I’m feeling retro. Again.

It’s DVD time tomorrow.

A trailer for Magicians?
I have to wait until Christmas day?
It’ll be on YouTube. Oh yes.

David Mitchell is in Jam And Jerusalem which starts tonight on BBC1 at 9:30. It might be good, it might be bad. I have no idea. It will probably be better than that old E4 thing that they’re finally showing tonight at 10:35 on Channel 4 that he is allegedly hardly in at all. I need to do some research but I have the lurgey today.


Hmmm… Blunder sounded terrible when I didn’t want to get free tickets to the recording and as it has pretty much no web presence it doesn’t look good. I shall, of course, check it out but may just stick to watching those Peep Show DVDs again.

Another Them Tube fing… but this time it’s an interview so no applause please…

I keep finding these Bruiser sketches. One day it shall be on DVD. Probably.

The press blitz around the tour continues. Here’s an interview from today’s Independent:

Peep Show’s David Mitchell and Robert Webb
With a sell-out UK tour, a fourth series of Peep Show in the pipeline, and even a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, David Mitchell and Robert Webb must be doing something right. Deborah Ross finds out what.
Published: 18 November 2006
I meet David Mitchell and Rob Webb at a hotel in Cambridge. They’re currently on tour and performed here the night before. Rob, the nervier, fairer one, looks quite scared. Indeed, when I first catch his eye in the lobby he doesn’t flinch, as such, but he does shrink back into his big black anoraky thing with its big black hood. Actually, maybe that is a flinch. Certainly, everything about him seems to say: “Clear off, you nosy old witch, clear off.” David, the darker, fleshier one, is grumpy. He’s come down from his room with wet hair, having just washed it, and he grumbles about having to have his photograph taken before it is dry. I try to reassure him. “Don’t worry, David,” I say. “People will just assume it’s really, really greasy.” He goes off in search of a hairdryer. Rob goes out for a smoke. I am abandoned forthwith. This is not good. They are meant to love me as I love them, and I do love them. In fact, everyone in our house loves them. We certainly love Peep Show, that wonderfully inventive comedy series featuring those two brilliantly dysfunctional characters: Jeremy (Rob), who is lazy and useless yet has grandiose ideas about himself, and Mark (David), who is sad and world- weary and so socially inept he’s fully traumatised when Sophie – the girl he fancies – sits on his hand on the bus. It’s great. I love it, my son loves it, even my partner loves it and he doesn’t usually laugh at much unless, say, I happen to trip up in the street, which always totally kills him. Come on, guys, I’m thinking, it really isn’t nice when love goes unrequited. It hurts.

When they return, as they eventually do, I tell them how much I love Peep Show (which they don’t write, by the way), as well as how much I’d enjoyed their live sketch show (which they do) the previous night. They don’t appear won over. I then ask, apropos of nothing except a wish to endear myself, if they’d noticed the plaque in the hotel lift saying it had been installed by Waygood Otis in 1927. Waygood. How cool a name is that? “Is that why you see ‘Otis’ in lifts?” asks Rob. “Yes,” says David, “and the other big lift people are the Shindlers.” “Aha,” I say. “Shindler’s lift!” Now, that’s funny. That may even be the funniest joke of my career – and there have been a few – and I’m not even meant to be the comedian here. They don’t laugh, though. Guys, come on! I start to grumble, now. I also stayed at the hotel and tell them that, in order to meet them on time this morning, I had to leave my room mid-way through Kirstie Alley having her kitchen overhauled on Oprah. I didn’t get to see the finished result. Guys, I say, I didn’t even get to see the tiles she eventually chose. Now this, they get. Happily, they love rubbish TV almost as much as I do.

David says he much prefers telly to books. “A book will always be there but with television, it’s going away. If I don’t watch now to see whether this couple go for house number one or house number three I will never know, whereas I can read War and Peace anytime.” Oh, don’t read the War bits, I say. They’re so boring. “Just read Peace?” queries Rob. Indeed, I say. Rob loves the daytime ads for consolidating your debts. “Why be screwed by a hundred tiny cocks? Join us and get screwed by one big cock!” We are absolutely united in our hatred for that Gillian McWhatsit woman, the one who goes on as if giving your kids a packet of crisps is akin to injecting a deadly poison directly into their veins. “The poo inspector?” says Rob. “What does she think her own turds smell of?” Potpourri? I suggest. We are quite keen on Dragons’ Den.

