Margaret's Fringe. Gilbert's Fridge.

Margaret Cabourn-Smith reflects on her old sketch antics and why you shouldn't use real meat in your shows. You can listen to the full conversation right here! shows.acast.com/out-of-chara... #Comedy #Chat #Podcast #Sketch #Character #VictorianTimes #Liver #Magic #EdFringe

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— Out Of Character (@oocharacterpod.bsky.social) 26 May 2025 at 10:54

 

 As "Jonah" turned from distant credit to looming "to do", I found these and other reminiscences about heading to the Edinburgh Fringe and making "magical worlds... trawling costumes around rooms above pubs" from fellow Finnemoreperson and rising star, Margaret Kaboom-Smith, both inspiring and grounding, and did not in the end use real fish. 

 

 Another reminiscence: Margaret, Carrie, Lawry and I independently tour our production of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "Мы" for ten seconds in 2019

 

 Margaret is often inspiring and grounding, and I happen to have also recorded a (far more meandering) Out of Character with Alex Lynch back in 2022, but never got round to putting it up here, so why not listen to both episodes now, and compare our differing accounts of, say, making Series Nine? (I did not think it might be shit.)

Simultaneously. That's right. Listen to them simultaneously. It's like being in the room with us!

 

 I remember enjoying myself a lot during the recording, and also the punishing heat – so today's actually perfect for a repost – I had just got back from "Bleak Expectations" in Newbury, and had no idea at the time the show would go on to the West End with an almost completely new cast, nor that Series Nine would indeed be the last series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme but that it would continue as a series of annual specials, and I'd certainly no idea I would be writing for Mitchell and Webb again in 2025, which I should definitely write about, I know. But I think that's all the loose ends tied up. Our next Silly Voices Day is Friday.

 

Yet another reminiscence: Mayfly Season, Newbury, 2022. Intense.

 

 Oh! The actor whose name I couldn't remember is James Callis, and Lillian Roth is the actress from "Animal Crackers". And I don't think that sound is me belching and rustling crisps, I think it's feedback. And it's a Newcastle accent Gilbert puts on as Len MacMonotony, not Birmingham, and Engelbert Humperdinck he mentions, not Sacha Distel. In fact, here is some "Gilbert's Fridge". They don't make kids' shows like etc.

 

"Perfectly Buoyant" - further chronicling of the tosh

willoughbies.jpeg by John Finnemore

 We had tried all manner of things with "The Willoughbies" in previous series of JFSP at both sketch try-outs and live recordings. We'd tried it with John as the Dad, with me as the Dad, as a "runner" – catching buses, or winning points for spotting spelling mistakes in a menu – and as a standalone, but the clan never made it in. Also, I didn't really get them. I am, as should be clear from these posts by now, a lot slower on the uptake than most listeners, and as cold as any stone. Possibly the point was to show a generically happy, Ned-Flanders-type family in a less annoying light, and to let an audience – specifically John's audience – love something more commonly mocked. Or posssibly it was less pointed than that. Sometimes John just enjoys painting portraits. Anyway, I was surprised how doggedly he kept trying to do something with them.

 

 So when he first mooted over Zoom his plans for Series Nine, and for the family formerly known as Willoughby to take centre stage, I immediately considered how out of my depth I might be. This wouldn't be the normal rough trade John gets me to do, I'd need a buoyancy aid. That buoyancy aid turned out to be a fond memory of Jim Broadbent at his most "heigh-ho", augmented with Terry Jones' weak "R", and I clung to that aid for dear life when recording Jerry's first scene, the restaurant scene from Episode Two. As I said on twitter during the tweetalong: 

 "I reckon it might have been this scene that made me consider giving Jerry that voice. I was worried my own voice might sound a little too punching down. Among other things"

 You know. Bullying. 

 I'm making it sound like it was hard, aren't I. It wasn't hard, of course. I had John's writing to play, John and the rest of the cast to play off, Sue's tunes to sing, and Ed to tell me how much Jerry reminded him of his dad. But this was still unlike anything I'd done on the radio before.* Jerry wasn't a character in a sketch. He'd last a whole series, a series in which I'd also be playing quite a few other roles which we'd have distinguish him from. So whatever voice I used in that first recording of that first scene would have to stick. Fortunately, Jim Broadbent is a very versatile actor. 

 Oh, here's something about that restaurant sketch I didn't know:

 

 And this might be my favourite revelation of the week. 

 I've loved Willie Rushton ever since I received a copy of his comic The Gernaium of Flüt as a child, and I wish I could find it now. His son in that is called Toby, I think. His dog might be called Toby as well. I sang his praises here back in 2008. And here he is playing Watson opposite John Cleese's Holmes.

 

 

 

 But he wasn't just the dry, avuncular fantasist of my childhood. Ruhston was there at the beginning of Private Eye and That Was The Week That Was, a stalwart of the sixties' Satire Boom that Jerry fails the audition for in Episode Six. In real life there are people who remind you of people, and I love that Jerry had that too, whether I knew it or not. But what I remind myself most of, listening to Jerry again now, is my childhood friend, Tom of our number. He was big fan of Willie Rushton too.

 HERE is something great that William Shaw wrote about the series' approach to failure. And here, before I go – because, despite what it says at the top of this post, it's actually New Year's Eve tonight – is another thing John told me about the inspiration for Jerry when we first Zoomed:

 

  It goes up to 63, by the way. 

