Many a com­e­dy dou­ble act or group cut its teeth as mem­bers of the Cam­bridge Foot­lights, the ama­teur the­atri­cal club run by stu­dents of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty (and which has been going since 1883) – Beyond the Fringe, Mon­ty Python, the Good­ies, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of media per­son­al­i­ties active on our tele­vi­sion screens today. One pair of for­mer Foot­lighters pur­sue their careers indi­vid­u­al­ly these days but for a long time through­out the 1980s and 90s their obvi­ous comedic chem­istry was exploit­ed to great effect as a dou­ble act. I’m talk­ing about Stephen Fry and Hugh Lau­rie, who col­lab­o­rat­ed in such pro­grammes as the Black Adder series, Jeeves and Woost­er, and four series of A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie.

A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie was a sketch show cast for a post-Alter­na­tive com­e­dy audi­ence, in which elab­o­rate word­play and innu­en­do were sta­ples of its mate­r­i­al. Both per­form­ers brought great char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion to the sketch­es, and were equal­ly fun­ny, though Fry’s well-known intel­lec­tu­al heft was clear­ly present through­out the series.

My favourites of the series’ char­ac­ters were John (Fry) and Peter (Lau­rie), who are high-pow­ered, hard-drink­ing busi­ness execs, engaged in backs-to-the-wall, board­room hard talk, the joke being that their loca­tion, unlike Lon­don or New York, is com­plete­ly non­de­script (Uttox­eter) and their busi­ness dis­tinct­ly under­whelm­ing (a health club). The char­ac­ters are of course a par­o­dy of hard-dri­ving busi­ness­men of the time, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from such board­room soap operas as Man at the Top and Howards’ Way, in which char­ac­ters’ bom­bast is deliv­ered with such com­plete seri­ous­ness, and as if the fate of the free world depend­ed on it, about mat­ters that the view­ers know are of no real con­se­quence.

John and Peter’s loud catch­phrase was “Damn!” and sev­er­al increas­ing­ly ridicu­lous vari­a­tions on this theme (“Three pints of Damn and a chas­er of Hell-blast!”), as they uncov­er some new busi­ness-crit­i­cal twist or plot engi­neered by arch-rival Mar­jorie, John’s ex-wife. This mar­vel­lous premise is summed up thus:

“Dammit John, I’m talk­ing about the big idea. The dream that you and I shared. The dream of a health club that would put Uttox­eter on the god­damned map once and for all”

Inci­den­tal­ly, Uttox­eter is in Stafford­shire…