A Kick Up The Eighties
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A Kick Up The Eighties
''A Kick Up the Eighties'' was a 1981–1984 BBC 2 comedy sketch show starring Robbie Coltrane (Series 2), Tracey Ullman, Richard Stilgoe (Series 1), Miriam Margolyes, Rik Mayall, Ron Bain and Roger Sloman. The show was created by Tom Gutteridge (producer/director) and Sean Hardie (executive producer). Colin Gilbert was script editor. Series One, comprising six shows, was broadcast on BBC2 from 21 September 1981 to 26 October 1981. Series Two, comprising four shows, was broadcast on BBC2 between 3 January 1984 and 24 January 1984. A contemporary sketch show with a nod to the then emerging wave of alternative comedy, a strong team combined to perform short sketches and various musical parodies. The show was the first break into television for Rik Mayall, who played an over-excited, anorak-wearing investigative reporter Kevin Turvey. To maintain the illusion that his character was real, Mayall's name did not appear in the closing credits whereas Kevin Turvey's did. The show was a ...
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Robbie Coltrane
Anthony Robert McMillan (30 March 195014 October 2022), known professionally as Robbie Coltrane, was a Scottish actor and comedian. He gained worldwide recognition in the 2000s for playing Rubeus Hagrid in the ''Harry Potter'' film series. He was appointed an OBE in the 2006 New Year Honours by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama. In 1990, Coltrane received the Evening Standard British Film Award Peter Sellers Award for Comedy. In 2011, he was honoured for his " outstanding contribution" to film at the British Academy Scotland Awards. Coltrane started his career appearing alongside Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Emma Thompson in the sketch series ''Alfresco''. In 1987, he starred in the BBC miniseries ''Tutti Frutti'' with Thompson, for which he received his first British Academy Television Award for Best Actor nomination. Coltrane then gained national prominence starring as criminal psychologist Dr. Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald in the ITV television series '' Cracker'', a ...
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Tom Gutteridge
Thomas Michael Gillan Gutteridge (born 2 February 1952) is a British television director, producer and executive. He was formerly Chief Executive of FremantleMedia NA, having previously been founder and Chief Executive of Mentorn, from 1985 to 2001. In 2016 he was appointed Executive Producer of the television series BattleBots, which, after two seasons on ABC, in 2018 moved to the Discovery and Science Channels. He started his career as a BBC journalist. Early life Gutteridge was born in London in 1952, the son of a food technologist, and moved to Tyneside when he was 5. He was educated at Priory School Tynemouth, Newcastle Royal Grammar School and the University of York, where he studied English and Philosophy. BBC career Gutteridge joined the BBC as a News Trainee, and initially worked at Radio Derby, and in the Newcastle newsroom. He was later a producer and director on Nationwide (TV programme), ''Nationwide'', ''Tonight'' and ''Panorama (British TV programme), Pa ...
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1984 Scottish Television Series Endings
Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). * January 10 ** The United States and the Vatican City, Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations. ** The Victoria, Seychelles, Victoria Agreement is signed, institutionalising the Indian Ocean Commission. *January 24 – Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh personal computer in the United States. February * February 3 ** Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth. ** STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger, Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' is launched on the 10th Space Shuttle mission. * February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered spac ...
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1981 Scottish Television Series Debuts
Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments. * January 15 – Pope John Paul II receives a delegation led by Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa at the Vatican. * January 20 – Iran releases the 52 Americans held for 444 days, minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, ending the Iran hostage crisis. * January 21 – The first DeLorean automobile, a stainless steel sports car with gull-wing doors, rolls off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. * January 24 – An earthquake of magnitude in Sichuan, China, kills 150 people. Japan suffers a less serious earthquake on the same day. * January 25 – In South Africa the largest part of the town Laingsburg is ...
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1980s Scottish Television Series
__NOTOC__ Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 198 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire *January 28 **Publius Septimius Geta, son of Septimius Severus, receives the title of Caesar. **Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, is given the title of Augustus. China *Winter – Battle of Xiapi: The allied armies led by Cao Cao and Liu Bei defeat Lü Bu; afterward Cao Cao has him executed. By topic Religion * Marcus I succeeds Olympianus as Patriarch of Constantinople (until 211). Births * Lu Kai (or Jingfeng), Chinese official and general (d. 269) * Quan Cong, Chinese general and advisor (d. 24 ...
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Peter Capaldi
