Something unexpected has happened with The Peter Serafinowicz Show over the years.
For a programme which had just eight episodes, one of which was a Best Of, and which has never been repeated by the BBC1, the show has become a fixed reference point for certain strata of comedy fans. When I first watched it back in 2007, I rather liked it, with a few reservations. In 2025, it lives rent free in my head. If you think people endlessly quoting Python are annoying, just wait until I do my Ringo Remembers. “I just thought it was inappropriate. Especially at Christmastime.“
But of all the characters in the show, the one with the longest life has turned out to be inept businessman Brian Butterfield. A character inspired by this ludicrous advert, but which became something stranger and wilder almost immediately. A character which ended up going on tour fifteen years after the series was first broadcast, with all the associated paraphernalia. Who would have predicted that back in 2007?
All of which means it’s high time I wrote something interesting about it. So let’s take the second episode of the show, broadcast on the 11th October 2007, and one of the most well-remembered sketches of the lot: the Butterfield Detective Agency.
Of all the incredible moments in that sketch, my favourite might be Peter’s eye-flick upwards on “Australian”, as though Brian has just begun to realise he might have got it wrong.
But if you know this site well enough, you can probably guess where I’m about to go. What about the fabulously inappropriate music for the sketch, trying desperately to give a sense of showbiz that Brian Butterfield is incapable of providing? Well, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it’s a library track: “Theatre Land”, credited to David Arnold2 and Paul Hart, and first released in 1991 by Carlin on the album TV/Radio/Showbiz/Logos (CAR 188).
Specifically, it’s three different versions of “Theatre Land” bunged together. All three are included below.3 I shall leave where the edit points between them are in the original sketch as an exercise for the reader.
So, job done, yes?
Not quite.
* * *
Now perhaps isn’t the right time to go into the full history of Radio West. Suffice to say that it was an Independent Local Radio station based in Bristol, which launched in October 1981, and which ceased broadcasting in September 1985. The following month, GWR was launched, and these days, 96.3 Mhz is home to Heart Bristol, because of course it is. For more on the history of the station, see this article on Transdiffusion.4
No, our interest with Radio West is something very specific: it’s their jingle package from 1984. Let’s take a listen to the 60″ version of their main theme, by… hmmmm, David Arnold Music.
Hang on, that sounds rather familiar. What’s going on?
The answer is simple: library music can come from many sources, and one such source is repurposed radio jingle packages. In 1991, it was six years since Radio West had been a going concern. Why not take all that hard work, recorded with a real orchestra, and use it for something else?
Of course, in 1984, David Arnold Music didn’t just provide a theme for the station; they made a whole jingle package. This can be heard in full on the incredible Local Radio Archive site, which is where I’ve taken the following extract from:
So now you know that the lyrics to the music in the Butterfield Detective Agency sketch are:
“Everything that you need to know
Everywhere that you go
Radio West for you…”
And that “Radio West for you” is the original meaning of the repeated six-note fanfare which – over twenty years after it was recorded – eventually found its true home in the Butterfield sketch. For us idiot comedy fans, anyway.5
* * *
Which just leaves us to ponder: one thing which makes the use of this track funny in Peter Serafinowicz is the idea that Brian Butterfield is really trying to make his advert full of glamour… while doing his ridiculous disguises against the least glamorous brick wall imaginable.
But listening to the track now makes me a little melancholy. Perhaps you find that piece of music a little ridiculous to use as a radio station theme. But all it does is remind me of when there was a little more interest in the “showbiz” magic of radio.
The days where even a local radio station from Bristol had a theme which you could credibly repurpose as a glitzy entertainment track.
With thanks to Tanya Jones.
Aside from the Christmas Special, which had a repeat a couple of days later in a different edit. I’ll write about that one day. ↩
Ah, the everlasting confusion with there being two British composers called David Arnold. One scored multiple James Bond films. The other did the themes for The Big Breakfast and Live & Kicking. We are dealing with the latter. ↩
There are nine versions of “Theatre Land” in total on the album. ↩
The major thing worth noting in that article is that Nino Firetto was weekday breakfast presenter for the first six weeks, until he moved to weekends. ↩
Also included in these tracks is a four-note “Radio West” variant. These four syllables surely factored into the decision to call the library tracks “Theatre Land”, to match. ↩
18 comments
Scurra on 1 January 2026 @ 1am
So, TIL that there are two David Arnolds. That explained a lot. Well, a bit. Well, maybe something.
But it’s true that it’s the sort of thing I expect to learn here rather than anywhere else.
Jon on 1 January 2026 @ 1am
Thanks for this. I’d never seen the show and was only tangentially aware of Butterfield, but I’ve just watched the Diet plan sketch and my stomach is genuinely hurting from laughter
DocWallace on 1 January 2026 @ 9am
I was aware of the multiple versions of Theatre Land, since it has become somewhat of a running gag in our streams. It’s worth noting as a sideline that the track’s pseudo glamour potential was exploited a little earlier, with Noel’s House Party using it to back the prize reveal on a fake gameshow. Whether this is where Peter’s production first became aware of it I’m not sure, but it sounds like the same reedit to me:
https://youtu.be/b1UQDZmM7xc?si=eYSm0JRqJYCm9AzA
Dan Whitehead on 1 January 2026 @ 12pm
There are also two musical Brian Mays. The one from Queen that everyone knows, and an Australian composer who did the soundtracks to loads of low budget exploitation movies (including the original Mad Max).
