Brilliant! The Cabin Pressure appreciation thread

Stanislaus · November 1, 2018, 12:16pm

If you were wondering what the characters are up to now, read on…

The team from the Souvenir programme did a live show, called John Finnemore’s Flying Visit. Mostly sketches from Souvenir, it also included an interview between Patsy Straightwoman and… Arthur Shappey. Brilliant! Goes into some detail on what happened next…

Notes from an audience member (not me) can be found here, and in the spoiler below:

Carrie came onstage again as Patsy Straightwoman, again met by great applause, and then she was joined by……ARTHUR SHAPPEY!

IN HIS ARTHUR SHAPPEY STEWARD’S UNIFORM!

ARTHUR SHAPPEY IS HERE ONSTAGE!

AS ARTHUR SHAPPEY!

The premise was that there had recently been a documentary about OJS, so Patsy Straightwoman was interviewing Arthur about it. She greeted him, he greeted her enthusiastically back. Then he corrected himself and said: “Oh, I mean –” and launched into a bunch of Arthur-speak (you know, in the vein of, “Please kindly allow myself to inform yourself, that…”) When Patsy told him it was okay to speak informally, he switched back into normal Arthur excited mode.

The interview was really well done: in the context of a sketch that was fun and joke-filled in its own right, John also slid in various nods and hint of what new canon (NEW CANON!!!) has happened since we left the Cabin Pressure crew at the end of the Zurich episode. I didn’t take many notes during this part, since I wanted to be wholly focused on the sketch itself, but here’s what I’ve got from memory:

At OJS, Douglas (whom Arthur always refers to as “New Skip”) and Herc are bumping along about as you’d expect. Their latest flights are San Sebastian and Trinidad and Tobago – as in, yes, the Cabin Pressure world has continued on through the alphabet of double-letter place names, after we last saw them flying off into the sunset, bound for Addis Ababa.

Yes, Carolyn and Herc are married! No, she didn’t take the name “Knapp-Shappey-Shipwright”…though New Skip definitely delights in calling her that. In fact, she dropped the “Shappey” from her name – glad to be rid of any vestige of horrible Gordon, one assumes. The audience reacted sadly to this (that Carolyn and Arthur no longer share a name). But Arthur enthusiastically declared that he wanted to drop the “Shappey” from his name too! But then it was pointed out to him that if he did that, his name would be just…“Arthur.” So he kept his old name after all.

Herc has moved in with Carolyn – and it was implied (by a line about “my old room”) that Arthur has moved out, though we don’t know where to! Yes, Finn McCool the Third the stuffed dead sheep is still with them. Generally he stays in one place (I think this was where the line about Arthur’s old room came in – that’s where they keep Finn McCool). Except when Carolyn is annoyed with Herc, in which case she puts Finn McCool in various unexpected places, to frighten him. The best one of these, apparently, was outside a window looking in.

You know who isn’t married, though? Martin and Theresa. The audience reacted with devastation. No, but it’s okay! It’s just because of some long-winded complicated thing about how it turns out that Liechtenstein royalty can marry people who are not from Liechtenstein, and they can marry commoners – but they can’t marry commoners who are not from Liechtenstein. So Martin will need to get Liechtenstein citizenship. Which requires taking a citizenship test, a test of one’s knowledge of things about Liechtenstein. And you only have to get 60% or something on the test, but…have you met Martin? Martin will never be satisfied with getting 60% on anything! So currently he’s studiously learning everything about Liechtenstein. I imagine a Martin who’s determinedly memorising literally every fact about Liechtenstein is a happy Martin. Arthur said he helps Skip study for the test by texting him spot-check revision questions. Like: “How many dogs are there in Liechtenstein? I mean, right now?”

The interview also, of course, included other fun Cabin Pressure references: like Patsy asking Arthur about Yellow Car. (“Now, for the possibly two people in the room who don’t know: How do you play Yellow Car?”)

The interview gradually got more bizarre – for example, Arthur said he’s no longer working at OJS. What??? Yes, now he’s a “polar bear scientist.” When Patsy asked him what aspect of polar bears he studies, he said “all of them.” She got really enthusiastic about that too, said how cool it sounded to be a polar bear scientist – and then they ended up switching roles, because Patsy never gets to answer questions, and Arthur thought it would be fun to ask them.

So it went on like that, getting a bit strange and off-kilter, and then… This was a big secret/spoiler, there was even a note up on the screen at the end of the show asking people not to mention it, so that other audiences throughout the course of the tour wouldn’t be spoiled, but I HOPE since the tour is now completely over that it’s okay to mention this? Anyway:

Douglas’ voice came over the intercom. Yes, secret voice cameo from Douglas!! He wanted to know what on Earth Arthur was doing in there. Apparently they were doing some kind of safety drill that was only supposed to take a certain number of seconds, and Arthur had been in the hold or wherever this was for something like 37 minutes. I think Douglas also made some reference to the Travelling Lemon, too – something like, “See if you find a lemon in there.”

Arthur said, “Coming, Skip!” and Patsy Straightwoman slumped down in her seat like a life-sized doll – the implication being that she wasn’t really there, and the whole interview/polar bear scientist thing was just something Arthur was daydreaming. He picked her up to carry her offstage…and there was a lemon taped to her back.

