Series One, Episode Eight: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to come over me.”

Originally Aired on 31^st January 1997
If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends, and by ‘be my lover’ I mean ‘read my blog’ and by ‘get with my friends’ I mean ‘watch the relevant episodes otherwise it’s all just bollocks’.

Introduction
“Hello, I’m Mark Lamarr, and this is Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the pop quiz that says ‘If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, I’d double the estimate and bugger off with the work half-done’. Our team captains are two comedians who between them have all the musical talents of Lennon and McCartney. Sadly, Julian Lennon and Linda McCartney, it’s Phill Jupitus and Sean Hughes.”

Guests

Adam Ant – “Phill’s first guest is Adam Ant. He’s had ten top ten hits, he’s a film and television actor, and in the eighties Adam’s pirate image earned him an absolute fortune. Sadly, he can’t remember where he buried it.”

It’s not really a great performance from Adam, who mostly looks like he doesn’t want to be there. He’s got a dry enough wit to get a couple of jokes over but for the most part it doesn’t work.

Crispin Hunt – “Phill’s second guest is Crispin Hunt. His band the Longpigs takes its name from the cannibal term for human meat, which apparently tastes like pork. Phill Jupitus is known to cannibals as ‘long banquet’.”

Crispin has a dry enough wit to get by on the show without ever being outright hilarious. He does alright – probably enough that he could have been invited back – but nothing much special.

Jo Whiley – “Sean’s first guest is Jo Whiley. She’s a disc jockey who hosts Radio 1’s Evening Session and has something Chris Evans can never have – a show that goes out Monday to Thursday, and friends.”

A decent show from Jo who mostly focuses on getting questions right rather than trying to compete in the humour stakes. She does that well enough, although as I’ve said with a couple of other guests that works well enough at this point but wouldn’t have been great on later episodes where the comedy dominates.

John Thomson – “Sean’s second guest is one of the stars of the Fast Show, and also played Sgt. Dunne in Soldier, Soldier. So he’s been in a room with Robson and Jerome with a gun, and for some reason didn’t use it. It’s John Thomson!”

A decent showing from John, who doesn’t tend to do panel shows too often. He’s fun and cheeky, but not devastatingly funny.

Freeze Frame

Sean’s team start off with the Stranglers and No Mercy, the video for which features Hugh Cornwell submitting to hypnosis before a cotton bud is shoved into a giant mock-up of his ear, at which point the show pauses it. A few quick jokes before Jo guesses that the cotton bud produces some small men, similar to the Numbskulls. We are then shown what happens next – the cotton bud produces a small Hugh Cornwell. Oddly enough, Mark doesn’t consider Jo’s answer, which is fairly close to what actually happens, to be good enough even for one point.

Phill’s team get Robbie Nevil and his video for Wot’s It To Ya. Robbie, looking disturbingly like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, dances around a bit, and then we see a cat, which the video pauses on. Again, a few jokes, a little riffery, and then the real answer, which is that the cat dies, and then turns into Groucho Marx. Of course!

Intros

Phill and Adam to start with, performing Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. It’s a very good version, too, and Crispin gets it.

Next up is T. Rex’s Get It On. They do a good job, but nobody gets it – indeed, when Mark plays it in, Crispin mistakes it for Oasis’ Roll With It which, in his defence, probably says more about Oasis’ not always inspired approach to songwriting than it does about him, although it draws glares of disbelief and derision from his fellow panellists.

Third, Madonna with Papa Don’t Preach. Another good performance, but again Crispin doesn’t get it. John does, though.

Phill and Adam finish off with Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie – they make for a good team, turning in another good performance, and this time Crispin’s on the money.

Sean and Jo then take their turn, starting with Pigbag’s Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag. It’s good, albeit a hugely recognisable song to begin with, and John gets it right.

Their second song is Status Quo’s Roll Over Lay Down – it’s not the greatest performance, with Jo doing the lead guitar and Sean seeming a bit lost before doing the same bit as Jo, which makes the song sound a bit like a stop-start blues number. Still, Phill gets it, even if John doesn’t.

After that malarkey, we get Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks. It’s a good enough rendition, but, as Mark puts it, no human has ever looked as vacant as John does trying to guess it, so it’s passed over and a bored-looking Adam gets it.

Finally, the Beatles and a Hard Day’s Night. Sean does a countdown in a Ringo Starr voice, Jo does the opening chord, John furnishes us with the correct answer.

Indecipherable Lyrics

Phill’s team are tasked with translating Dead Ringer For Love by noted thespians Meat Loaf and Cher into English. They don’t make much of it, really, but Crispin does get in a funny line in ‘You’ve got a lot of nerve to come over me’, delivered with just the right amount of detachment to not oversell the joke. They don’t have the correct answer, so Mark fills us all in.

Sean’s team, meanwhile, get the hot sound of 1997, the Manic Street Preachers with Kevin Carter. It’s the usual japes – some incongruous but dull combinations of words that don’t really sound like the song. Jo gets the first two lines right, which is enough to earn one point.

