Coogan's one man show which won a Perrier award. At about this time the National Theatre made some overtures to him to come up with a play idea, even though his writing history at this time was limited to about 10 minutes of "On The Hour". From then on he has become unstoppable. Today Marber is known and loved throughout the entertainment industry as the star of "The Day Today" and "Knowing Me Knowing You", and, having written "Dealer's Choice", as the finest West End playwright of his generation. At last, he is enjoying the success due to him, and the smile of delight rarely leaves his laughing face. Adrian Cook, we've given Tom your number. Manchile congratulated us on the world's shortest catchphrase - "Ah!" "Ah!" to you too Manchile Andy Lowe asked us to put Patrick Marber's face on the punchbag. By the time you read this it will be there. He also asked us to dish the dirt on Chris Morris. There ain't none. He is, as you say a "scorchingly talented genre-busting etfuckingcetera untouchable genius." BIO-WIRE says the FOF theme tune should be sung in schools instead of hymns. Rich Johnston found the real Simon Quinlank. Mark Stephan, on the net at [email protected], discussing Doctor Who under the title "An Argumentative Paper Over Why the Seventh Doctor Is The Best Doctor To Write About in Science Fiction Novels About Doctor Who". You can find this hobby crazed missive also at htip://exl2ert.ce.12urdue.edu/-drwho/welcome.html Alexis Manning mailed in to say we were dire, unwatchable and tedious. Adrian D Bailey said. re complaints. "Bugger blasphemy! - What are they going to do, issue a Fatwa against you?" Ironically we did receive a scary, convincing, anonymous motiveless bombthreat that said if the third week's show went out people working on the show would be blown up. But, look, we're still hereeee..... aieeeeeeeee .... my faaaaaayce..... BAAANG!!!! Heeeelllllllppp meeeeeeeeeeeee! Thanks to all of you who E-mailed in asking to win the signed urban men actors' pants. Lots of people have written in with pens too, so we will consider the best and act accordingly. There are 4 pairs to be given away. Helen Ribchester said that Fist of Fun was better on the radio and asked, re the University of Life sketch, "Do we really need to see people being violently punched, stabbed etc? I think the best laughs come from what you don't see." Helen, we're

genuinely sorry if we upset you as you sound really nice. Personally, we loved the off license shooting and thought it was great and really funny, but I think you're right - there are times when it's best to leave things to the imagination, as we found with our tv version of the sick supermodels sketch which hopefully won't go out. Paul D Price wrote in to say how much he enjoyed Peter at Brunel University, but failed to say that he liked Stew who was on on the same night. Peter will be punished accordingly for his popularity. You're right though, Paul, the audience completely missed the point of all Peter Baynham's character stuff that night, and just assumed he was a real sad loser who for some reason had been mistakenly booked into a comedy act night. Chaucer said Peter is good and should have more to do in the show, and that the Jesus parable was rubbish. He is exactly wrong about both these points. mktscan asked who the two guys in the newsagents in the title sequence flash frames are. They are Raj and Billy, Pete and Rich's newsagents, who run Maston news on Bedford Hill in Balham. Pete hopes to get Raj on in show 6. He did some stuff for us on the radio. The "heads on sticks" you refer to are probably from the British Museum. Robert Blake wrote in to say that there wouldn't have been a Tracey brother called Ian Tracey as "everyone knows that Jeff Tracey named all his sons after astronauts. How many astronauts do you know called Ian?" The answer is: 1) That this was a joke, written by us and thus did not have to conform to Gerry Anderson's astronaut law. 2) Perhaps Jeff Tracey was so embarrassed by his freak son that he did not wish to sully an astronaut's name by giving it to such an ugly son. 3) What about the astronaut Ian Harris who was aboard Appollo 17. Aaaah! 4) Thunderbirds is not real. Try and make the most of the precious gift of life that has by infintissimal chance been bestowed upon you, by doing something constructive with poor people or sick animals. 5) Good point. Tim Caynes said we humiliated his friend Neil with the true caption about deep sea diving. He's right. We did. That will teach him not to lie to Rich. Paul W Wormald, a lecturer in Design and Technology at Loughborough University, recommends you freeze frame all the graphics, as he enjoyed the "batman on a stick". Bruce Turner - "that little Scottish bloke" - are you that bloke who used to write for Punch and have a tweed jacket? Thanks for your message of support. cof3019 says Pete has more talent in his little finger than the two of us put together. Thanks. We will now be cutting his little finger off as punishment. Jason Emmett asked what colleges we went to in Oxford. Rich went to Saint Catherines, which is like a large comprehensive school on the outskirts of the town with a good entrance policy for people from state schools hence his attendance, and Stew went to St Edmund Hall, which was really old and is where Terry Jones from Monty Python went and he got taught by the Australian Olde English academic Bruce Mitchell, legendarilly the inspiration for the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch, about Australian academics. James Hunter said he visited BW Barbour Macoll evangelical bookshop in Edinburgh last

