construed as racist orhomophobic. There’s no denying that everyone on the team was happy to offend, but what is naughty in one decade can seem scandalous in another (such as Toby’s order to the sodomites in Hell, or the free use of the term ‘spastic’ in much of British comedy at this time). On the other hand, perhaps it’s considered that a full DVD release would be a commercial flop because the topical references would mean nothing over thirty years on – as if a Britain in which a Tory government were making ruinous cuts in public spending, provoking zooming levels of unemployment and mass protest, and having a royal wedding to help distract the populace, would seem to be an alien world to modern Britons. But the original broadcasts still stand up, peppered as they are with celebrated moments (the final series’ opener concludes with Curtis and Goodall’s epic New Romantic lampoon ‘Nice Video, Shame About the Song’) and forgotten jewels (Mel Smith running a company which offers job creation schemes for human sofas, hatstands and pencil sharpeners). By the time the final sketch (the Youth TV spoof, ‘Hey Wow’, featuring a leotarded Atkinson as the mime artist Alternative Car Park) had descended into bedlam, there was no doubt that the Not team were going out on a high. The punning finale, the valedictory ballad ‘Kinda Lingers’ (another Curtis/Goodall original), was filmed in the cold industrial atmosphere of Bankside Power Station, and closed with Atkinson quite fittingly cutting transmission with a hefty turn of a valve. After three years and twenty-seven episodes, that was the end of Not the Nine O’Clock News .
John Lloyd had to let his empire kinda linger a little longer, however – a book covering the 1983 election was published, and with Douglas’s help, he put out two Not -themed calendars. Despite their late-seventies contretemps, Lloyd and Adams did some of their best work in the eighties fn5 , with the calendars giving birth to The Meaning of Liff comic dictionaries, rated by John as his favourite creations. The odd comedy book continued to surface under the Not banner, with Lloyd and Hardie collaborating on Prince Harry’s First Quiz Book as late as 1985. A vastly different US spin-off for HBO, Not Necessarily the News , on the other hand, ran quite successfully for several years without any input from either Sean or John.
The final gasp from the original team was the live show Not in Front of the Audience , a farewell concert staged in Oxford and at the Drury Lane Theatre, where on 29 April a recording was made for the last Not double album. This theatrical swansong came only a month after the last episode was broadcast, and was necessarily boosted in topicality due to the Falklands War, which had begun in the interim, and would be over by June. Although constructed from brand-new material (albeit including the old joke about being ‘well hung’), the team allowed themselves the return of a few favourite characters and sketches, Rowan reprising his outrageous sex-obsessed French critic, an extra-foul-mouthed ‘Ranting Man’ and Zak, the friendly alien with a malfunctioning translator.
With the last bows taken that night, the unusual quartet went their separate ways – although Rowan would remain close to regular collaborator Mel, whose years of comically successful partnership with Griff would also lead to massive financial success with the setting up (and flogging off) of their production company Talkback. Not was never a love-in, and both Smith and Atkinson would have difficult relationships with Stephenson, but three decades on, Rowan’s memories of the time tend towards the fond. ‘What I do remember about those days was the fantastic freedom you felt at that age to do and try anything,’ he reflects, ‘There was none of this sort of angst which one feels later on in life, where you think, “Now is this the kind of character I should be playing at this stage in my
John Lloyd had to let his empire kinda linger a little longer, however – a book covering the 1983 election was published, and with Douglas’s help, he put out two Not -themed calendars. Despite their late-seventies contretemps, Lloyd and Adams did some of their best work in the eighties fn5 , with the calendars giving birth to The Meaning of Liff comic dictionaries, rated by John as his favourite creations. The odd comedy book continued to surface under the Not banner, with Lloyd and Hardie collaborating on Prince Harry’s First Quiz Book as late as 1985. A vastly different US spin-off for HBO, Not Necessarily the News , on the other hand, ran quite successfully for several years without any input from either Sean or John.
The final gasp from the original team was the live show Not in Front of the Audience , a farewell concert staged in Oxford and at the Drury Lane Theatre, where on 29 April a recording was made for the last Not double album. This theatrical swansong came only a month after the last episode was broadcast, and was necessarily boosted in topicality due to the Falklands War, which had begun in the interim, and would be over by June. Although constructed from brand-new material (albeit including the old joke about being ‘well hung’), the team allowed themselves the return of a few favourite characters and sketches, Rowan reprising his outrageous sex-obsessed French critic, an extra-foul-mouthed ‘Ranting Man’ and Zak, the friendly alien with a malfunctioning translator.
With the last bows taken that night, the unusual quartet went their separate ways – although Rowan would remain close to regular collaborator Mel, whose years of comically successful partnership with Griff would also lead to massive financial success with the setting up (and flogging off) of their production company Talkback. Not was never a love-in, and both Smith and Atkinson would have difficult relationships with Stephenson, but three decades on, Rowan’s memories of the time tend towards the fond. ‘What I do remember about those days was the fantastic freedom you felt at that age to do and try anything,’ he reflects, ‘There was none of this sort of angst which one feels later on in life, where you think, “Now is this the kind of character I should be playing at this stage in my
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