August 29, 2006
KEN KORDA NEWS
KEN KORDA: INSIDE THE FUNNY FACTORY!
Earlier this year I was asked by the BBC’s New Talent department to make a couple of short films containing tips for people who wanted to upload content onto their Comedy Soup website. I spent an afternoon cocking about in BBC television centre dressed up as Ken Korda and a few weeks later delivered a couple of 2 and a half minute pieces with some very basic, common sense tips. Although they did eventually use them, I’ve never been able to actually make them play and they seem to have opted for a far more exhaustive list of comedy do’s and don’ts from Rob Manuel from B3TA (who were kind enough to link to my New Pope clip despite accusing me in a bizarrely gossipy way, of being fat and sinister looking which, coming from the net’s über geeks, stung a little!)
Anyway with a few days spare, I cut a couple of alternative versions of my Ken bits for my own amusement, which you can see below. I just realised in the course of uploading them that they both contain the same piece of music I used for the CADS messages video I did. So far no one’s tried to sue me so I suppose the least I can do is give it a plug: it’s called RENDELSHACK by WAGON CHRIST, which I believe is another pseudonym of Luke Vibert. If you’re into that kind of thing, all his stuff is amazing.
Oh shitpipes! Almost forgot, I couldn’t have made the video if it weren’t for the help of Angela Wallis from the BBC who foolishly let me in there and gave me a pass for the day, and my friend Garth Jennings who took time out from pre-production on his new film Son Of Rambow to operate the camera and keep my pecker from wilting.
In other Ken Korda news, the spoof behind the scenes/EPK piece I did for The IT Crowd DVD is, I think, being used so you can check it out when it’s released on October 9th 2006. I think it turned out pretty well despite some last minute negotiations with a couple of cast members who were concerned I might be trying to make them look too stupid. Mind you, if I was interviewed by a smug twat in a bad wig I might be worried myself so that’s fair enough, but I honestly don’t think any of them look stupid. They were all great and anyway I like them all very much so making them look like dicks was the last thing on my mind. I don’t want to upset any nice TalkBack people by posting stuff in advance of the release so when the DVD is out I’ll stick the thing up here for you if you’re interested. In the meantime enjoy these exclusive slices of Ken!
August 20, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
FINDING THE EASTER EGG ON THE ADAM & JOE DVD & THE CRYSTAL MAZE WITH STAR WARS FIGURES
Every now and again I’ll be in my studio quite late having had a couple of delicious beers and I’ll be unable to resist a self-indulgent trip down Adam & Joe memory lane. When that happens I reach for my copy of the Adam & Joe DVD and spend a few hours luxuriating in all the wonderful extra features that we packed into it so lovingly. For ages I tried to remember how to access the Easter Egg we put in there but I lost the piece of paper the DVD company sent us with the instructions for how to find it. Well last night, during a particularly long memory lane ramble I did it! I’d forgotten how crap it was but hey, that’s Easter Eggs for you. If you too find yourself very drunk and lonely one night, why not check it out and you can share in the disappointment.
Go to the first extras menu, move the hand graphic to Adam & Joe’s World Of Sound then press UP on your DVD remote. The hand disappears at which point you should press RIGHT, RIGHT, LEFT, LEFT, UP, RIGHT, RIGHT, LEFT, LEFT, UP. The right hand button on the little Etch-a-Sketch goes yellow! Press SELECT and you will hear two phone conversations with shop assistants from Harrods and Woolworths in Clapham High Street that we made just before we delivered the DVD in July 2004. If we’d had more time, we might have come up with something a little more exciting. If we ever get to do another one I swear it’ll be the absolute shiz.
As a consolation prize here’s a version of The Crystal Maze we did with Star Wars figures for a special called Adam & Joe’s Fourmative Years, which celebrated Channel 4’s 15th anniversary. It only ever went out the one time on 31st December 1997, just after our second series aired so it’s unlikely you will have seen it. I’ve just discovered that, unbelievably someone has made a note of the TX dates of all our shows here. That’s made a sad Old Dogs New Tricks voice over artist very happy. What a delightful multicoloured lavatory the internet is!
TV WORK NEWS
FUCKING YES! I GOT ANOTHER JOB! (& CHARLIE BROOKER’S SCREENWIPE)
I got a message from my agent the other day informing me that a new sketch I auditioned for the other day has been commissioned! This is only the second time a show I auditioned for completely cold (ie. with no personal connection to anyone involved) has not only got the green light, but asked to use me as well. The first was The Last Chancers (which I talk briefly about on the introduction pages of this site.)
