Vic Reeves Big Night Out

Just been gifted the DVD set for my birthday I'm having trouble writing this as my sides hurt from laughing so much Genius is often banned about these days but in this case Genius is the only word fitting VIC REEVES WILL SAVE US ALL!

I have seen a couple of repeats of this in 2005 and it reminded me just how awful this show was. There is real talent out there and those like Reeves and Mortimer who are untalented. VR-BNO was one of those programs that people watched just to say that they watched it, and therefore were fashionable. Ask people now and they will admit what a pile of cr*p it was.

Nothing Reeves and Mortimer have done since has been of any great shakes. They now make money creating and selling game show ideas. Well, if it keeps them off the screen then it has to be a good thing! So there you have it.

I consider Vic Reeves Big Night to be one of the finest comedy shows ever to have adorned British television. It was brilliantly funny, incredibly inventive and superbly performed. It is comedy in the true sense, in that the objects or names that Vic mentions (eg when he's looking at what the man with the stick has written on his helmet) are funny in themselves. Reeves and Mortimer had an unerring ability to know exactly what was funny. So one type of vegetable is funny, another is not. The mere mention of one celebrity's name is funny, another is not. This is observational comedy in its purest form, and a sign of witty, perceptive minds. Get the DVD of this and keep it close. They don't make many like this.

This show is hilarious. When it first came out it changed the way I saw the world. In the UK it was the last show that everyone watched and everyone talked about it every week.

Comedy snobs might criticise it for catchphrases and prop comedy, but only the ones who think Otto and George should be marked down for being a puppet act. Sure, a lot of hack comedy uses props, puppets or catchphrases but to use them and be strikingly original (And derivative) takes genius. The point of comedy is to be funny. Stick your rules where the sun don't shine.

It's regrettable that none of their subsequent work has lived up to this striking beginning* but, to paraphrase Josef Heller, whose has?

This show made the world a better place for me and millions of others and I'm forever grateful. Thank you Slim. Thank you, stocky feller.

*On TV anyway. Vic's drawings are brilliant and Bob's podcast Athletico Mince is superb.

Big night out is probably the worst show ever on English television - but that is what makes it so great. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer guides us through a world of their own including Les - a man who fear chives and people being sentenced to being part of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar for a year.

Anyone with a taste for the bizarre should see this show.