I have long thought it impossible to get an article on Vic and Bob in print. “They’re not remotely funny,” my friends say. It’s hard to explain my affection for them; quite a lot must have to do with the daily opposition I face. But, like a Pol Pot apologist, or a Sega Dreamcast salesman, it is my trenchant belief public opinion will come round to Vic and Bob again. With fellow Northern surrealist Frank Sidebottom receiving the movie treatment last month, that time has never looked more likely.
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer first hit screens on Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out on Channel 4, Reeves headlining as “Britain’s Top Light Entertainer”, Mortimer a succession of strange, absurd characters such as The Man with the Stick. There was a pleasing counter-balance to anti-Thatcher stand-ups like Ben Elton: here was Dadaist performance-art dressed as populist Friday-night entertainment, deconstructing old variety and dance-hall tropes like the double act in the process.
They’ve experienced their fair share of failures throughout a varied career. A video of Vic and Bob performing at Montreal Just for Laughs Festival in 1993 sees them die a death on stage, the laughter track added later on in an effort to reanimate them. But they don’t look fazed, like their surreal world view is a panacea to the kind of embarrassment that would cripple the next comedian. It’s this that enables them to advertise Churchill car insurance or Müller Corners, and still be revered in comedy circles.
Their greatest achievement remains The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. With a spare blue backdrop and Greek colonnades, the set looks like the filming of 300. Each episode opens and closes with a musical number, everything else is fair game: a table filled with tat from the BBC props department; Frank Sidebottom-collaborator Charlie Chuck as crazed Uncle Peter; lavish, Lynchian ads for vegetables; agony-aunt marionettes Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. The spoofs of 1990s TV presenters like Noel Edmonds and Lloyd Grossman are disturbingly realised and exaggerated.
Vic and Bob would not see this level of creative freedom again. BBC bosses felt a different format might broaden their base, and celebrity guests would diffuse the concentrated weirdness; Shooting Stars wasn’t long beckoning.
Have I Got News for You launched the modern TV panel show in 1990, but Shooting Stars in 1995 set a high benchmark, with its arbitrary scoring, surreal flights of fancy and sense of glee and abandon. With Shooting Stars, Vic and Bob’s comic broth had been boiled down to a light miso soup from the tangy, full-bodied The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, with one or two meaty sketches left floating in.
Shooting Stars lasted eight seasons with viewing figures of over 5 million at its height. It looked as if Vic and Bob had left the BBC for good when Shooting Stars was cancelled in 2011. They returned to Channel 4 for one-off Lucky Sexy Winners but it wasn’t picked up. Vic and Bob seemed jettisoned, faced with no firm home for their esoteric comedy… when former director of Shooting Stars Shane Allen was appointed comedy commissioner at the BBC.
House of Fools screened in 2014. The set-bound comedy parodied stodgy sitcoms in the same way Shooting Stars skewed panel shows. Season one was warmly received, the show’s anarchic farce intercut with woozy puppetry from Vic. But the series was dogged by low viewing figures, and rumours of its cancellation spread before the final episode even aired. Stephen Fry jumped to their defence, calling the BBC “insane” and trending “#saveHoF”, Damian Hirst tweeting in kind “It’s Vic and Bob’s world, we just live in it”.
The kerfuffle turned out to be premature though, when in a press release Shane Allen reaffirmed there was a place for Vic and Bob at the BBC: “House of Fools is a much needed rainbow of daftness in a world that is too grey and sensible.” Seconded; maybe Mr. Allen can go write to my friends.
Start Here:
Bang Bang It’s Reeves and Mortimer
The trademark desk was back, now containing a naked man, from where balletic pan fights and gruesome slapstick unfolded. Vic and Bob’s favourite series is also their most divisive, but if you can tolerate the frustrating Car Door Blokes then be assured their comedy’s for you. The Club sketch bears undeniable resemblance to The Office, and predates it by about two years.
Catterick
Vic and Bob are joined by Matt Lucas and Reece Shearsmith in this strange and funny, dark BBC3 dramedy, where – in a possible nod to Dennis Potter’s BBC series The Singing Detective – characters regularly break from the action to sing numbers by Morrissey and The Beautiful South. As close to a V&B film as we’re likely to see.
Shooting Stars
All things Vic and Bob will inevitably return to Shooting Stars, the show they helmed for eight successful series. A Guardian article from 2011 does a good job of listing its best moments, but omits Mark Lamarr’s trumpet, Johnny Vegas spilling Guinness over Larry Hagman, the question “Tom Waits, but for who?”, the sight of Ronnie Wood racing Ricky Tomlinson on mobility scooters…
The Guardian’s Top 10 Shooting Stars Moments
Words: Eoin Tierney / Illustration: Fuchsia MacAree
