Comedy From Hell

Another item from my personal DVD collection for your delectation. This time we look at a favourite box set from 2002:

Yes it had to happen; the comedy programmes that looked good on paper, but were actually ill advised or, in some cases, in such poor taste that they were either never shown in the first place, or never repeated due to popular demand. The first part of this compilation tape looks at comedy disasters from overseas, such as the German version of Alf Garnett ( Willi Whakker, an unintended joke for the British sense of humour), who looks and acts not unlike Hitler. Also included is the Israeli alternative comedian Uri Cohen's sick pilot for his concentration camp set comedy My Mother's a Lampshade, in which Cohen is the Jewish wide boy always putting one over on the camp commandant. This is reminiscent of the BBC’s abortive concentration camp comedy, Heil-de-Heil. Also of note is the US sitcom Sparks about three death row inmates.

Special mention must go to the poor-taste sitcoms that actually made a series in this country, but which are not represented by complete episodes on the latter part of the tape. A personal favourite is the wonderful Idi and Me, in which Idi Amin finds asylum in South London but is forced to share a council flat with a Ugandan Asian refugee. There are also excerpts from the vulgar but funny Vinegar Strokes, about a cocky painter and decorator who claims to have bedded the attractive women he works for in each episode, but actually secretly masturbates over their pictures whilst at work.

While only clips of these gems can be found, fear not, as the actual main material on the tape is of the notorious 1977 Happy Ever After episode, where Terry and June get a new Asian neighbour - with hilarious (in 1977) consequences. Terry fears he might be perceived as a racist, after his daughters Susan and Debbie criticise his penchant for Pakistani jokes, Aunt Lucy has a funny turn and mistakes Mr Patel as the domestic. Even the myna bird keeps dropping Terry in it by repeated racial slurs. Things come to a head as Terry dresses up as Gandhi and talks with an Indian accent to learn what it is to be Asian with supposedly hysterical results. When everything ends with the whole mess sorted out, Terry's new boss visits - who they have no idea will turn out to be black, and so it ends with the cycle beginning again. This is the only chance many will have to see this episode, which was condemned in 1977 and buried, and is believed by many to be behind the decline of the series and its relaunch in 1979 as Terry and June.

The rest is made up of pilots that bombed, such as a twist on Last of the Summer Wine, with three paraplegics wheeling themselves over the Cotswolds and getting into many lunatic escapades in Only From the Waist Up. Also, there is the woefully politically incorrect Filth a comedy about police brutality. A must for any Sleaze reader’s Christmas stocking.