25 Years of Reeves and Mortimer: an appreciation

Back in the mid-90s, VHS tapes were traded among school friends like cigarettes in prison. Favours were swapped for a sneak peak at the unrated Predator; recorded-from-TV copies of Basic Instinct where the tracking went especially bad for one particular scene, and something called Animal Farm that I never saw and frankly, the very notion of it scared the heck out of me.

There was one video in my tiny collection, however, that could never be swapped around. The casing was red but it was entitled Blue, just one of many throwaway jokes that made it unique and irreplaceable. It was The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and for a short time it was my life.

Comedy was a big thing in our household, mostly taken up by the Friday-night sitcoms – these were the halcyon days before panel shows littered the television schedule – split across BBC2 and Channel 4 (Cheers at 9, Red Dwarf at 9.30). But this was something completely different. While sitcoms were aimed at adults and I laughed along regardless, not understanding the simmering sexual tension between Sam and Diane, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were a different couple, two such nutcases spraying jokes and everything else into the ether, somehow egged on by the licence fee.

It was probably for the best that I never took this video into school for trade, as I had developed quite the reputation as a ‘funny man’ by basically ripping off these two Northeastern clowns.

I was obviously not the only one that these two mad princes inspired. It’s impossible to think that something like The Mighty Boosh might have made it on to television without the blueprint of surreality laid down by Vic and Bob.

More important than their inspirational qualities, though, was the boundaries they seemed to break while delivering just 12 episodes for Auntie Beeb. Their style was inimitable, but they also turned a lot of well-worn tropes on their heads. 

First off, Vic and Bob were people with accents doing weird and alternative comedy, and though this was nothing new, it was the first time people outside the Oxbridge elite had been allowed to take viewers outside of their comfort zones. Unfortunately (and this is often still the case today), unless a performer had ‘Footlights’, Cambridge University’s amateur theatrical group, on their CV, then they were lucky to get anywhere near your television set. Vic and Bob gave hope to those who were doing weird inverted comedy and they, in turn, gave breaks to their favourite acts, be it a young Steve Coogan showing up as ‘the bloke from Go West’ to Matt Lucas, who they invited to pal around with them as George Dawes, paving the way for Little Britain – a show that, love it or hate it, was a global success.

(Continues below)

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 "Comedy that needs to be felt" – An appraisal of Daniel Kitson

 Noel Fielding on The Mighty Boosh and his return to stand-up

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With Shooting Stars, Vic and Bob were caged within the now popular panel show format but still managed to make it their own anarchic mess, by not bowing down to big guests and keeping everything as silly and pointless as possible. When Johnny Vegas was asked to be on the show, Bob asked if he’d be having a drink when they film. While Vegas nervously grasped for an answer that might please who was essentially his new employer, Mortimer interjected with: "’cos we are!" This devil-may-care attitude to broadcast television made Shooting Stars a joy to watch and, in freeing Johnny Vegas to be himself, Vic and Bob opened him up to wider audience who could bathe in his rambling genius.

Reeves and Mortimer's most recent foray into television was the criminally-underrated House of Fools, which mixed a love for old-fashioned sitcoms with the surreal non-sequiturs they had become known for. Once more, they brought in acts they loved, including the Norwegian oddball Daniel Simonsen. Though it was hardly a classic, the addition of Matt Berry and Morgana Robinson was inspired in keeping a sense of fun and mischief in what was supposed to be a straight single-camera situational comedy.

This leads us to their upcoming tour, entitled The Poignant Moments, in which the pair will be re-enacting some of their most famous skits and characters. Where most reunion tours might seem like cynical cash-ins, and where popularity is almost certainly playing on nostalgia, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer has aged phenomenally well. Alongside a proliferation of safe panel shows, throwbacks like Mrs Brown’s Boys and recycled shows such as Open All Hours and Birds of a Feather, perhaps this particular nostalgia trip – to a time when comedy was a little more daring – might reignite the sense of danger that was once evident in British television comedy.

Hopefully, it will spark TV producers to be more willing to take the risks that Vic and Bob did so early on, and to commission shows that are willing to fail.

They can even borrow my VHS. 

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25 Years of Reeves and Mortimer: The Poignant Moments kicks off at First Direct Arena, Leeds, on 30 Jan and takes in Edinburgh Playhouse (31 Jan) and O2 Apollo, Manchester (2 Feb).