TV12: John Sparkes, Gregor Fisher in ‘Naked Video’ and ‘Absolutely’

 

Did anybody else here enjoy the two ‘Celtic’ comedy shows that were called ‘Naked Video’ and ‘Absolutely’, the ones that amongst the largely Scottish casts featured the Welsh comedy genius John Sparkes.

 

Living in ‘Granadaland’, I only get the ‘Radio Times’ that has all the ‘North and Yorkshire’ programming in it, so I am not going to say that he is a lost comedy genius, just in case he is a major star on ‘S4C’, though to me he is.

 

John Sparkes first came to my attention in the mid 1980s, as a member of the BBC 2 comedy sketch show ‘Naked Video’. Like the ‘Mary Whitehouse Experience’ and the ‘Flight of the Conchords’, the show was originally a radio show, and because I did not listen to them at the time, I do not know if the cast was all Scottish at that point, or also featured contributions from John Sparkes.

 

As well as John Sparkes, ‘Naked Video’ also featured Tony Roper, Gregor Fisher and Elaine C Smith, faces who you might remember from the iconic Scottish comedy series ‘Rab C. Nesbitt’. In fact, ‘Rab C. Nesbitt’ was first seen in sketch form on the show and, as with the sitcom, was shown in his grubby headband and vest, talking in his broad dialect, a dialect which some people needed subtitles for to understand. Also making his debut on the show was another sitcom star, ‘The Baldy Man’, though his ‘Mr Bean’ type of adventures proved more successful when spun off into advertising.

 

Both ‘Rab’ and ‘the Baldy Man’ were played by Gregor Fisher, whose other main character on the show was an anchorman for a local broadcaster, a television station called ‘OHBC’. In fact, if this station had been given a licence by the IBA to make it a real Independent Television station, then it would have beaten ‘Channel’ to the title of Britain’s smallest station, as ‘OHBC’ stood for the ‘Outer Hebrides Broadcasting Corporation’. I cannot remember if they had their own version of ‘Puffin Pla(i)ce’, but in a way predicted the future when small community channels and Gaelic language channels would appear on people’s electronic programme guides.

 

From a Scottish view to one of Wales; and one of my favourite characters of all time. ‘Siadwell’ was an anorak wearing Welsh poet, a ‘complete bard’ in fact, who would sit in his room and tell tales of the week gone by. If I remember correctly he had an honouree O-Level from a local university, was given one shoe for a present and had a Gran who was afraid of the floor, which was because “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the floor”. Unfortunately ‘Siadwell’ would not appear in all the series of ‘Naked Video’ because after a few series, Sparkes moved to another Scottish based comedy show, the one on ‘Channel 4’ that was called ‘Absolutely’.

 

On ‘Absolutely’, Sparkes who play a number of recurring characters, though none were as brilliant as ‘Siadwell’, they were all great. Moving from the bedroom to the toilet, Frank Hovis was a ‘Northern Working Man’s club turn’ and gave his life’s perspectives from perched upon his lavatory seat. As you would have guessed from this set up, most of the humour for this section was ‘lavatorial’ in nature and very rude, though the actual observational style was not a million miles away from that of the ‘Welsh Bard’.

 

Whilst Hovis was from the ‘backwards’ North of England, ‘Gwyneth & Denzel’ were Welsh. Here Sparkes played ‘Denzel’ and this character’s ‘Welsh-ness’ would be played up even more than with ‘Siadwell’. The sections would be filmed with subtitles so it looked like it was actually ‘S4C’ that you were watching, though the characters would be speaking ‘English’ and the subtitles would be in ‘Welsh’. These subtitles were not really ‘Welsh’ but an approximation of the Welsh language with lots of ‘fffff’s’ dropped in, whilst the characters would have trouble with their ‘woovres’ rather than having problems with their vacuum cleaners.

 

This warping of the sound of local dialects, was also in affect in the sketches that were set in the small Scottish town of Stoneybridge, a town famous for its ‘Stoney’ stone bridge. Here the town council would try to promote the town in any which way they could, most famously producing a promotional ‘vi-do’ that would target French investors. This ‘vi-do’, or as I would be corrected by the council ‘vid-day-oh’, focused on a lot of the wonderful things that the town had to offer, such as their ‘stoneybridge’, a bridge that was made of stone.

 

I would have liked ‘Stonebridge’ to have been spun off into a proper sitcom as it would have been like a Scottish ‘Royston Vasey’. On the other hand, the characters of ‘Mr Don and Mr George’ were briefly seen in their own sitcom before Jack Docherty became Channel 5’s ‘Letterman’ clone. I never really liked ‘Mr Don and Mr George’ in the show, preferring characters like the incredibly boring Callum Gilhooley and his ‘Honda Bike’ obsession instead.

 

Both were great - Absolutely somewhat more surreal.

Frank Hovis was absolutely brilliant with his bizarre pronunciation and his strange medical problems. I will never forget his squirming about on the toilet for two minutes followed by his production of a chap stick and the line, "Ladies and Gentleman, I have a chapped anus".

 

Stoneybridge was great as was the nice family with the authoritarian father. Also loved the old git who couldn't get the peas on his fork.

Liked both series,......................stoneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyybridge :lol:

Frank Hovis was absolutely brilliant with his bizarre pronunciation and his strange medical problems. I will never forget his squirming about on the toilet for two minutes followed by his production of a chap stick and the line, "Ladies and Gentleman, I have a chapped anus".

 

Stoneybridge was great as was the nice family with the authoritarian father. Also loved the old git who couldn't get the peas on his fork.

 

 

Oh yes, ‘Alf’, who was another great Sparkes character. I forgot that he did him as it was very similar to that other ‘old giffer character’ called ‘Alf’ that appeared in the ‘Fast Show’. I think the two have got merged in my memories along the way into one character.

Totally. Once when watching the Fast Show I thought it was the same character, although Absolutely created him first.

 

Which one of them ended up in France on his shopmobility scooter?

Both shows were utterly fantastic, my favourite of the two was deffo "Absolutely" though mainly because of its surrealness, I reckon "Stoneybridge" could easily have made a very good spin-off show (the League of Gentlemen certainly owed "Absolutely" a debt or two..), but instead Moray Hunter and Jack Doherty chose to do "Mr Don and Mr George" instead, which frankly was a rather more-miss-than-hit affair.. Other great characters from that show - The Poet MacGlashin with a hatred of "English poofs" :lol: :lol: , the over-excited little girl (as played by the excellent Morwenna Banks, surely one of our finest female comedy talents....), Callum Gilhooley (the most boring man in the world..), the dirty old man who continually uttered the words "bugger" and "quim". "Absolutely" was another one of these shows that was the main inspiration for shows like "Little Britain".... It really is a shame that the "Absolutely" crew just seemed to disappear without trace after the mid-90s and never really did anything else to match this brilliant show, Banks, Doherty, Hunter, Baikie, Sparkes and Kennedy were certainly six of Britian's most versatile and talented comic actors....

 

 

"You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps"

 

Wooooaaaahhhh...Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

"You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps"

 

Wooooaaaahhhh...Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

 

"Man in the red jersey... You are talking sh!te... You are talking sh!te....!!"..... :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Here we go - some clips

 

Stoneybridge bid for the Olympics

 

McGlashan ranting

 

Frank Hovis

 

Little Girl