Office politics
James Delingpole
E"'Everyone always says how clever it was .L.:.eof John Cleese to have ended FawIty Towers after just 12 episodes, while it was still funny. But it's not nearly as clever as what Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant did with their farewell Christmas Special of The Office.
Lesser geniuses might have contented themselves with tying up a few loose ends — perhaps allowing Gareth finally to get his end away or to experiment with a new haircut; maybe letting Dawn finally see sense and realise that her true destiny lay with Tim rather than the thuggish Lee. But I thought the real conclusion — 15 minutes of desultory banter about photocopiers and that 'wanker who used to work here, what was his name?", followed by 30 minutes in which a heavily armed David Brent returns wearing a handband and just wipes everyone out in gore-splat tered slow motion was just awesome (and genuinely surprising). I particularly liked the bit where Brent finds Dawn hiding in the ladies and she says, 'I won't scream,' and Brent does the most brilliant Max Von Sydow impersonation before blowing her away.
Then, in the second part, it turned out to be all just a dream, and that what had really happened was that they'd been caught in a time-warp and relocated to the siege of Khe Sanh, with Gareth as a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrolman who never comes out in the day so his eyes are permanently in night-vision mode. That's the great thing about Gervais and Merchant. You just know that, unlike some people I could name, they're never going to end up making business videos and preaching solemnly about marriage guidance.
Nor, probably, will David Walliams and Matt Lucas, creators of the wondrous Little Britain (BBC3). I say probably, though I once met David at one of John Gross's parties — nice bloke, but he did express amazement at being caught in a room with so many avowedly right-wing people. David, man, what you've got to realise is that all the very coolest and most forward-thinking dudes are on the Right these days. Stick on the worthy Left and you'll end up like that bloated generation of Eighties alternative comics, trying desperately to reconcile your West Country mansion and vast bank-balance with your bankrupt socialist ideals, making emetically saccharine movies, writing PC children's hooks, flogging the same old jokes way beyond death in your past-it sitcom, and so on. Left-wing people, you see, never have to think about their views because, being the supposed nice guys, they're never challenged. And that's not good for the brain. Or comedy.
Hey, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. For the moment Walliams and Lucas are doing just great and I'm so glad because for a worrying period it looked as if none of Lucas's projects outside Shooting Stars (where he made his name as the shouty, drum-playing baby George Dawes) was ever going to be quite funny enough. But with Little Britain they've both really hit their stride.
Yes, it is a bit like The League of Gentlemen (mildly sinister, men in drag, and the cruel diet-class leader is very similar to the horrid Pauline) and also like The Fast Show (rapid-fire sketches not always resolved, catchphrases like 'I'm a lady'). But that's OK, it's merely a case of genius-stealing.
And it seems to have been getting better as the series has progressed. I like the way, for example, that the Tom Baker voiceover is becoming more gleefully selfreferential (the other night he actually boasted about having played Doctor Who and starred in an episode of Blackadder). But this may just be a function of becoming more familiar with the characters and knowing what they're going to do before they do it.
Much of the humour in the sketches involving the lazy, fake, disabled person, for example, now comes from that exquisite comic tension as you wait for him a) to change his mind or b) sneak out of his wheelchair when his carer's not looking. It's the same with 'the only gay in the village'. We've got used to the first part of the joke — that actually his Welsh village is swarming with gays; now we just look forward to the second more interesting part which is: 'How is he going to alienate his potential gay friends this time?'
Aagh, but I've been analysing comedy, which is terrible, because a joke explained is a joke lost. And I would go on. I did have loads of other stuff to say, like how my other favourite comedy programmes of the year were Channel 4's Peep Show (total masterpiece; easily up there with The Office and Little Britain) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (BBC4), but there isn't time. I've quite ludicrous quantities of other work to do, I need a swim, and I'm mightily pissed off because I'm not bringing in enough money, there are so many people out there who deserve to die and there just aren't enough bullets. But perhaps I'll tell you more in what is bound to be an extremely dyspeptic post-New Year column.
That stuff about the final part of The Office I made up by the way, because there weren't any preview tapes. But hey, if I've guessed right, how spooky is that?
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