So, thanks to Youtube, I’ve been watching a bunch of old episodes of “Have I Got News For You”. I live in Canada, it doesn’t show here and I frankly had never heard of it until a few months ago. I’m trying to watch them in order, but I can’t always find every episode, so I’m afraid I may have missed something…
All of a sudden, Paul Merton is making loads of jokes about Angus Deayton wearing browns suits. It’s obviously in reference to something - all he has to do is say ‘brown suit’ and the audience laughs - but I can’t figure out what the joke is.
Can any U.K. Dopers help me out on pop-culture reference? I fear it may be something relatively dull, but I hate feeling out of the loop.
And while you’re in here … any other good panel shows I should keep an eye out for? I’m all over “Q.I.” and “Never Mind The Buzzcocks”.
AFAIK, it’s a reference to an earlier episode where Angus was wearing a red suit that looked brown under the stage lights, and Paul kept pointing it out… for the rest of the series. I don’t think it’s a reference to anything outside the show (but I’m an American, so I don’t know much).
QI and HIGNFY are the best panel shows, IMHO, but you might want to check out “Would I Lie To You,” which was on this past summer. Angus Deayton is the host.
Thanks ErinPuff. I figured it was something simple, but I wanted to check. I’ll keep an eye out for “Would I Lie To You”. I assume it’s not BBC, if Angus was the host… ?
There are some great panel shows on Radio 4 as well if you can track them down. My favourites are “Just a Minute” (which often features Paul Merton) and “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”.
I don’t think the Beeb ever had any problem with Angus per se, it was just that his hosting a news-based comedy quiz show became a practical impossibility once he was plastered all over the newspapers himself.
Plus, I get the impression neither Paul Merton or Ian Hislop liked him much.
Not sure - it’s pretty much their sworn duty to toy mercilessly with the host - and maybe with Angus, they just had the chance to hone it into a fine art.
This is true, of course, within the context of the show.
Maybe I’m reading too much into too little, but I certainly got the impression, from things said – and not said – around the time of Deayton leaving the show, that they weren’t all bezzy show-biz chums. Where you might have expected something along the lines of “Angus is a close personal friend and a major part of the show’s long-running success. He’s made a courageous decision for the good of the show, and it won’t be the same without him,” we got “He’s gone and we’ll get someone else. Anyone else.”
I’m not saying it was necessarily a case of “Either the smug, philandering coke-head goes or we do”, but it seemed to me that there was just the occasional hint that the wind might be blowing from that general direction.
I’ve seen documentaries where people “close to the show” said that they really, actually, disliked him. Partly because he earned a hell of a lot more than they did, but wasn’t as funny.
I remember Paul Merton at the time saying that while he got on OK with Deayton around the set, he wouldn’t hang around with him otherwise. It seemed to me that for all their larking around, he and Ian Hislop take HIGNFY quite seriously and regard it as their baby. They didn’t take kindly to Deayton bringing ridicule on the show itself.
Deayton read the jokes, scripted by someone else, from the autocue. If he did get paid more than the other two, that is a travesty. But there was also the hypocrisy of him commenting on the outrageous behaviour of some politicians and celebrities when he was behaving just as bad as they all were. The whole situation seemed to rub Ian and Paul the wrong way.
It was Merton and Hislop’s meal ticket - they get £100ks for appearing, for not much work (relatively speaking), so they thought of the show getting canned 'cos Angus liked to snort charlie would have pissed them off.
Stephen Fry has said he’ll not return to HIGNFY due to the way AD was treated.
Heh. I googled around a bit before posting my question here, and one thing that came clear was that the British public is deeply divided over whether or not it was ‘fair’ to fire Angus. Seems the controversy is still raging, here on the SDMB …
I checked out the first “Would I Lie To You” last night. Funny stuff. I love David Mitchell, so it was great seeing him. Angus seems to be doing pretty much exactly what he did on HIGNFY , i.e. introducing everyone and reading jokes from an autocue. I have no problem with that, I think he does it well. Thanks for the tip, ErinPuff.
I don’t mind that the Beeb decided to get rid of Angus, but I wish they’d find a regular replacement. The string of guest hosts is off-putting, I think. Although the Anne Widdecombe episode was pretty hilarious in its own way.
Oh, and the Radio 4 stuff is great, I agree. I love “Just A Minute”, “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” and “The News Quiz”. I was very upset when Alan Coren died this year. I also love the music quizzes, like “Counterpoint” (although I’m hopeless at playing along) and “All The Way From Memphis”. I wish they’d do another series of “Memphis”.
I too think that Angus Deayton is in truth a pretty good TV show host. While the experiment-that-has-become-permanent of having guest hosts has turned out better than I expected on HIGNFY, I still think that it was even better when it was Angus at the helm every week. I am tired of novelty acts like Boris Johnson hosting the show. It’s funny maybe once when the host doesn’t know how an autocue (teleprompter) works.
Nobody can deliver scripted one-liners that he didn’t actually think of himself quite like Angus Deayton does.
I love Jimmy Carr. I love him on QI, just caught him on Would I Lie To You and caught a stand-up show of his. I’ve got his book, ‘Only Joking’, but I haven’t started reading it yet. Funny, funny man. He’s responsible for one of my favourite QI moments. “Put Smarties tubes on cats legs, make them walk like a robot.” Brilliant.
I’ll check “Mock The Week” if I get a chance. It’s sometimes hard to find these things in the Canadian market. Maybe Youtube will help me there, too…
