In the episode of the Office in which the Swindon people are brought in to the Slough office and David Brent does his hopeless standup act, he tries to do some sort of impression of someone called Harry Enfield. I take it that Harry Enfield is a comedian and Brent is recreating some kind of joke that Enfield is known for.
Can someone explain to me the Enfield joke and its context? Brent says something like “I don’t think you meant to do that … only me!,” a sentence that doesn’t seem to make any sense. What’s the original joke?
Harry Enfield’s various shows for the BBC (and one disastrously awful series for Sky) included many different recurring characters. One was the interfering father-in-law, “Don’t”, played by Harry, who would arrive during some activity - in the kitchen, DIY etc - and announce himself, “Only me!”. He would then proceed to criticise what was going on, “You don’t wanna do it like that; you wanna do it like this.” At the final debacle, he would announce, “Now, I do NOT think you wanted to do that!”.
Harry Enfield’s comedy often revolves around sketches involving catchphrase-laden caricatures. The one in question didn’t, to my knowledge, even have a name, but was just a very annoying interfering idiot.
The situation in The Office is that of a terrible office-joker (David Brent) attempting to be humourous, simply by regurgitating catchphrases which had long since become irritating through such overuse. Doing an impression of a character nobody laughs at any more…maybe the sincerest form of flattery, but painfully unfunny.
Harry Enfield can currently be seem as a ginger guru-type on a commericial over here at the moment (i think its for burgers). He’s playing a zoned out guru type dude with a funny voice in a way that would not have been out of place on his sketch show.
Next time i’ll see it, i’ll make a note of the product.
Ah, Harry Enfield. I first knew of him for his role as Dirk Gently in BBC Radio 4’s serializations of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul. In which he was completely awesome, by the way.