Peter Dougan Capaldi (; born 14 April 1958) is a Scottish actor, director, writer and musician. He portrayed the Twelfth Doctor, twelfth incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor in ''Doctor Who'' (2013–2017) and Malcolm Tucker in ''The Thick of It'' (2005–2012), for which he received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning British Academy Television Award for Best Male Comedy Performance, Best Male Comedy Performance in 2010. When he reprised the role of Tucker in the feature film ''In the Loop'', Capaldi was honoured with several film critic award nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Capaldi won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film for his 1993 short film ''Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life''. He went on to write and direct the drama film ''Strictly Sinatra'' and directed two series of the sitcom ''Getting On (British TV series), Getting On''. Capaldi also played Mr Curry in the family fi ...
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Kevin Turvey
Kevin Turvey was a British television comedy character, created by actor and comedian Rik Mayall, who featured in the BBC sketch show ''A Kick Up the Eighties'' in 1981. ''A Kick Up the Eighties'' Turvey, an awkward and socially inept character who spoke with a broad West Midlands accent, was a self-styled "investigative journalist" who still lived with his mother, wore a shapeless blue anorak, fancied a local girl called Theresa Kelly (who was never depicted), and rarely ventured outside his home town of Redditch, north Worcestershire. Each week, his 'investigations' amounted to little more than an over-excited, rambling, uninformed monologue delivered straight to camera, providing absolutely no insight into the subject-matter whatsoever. The Kevin Turvey segments used as theme music the third movement ''alla marcia'' from the ''Karelia Suite'' by Sibelius; the first movement, ''Intermezzo'', was the theme of ITV's '' This Week'' current affairs programme. ''The Man Behind the G ...
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Alternative Comedy
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe content that was an "alternative" to the mainstream of live comedy, which often involved racist and sexist material. In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt has defined it as "comedy where the audience has no pre-set expectations about the crowd, and vice versa. In comedy clubs, there tends to be a certain vibe—alternative comedy explores different types of material." In an interview with ''The A.V. Club'' after his performance in the 2011 comedy-drama film ''Young Adult'', Oswalt stated: I had come up out of that whole alternative scene, which was all about, "Don’t try it, man. Just go up and wing it. ...
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Colin Gilbert
Colin Gilbert, born 1954, is a Glasgow-born television producer and former senior creative director of The Comedy Unit. Career Gilbert began his career in comedy writing jokes for the radio shows ''Week Ending'' and ''The News Huddlines''. He joined BBC Scotland as an Assistant Floor Manager in 1975 and continued writing comedy in his spare time. He was then asked to script edit the Rikki Fulton sketch show ''Scotch and Wry''. This led to a move to London to script edit ''Not the Nine O'Clock News''. On his return to BBC Scotland in 1983 he set up the Comedy Unit where he began working as a producer and director. His credits during this period include ''A Kick Up the Eighties'' with Tracey Ullman, Miriam Margolyes Roger Sloman, Ron Bain and Robbie Coltrane, '' Naked Radio'', ''Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee'' with Robbie Coltrane and John Sessions, ''Naked Video'' with Gregor Fisher, Jonathan Watson, Helen Lederer, John Sparkes, Andy Gray, Tony Roper and Elaine C Smith ...
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Sean Hardie
Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name ''Yohanan'' (), Seán (anglicized as ''Shaun/Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan (Ulster variant; anglicized ''Shane/Shayne''), rendered ''John'' in English and Johannes/Johann/Johan in other Germanic languages. The Norman French ''Jehan'' (see ''Jean'') is another version. For notable people named Sean, refer to List of people named Sean. Origin The name was adopted into the Irish language most likely from ''Jean'', the French variant of the Hebrew name ''Yohanan''. As Gaelic has no letter (derived from ; English also lacked until the late 17th Century, with ''John'' previously been spelt ''Iohn'') so it is substituted by , as was the normal Gaelic practice for adapting Biblical names that contain in other languages (''Sine''/''Siobhàn'' for ''Joan/Jane/Anne/Anna''; ''Seonaid''/''Sinéad'' for ''Janet''; ''Seumas''/''Séamus'' for ''Jam ...
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Sketch Show
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation.Sketch
definition 3b, Merriam-Webster online. Retrieved 5/4/2019


History

Sketch comedy has its origins in

Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman (born Trace Ullman, 30 December 1959) is a British-American actress, comedian, singer, writer, producer, and director. Her earliest mainstream appearances were on British television sketch comedy shows ''A Kick Up the Eighties'' (with Rik Mayall and Miriam Margolyes) and '' Three of a Kind'' (with Lenny Henry and David Copperfield). After a brief singing career, she appeared as Candice Valentine in '' Girls on Top'' with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. She emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States and she starred in her own network television comedy series, ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' from 1987 until 1990, which also featured the first appearances of the long-running animated media franchise ''The Simpsons''. She later produced programmes for HBO, including '' Tracey Takes On...'' (1996–99) garnering numerous awards. Her sketch comedy series ''Tracey Ullman's State of the Union'' ran from 2008 to 2010 on Showtime. She has appeared in several feature ...
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