Latest news with #PeterRichardson
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Robin Williams said: 'I'll buy the club!'': how The Comic Strip set the UK comedy scene ablaze
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise. At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television. This being a celebration of an iconic moment in UK comedy history, one might assume Edinburgh's Usher Hall or the 750-seat Pleasance Grand has been set aside to host. But one might assume wrong. 'When I started [showing these films] about a year ago,' Richardson tells me, 'we didn't have the money to advertise them. So we'd arrive at theatres that had about 30 people who had somehow read our minds that we were going to be there. And 30 people in a 300-seat cinema can be hard work.' The Comic Strip Presents … ran for three series on Channel 4 from 1982-1988, then it moved to the BBC in the early 90s before making a return to Channel 4 for one-off specials, the most recent in 2016. But it's not a big name in comedy – far less so than, for example, The Young Ones, the BBC sitcom starring some of the same talents and broadcast at the same time. 'It wasn't good television,' admits Richardson, 'because it wasn't repetitive, and television is about repeating a formula and people getting to know it well.' And was it even comedy? One of the show's stars, Mayall, argued that it shouldn't have been called The Comic Strip, and that 'Interesting Films' might have been a better fit. In fact, the series was – like Inside No 9 more recently – a tonally varying anthology show, a suite of standalone films united only by sensibility, and by the performers bringing them to the screen. 'I told Channel 4,' says Richardson, ''These performers are so good they don't need to be stuck playing one-dimensional characters. They can play all sorts. One week they can be a heavy metal band, the next week they can be The Famous Five.' You could call it bad television, because you're not seeing more of the same. But as it's gone on, it's become a collection of very memorable one-off moments and that's what people now remember.' The performers also included Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Richardson himself, with a rotating supporting cast that included Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and more. At the time, they were setting the UK comedy scene ablaze. That all started at the Comedy Store, a strip club and the anarchic HQ of what had recently been called 'alternative comedy'. Richardson's coup was to cherrypick the most exciting voices of that generation, and cart them off to another strip club, a little less anarchic, a few blocks up the road: the Raymond Revuebar. Here, with the financial support of the Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, he opened The Comic Strip club – a name that seems obvious, although 'the New Depression Club' was, according to Edmondson, a very near miss. For a year from 1980-1981, the Comic Strip was the hippest and hottest comedy night in town. 'The bouncers at Raymond Revuebar had a simple rule of thumb for who was directed where,' Sayle later wrote. 'If they reeked of aftershave they were sent to the strip show; if they smelled of beer they came to us.' Celebs piled in: Bianca Jagger, Dustin Hoffman. Robin Williams came and demanded to perform, to impress his guest, David Bowie. Sayle offered him 15 minutes. Williams said: 'I told [Bowie] I'd do an hour'. Sayle: 'You can't.' Williams: 'I'll buy the club!' Sayle: 'We don't own it. It belongs to a bouffant-haired pornographer.' The buzz even reached the pages of the London Review of Books, whose critic noted, 'within seconds, [Sayle] has the audience agape. Most of them, it seemed, had never been called cunts before.' Then Channel 4 came calling, looking for cutting-edge talent to help launch the new broadcaster on to the country's airwaves. Richardson was given carte blanche. 'They said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to make six films, all different.'' The first, Five Go Mad in Dorset, was transmitted on the station's opening night, and the controversy around its satire of Enid Blyton attitudes gave that event a front-page news fillip. But Five Go Mad will not be celebrated at the fringe this summer, says Richardson. 'Taking the piss out of racism and sexism [in that way] is long gone,' he says. 'It's not a funny issue like it was when we did it in the 80s.' One option might have been to re-edit the episode – a course of action in which Richardson, now 73, has freely indulged as the Edinburgh shows have come together. Not for him a bask in the glory of his youthful success. 'What we've done,' he says, 'is revisited the films and said, '30 years later they need some adjustment.' Because things go faster now.' Western spoof Fistful of Travellers Cheques has been 'cut back a bit'. So too has late-period favourite Four Men in a Car. And a scene has been trimmed from The Strike, the show's faux Hollywood movie making mincemeat of the miners' strike. That one bagged a Golden Rose of Montreux comedy award, and starred Richardson (the only performer to appear in every episode) as Al Pacino playing, er, Arthur Scargill. 