Although I might come across as a lovely fellow online – fingers crossed – I have, occasionally, done very bad things. One of these was to take my lovely wife to see Simon Munnery as The League Against Tedium (described by blog god Stewart Lee as occupying the wasteland where comedy meets art since no one else wants to) when we were first dating. Quite why she stuck with me after that, I don't know.
Munnery went on to have two TV shows – Either/Or, a game show which I was on briefly and ended up losing/winning; and a BBC2 show Attention Scum. Just to give you the full flavour of what I put her through, here's a clip.
Apologies again, lovely wife.
May 29, 2008 | Reply
...what?
May 29, 2008 | Reply
A pretty common reaction to The League Against Tedium.
Try these for the sheer WTFness of it all: Kevin Eldon - What am I?; The Internet; the opening titles; the taller hat. And none of them have the insulting opera singer in them, which is a shame.
That was on BBC2, that was. Not as clearly misjudged a choice as Jerry Sadowitz's The Pall Bearer's Review, but still amazing that it ever made it that far.
May 29, 2008 | Reply
Before I had children I used to go regularly to see Simon Munnery at the edinburgh fringe. One year he did a show with Lee and Eldon (and one or two others) called Cluub Zarathutsra, which was the funniest thing I've seen on the Fringe: including Kevin Eldon and Stewart lee (IIRC) doing variants on the oysters and snails dicussion from Spartacus.
The Legaue Against tedium stage show - accompanied by insults sang by an opera singer directed at members of the audience - was a wonderful thing. I fondly remember
"Master of 99 languages. Inventor of 98 languages."
I took my flatmate to both shows - soon after he moved from Edinburgh to Bristol, my wife (then girlfriend) was taken to see Peter Kay. We're still together.
May 29, 2008 | Reply
"The Legaue Against tedium stage show - accompanied by insults sang by an opera singer directed at members of the audience - was a wonderful thing. I fondly remember"
That was my prize for winning/losing Either/Or - that and the loss of my anonymity. I still think he had a point there.
May 29, 2008 | Reply
IAMTV - a DVD of the show that you are talking of here is available from leagueagainsttedium.co.uk , along with many other Munnery products
Cheers
May 29, 2008 | Reply
Any sign of an Either/Or DVD?
May 29, 2008 | Reply
Ah, Either/Or, game show meets Kierkegaardian existentialism. Didn't all the audience/contestants have to wear cowls/hoods, and the "loser" had to take theirs off? And got a mocked up tabloid front page in which they were declared to be evil? One of UK Play's few original programmes. That and Lucas and Walliams' finest hour, Rock Profile (see e.g. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fjPBVLuWj-g )
May 29, 2008 | Reply
By the way, I have a Sitting Tennant:
http://www.sfuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/top-gear-2.jpg
May 30, 2008 | Reply
We wore hoods on our monks' garments and we each had a placard on a stick to obscure our faces. Once you reached a certain point, after answering a number of random questions, if you got the answer wrong, you had to remove your hood and swap the big placard for a tiny placard. More questions then the last remaining contestant had to lose their little placard, be insulted by the opera singer and have various insults (including a tabloid front page and some sky writing) reveal their identity – since the worst thing in the world is to lose your anonymity.
I was in three of them, but for two of them I managed to retain my cowl and big placard. The third one I lost. Oh well.