For more on this BBC100 series of posts, read this introduction.
I get the idea with this project that I’m not really supposed to have favourites. The whole point is to celebrate a range of BBC programmes across the decades. Having a best one is a bit naughty, really. But on a good day, Smashie and Nicey – the End of an Era stands as my favourite TV show ever made. It somehow seems to represent everything that television can do as a medium, in 45 minutes of utter joy.
And yet those 45 minutes didn’t spring out of nowhere. Like so much brilliant comedy, it has its roots in something rather more ordinary, at least at first glance. Harry Enfield’s Television Programme (1990-92) is the kind of sketch show which used to be de rigueur on telly, and now very much isn’t. The number of famous characters which sprung from this series and its successor Harry Enfield and Chums is extraordinary: Tim Nice-but-Dim, The Slobs, Mr Cholmondley-Warner, Kevin the Teenager… the list is endless.
But two of the very best were Smashie and Nicey, played by Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield. Radio DJs for Fab FM – an extremely thinly-disguised parody of BBC Radio 1 – sketches typically went as follows:
NICEY: I love Tuesdays, don’t you mate?
SMASHIE: Certainly do mate, it’s one of the best between-Monday-and-Wednesday-type days we’ve got.
NICEY: It’s the only between-Monday-and-Wednesday-type day we’ve got mate. It may not have the glamour and excitement of a Saturday night, or the mournfulness of a Monday morn, but it’s our Tuesday, the good old-fashioned honest-to-goodness down-to-earth Great British Tuesday.
Inevitably, every sketch ended with them playing Bachman-Turner Overdrive and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”. If inane DJs were an easy and at times unfair target, it was an exceptionally well aimed one nonetheless, and the characters became a byword for what mainstream Radio 1 was doing in the early 90s.
But events quickly overtook Enfield and Whitehouse. In 1993, Matthew Bannister became the new controller of the real Radio 1, replacing Johnny Beerling who had been with the station since its launch in 1967. His remit was simple: get rid of the Smashie & Nicey image. Things started changing immediately. At a stroke, Enfield and Whitehouse had managed to create that rare thing: satire that actually achieved something.
And yet the success of their satire also seemed to signify its downfall. What was the point of continuing the Smashie and Nicey sketches, when what they were satirising was now dying? It was a point well taken by Enfield and Whitehouse. They decided to do one last special to say goodbye to the characters, and then move on.
That special was End of an Era, and they were given a gift of an opening. In August 1993, Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis resigned live on air, with the immortal words “Changes are being made here which go against my principles, and I just cannot agree with them.” It was a short leap to change this to a press conference, and for Dave Nice to talk about “the current backstabtrocious policies” instead. What follows is a mockumentary – essentially in the style of the then-current BBC series Omnibus – looking both backwards and forwards at Smashie and Nicey’s career.
And what we end up with – and bear with me on this one – is British comedy’s version of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Before you close the browser and consider reporting me to the authorities, let me explain. Ulysses is often described as just as much of an encyclopedia as a novel; as “complete” a description of Dublin in the early 20th century as you would ever be likely to need. End of an Era is pretty much the same, but for British light entertainment from the 1960s – 90s. Less comprehensive, sure. But somehow, watching it, you feel you now know everything you need to about its development.
So we get Smashie’s ill-advised stint as an actor in live drama, Nicey interviewing the Beatles, their early days on Radio Fab in the 60s, their 70s Top of the Pops years, Smashie’s brief fortray into punk records (“On the ruddy rotten dole”), Nicey throwing himself into the world of advertising… all the way through to 90s Comic Relief, and Noel’s House Party. (Erm, sorry, Smashie’s Saturday Smiles.) All expertly recreated, either shot from scratch as pitch-perfect parodies, or by splicing together existing footage with newly shot-material of Enfield or Whitehouse.
One section in particular is just a perfect combination of picture research, special effects, and comic acting. To show Nicey’s career as a Blue Peter presenter, the team took an actual performance of Freddie and the Dreamers on the show (originally transmitted 23rd March 1963), and added Enfield dancing next to Freddie Garrity. It’s an astonishing piece of work which looks incredible today, let alone in 1994. It’s not just the brilliant compositing of the two pieces of footage; Enfield is moving in perfect synch with Freddie’s original distinctive leg movements. You just would not believe the footage was shot 30 years apart.
And then we get the big admission. Towards the end of the programme, we cut to the birthday party for 25 years of Fab FM, and meet a bunch of Smashie and Nicey’s replacements. (“Simon Northern-Accent, serious world music evening slot…”) And we are suddenly, utterly on Smashie and Nicey’s side, as we realise that their replacements are just as bad… or far worse. Enfield and Whitehouse weren’t out to destroy a section of British light entertainment after all. They just meant to poke a bit of fun.
Paul Whitehouse gave an interview to The Telegraph in 2015 which confirms this:
“I remember [former director general of the BBC] John Birt approached me at some award ceremony in the mid-Nineties… He said, “Oh well done, thanks for giving me the idea about the DJs. Now I can get rid of them.” And I said, ‘We actually quite like their rambling antics.'”
The characters of Smashie and Nicey weren’t inspired by hatred, or a desire to change things. They weren’t created in order to kill anything off. They came about through affection.
Perhaps people should have taken the satire a little less literally.
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