David: “The thing is, I love to watch it but really hate it in some ways. I hate the fact that the panel are briefed to be nasty …”

Rob: ” … that Peter Jones guy. He’s got that Anne Robinson, ‘I’m going to be rude to people’ thing …”

David: ” … and they can’t really act. You can hear the producer saying to them beforehand, ‘Yeah, it’s great when you are nasty, we love that …’” I think we’re off now.

I don’t think there was ever a real problem as such, although David might have something of a hangover. They went to the pub after the show last night “and then I had a crappy van burger, and you have to be drunk to want a crappy van burger, don’t you?” As for Rob, I think he is actually quite shy in person, as many performers are. It’s a cliché, I know, but there is often some truth to clichés. (I once watched a pot for several weeks and it still didn’t boil.) He later admits he bought his big black anorak thingie “as a sort of comfort blanket. It has got this massive hood, which I do use in a celebrity kind of way.” To avoid being recognised? Is it so disquieting? “Actually,” says David, “it’s basically quite nice. It’s also disquieting but it’s a nice sort of disquieting.” David approves of Rob’s big hood. It’s better than big sunglasses. “Putting your hood up doesn’t make you look like a wanker,” he says. But you might get hugged by David Cameron, I say. Rob says he’s not sure he would like that. “You kind of suspect all MPs have got BO, the way they sit together on those benches.”

We order coffee. Rob lights up. Do you smoke, David? “Not really,” he says. “Oh, God,” I say. “You’re not one of those people who can take it or leave it, otherwise known as a crap smoker, are you?” “He is,” says Rob. “I even know how to get away with smoking on planes,” I say. “You used to be able to smoke on planes,” says David, wistfully. “And buses and trains,” says Rob. “It must have been great,” says David, “before anyone knew it was bad for you. When people thought: ‘I cough a lot. I wonder why?’” We all laugh. They’re relaxed now, plus David’s hair is nicely dry. I think we might be in for a good time, which we are.

They are certainly smart. They both, in fact, studied here, at Cambridge University. David studied History. Rob studied English. Do they remember their first day? “I remember,” says David, “being dropped off by my parents with a car full of toasters and kettles and feeling … there is always something heartbreaking about the thing that your parents have done for you, whether it’s a packed lunch or the way your pencil case has been sorted out on the first day at school – and for university you have this room full of stuff that has been lovingly bought or prepared for you. All ridiculous things you were never going to use, like a saucepan.” Rob says: “A saucepan! Ridiculous!” Rob remembers being dropped off by his dad at his college and “immediately a quite attractive second-year student knocked on the window and said: ‘Hello. Hello, nice person. We’re all mad at Robinson. I bet you’re mad, too.’ She turned out to be a Christian and she was snaring me …”

David: “… oh no, the Christians!”

Rob: “… they get in there as soon as your bag hits the ground. They nab you for a tea party and it isn’t until you’re halfway though, when someone says, ‘let us pray …’ that you realise …

David: “… they don’t mean any harm. In fact, they mean to save your soul. The one thing you have in your head when you arrive is that you have got to try and make friends. It’s the first time you’ve had to make friends for years, so obviously you jump at anyone who says, ‘We’re all meeting in my room for tea.’ I spent a few days thinking maybe just everyone is still Christian in Britain.”

Did you ever use your saucepans, boys? Can you cook? Rob? “I haven’t really expanded beyond studenty rice and stuff, noodles and stuff or pasta and stuff, and it usually involves a tin of chopped tomatoes, some onions and A Meat.”

David? “I once made a lasagne but it was so stressful I never repeated it. I’m quite good at bread and butter pudding but that doesn’t really make up a balanced diet. Sandwiches. I take a lot of care with sandwiches. Sausages. I’m good at sausages.” Isn’t it about time, I say, that someone redesigned the sausage? Why not make it cuboid, or square – the squasage? – so you don’t have to chase it round the pan trying to get the raw side cooked? David has a better idea. How about a grill pan with wide, sausage-sized grooves. That should do it. Shall we, I suggest, go on Dragons’ Den? David thinks we should although, that said, it’s always the boring things that get funded. “It’s never the knife that’s also a kettle and egg timer,” he says. “It’s never the Professor Branestawm things.” David, are you in or out? “I’m in, I’m in!”