year after Stew's recommendation. It is on George IV Bridge street and is well worth a vsit for frightening evango-comix which are only 10p each. m-steer slagged us off for using old radio material and then asked why we haven't used the old comedy bed idea. It's because The Possee did it too on Channel 4. 100437.127 said he/she did not understand Fist of Fun and it was disjointed and completely unintelligible. We do not understand his/her name. It seems to be just a collection of numbers. Are you from the future? AR327 asked if it was Harmon Leon inbetween the sketches. Yes. The dreadlocked San Franciscan foole is a friend of Stew and Rich and sleeps on their floors on his euro-jaunts. David Holland asked if we'll do a second series. We've had good press and OK audiences and the show's been well received, but whether or not we'll get a second series depends on how swiftly the BBC runs out of money, seriously. He also asks how long it takes to write one show. Well, the oldest piece of material in the series is 8 years old, so I guess the whole thing has been gestating about 8 years. Lots of the material in each show has been knocking around our files for ages, so it's really hard to say exactly. When we were a bit younger we used to write hour long radio shows from scratch in about a week by drinking loads of diet coke and staying up all night, but we're too old for that now. Hello, TPPP Colman, do come and see us again. Stephen J Kent-Taylor had four things on his mind, here are our replies: 1) Thank you Stephen for warning Peter Baynham about the dangers of staying in character all night. Also Stephen is the only one of you lot so far to spot the clever secret Star Trek TNG joke in show 2. 2) The reason Pete was only in one sketch in "The Day Today" is because his job on that show was to write material for all the others making them look good and then to be edited out of any publicity photos supplied to the press, and then to have his material used by Patrick Marber in his Observer column and not be paid for it. 3) See above. 4) Re: music on the radio. For years the only music Rich had in his possession was tapes of The Sex Pistols and Simon and Garfunkel. Honest. He loves Paul Simon and sings the line "I met my old lover on the street today" from the song "Still Crazy After All These Years" about 4 times a day. About 3 years ago I gave him a tape of Ice T, which he likes because of the brilliant words, aggressive satire of the capitalist world and swearing. Rich bought a cd player with some of the money from the telly and has been out buying records and has now got about 10 cds, including Sheryl Crow, The Jam, Terry Hall's brilliant solo album, the soundtracks of "The Piano" and "Pulp Fiction", a Creation Compilation which was supposed to be a prize on our last tour, and a King Missile album, which he has copied off me. I like 60's American US psychedelia, all those early 80's California bands, folk stuff, American indie things, melodic hardcore and difficult bendy avant gardey music. I have thousands of records, all in perfect alphabetical order, and Rich says I deliberately like things that no-one else likes to try and appear interesting. To which I always say "Aaaah, yes, but I like REM" and he says "No, not aaaah" etc. etc. "Something To Eat" was by Donner Party, from San Francisco, who included Melanie Clarin from the Catheads and a bloke I think is now in X-Tal. They were great and made three albums, all called "Donner Party", but I've only ever found 2 of them. I've got the green one and the one with the medieval animals on it. If anyone knows where the other one can be found, tell me. I don't want a tape of it, as I actually want to possess it as an object. "Jesus Was Way Cool"