Stanislaus · November 1, 2018, 12:21pm

I suspect we might both be…middle class.

Your lucky she didn’t develop an elaborate plan to steal it.

Or maybe she did and nobody ever caught her…

Gyrate · November 1, 2018, 12:23pm

This made me inordinately happy to read. Thank you.

Novelty_Bobble · November 1, 2018, 2:17pm

Shit…you may be right, I am from very common north-eastern stock (I even just had a corned-beef and onion toastie for my lunch) but I have been down in the south-east for 20 years now and my children have a very different accent to my wife and I. They are dead posh.

Well there was a sort of “pick and mix” basket of minatures nearby and plenty of cosmetic stands for clear nail varnish so…

bless her, she’s a sharp little cookie but completely incapable of lying convincingly. Very much an “Arthur” in that respect. She’d be the world’s worst thief.

Robot_Arm · November 2, 2018, 1:26am

Here I am, don’t tread on me.
Here I am, don’t tread on me.
Here I am, don’t tread on me…

nightshadea · November 2, 2018, 1:34am

sounds like a cross between the office and wings ……

digs · November 2, 2018, 3:51am

A cross between the office and wings … and Beyond The Fringe.

And Arrested Development and Parks & Rec and Mr. Bean and Extras and Hot Fuzz and Little Britain and Fawlty Towers…

(Oh, someone did an homage to Cabin Pressure in a “Nikon Ad” style. Just a nice reminder of a brilliant series.)
So, what if I’ve listened to all of Cabin Pressure and Souvenir Programme four times through… and need more humor like this?

Gyrate · November 2, 2018, 9:59am

Finnemore has written for Mitchell & Webb (both on radio - “That Mitchell & Webb Sound” - and television - “That Mitchell & Webb Look”). I’d also recommend Radio 4 comedy panel show “The Unbelievable Truth” in which players give lengthy speeches on given topics filled with lies and only five actual truths, and the other contestants have to identify the true statements. I’m not sure whether any of those are generally available other than waiting for them to come around on the Radio iPlayer as they do periodically but they are definitely worth a listen.

“John Finnemore’s Double Acts” are half-hour comedy plays rather than sketches and are less wacky than “Cabin Pressure”; some are absolutely brilliant (“Penguin Diplomacy” remains my favorite) and some are meh (“The Rebel Alliance”) but Finnemore has a gift for the last-minute plot twist that make it worth hanging on to the end each time.

KneadToKnow · November 2, 2018, 4:14pm

Hey, chief! I might be wrong about this, but this thread looks like a lot of fun! That makes me feel super happy! What do you think about that?

digs · November 3, 2018, 1:16am

Oh, dear, he’s chipper again…
(I say things like that when my college students gush about something, in my world-weary First Officer Douglas Richardson voice. Which of course none of them recognize…)

digs · November 3, 2018, 3:56am

And after searching for them online for months, just this evening I found that they’re suddenly available on iTunes! Along with individual seasons of Souvenir Programme. *
Which is… ooh it’s, err. It’s, umm, it’s just that it’s… it’s, err…*

Douglas: I think what we may be witnessing here is Arthur attempting to describe something with an adjective other than “brilliant.”
*
Yeah, n-n-no I wouldn’t say it was b-b- I mean obviously everything’s b-b-br…*

Wallaby · November 3, 2018, 6:33am

I must admit I was a little disappointed in “double Acts” - they seemed to be more quirky for the sake of being clever rather than funny. I was going to give them up, but - ‘It’s John Finnemnore’.

And then “Penguin Diplomacy” arrived. Brilliant!

Robot_Arm · November 4, 2018, 5:25am

The cheesecake is poison!
The cheesecake is poison!

Was just listening to Gdansk again. When Douglas gives Martin the hints on the Seven Dwarfs, and then Martin says them over the intercom, they’re in the same order.

And Cabin Pressure fans might check out the sitcom Mom, see if anything about it seems familiar.

digs · November 4, 2018, 12:56pm

I did and I don’t. Can you give us a hint?

Robot_Arm · November 5, 2018, 12:20am

Hint:“See” is not the right word for it.Answer:[spoiler]They have the same theme music, Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka. Here are the credits to Mom, although I wouldn’t be too surprised if they’re usually cut down to a few seconds so the network can squeeze in extra commercials.

Yellow car.[/spoiler]

digs · November 5, 2018, 12:35am

That’s great, and here I was racking my brain: “Did Roger Allam* guest star as a drunk uncle? Did a yellow car go past in Episode 4? Do they have a dog named Snooperdoop?” It would’ve bugged me for months…
*By the way, I watch “Endeavour” just to hear that Co-Pilot Douglas Richardson voice…
He really is an excellent actor.

Mahaloth · November 5, 2018, 12:41am

OK, so now I feel obligated to check it out.

Novelty_Bobble · November 6, 2018, 12:54pm

a little treat for you, Roger Allam giving it full throttle as King Lear

Mahaloth · November 12, 2018, 12:58am

OK, so I plan to give this a shot. I have a question.

I have kids and was hoping to perhaps listen to this in the car on longer car rides. Is it family appropriate or not?

Thudlow_Boink · November 12, 2018, 1:10am

I have no idea whether your kids would appreciate it or not, but I don’t remember anything in it that’d be inappropriate for kids.