John J. Hoare on 1 January 2026 @ 1pm
Jon: the interesting thing about that is that I went though a contemporary comedy forum thread in preparation for that article, and here’s what I said about the Butterfield Diet Plan sketch:
“It was the weakest Butterfield for me so far, though.”
Cue everyone disagreeing with me. Quite possibly the least perceptive I have ever been, among some stiff competition.
Mike on 1 January 2026 @ 6pm
Interesting fact (perhaps): The Butterfield Karaoke scene didn’t make the DVD due to not being able to clear Queen’s music. But it is on YT. Worth checking out!
Also Dan: The other B May’s next movie score straight after the actual F Mercury’s death was ‘Freddie’s Dead’ – the then latest instalment of the Elm Street series. Unfortunate timing I’d say….
DocWallace on 1 January 2026 @ 9pm
One note on the two David Arnolds – the film composer was on Liquid News, and they played him the Live and Kicking theme. Clearly thinking they’d stumbled on a fun fact, they mentioned that sideline, taking his stunned reaction as embarrassment at them bringing it up. Ultimately David does explain the confusion to a sheepish Christopher Price.
Pity I can’t find it right now, it ended up in one of the Outtake TV collections.
James on 1 January 2026 @ 10pm
On a related note, I know the Grandstand theme is a library piece despite being composed for the show- anyone know if was that the case from the start or did it become one years later?
Stuart on 2 January 2026 @ 11am
I’m sure the theme to Grandstand was used in a film, can’t find which one though.
The themes to both Channel 4 News and News at Ten seem to be production music and were used in films:
https://youtu.be/FwQCfCSjOns?t=401
https://youtu.be/SGzz3hh1jHc
DocWallace on 2 January 2026 @ 4pm
@James it’s reasonably common for tracks like that to become parts of libraries after a certain period, or rerecorded for such. My favourite example of this is the reworked UK Wheel of Fortune theme for the Bradley Walsh era. As “Spin to Win” it ended up non exclusive, causing me no small amount of amusement when it was overdubbed onto an archive DVD release of a Wrestlemania event. It matched the unclearable track for BPM, but changes the mood somewhat.
James on 2 January 2026 @ 6pm
I remember reading an article about how ITV once showed an American documentry on fairgrounds which used the Grandstand theme which caused some amusement to the person watching. Of course the people making it wouldn’t know about the music being known for something else here!
Similarly, Journey Back To Oz used The Awakening- the News At Ten theme- during the opening credits. That music wasn’t specifically composed for ITN in that case (though they had been using it for several years before the film was made), but it’s also still amusing to see from a British point of view. Though no doubt British producers have used library music known as theme tunes for something else somewhere in the world as well! And we had Grange Hill and Give Us a Clue using the same theme at the same time… and the Terry and June theme was used on Scott On a few years earlier too!
Rob Keeley on 3 January 2026 @ 8am
I remember that David Arnold interview,- when they cottoned on and asked what sort of thing the other one wrote, he deadpanned: “Well, stuff like that.” As Rob Keeley the author who’s always being confused with Rob Keeley the composer by Google, I do sympathise.
Paul Bovey on 3 January 2026 @ 7pm
Great stuff, John.
It never fails to fascinate me where library music turns up. Alan Tew’s The Detectives has turned up in ITV’s crime drama The Hanged Man, the Two Ronnies’ Piggy Malone & Charley Farley sketch, the adult film Wanda Whips Wall Street and the blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite. As Stewart mentions above, Alan Hawkshaw’s theme for Channel 4 News appears on the trailer for Clint Eastwood’s western Pale Rider. And when I binge-watched Prisoner: Cell Block H a couple of years ago (yes, I know), the moment when Pippa (the second one) from Home & Away contemplates throwing herself off the roof was undermined by being accompanied by the same three-note brass sting used in the first series of Father Ted (“I know what you’re up to!).
Westy on 5 January 2026 @ 4am
One which was pointed out to me, the title which escapes me at the moment, was the theme tune used by ‘Atv Today’ in 1981, was the same music used by ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’ at some point!
David Wardrop on 5 January 2026 @ 2pm
Amazing research, John. Rather poignantly, ‘Theatre Land’ is the music played on Thames TV’s *very last* programme trail in 1992 (it’s 1.48 in, courtesy of Sticky Tape n Rust): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHFIOusMLJ4
Brian Butterfield is a comedy creation up there with Mainwaring and Fawlty – it’s a shame the 2016 Brian Butterfield sitcom pilot only made it to the read-through stage.
John J. Hoare on 5 January 2026 @ 6pm
I think this is my favourite set of comments on here for ages.
YOU’VE ALL DONE VERY WELL
Martin Fenton on 8 January 2026 @ 6pm
The first grot film I ever saw had Chi Mai on the soundtrack. It worked much better in that context than it did on The Life And Times Of David Lloyd George.
Will Tudor on 18 March 2026 @ 9pm
Punt & Dennis did a sketch in series 1 of their BBC 1 show based around a Royal expert being interviewed on breakfast TV. I remember years later seeing an old HTV News report on GWR and their (I guess) breakfast show theme was the same track used in the sketch, minus the vocal.