'I could do Pacino much better now,' he laughs, 'because I worked with John Sessions on Stella Street.' So now, he says, slipping into a convincing Italian-American accent, 'I can do Al.' Stella Street was another of Richardson's TV hits, undertaken when The Comic Strip Presents, by any measure his life's work, was in abeyance. Even when he was a jobbing comedian, in double act The Outer Limits with Nigel Planer, Richardson was a child of amateur film-makers and a wannabe film-maker himself. With The Comic Strip, he made movies for cinematic release: The Supergrass in 1985, and Eat the Rich two years later. Further TV specials included Red Nose of Courage, telling the tale of John Major's flight from the circus to parliament, and 2011's The Hunt for Tony Blair, imagining the ex-PM on the run having been accused of a series of murders. Both will be screened at the fringe, MC'd by comedian Robin Ince and with special guests including Sayle and Allen. Richardson is modest about the achievement of having brought these 30 years' worth of films to the screen. 'I always thought we were the new Ealing comedies. And [Ealing Studios at its peak] made about 150 films over 20 years, of which about 15 are remembered. So our strike rate isn't too bad. We made some flops, but at least one or two out of each series are really good.' Some, indeed, are carved on this writer's heart – notably Bad News Tour and More Bad News, the show's two-part heavy metal spoof, which predated This Is Spinal Tap and ended up with Edmondson, Mayall and co performing live on stage, under a hail of beer glasses, at the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington. Richardson is at peace with the under-appreciation of The Comic Strip Presents, acknowledging that, as a bloody-minded sitcom refusenik way back when, he is the auteur of his own misfortune. He is delighted to be bringing the remastered films to Edinburgh, a city in which, back in the day, he and Planer once toured as a support act to Dexy's Midnight Runners. 'FrontmanKevin Rowland complained,' he says, 'that we didn't do new material at every performance.' Expect no new material at these screenings – but a new experience, perhaps. 'It's a great thing,' says Richardson, 'to show them in the cinema. You don't often get to share comedy television with an audience, and it changes the whole experience: people laughing around you. We've discovered that there is an audience around the country who want to see these films on the big screen and talk about them. It's fantastic that something we created 30 or 40 years ago is still creating laughter. I love it.' The Comic Strip Presents … is at the Fringe is on 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10 August at Just the Tonic, Edinburgh
BBC News
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Cult comedy screening to raise funds for Devon seawall repair
A special screening of a cult 80s comedy film is taking place to help raise funds to repair a 100-year-old Devon breakwater at Hope Cove Harbour, in South Devon, protects the beach at the seaside village but needs urgent work and if it is breached the sands could be washed 1985 film The Supergrass by the comedy group The Comic Strip features an iconic scene in which the late actor Robbie Coltrane marches along the breakwater in crashing director of the film, Peter Richardson, is holding an event showing a special 'Director's Cut' screening in nearby Marlborough to help raise funds for the repair work. 'Breakwater is crumbling' The breakwater was last repaired in 1983 but it has some big cracks and local residents are concerned that a breach in the wall could have a devastating impact on the village."If we lose the sand, we lose the harbour and that would be catastrophic for the village," said joint Harbourmaster Sean Hassall."We'll lose our tourism industry."The locals come down here as well so really we want to make people aware how crucial our breakwater is and how important it is to get the funding and get it sorted," he said. The benefit night, at Marlborough Village Hall, is designed to try to raise awareness of the breakwater as well as to raise money to support the repair work. "The breakwater is crumbling and we need to find some way to get it repaired and it costs money these days," said Mr Richardson. "They need to raise it [money] and that is why we are doing a charity benefit showing The Supergrass which features that scene with Robbie on the breakwater."'It's the 40th anniversary of the release of Supergrass so it seems like a good time to do something with it so I've recut it." The coastline is part of the Crown Estate and the harbour is leased by the Hope Cove Harbour harbour is self funding and raises money through mooring and launch fees. It is estimated the breakwater repairs will cost more than £1m. The Friends of Hope Cove Harbour is a charity trying to raise money for the repairs. So far they have accumulated £100,000. "We've had various experts look at it [the breakwater] in the past few years and it is going to go at some stage but nobody can give a date," said Graham Phillips, the chairman of the charity. "Before it goes we want to try to raise enough money to repair it in a substantial way because if it goes the beach will disappear."The Supergrass is due to be shown at Marlborough Village Hall on Saturday 15 March 2025.