Rob, who grew up in rural Lincolnshire, says he wanted to be a performer from the age of 14. “It occurred to me when I was watching that fine sitcom, Home Sweet Home, starring a young Martin Clunes and various other respected comedy actors. They were having a laugh and I thought: I could get paid for this …”

David: ” … and seeing Home Sweet Home, it didn’t look that difficult …”

Rob” … it didn’t look at all difficult, and I thought: this could be my job.”

Did you know you could be funny, Rob? “Yeah. When you’re at school and there is the funny one? I was him. But I didn’t start doing it on stage until I was 14 … “

Me: “A late starter, then … “

Rob: ” … I wrote searing parodies of Blue Peter and The A-Team and charged everyone in the audience 20p, which I pretended was going to charity.”

David: “When I was at school I either wanted to be a comedian-stroke-actor or Prime Minister. But I didn’t admit that to other people, I said I wanted to be a barrister and that made my parents very happy. I didn’t admit I wanted to be a comedian until I came to university, met a lot of other people who wanted to be comedians, and realised it was an OK thing to say.”

Rob:”It’s good when you can drop the cover story.”

Me: “What was your cover story?”

Rob: “Teacher.”

Me: “Why did you go off the idea of being PM?”

David: “The turning point against politics for me was turning up at the Union Society and finding it to be a moldering institution full of arseholes, whereas Footlights was full of nice people who seemed fun.”

Me: “Which political party would you have aligned yourself to?”

David: “Whichever one would have got me into power. I sort of realise now that I didn’t really want to be PM. It sounds like a headache. But I’d love to be a former PM. Tony Blair has got so much fun ahead of him. When he’s not PM anymore people will gradually forget about his fuck-ups and he can sort of roll his eyebrows when future leaders do things he wouldn’t do and generally dine out.”

Me: “But then Edwina Currie will crawl out the woodwork and say she’s slept with him.”

David: “The great thing about that for f John Major is that it added massively to his cachet. It might even have started it.”

Rob: “Imagine sleeping with Edwina Currie adding or starting your cachet, when you have been Prime Minister …”

David, who grew up in Oxford, first performed at prep school. “I used to be in school plays largely because you got to play cards backstage. These plays would have everyone in, so most people were on for a minute and then you’d go back to playing cards. Then, in one play, I suddenly got a part that was quite big. It was Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh and that is the first time I was consciously aware I was doing a performance, that I was deliberately saying the lines in a certain way, and the audience was laughing. It was better, even, than playing cards.”

Rob: “I’m imagining you in a full-body rabbit costume. Did you have big ears?”

David, proudly: “Big ears and an adorable little white tail.”

They met during a Cambridge Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993. Rob is now 34, and David’s a year younger; they instantly forged both a friendship and partnership. The following year they took a two-man show to Edinburgh. After graduating, there was a sketch show on Play UK (whatever that was) followed by a Radio 4 sketch series that recently transferred to TV. Sorry to whiz through all that stuff, but I so want to get to Peep Show, written for them by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. How did it come about? “We met Jesse and Sam during a doomed attempt to write a team-written sitcom for the BBC,” says Rob. Meeting people, I say, is so important. If we hadn’t met, David, we wouldn’t have come up with the Squasage Pan. “Exactly,” says David, “that is the way of the world.” Anyway, Jesse and Sam had an old script they wanted to revive, asked David and Rob to help, and eventually it evolved into Peep Show with its, as Rob puts it, “internal monologue thing”. I say I love the episode where they all go to the Quantocks. David says that wasn’t fun to shoot. “I had the shingles.”

Everything seems to be on the up for them. Their tour is doing well. They’ll be making a fourth series of Peep Show next year. Their sketch show – That Mitchell and Webb Look – has been recommissioned. They’ve finished making a film, Magicians, also written for them by Jesse and Sam. Rob appeared in the Brit-flick Confetti. David has done a film with Michelle Pfeiffer. Wow! Really? “Well, doing a film is one way of putting it. I am very slightly in a film with Michelle Pfeiffer. She is much less slightly in it.” Did you laugh her into bed? “Um … no. I didn’t. It’s a romantic comedy in which I play a British writer called David Mitchell so it wasn’t exactly a stretch.” Nice Winnebago? “No. She had two!”