Identity Parade

Sean’s team start us off, tasked with identifying Kajagoogoo’s Jez Strode and Stuart Neale from a line-up that consists of “number one, cheekbone Charlie, number two, simply oozing star quality, number three, who’s wisely decided to lose the hair, number four, the betting shop manager, or number five, who’s too shy, too shy”. After a few jokes – including John comparing number five to Lurch from the Addams Family, which seems innocuous to me but draws oohs from the audience – Sean guesses number one and number four who, hey presto, were indeed in Kajagoogoo.

Phill’s team get the Beatles – or the Bandit Beatles, anyway. They have to identify the Lennon and McCartney of the group. The line-up is ”number one, as Scouse as you like, number two, Ringo surely, number three, the Maharishi’s minder, number four, Big Issue, or number five, Peter Stringfellow’s hair double”. Phill and co guess number two – not too hard considering he looks a fair bit like John Lennon – and number four; it is in fact two and three, who are, as we learn, Ian Walters and Colin Smith.

Next Lines

Another fairly textbook playing, with few jokes, although there is a little fun in some rather salty Marc Almond lyrics being given to Phill’s team, probably the best jokes the show manages to milk from that urban legend. Phill’s team lap up victory with 16 points, and Sean’s team are left with the bitter taste of defeat with 13.

How Good Is The Script?

• The Good: There’s a joke referring to Jimmy Nail as a twat which is delivered very well – there actually seems to be some genuine venom behind it…
• The Bad: …however, it’s followed by a joke about David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs that feels very, very hacky.
• Overall: Nothing outstanding, really, and a couple of duff jokes.

Proof That It’s 1997

• The Longpigs had released their debut album the year before, and were seen as ‘the next big thing’ at this time – although they maintain a cult following they never quite had the expected commercial breakthrough. I suppose Jo being referred to as a Radio 1 DJ is dated now, and while he’s still working John was very much at the peak of his fame around this time.
• Sean wears a ‘Support the Liverpool dockers’ t-shirt, as made famous by Robbie Fowler around this time, while Crispin’s shirt is very much of the time. I’d like to make a similar argument for Phill’s shirt, but I’d be being generous – that shirt has never been in fashion.
• The references to Soldier, Soldier and Robson and Jerome in John’s introduction date the show a fair bit.
• There could almost be a sub-section to this feature, which would be for jokes or remarks where the references aren’t necessarily dated but the attitude towards them is. For example, the joke about Chris Evans in Jo’s introduction is a reflection of a time when Chris Evans was a national hate figure in a way that, even if some people still dislike him, he simply isn’t now, similar to the Take That jokes I mentioned in the previous episode. Similarly, there’s a joke about Peter Andre which seems harsher now that his public image is that of a slightly bumbling, loveable nice bloke.
• Phill makes a joke about Madonna having recently given birth, and Sean makes a reference to the controversy when Radio 1 refused to playlist a Status Quo single in 1996.
• Jez from Kajagoogoo is sporting a ponytail that would have been just about acceptable at this time.

Other Observations

• Even by his own standards, Mark’s quiff is ridiculous in this episode.
• Unless I’m mistaken I believe Adam was undergoing a bit of a critical revaluation and revival around this time due to the patronage and praise of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, who’d covered his song (You’re So) Physical. Possibly as a result of this Adam seems to be going for a gothic image here, and also mentions Reznor in a joke which gets a fairly muted response from the audience.
• This is the first episode to feature more than one non-musician as a guest, and similarly Jo becomes the first non-musician to perform in the Intros round – compared to some later non-musical guests, and indeed some musical ones too, she does a pretty good job.
• Sean makes a joke about not wanting to make fun of the Stranglers in case they beat him up; at some point jokes about Sean getting beaten up for his jokes, usually by insulted Identity Parade members, become a bit of a recurring feature. Incidentally, despite not wanting to make any jokes about them he does refer to them as ‘three fat blokes and a karate expert’, so it’s probably for the best that the show waits until he’s left before booking any Stranglers.
• Mark incorrectly refers to Kevin Carter as a Vietnam photographer; Carter was active in Africa and his most famous work was from Sudan. My guess is Mark was mixing him up with Sean Flynn, the actor-cum-photographer best known for his work in Vietnam who went missing in Cambodia and was later sung about by the Clash. Failing that, he may have been thinking of Coventry City and Derby County midfielder Sean Flynn.
• There’s laughter from the audience when they’re shown a clip of the Bandit Beatles after their Identity Parade, but other than the fact some of them are a little middle-aged and pudgy they’re pretty good. Maybe the audience are laughing because they’re assuming that if a clip is shown they should be?

Final Verdict
Not a particularly good episode. It’s no disgrace, but it’s hard to think of many highlights and with a fairly uninspiring panel and team captains still yet to find their feet there really isn’t any real reason to give your time over to it.