was by King Missile, who are ace!! Alan Davis' stealing stuff from work routine must owe a debt to their song on the same subject as he is a big fan. Peter Baynham likes Bob Dylan (obsessively), The Manics, Lightning Seeds and American Music Club. His false Peter Character likes Coast To Coast who did "Do The Hucklebuck" - Stew. 5) Thanks for what you said about us, and I think being "accessible" is a good thing too! Cheers! Paul O'Brien recommends you look at http://www.primus.com/staff/paulp/useless.html if you want to see dull things. DE Hopkins asked if Lionel Nimrod, our BBC Radio 4 Show, will come out on tape. Well, hopefully it will soon, as I expect some people might actually buy it now. If you really want some tapes of it try writing to that fanzine, "Christs Fat Cock", they might help you. Good idea about the lottery, maybe series 2, if there is one. Geoffrey Donald Hogg - write to Low Life, they'll tell you. Johnny Boy asked for "more blasphemy, swearing and general offensiveness". Well, Johnny, we'll do our best, but it's hard to please everybody. David Holland. Stop sending us that Smurf porn. Smurf porn is a cliche of the internet. James P Mcbride writes "Patrick Marber deserves all he gets, he seems too smug by half on Knowing Me Knowing You, which was nowhere near as funny on TV as it was on the radio." Salim Fadhley says "Fist of Fun is the best comedy programme on the TV at the moment, despite the fact that we have heard all of the material before on Radio 4, Radio 1 and on stage." .. and then says please can we see the All Things Bright And Beautiful thing on TV. Make your mind up. I don't think ATBAB would work on Fist of Fun as it takes about half an hour, would make bad TV, and is essentially funny because it is so boring, but might just actually turn out really boring. I'd like to do it in a big theatre one day, so maybe it could turn up on a live video if we/I ever do one. - Stew. Joseph M Farrugia said he was "sorry" but did not find FOF funny at all. We are sorry too. Try and watch another programme which you do think is funny. Mark Redman asks: 1) "To what extent do you think your very existence as BBC light entertainers merely serves to perpetuate some kind of Oxbridge-comedy hegemony?" Firstly, Pete didn't go to Uni at all and was actually in the Merchant Navy etc etc. But, seriously... I don't think TV comedy was "Oxbridgey" in the 1980's. Fry & Laurie etc were the last gasp of the Seventies and then people, quite rightly, looked to the stand-up circuit for new talent. But, I think the increasing commercialisation of the stand-up circuit means that it's harder to be original on it - promoters can't afford to put on a 'risky' act, and thus all the best, most original new TV comedy shows have come from people who weren't especially active on, or approved by, the circuit, namely, Reeves & Mortimer, The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You, Fast Show, Mrs Merton Show etc. Mrs Merton (Caroline Hook), Coogan, John Thompson etc were allowed to develop in splendid isolation in Manchester, doing character acts that might not have been able to blossom in London. Chris Morris came out of local radio and was, I think, blissfully unaware of the "comedy laws" of London. Reeves & Mortimer, Tommy Cockles etc seem to have been able to make their own little South

London enclave where they got on in peace, and us and all the Oxbridge wankers were plugging away trying to freelance stuff into radio . Personally, if I'd only had stand-up I'd have been more determined to be commercial, and thus probably not as good, but Me and Rich were always trying Weekending etc as well. None of this is to say that circuit acts aren't any good, or that its a total dead loss. Harry Hill has managed to be both really good and really popular on the circuit, and obvioulsy there's loads of brilliant stand-ups who never get the credit they deserve. This is a really personal mad biased view and I hope it doesn't piss anyone off. - Stew. If going to Oxford or Cambridge is such a great help how come I've been living in disgusting rented accommodation for 6 years and living off as low as GBP 5000 a year. We have got to this point through hard work in a number of media and not because of any false mafia system. On the other hand it didn't do us any harm knowing Armando Iannucci before he became famous, although ultimately it didn't do us all that much good either as anyone who knows the story behind "On the Hour" will tell you. The reason lots of people form Oxbridge do well is because you (generally) have to work very hard to get into Oxbridge and working hard is the best way to succeed in this life. That is what I think. I only went to a comprehensive in Somerset after all. Plus I hated all the posh twats at University and I don't see why I should be punished by being associated with them. Does that answer your question? Good. Love Rich. 2) We're using the old green desk material from On The Hour on the radio because all our stuff was edited out of the best of the series radio release due to arguing about who was the best and we want more than 10 people to see it. 3) Mark writes "Make me a copy of "Mystical Shit" by King Missile. Please use dolby c." Buy your own. It's on Shimmy Disc records. Actually I think Shimmy Disc has just gone bust... look if you really can't find one send a tape to the office and I'll do it, but don't anyone else ask for this kind of stuff otherwise you just run out of time to have a life Stew. JRM Wills writes "I am a student and live with five other blokes, but we are all just mates." and said his friend thought the show was "quite good". Thanks. We find your unnecessary insistence that you are just mates suspicious. Do not be ashamed of your sexuality JRM Wills. All sexual tastes are equally dirty and wrong and should be punishable by a ten pound fine. mktscan asks "Where do you get all your crazy ideas from?" Well spotted. We are glad your freeze frame works on your video. Colin Campbell and G White both asked for less of Peter. We'll try. Chris Perkin - Stew was a Smiths fan as a lad, but Rich hates them. I've always liked the line "The Devil will find work for idle hands to do" that we opened show 1 with, because the "to do" part of it seems so unecessary, like what else were the idle hands going to do with the work other than... er... do it. - Stew. To everyone else, thanks for your positive/negative/indiscriminate comments. Please keep them coming in. We do read them all, but are only troubled by those which display an obvious innate intelligence. Neil said it was a mistake using "famous comedy bloke" John Thomson, as he was enjoying having no established comedians on the show, and it leaned towards "a great comedic camaraderie". We don't think it was a bad move. John Thomson has been doing stuff for us on the radio for about 3 years, and is the best at doing the parts, especially of

