From today’s Independent, where they have chosen some folks to be their picks at various stuff and things like you do at this time of year… it’s a certain person who has cropped up in quite a few things you might recognise:
The comedian: Barunka O’Shaughnessy
By James Rampton The Independent, Saturday, 27 December 2008 Barunka O’Shaughnessy once worked in a jam factory in order to make ends meet. It was mind-numbing work. “My job was to pick up any jam-jars that had fallen over,” she recollects, “but one only fell over every five hours. I was going mad there!”
Her professional career certainly started quietly. In 1999, she played a drugged-up girl in Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson’s much-loved sitcom, Spaced, “for about a minute”. She went on to take parts such as Checkout Girl in The Mighty Boosh, Woman Extra in Extras and Waitress in Absolute Power.
Such anonymity, however, seems unlikely to befall O’Shaughnessy in the future. The performer, whose unusual name reflects her Czech and Irish parentage, looks set to break through to the major leagues in the coming year.
A graduate of Cambridge University, where she was friends with the double act of David Mitchell and Robert Webb, O’Shaughnessy has penned material for Jonathan Ross, Matt Lucas, Sally Phillips, Phill Jupitus and John Thomson. She is now writing for School of Comedy, a new Channel 4 series in which grown-up sketches are performed by youngsters.
But it’s as a performer that O’Shaughnessy is really making her mark. After two well-received Edinburgh shows, she appeared on the Paramount Comedy Channel as an Eastern European prostitute and enjoyed a successful run in the much-lauded sketch troupe at Ealing Live!. She then landed a big break, appearing as Avid Merrion’s (Leigh Francis) wife (and sister!), Sacha, on C4′s cult-com Bo’ Selecta.
O’Shaughnessy has since been a regular on C4′s Bremner, Bird and Fortune and been reunited with her old university pals on BBC2′s That Mitchell and Webb Look. In addition, she has starred as another Eastern European prostitute in Five’s brothel-set sitcom, Respectable. “I was in danger of being typecast,” she laughs.
Now she is one of four performers in E4′s new all-female sketch show, Beehive, which has been compared to both Smack the Pony and French and Saunders. All in all, 2008 has been quite a year for O’Shaughnessy – and 2009 promises to be even better.
Since James Bachman pointed out to me that Playing Shop was made by Hartswood Films I thought I should share the press release I found. So here it is…
10th December 2008
“PLAYING SHOP”
THE FIRST SITCOM WRITTEN
BY MITCHELL & WEBB
FOR HARTSWOOD FILMS
Hartswood Films begin production this week on Playing Shop starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the pilot episode of the first situation comedy that they have written together for the BBC. They play Eric and Jamie, two of the most dynamic, practical and driven men ever to try and run a business out of a garden shed. Convinced that everyone else involved in commerce are idiots, they think that this insight alone will make them millionaires. Armed with new computers, start-of-the-art stationery and a blogger’s contempt for the rest of mankind, all they have to do is sit back and wait for greatness to be thrust upon them.
Joining Mitchell and Webb are Geoff McGivern (Peep Show, Armstrong & Miller), Natasha Joseph (Love Soup, Skins, It’s A Girl Thing), James Bachman (The Mighty Boosh, The IT Crowd), Ashley Madekwe (Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, Cassandra’s Dream) and Paul Sharma (Gavin & Stacey). The comedy is directed by Martin Dennis (Coupling, Men Behaving Badly) and produced by Sue Vertue (The Cup, Coupling). The Executive Producer is Beryl Vertue. Playing Shop is a Hartswood Films Production for the BBC.
The pilot for Playing Shop was recorded in front of a live studio audience last night at Teddington Studios. I was not there as the ticket company (not their usual one) were rather useless at getting their act together, but never mind…
The sitcom (for once David couldn’t tell the audience to not waste their time looking for a narrative) was about two men (played by David and Rob) who are made redundant and set up an office in a shed. Very Credit Crunch, I am sure! Here are some facts about it:
My spy thought it was produced by Gareth Edwards, so his fan club will be happy.
*Edit* It’s actually produced by Sue and Beryl Vertue from Hartswood Films, who made Men Behaving Badly. Thanks, James. So it has a Moffat connection now too!
James Bachman plays a gay in it.
The shed business is an internet dating site.
David has a girlfriend in it.
Burnt sports equipment features.
My spy met David Mitchell’s parents and can confirm that they are lovely.
“(The Daily Mail) clearly set several journalists to watching TV for a week and if they heard the word fuck or similar, putting it down on a list. That’s how you get a list of things, many of which had been broadcast a long time before and had no complaints, and none of which involved ringing up anyone and saying they fucked their granddaughter, and sort of taken them in a list as examples of why the BBC is just a load of liberal pornographers… Daily Mail employees who, I’m willing to bet, 99% of are not remotely offended and don’t object to any of the things they’re seeing, that are just subscribing to that paper’s grim, depressing sort of envious editorial style. “
New enormous and very entertaining David Mitchell interview up at Quickstop Entertainment…
I really really like this advert. Bloody weird, so that might be why.
Also…
Daily Record interview: Peep Show star David Mitchell on life as a single man Nov 22 2008 By Rick Fulton
While his comedy partner lives in married maturity it seems for David Mitchell life is still a Peep Show.