So, are you raking it in now, boys? “We’re doing all right,” says David. Are you spending? Rob says he’s getting married at Christmas “in a slightly more extravagant way than I otherwise might have done.” David says: “I have it in mind that if I have another couple of good years, I’ll move. I’ll buy a small house rather than the small flat I’ve got [in Kilburn, near Rob]. I’d like to be able to play table tennis where I live. That’s as far as my imagination stretches; that’s my dream.”

Rob: “I’d like to have a house big enough to put up all those newspaper wall charts.”

David: “I love table tennis but I only get to play on holiday. I used to have a table at my parents’ house that we just put over the dining room table. I used to play that endlessly. It struck me a year ago that I could aspire to once again live in a place where I could have a table.”

Rob: “He’s very good.”

Me: “I’m quite good at table tennis, but get bored so lose on purpose.”

“I don’t!” yelps David, shocked.

Anyway, they have to go now. Their tour bus has drawn up outside. We part affectionately. I get a hug from each and Rob doesn’t even flinch. I hope they love me, if only a little bit. If nothing else, I feel the future of the Squasage Pan might depend on it.

Mitchell and Webb are currently touring the UK; their show culminates at Brixton Academy, London SW9, 12-14 December. For full details, visit www.mitchellandwebblive.com. The DVD of their live show is released on 27 November

For fans of the live show who couldn’t place all the sketches…

Bruiser had its moments.

Did I mention that David is on everything on telly next week?

I didn’t?

Oh well. Buy a Radio Times, tightwad.

Those Comedy Awards nominations are in and look at all the lovely bold stuff I have made!

Best TV Comedy Actor of 2006
David Mitchell & Robert Webb – Peep Show (Objective for Channel 4)
Ricky Gervais – Extras (BBC Comedy For BBC One)
Stephen Merchant – Extras (BBC Comedy For BBC One)

Best TV Comedy Actress of 2006
Catherine Tate – The Catherine Tate Xmas Special (Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC Two)
Katherine Parkinson – The IT Crowd (Talkback Thames for Channel 4) excrutiating!
Tamsin Greig – Green Wing (Talkback Thames for Channel 4) Fraaaaan!

Best Comedy Entertainment Personality of 2006
Ant & Dec – Saturday Night Takeaway/ I’m a Celebrity – Get me Out of Here/ Poker Face (ITV Productions/Talkback Thames for ITV1)
Harry Hill – Harry Hill’s TV Burp (Avalon Television for ITV1) A clear winner?
Paul Merton – Have I Got News for You Hat Trick Productions for BBC One)

Best Male Comedy Newcomer 0f 2006
Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins – The Friday Night Project (Princess Productions for Channel 4)
Kevin Bishop – Star Stories (Objective Productions for Channel 4)
Russell Brand – Russell Brand’s Got Issues (Vanity Project for E4) Dickensian tedium.

Best Female Comedy Newcomer of 2006
Charlotte Church – The Charlotte Church Show (Monkey for Channel 4) Comedian?
Katherine Parkinson – The IT Crowd (Talkback Thames for Channel 4)
Miranda Hart – Hyperdrive (BBC Comedy for BBC Two)

Britain’s Best New TV Comedy of 2006
Star Stories – (Objective Productions for Channel 4)
Suburban Shootout – (Feelgood Fiction for Five and Paramount Comedy) Mirthless.
That Mitchell & Webb Look – (BBC Comedy for BBC Two)

Best TV Comedy of 2006
Extras – (BBC Comedy for BBC Two) If it beats M&W I will send Gervais a turd.
Peep Show – (Objective Productions for Channel 4)
The Thick of It – (BBC Comedy for BBC Four)

Best Comedy Entertainment Programme of 2006
Ant & Dec Christmas Takeaway (ITV Productions for ITV1)
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (Avalon Television for ITV1)
Have I Got News for You (Hat Trick Productions for BBC One)

Highland Spring People’s Choice Award
Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV Productions for ITV1)
Extras (BBC Comedy for BBC Two)
8 Out of 10 Cats (Zeppotron For Channel 4)
Friday Night With Jonathan Ross (Open Mike Productions for BBC One)
Green Wing (Talkback Thames for Channel 4) I just don’t get it!
Little Britain (BBC Comedy For BBC One) Used to be my favourite.
Northern Lights (ITV Productions for ITV1)
That Mitchell & Webb Look (BBC Comedy for BBC Two) No chance but nice to be nominated.