grumpy blokes from Manchester. It's nice that we used loads of new people, but by your logic what are we supposed to do if we get a 2nd series? Use people that look like us instead of ourselves. Also, you'd be hard pushed to find any people less a part of "a great comedic camaraderie". We're almost never asked to be on anything else by anyone else, and Ben Elton himself wrote to London's "Time Out" magazine last week saying he had no idea who we were. Thanks for the other nice comments though Neil. Hope you enjoy the rest of the series. Ben Lester asked if life at Oxford University is like the University of Life sketch. No, it isn't, obviously. That's the point. Dave Emmett, we are sorry to hear you died after putting Tippex in your mouth. YOZ - Fist of Fun's theme music is indeed the B-side of Globo's 'Beautiful Feeling', but they have re-mixed it for us, and done all the incidental music and stings. They have a new album out called "Pro-War" which is good. Their live shows represent the kind of info-overload we wanted, plus they are nice blokes. Stew says: "I really like guitary moany music, to be honest, no technical stuff, but we didn't want to have some cool indie band do the sound-track so we'd look like hopelessly out of date twats in about 2 months time. Globo's stuff sounds kind of efficient and grown up and outside fashion. In reply to your question, YOZ, the last ace bargain record I got was The Windbreakers' first album, including a version of Televison's 'Glory' on which they are backed by the Rain Parade, for GBP 1 in a charity shop in Clapham Junction." bsc4036 asked if we are going to done phone call things like we did on the radio. We can't really. They wouldn't make good TV and the format of the show is not really loose enough to accommodate that sort of thing. We'll do stuff like that on the radio again though. William Mackintosh was an extra in the University of Life and asked how to get more extra work. Er... apply to an extra agency? Don't know really. Michael Buckely said the show is crap. Neil Stewart asked if Pete got any audience in Edinburgh last year, as when he saw him there were only about 12 people. Well, he didn't get many, although his show was ace. Stew and Pete both lost about GBP 4000 each at Edinburgh last year, though Rich covered his costs due to a clever ticket auction gimmick for his show. If we get paid more for the 2nd series, if we get one, we want to stage some really extravagant things in E next year, 96. Like our own anti-Perrier award for more money than the real Perrier, which we give to the shows that are really the best, namely us and our friends, instead of the ones that the comedy establishment wants to suck up to. A man at school with RaMpage used to paint his tongue with tippex, let the mixture dissolve, and spit it at people. He is now in the Police Force. Ryan Andrews asked what happened to the "hilarious" (sic) American comedian Harmon Leon who supported Stew at student gigs last year. He's back in SanFran, writing for National Lampoon, Might, Sky and others and runs a brilliant club which re-defines comedy as we know it. If you really thought he was rubbish then you are wrong. You say you spent all night ripping the piss out of him. That would explain why he turned up at my house all confused an upset the next day. He's in the show, with dreadlocks, shouting things to camera.