BBC News
16-02-2025
- General
- BBC News
Birkshead: What happens in the world's deepest gypsum mine?
Gypsum may be an unfamiliar name to many but we are surrounded by it every day. It is a mineral used to make types of plaster which coat our homes, schools and offices - and in Cumbria sits the world's deepest gypsum the small village of Long Marton, against the backdrop of the North Pennines, stands a bungalow in the corner of a field. It is perhaps the only clue that something else is happening close at a depth of 1,000 ft (305m), is Birkshead drift mine where a lengthy system of conveyor belts snakes its way from where the stone is mined to where it is treated."You've got to have your wits about you all the time, but I just feel at home down here," says shift manager Peter Richardson. "I'll probably miss it when I retire." The drift mine, near Appleby-in-Westmorland, sits under rolling farmland and supplies the raw materials to make plasterboard for the building industry, something it has been doing for almost 50 30ft (9m) high tunnels, wide enough for a Range Rover to drive through, are grey and there is a smell of dust in the air."With ceilings as high as they are you don't really feel like you're in a mine," says one of the workers. The underground road leading down to where the gypsum is extracted is steep and with sharp here say that without external contact there is no way of knowing what the weather is like outside. But while they are cut off, they are reminded of life continuing above them with the smell of freshly cut farmland grass making its way through the ventilation the reality of life underground is never too far away."If you're down a mine and your light fuses - which has happened to me in the past - it's not good," Mr Richardson says."Now we've got a little pen torch, just in case, whereas the old pitmen's lamps used to have a little bulb, but if your battery fused you were up the creek really." The mine has been here since 1977 and these days machines can cut through 3.3ft (1m) of gypsum per hour."It just peels it off," Mr Richardson belts then take thousands of tons of material a day to a factory in Kirkby Thore, operated by British machine that cuts the stone looks a little bit like a giant porcupine.A staff member sits in an air-conditioned cab so they are protected from the dust, which engulfs the tunnels when the machine only way to see what is happening is through monitors inside the cab. Some belts travel up to 3,300ft (1km) each but, as they roll back on themselves, they are double that in them is a "big undertaking," Mr Richardson says."We've got a few of the lads here who've done it a few times and you need them lads on the job - they know what they're doing."You have to clamp it up and chain it, you can't just cut the belt because of the tension on it."You'll end up with a concertinaed heap at the bottom." Safety is obviously a major focus and were things to go wrong there is a specially built room which has its own life support system and supplies of food and water. "If I had a vehicle fire and the tyres caught fire, there would be thick black smoke and you'd struggle to see, hence the strobes on there to guide you in," Mr Richardson would take about an hour to walk back to the surface from here, but he says he feels safe working at Birkshead."The fear factor just isn't there, you don't think about it."You're obviously aware of your surroundings and you check where you're going to be working."Dare I say it, you never take it for granted."Like the old saying from the coal miners: It's always the good roof that'll get you, not a bad roof because you've got that sorted." Follow BBC Cumbria on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas here.