Best Comedy Film for 2006
Confetti – Fox Searchlight Pictures/BBC Films/Wasted Talent (distributed by Fox Searchlight) Mister Webb!
Little Miss Sunshine – Fox Searchlight Pictures/Big Beach/Bona Fide (distributed by Fox Searchlight)
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Aardman Animations (distributed by Dreamworks / UIP)

Best International Comedy Show for 2006
Curb Your Enthusiasm – HBO Entertainment for More 4 Oh yes!
Everybody Hates Chris – Chris Rock Enterprises/3 Arts Entertainment/Paramount Network Television for Five
The Office: An American Workplace – NBC Universal for ITV2 I am torn now.

Best Live Stand Up Tour for 2006
As voted for by readers of FHM and Zoo Magazine. i.e morons.
Al Murray – …And Another Thing
Jimmy Carr – Gag Reflex
Lee Evans – XL – UK Tour 2005
Lee Mack – The 2006 Stand Up Tour
Ross Noble – Fizzy Logic
Russell Brand – Shame

Best Stage Comedy for 2006
As voted for by readers of FHM and Zoo Magazine.
Little Britain Panto!
Robin Ince’s Book Club
The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You
The Mighty Boosh panto fun!
The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb Grrreatest hits!

We went on a Mitchell & Webb misssion… to Oxford for some reason. That reason being that we were given tickets as a wedding present because we asked nicely and fancied a trip out. It was a bit of a palava to get there, involving the car, some trains and a bit of walking but we did it. I discovered that First Great Western trains make the Metropolitan line of the tube look like a good thing as both stations had no customer information at all. Well done. I discovered that I can eat a lot of food but it’s not always a good idea. I also discovered that there are many real life Sir Digbys around Oxford and some of them hang around outside theatres…

Look! It’s the view of the stage from the street! I had tramps harrassing me while I took this! There’s bloody dedication for you!

As official uber-fan I had to be the first person to buy way too much merchandise. I could start a mug shop now with all the mugs we are forbidden to drink out of that I own. Who can resisit a Numberwang mug? It almost veered into L****e B*****n territory with the merchandise but there wasn’t too much of it so phew and all that. The programme was rubbish though. A couple of good gags but mostly not tickling the funny bone. Sorry…

The show? Well it was good of course, but then I am biased. I wouldn’t have put all the effort into this site if it was a bit meh. I would call it The Mitchell And Webb Greatest Hits Tour as it featured material from TMAWLook, TMAWSound, TMAWSituation and Bruiser. Yes, Bruiser. Only with a role reversal and some equally scary acting…

The majority of the other reviers’ complaints about the show have been about the over-reliance on old material but that is the whole point of the greatest hits tour. Only a true geek would recognise all of the stuff but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. The interludes with James (that man Bachman) and Abigail Burdess (an able replacement for Olivia and much more mental but in a good way) doing their own spoof of their very own greatest hits that never were was funny (we particularly liked the wine tasting sketch) and stupid (of course!) but there may have been too many bits of that sort of thing, as the audio interludes (the joy of a radio format) provided handy costume change moments…

As is the way with these things I got confused as to whether some of it had actually been on the recent TV series because of the huge amount of material we had seen in earlier rougher versions at those rehearsals all that time ago. The heartwarming cricket movie for example, was never on the telly but fitted in well with the stage format, and that non-visual sketch at the beginning of the show seemed totally brand new but I am getting old and foolish. Enough was changed and tweaked throughout to keep us entertained and they gave the people what they wanted, i.e. a bloody good laugh. All of the favourite characters made an appearance (except Chip & Pin and The Green Clarninet Man but then I have odd taste) and the audience interraction made it more than just like watching telly being remade on a stage. Fantastic!

Look! A giant picture on a curtain! I have seen that somewhere before…

We didn’t hang around afterwards to lunge them as the trains were a bit shit and we would never have got home. Still, it was a great evening and we’ve done the scary fans thing before.