David Mitchell asked if the 'aubergines or death' sketch from our Radio 4 show, LNEW, will be in the series. No it won't. We'd forgotten about that one and when you reminded us of it we laughed. Andrew Simmons wrote to say to Richard "Hope you die and burn in Hell". Rich says: "Thank you Andrew. I think you were joking anyway, but I will definitely die and may burn in Hell, but only because I don't believe in it." Someone anonymous on compuserve wants us to desist from taking the piss out of the West Country and have a go at Suffolk. We do this anyway. The urban man came from Hoxne, near Diss. Thank you Mark Bennett for all the stuff you sent and the scary sub-genius stuff. Spooky. He edits a magazine called Black Ice in Brighton that you might like to read. It is great. Dave Hunt, we will ignore the god squad people. Although we were forced to cut Stew slapping Jesus out of the parable in show 2, which explains the slight odd edit. It was funny as well. Never mind. We annoyed 24 Christians who rang in to complain and that's a good start. Nick, your mum Mrs James, did teach me Chemistry. My dad, Keith also taught me Maths. The Kings of Wessex Upper School rules. Melissa, glad you like the show. Hopefully they will repeat the series so you can tape the shows next time round and also because we get paid again for doing nothing. TV is neat. Richard Green, we did meet Ben Moor at University. He was in the Oxford Revues of 1988 and 1989 that Rich and Stew wrote/directed/appeared in. He's ugly isn't he? Rich wrote a couple of sketches for Up To Something. Well Dave Schneider adapted some of Rich's ideas for Zero Talent, the strange magician. You are wrong. The show was rubbish. Shane Ritchie has done well though. Rich says "I am called Richard Herring" because we enjoy writing unnecessary words in our sentences. Actually he is meant to say a different thing each week, but as we recorded show 1 and 2 together he got confused and messed it up. Watch out for the changes in future shows. Ben Partridge, enquired about our use of flash frame images. Well we don't care if we're not allowed. We've put them in and no-one's told us off. The attacks on Patrick Marber are entirely justified. He was the only one of the Day Today team who seemed to relish us leaving the show. Also he tried to jump on the backs of a succession of comedians and ride his way to fame before getting his claws into Coogan. We actually quite like him, but it's funny to bring pointless personal grudges on to the national TV arena. Also he has a grumpy cornish face. You're right about Eric Idle. He was great in Python, but oh dear, what has happened since. Watch us decline in a similar sell out fashion over the next 20 years. The girl in the titles is called Lucy. She's the daughter of an actress we know, but is just an ordinary kid and much more natural than all the stage school freaks who auditioned for the role. lan Coleman asked if Somerset is "a hotbed of rural violence" as he had heard it was. Well, I don't really know as I now live in London. The Cantonese takeaway incident is true.

I don't think it is as violent as London - Rich James Delap wrote to remind me of an incident where a naked woman's bottom appeared in a window when I was in Cheddar. Sadly I do not recall it. Apparently it was Debbie Paige's bottom. You do not win 5 pounds James as you ask, as the information you sent was in no way requested or sought by me, although I found it interesting - Rich. Thank you also from Rich to whoever it is in Cheddar who is e-mailing and writing to me pretending to be Malcom Litten my English teacher and or Brian Bancroft's solicitor. It is funny, although obviously a lie. Would Malcom Litten send me pornography? Only very hard core stuff, not the pathetic rubbish you sent. Peter wrote about Richard's shirts. They belong to the BBC, I can not answer your queries. He is in a band too but I can't work out what it's called... "Dog in the Wax"? Can't mention it on the telly now despite your offer of drugs and Wham Bars. Sorry. Dave Haddock (yeah like that's a real name) e-mailed to say he thought we were hit and miss (yes but the bits you don't like someone else does, can't you even see that). He won Pete's set in Rich's show in Edinburgh last week, but couldn't get it home. If anyone has a film of it from a camcorder could they let us know. Ben Moor will be back in Edinburgh this year in a show called "The smallest Cinema in the World" so look out for that. scindh wrote to say he had seen the jarred man joke 2.5 times as it had been on the radio and in our Edinburgh show. Yes, as we've explained before, that Edinburgh show was seen by maybe 1000 people, the radio show maybe a few thousand more. The TV show is watched by up to 2 million people, leaving a good 1.99 million who have never seen it before. Do you see why it is OK to use it? Plus it is different when you can see it, isn't it? So that leaves only those people in Edinburgh and most of them would have forgotten it by now. Thanks for being our fan though. You also ask how my dad got to be a headmaster if he is pickled in a jar. Well he is now a retired headmaster. He used to be fully healthy but then due to an accident, that I do not wish to discuss, his life could only be saved by Somerset's top onion pickler and surgeon and thus he was put in the jar only recently. He struggled on being a headmaster for a couple of years but then the governors felt that even in Somerset children could not be taught by a jarred man so he retired. And also he could be a headmaster because the jarred man idea is just a joke - Rich. Ben Smith complained about the treatment of Shipham. It doesn't just have a war memorial he says, but also a red telephone box and TWO benches, so Shipham isn't boring. He has answered his own complaint. HEA Fulton. The "cute" presenter is Rich Herring. He does not have a fan club as yet. Perhaps you'd like to start one. We have a mailing list. The address is in here somewhere. m-lobley mailed in to ask why we spell "hamster" "hampster". We spell it "hampster" because that is better. He also said he heckled Patrick Marber at the Woolwich tramshed years ago during a radio recording, but that the heckle was edited out. MR JR Rogers asked why we were in the "On The Hour" writing team and not in the team for "The Day Today" on telly. I think we must have answered this somewhere else on here but here goes... For the last time, it's because we wanted a co-ownership deal on the TV show rather than just a straight weekly commission, as we felt like we'd created or co-created lots of characters that were successful in the radio show, i.e Patrick Marber's