The show has the provisional title of Rush Hour and is going to be a 6 part sketch series for BBC3, themed more or less entirely around people travelling in…yup, the rush hour. We start production in October and it should be on early next year. I’ll keep you posted unless it turns out to be awful in which case I’ll just go mysteriously quiet on the subject. For now I’m incredibly excited and happy to have got another paying gig that I can actually contribute creatively to.
Rush Hour is being made by Zeppotron Productions who have made some shows I didn’t enjoy that much and a few that I thought were great. They make Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe which for my money is one of the funniest shows on TV right now though in this review of one of the three pilot programmes from earlier this year Rob Buckley thinks otherwise. Those first three shows were certainly not as good as the current series but even so most of Rob’s points are I believe, utter bollocks. At this stage I should declare my interest and say that Charlie is someone I know vaguely and like. I also provided a brief Ken Korda commentary segment for programme 4 in the current series of Screen Wipe. Hang on, I’ve just noticed that this clip of that very Ken Korda segment was loaded onto YouTube by er, Rob Buckley. That’s weird. Presumably it’s the same guy though, don’t you reckon? Maybe he’s come round to the show, or maybe he hates it and put the clip as an example of how dreadful it is? Surely not. Anyway all that notwithstanding, I would like to take pedantic, over-sensitive , internet style issue with a few small points towards the end of Rob Buckley’s review (which does actually have some positive things to say about Charlie too)…
He says ‘a bizarre interlude featuring Robert Popper of Look Around You adds another five-minute element to the mix: Z-list celebrity TV nostalgia, one of the things, ironically, that Brooker critiques endlessly in his Screen Burn column’ and that ‘it’s hard to see exactly what the point of the segment is, other than to add another element to the mix and to give Brooker five minutes off from the tiring job of presenting.’
Rob appears to be narked by what he considers Robert Popper’s ‘Z-list’ celebrity status. Apart from the fact that the whole A-list, D-list, Z-list obsession is so fucking tired and meaningless nowadays (and that’s not just because I’m a fellow Z-lister), that’s not why Robert was on the show. As I understand it, the segment (which was the same guest slot I contributed to) is not just about nostalgia . It’s simply an opportunity for someone other than Charlie to talk in an informed and hopefully entertaining way about a TV show they have strong feelings for. Robert Popper is a slightly demented collector of weird old TV shows. It’s hardly the same as getting Kate Thornton to bollock on about perfume ads for I Love The 70’s.
Why is it hard to see the point of this ‘bizarre interlude’? It’s a show with a variety of different segments and ideas of which this is one. Rob seems irritated by the notion that you would mix lots of different elements into one show, but I’ve never understood that attitude. Screen Wipe is a show about all aspects of TV so if it’s an interesting segment about a piece of TV then it fits the brief doesn’t it? What’s the problem with variety? It’s nice to add another voice to the mix isn’t it?
He goes on: ‘ ‘Popper spends his allotted span enthusing on the awfulness of Gyles Brandreth’s 1980s talent/game show Star Quality. While this is indeed as bad as Popper recalls, the segment suffers from all the same flaws as other list shows: Popper obviously remembers the show, but can’t recall all the details after nearly 20 years, so a team of researchers have clearly stuck him in front of a single episode to refresh his memory. This, of course means almost all his comments end up hinging on that one particular edition.’
Robert Popper was not ’stuck in front of a single episode to refresh his memory’. He has every edition of Star Quality on tape having had access to various TV libraries in the course of his working life. Robert P is obsessed with the fucking show. He has parties in order to unveil episodes to the unitiated. He can recite long sections like some Rocky Horror munchkin. He has formulated complex philosophical theories about the implications of the Star Quality set design. His memory needs no refreshing.
‘His comments hinge on one particular edition’ because I imagine it was decided that was a more convenient way to present Robert’s observations which would otherwise turn into a six week seminar.
I don’t suppose anyone apart from maybe Robert Popper and Charlie would care much about all that and Rob Buckley doesn’t seem to be a particularly bad TV critic but it’s so exasperating when a show with as much real passion and enthusiasm as Screen Wipe gets dismissed as muddled and hypocritical when so many TV shows celebrated by critics or embraced by the public are such a cynical pile of old shit. Charlie Brooker may be a cynic for entertainment purposes but that cynicism does not stretch to the way he makes his show. Not everything works in Screen Wipe (his debt to Victor Lewis Smith is sometimes too obvious) but the many good bits are as enjoyable as anything I can think of on TV right now.
Maybe I’ll change my tune when Charlie savages Rush Hour six months from now…