The awkward star with the funny face became famous as the bumbling half of two thirty-something flat mates in the Channel 4 BAFTA-winning comedy.
But although Robert Webb, who plays bed-hopping, drug-taking Jeremy, has settled down with fellow comic Abigail Burdess, David is still a confirmed bachelor.
The self-confessed worrier lives in a two-bedroom flat in Kilburn, North London with a university friend who rents the spare room.
When he’s not working the 34-year-old TV star goes to his local for a drink and eats the pub grub for his dinner.
Despite his success, it seems actor David isn’t very far away from his Peep Show character Mark – a buttoned-down office stiff.
But speaking between takes of next year’s third series of sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look David doesn’t seem disappointed with his lot in life.
Dressed as a 1930s American president for his next take, David grinned: “I may be unmarried but I don’t have a particularly exciting Jeremy-style sex life.
“I’d like to see myself as a free agency bachelor playing the field but unfortunately it would not be a fair reflection of my lifestyle.
“I’m far more like my own character in Peep Show than Rob’s. I get the odd letter asking for signed photos but I haven’t signed many private parts.”
What David lacks in Russell Brand-style romancing he makes up in brains and a self-depreciating humour that makes him a must for TV’s increasing array of panel game shows.
He is captain of BBC One’s Would I Lie To You? and frequently takes part in Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week and QI. David has even appeared on Question Time.
And the comic shows no signs of slowing down.
The third series of That Mitchell and Webb Look will kick off early next year, then we can expect a new series of Peep Show plus a sitcom Rob and David have written – Playing Shop.
The pilot for the sitcom, which will be screened on BBC Two, is about two friends trying to run a business from a garden shed after being made redundant. The pair come up with a different scam each week. It sounds like Only Fools and Horses for the Credit Crunch generation.
After 10 years together David and Rob are still very much in demand. Following from the American success of The Office there is even an American version of Peep Show – although David is thankful the original British stars aren’t in it as he has no desire to move to La-La Land.
He said: “I don’t want to move to America. I’m very happy to get work from there.
“If anyone wants to hire me for a big budget movie I’m here but I’m not going to court it.
“It means you have to go to LA for a few months and put your face around and I’m happy here.
“I grew up wanting to be a British television comedian, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a film star.
“I was obsessed about Blackadder not Steve Martin films.”
How the PC-mad US audiences would react to the duo’s latest material is hard to imagine. The new series of Mitchell and Webb will bring the world Captain Todger – a part Rob will play as the world’s least politically correct superhero.
David said: “I am always wanting to do jokes we won’t get away with.
“As a writer and performer you are always the person saying we can do this can’t we? And it’s other people like producers at the BBC that say ‘that’s not allowed’.
“Even Rob getting married does not mean we are ready for the family sitcom yet.” There is also a parody of 1970s sitcom in the mould of Terry & June. In it David plays a tyrannical office boss and Rob plays the hapless sidekick. The comic said: “It’s my baby. It’s about the contrived nature of that era where you know the sitcoms wanted to end in Frank Spencer-style chaos. So in our one the boss sets the sidekick a task which is fraught with potential for misunderstanding.
“The audience can immediately see what the chaos is going to be like a Korean chef accidentally cooking these dogs from Crufts.”
But the guys have also brought back some of our old favourites including down-and-out Sir Digby Chicken Caesar, the greatest campaigner for truth and justice this side of Nelson Mandela, boozed up Snooker Commentators Ted and Peter and Numberwang, a game show with no apparent rules… or point.
The first series of That Mitchell and Webb Look won a BAFTA (David’s is on his bookshelf rather than the loo where he thinks it’s supposed to be).
The second series, which has just been released on DVD, was aired on BBC Two earlier this year. But despite the critical success, the coming series saw it’s budgets slashed by the Beeb bean counters.
He said: “We have less money than last time to play with. It’s annoying.
“It’s not that we’ve had to curb big budget explosions or set pieces but we are having to film a little less long and we have to be more careful in the way we schedule the location shoots.
“There is less contingency material. Usually you shoot more than you need so if you are wrong you don’t have to put it in the programme. We don’t have that this time.”
For David at least, he’s just happy to be making a living from doing something he loves, with his best mate. David met Rob when he auditioned for Cambridge’s Footlights in his first year.
Rob was the year above. They began a partnership which went from hobby to job.
A show on Radio 4, That Mitchell and Webb Sound was followed by their first sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Situation on Play UK before they starred in sitcom Peep Show from 2003. David said: “Because we work together we socialise a bit less than we did.
“Before we were doing this we were doing it for fun. It’s still fun but we also get paid which really is a fantastic bonus.”
Their double act – which has been likened to Fry & Laurie, has become so well-known that Apple used them for the adverts for their Get a Mac campaign with David as PC and Rob as Mac.
That sparked criticism from die-hard fans of their alternative comedy that the lads had sold out – a criticism David does not accept.
He said: “It was very well paid and there’s nothing wrong with selling computers. I’d do it again. But you can’t do that sort of thing too often because it winds people up.”
Somehow, despite his starched demeanour you can’t help but think that’s exactly what David wants to do.
‘I don’t have a particularly exciting Jeremy-style sex life. I’m far more like my own character in Peep Show than Rob’s’
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