Brian O'hanrahanrahan which we made up and had influenced the style/tone of the show more than we'd originally envisaged. They didn't agree and did a Stalinist re-write of history which erased us from the annals. cen noted that the Eel workshop host, Ken Zetty, was obviously based on the real person Kendrick Zetie, who has a funnier name. True. We met him 6 years ago, and once when me and Rich were doing a medieval play called The Weakefield Second Shepherd's play we used to change the middle english line "There is none that knows nor trows a war than ken I nightly" to "There is none that knows nor trows a war than ken zettie" just to amuse ourselves - Stu. Philip Mallard observed that the show is "completely lacking in intelligence and is based on only a few weak jokes, but is very good and a welcome change." rc 1: i) We'd love to do another series for Radio 1 but it's not up to us. ii) In Edinburgh this year Rich is doing "Richard Herring is All Man", Stu's doing "Cluuub Zarathustra" with some other guys, and we're all doing a live show of Fist of Fun iii) You can get the choc t-shirt in San Francisco. Nice Guy Pauls asks if we've ever got into a fight with other comedians, re: Lee Hurst punching Geoff Boyz at the Comedy Store and says "is it only rough non-Oxbridge comedians who do this? Well, me and Rich have had fights with each other, Rich's friend was fought by Keith Allen at Edinburgh in 1988, Stu once broke up a fight between Mark Lamaar and a man, but the fight King of fights is Simon Munnery aka Alan Parker, who punished Jeremy Hardy for his churlishness by fighting him at E Fest in 1988 resulting in the aged satirist being taken off by the police. Mark LT Baker. We put stuff on the net because we've both enjoyed zipping about on it in the company, of our more computer-literate friends, namely Danny O'Brien and Dave Green of Wired magazine, and cut and paste techno info exchange is all part of the Fist of Fun world view. Plus it helps to create a false air of subversion and interestingness amongst all you lot of net-divs and space-mongs. Andy - there probably will be a repeat at some stupid late night useless time that the BBC wrongly thinks is appropriate as they have ghettoised us as cult youth TV that only 13 year olds could possibly like. Sarah E Morgan - send your cv to the producer, Sarah Smith, via post, not us via internet. Good Luck. Did you know that the dead singer and guitar genius Nick Drake went to your school. I once drove to Marlborough at night when I was on acid - Stu. James D O'Brien asks for transcripts of the subliminal texts and asks .... "When I didn't have a transcript of a humorous subliminal message were you there, were you there." No James, we aren't there. Tuff luk! Tim Bentley asks if our dislike of Somerset extends to Cornwall. No. It doesn't. Cornwall has its own language, culture and food (pasties and ice cream) and is cool, and I know Cona Tevithen Jenkin the Cornish (not "cornish", Cornish) youth activist - Stu. Scott Kay writes "Stewart - underneath that fringe is pure baldness." Scott.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the show called Fist of Fun? It is because the phrase conveys the feeling of the twin worlds of delight and aggression that characterise our writing. Also, we wanted to see if we could get a reference to an anal sex techniques into the Radio Times, and we have! What is the address to send stuff in for The Gallery? It's: The Gallery Fist of Fun Room 3301 BBC TV Centre Wood Lane London W12 Pleeeeease send lots of stuff in, pleeeeeeease. Are the subliminal messages just a shallow ploy to make sure that everyone wears out the video tape they've taped the show on so they then have to buy a deluxe boxed set later? On the contrary. It's to make you tape the shows so you aren't tempted by corporate merchandising... and to use up all the hours of shit we've written over the years. Why are you using mainly old material? It is because our radio stuff has been heard by only a few thousand people, and our TV show is seen by 2 million plus, so it would be a shame to see all that old stuff wasted. Also, there is loads of new stuff anyway, and all the old stuff is changed for telly anyway, so even people who know all our stuff off by heart should find something to delight them in every show. Also, if you think we've done 5 years work in radio for sod all money just to have to start from scratch again for the telly then you are mistaken. And loads of people write in specifically asking for old stuff. Fair's fair, eh? My video is crap and the pause control isn't any good. Can the events diary be put on the web pages? Yes they can, plus all the other fast text stuff from the programme. All in good time. Be patient.

