Exit Bob Hoskins, Pursued by a Salad.

Not one for the coulrophobes.

 Ideally I'd have posted this Christmassy treat on Twelfth Night, sorry, but it's still panto season somewhere, so here's Bob Hoskins as Dickens' favourite clown Joseph Grimaldi displaying a talent for slapstick not employed again until "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" There are also cameos from David Rappaport and Chris Langham, and a giant vegetable mutant whose inclusion can presumably be explained by this cartoon from the Victoria and Albert Museum, depicting Joey "Setting to with a Grotesque Figure which he makes up of a series of Vegetables, Fruit &c. and which becoming Animated beats him off the Stage"...



 ... although there's no such set-up here. The giant All-Seeing Eye on Bob's midriff meanwhile, for which I can't find any precedent in cartoons of Grimaldi, must be explained by the fact that this was directed by Ken Campbell, who'd just finished staging the Illuminati Trilogy and possibly meant the whole Omnibus documentary from which this clip was nicked to serve as a secret Discordian Salute to the Embodiment of Chaos. You can watch "Ken Campbell's History of Panto" in full, complete with further reenactments here. (And you can attend Grimaldi's annual Memorial Service here, but from the look of things you really have to like clowns.) Hail Eris &c!

 "GRIMALDI & the NONDESCRIPT in the Red Dwarf - the Clown kills the Pantaloon and afterwards Dresses him in the Skin of a Lion the Head of an Ass Eagles wings Cats feet & a Fishes tale." Image courtesy of the Lewis Walpole library in Yale.

I do not remember this episode of Red Dwarf.