How To Find Out Even More You can e-mail us at [email protected] If you think we are really great then we have an information/mailing list:

Fist of Fun Mailing List PO Box 168 LONDON WC29NX There is a fanzine about us, Peter Baynham, The Day Today, Chris Morris and Alan Partridge called Christ's Fat Cock, done by a Welsh man called Joseph Champniss and an English man called Mike Scott. To find out about it write to: Joseph Champniss 31 Glanfellin Flats Hawthorn Pontypridd Mid Glamorgan South Wales CF37 5LL or Mike Scott 29 Kew Drive Oadby Leicester LE25TS This fanzine is nothing to do with us so don't complain to us if you don't like it. Or congratulate us if you do. We're also featured in the new edition of the Goth Fanzine, Lowlife, issue 9, through some inexplicable turn of events. It is GBP 3.00 + SAE from: Lowlife J Tucker 59 Burdett Rd London E3 4TN Issue 9 also includes pieces on Suede, Patricia Morrison from the Sisters of Mercy and new band Big Electric Cat, all three of whom we obviously fit in really well with.

Complaints
We haven't been getting too many complaints recently. We think those who will be offended have learned not to watch us. The latest few are here, but the older ones haven't gone, they're just at the end. A bloke wrote a long letter to us about the Urban Man sketch explaining in great hand-written detail the deep Freudian significance of us showing a small child having been

run over and eaten by a dog. It was very intelligently and cogently argued and would have been entirely correct had we shown that. Unfortunately the body in question belonged clearly to a grown man as anyone who had a sense of proportions of objects would have realised. Thanks though to that bloke for a good complaint which was just founded on nothing. The Jesus Behind You Skit in Show 5 predictably annoyed some people. What a surprise. Oh we're sorry. Never mind. 16 people were highly offended by blasphemous remarks made. A man rang in to ask (again) "if a similar programme could be made next week which poked fun at the Mohammed"... Well, no it probably can't, as programmes have to be prepared at least a couple of weeks in advance. But a nice suggestion. Another man said "are you paying people for this? It is not funny at all. I am broadminded but if it has to result to this to make people laugh then the BBC must be desperate". Ah well! Have you noticed how anyone who has to say that they are broad-minded usually aren't. Incidentally we're not allowed to put these complaints on the Internet, as our producer says it is against the BBC code of ethics or something, but we have anyway. It's not likely that the old tossers who ring in to complain are going to be able to work a computer let alone find their way on to this page, is it. That's it for new complaints, here's the stuff that you've probably already read. We can't put in anyone's names as the calls are confidential.

Old Complaints 15 people rang in to complain generally about the level of blasphemy in the programme. It is not clear from the duty officer's notes if the callers thought the programme was too blasphemous or not blasphemous enough. One woman thought that the programme was unsuitable to be screened. Another woman said "I was disgusted by your childish references to the menstrual cycle. The whole programme was a complete waste of the license payers' money." A man said "This is complete and utter crap and as funny as cancer. Pull the plug on it now and let us watch the test card instead." Another man thought that the sketch of a baby being run over (?) was extremely offensive. Presumably he is referring to the fully grown Urban man's dead roadside body. This was a foam rubber model and not a real dead man, honest. Another woman described the programme as "entirely unamusing and highly disgraceful that it should be shown at peak time." Another woman found the programme extremely distasteful, and further that it was promoting the taking of drugs. Another woman - "This is awful, and not at all suitable for BBC2." Another woman - "The drugs item was just stupid and should never have been broadcast

and the religious items were just offensive." A final woman finds the programme most offensive, particularly to the Christian faith, and wants an explanation as to why the BBC are showing it. Someone rang up the Fist of Fun office direct and blew a raspberry down the phone. We don't know who it was. The Archbishop of Canterbury perhaps? You can e-mail us at [email protected]

Celebration of Mediocrity Lee and Herring

Comedy duo Richard Herring and Stewart Lee are surely the most mediocre comedians of their genervation apart from Punt and Dennis but the very fact that they're not even the most mediocre makes them even more mediocre and thus the most mediocre after all and so on to infinity. Celebrate their lives by watching or listening to some of the things they've done. There are some to choose from. Sketches for BBC 2 Schools TV Radio 4's The End of the Road Show Channel 4s A Stab in the Dark BBC 1's 1989 sketch show Up To Something Radio 4's Weekending Two humorous monologues for Radio 4's Anderson Country. This show was one of the least popular programmes ever on BBC Radio and has since been scraped The never produced Spitting Image Video Comic and Stage Show The never made Jive Bunny cartoon The fifth show of BBC2's Loose Talk. There are no plans for a second series. Links for the untransmitted pilot show of Barrymore (they were not asked to write for the incredibly popular series.) A sketch about news for people called lan for Granada TV'S The Full Monty. The sketch was dropped from the show and never broadcast Pilot episodes of Gigo TV, Whatever Became Of ... ?, That's Wiggin's Yard, The Downbeat Space DJ Show, Contempt of Court, Bob Says Who? (with Bob Mortimer), Really Boring Journeys, That Was The Week That Was II. None of these shows were considered worthy of further development Lee and Herring also wrote for the non-mediocre award winning Radio 4 show On the Hour but they are still eligible for mediocre status as they left the show before it went to huge to success as The Day Today due to legal difficulties Other ways to celebrate Lee and Herring's mediocrity: In 1991 Richard was asked to play the voice of a spider on a Channel 4 Schools TV programme. However, according to the producer the tape Richard made "went wrong" but they did not ask him to come in and do it again, for some reason. Instead someone else did it. Celebrate Richard's mediocrity by spending a week creating a voice for an insect in your house and then, at the last minute get a friend to come round and do a voice he's just made up on the spur of the moment instead.

In 1990 Stewart recorded a satirical item about the Gulf War for the satirical satellite TV BSB satirical news show Up Yer News. The package was never broadcast and the TV station has since closed down. Celebrate this by videoing yourself, making a joke about Saddam Hussein and then send in a huge parcel bomb to the mediocre TV station of your choice (e.g. Anglia, Westcountry, Grampian, Ulster TV, BBC2) You will thus destroy the unseen tape and the mediocre TV station at the same time. In December 1989 Richard worked in an advertising sales office in central London working through the business phone directory asking random businesses if they'd like to advertise in a brochure aimed at the Russian market. He was sacked after 3 weeks having made no sales at all. Celebrate the mediocrity by ringing up random people form the phone directory and offering them things they don't need or want and can't possibly afford, whilst a rude Canadian boss called Lionel Cosgrave shouts at you for being rubbish. Stew once had a job as a quality control officer in an orange juice factory in Kidlington, but lost his job after fruit flies laid their eggs in the machinery causing the conveyor belt to become clogged with dead maggots. Celebrate his mediocrity by getting a job with a food manufacture and then deliberately poisoning the food with poison or dangerous drugs. Remember - if you laugh at these men that means you have a mediocre sense of humour and are as worthless as a crumb of a crumb in an infinitely huge pile of crumbs. But fear ye not, your mediocrity makes you a true hero in the tapestry that we call life.