 Series Nine is still being repeated at 11pm on Radio 4, the final episode is tonight, if you have any questions you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here (I recognise that, despite all this talk about buoyancy aids, I haven't once mentined the lilo scene). Happy New Year, Unattendees!

*(I know I've played Sir Maxwell House over a few series of The Monster Hunters {who also taught crows to do tricks} but Sir Maxwell is a character from a sketch, which might be why the show outgrew him.)

Some Things That Might Not Be Obvious About the Making of Finnemore's Ninth

 I'd forgotten I'd already written about the production of JFSP Series Nine, back when we first started recording in March, here. The home recording set-up in that first session, however, turned out to be insufficiently broad-bandy, so most of my remaining lines were recorded half an hour's stroll away, in the Nathan-Barley-themed escape room of Bloomsbury's Syncbox studios...

 

 

 

  I would usually have had only two hours' sleep the previous night from the excitement of knowing this was coming. Sometimes I'd be lucky enough to be joined – in the opposite corner of the studio, no hugging – by Carrie taking a break from the ambulances she now drives, also on about two hours' sleep. John, being John, wouldn't have slept since Christmas of 2020. On such little sleep, a crucial advantage of not performing the series live turned out to be the opportunity for retakes, and the chance for our producer Ed Morrish to direct, well, specifically, me. "Try that again, warmer," was a common note, while Carrie got it, and got on with it.

 

 I'd hoped my tiredness might help me stop overthinking "the point" of a scene, but I'm suddenly remembering how she'd still, occasionally, have to give me an additional note to just "do the thing John asked"... Was it really necessary to have so many scenes of Jerry making up poems, I remember thinking, for example, having no idea yet of the revelations in Episode Five... As I said on the tweetalong (and I've enjoyed seeing how many listeners are surprised by this), we all knew John had a big idea for the shape of this series, but none of us – with the possible exception of Ed – knew what that shape was. And John, again being John (one of his best qualities) would still ask open-endedly for feedback or suggestions, but to take him up on this felt like kicking the tyres on the batmobile. 

 

  In fairness to my lack of understanding, quite a lot of Jerry's episode was recorded first and there wasn't that much to piece together back then. (Only tyrants have favourites, but Jerry might have been the character John found least inherently difficult to create.) But even the author didn't have a clearer idea than was needed of the big picture two sessions in. Take the first recording of the scene where Alex asks Russ about his tattoo...

 John on Zoom: "Okay. Simon. Could you read Alex in this?"

 "Okay. Who's Alex?"

 "Yes. I should probably decide that, shouldn't I."

 "Someone Russ is meeting at a party?"

 "No. Maybe Russ's partner, or husband. Let's decide... Okay, yes, his partner or husband."

 "And is this them meeting at a party?"

 "No. This isn't a party."

 "Shall I give Alex an accent?"

 "No." 

 If you haven't listened to the series, Alex ended up being an Australian, played by John. So yes, of course there was a plan, is what I'm saying, a pretty perfect plan as things turned out, but there was also – perhaps the greatest advantage of the costume-less, set-less, on-book medium of radio – a big temporal overlap with that plan's execution.

 Series Nine is still being repeated nightly at 11pm, the tweetalong will be continuing tonight or, if you have any questions, you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here.

"I hear you let your forefather out of the cupboard!"

 Duck call as used in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme!

 

 ANNOUNCEMENT: Series Nine of JFSP is getting a second airing, on Radio 4 tonight at 11pm, and every night thereafter until New Year's Eve, and producer Ed Morrish is planning a tweet-along tonight to accompany Episode One – the one starring Lawry Lewin. I might be asleep because I'm an hour ahead. Carrie might also be asleep, as they've started allowing her to drive ambulances, and Lawry's not even on twitter, but I'll see if I can get that fake account pretending to be him to join us instead.

 

 Of course, you can still hear any you episode you want, any time you like, on Sounds, and I say "of course" because I'm still rashly assuming that everyone reading this blog will have already heard it anyway. If you haven't, however, I've written a little about how much I love it, and why you shouldn't necessarily be expecting a sketch show, here. 

 In keeping with the theme of Series Nine, here's a Moomin being startled by his ancestors:

 I loved hearing John play Moomintroll on the radio yesterday by the way, and really recommend you listen to the production of "Moominland Midwinter" in which he did it. It's possibly my favourite adaptation yet of possibly my favourite books; I'm still trying to work out what my love of Tove Jansson says about me. The increasing marketability of her characters isn't helping, but I think what she taught me, uniquely among the childrens' authors I read, was that a story can be packed with fantasy and drama without any need for "adventure". This probably wasn't a particularly useful lesson to learn as a writer, but there's no unlearning it. 

 Here's another Moomin winter to enjoy.

Going Back to the "WELL..."

  Speaking of wars and uncles and secrets and years, I can't imagine that anyone reading this blog hasn't by now listened at least once through to the ninth series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme. But if you haven't, I would love it if you did, and then you can learn why producer Ed Morrish bought us all these lovely glasses. In fact, you'll learn the reason for that in Episode One, but you'll have to wait until Episode Four to learn the reason for the reason, which is as good a guide for how to listen to Finnemore's Ninth as I can probably give. Here's the link. And here's John's own advice for how to listen to it. 

 When I heard the episodes go out this Summer, week after week, it felt like what finding treasure must feel like, and when John first suggested to me over Zoom what he was planning for the series – given the difficulty of performing sketches in front of a live audience at the beginning of 2021 – I was thrilled giddy by the idea that he might finally, finally, be making something that just wouldn't work AT ALL (like the fairy tale about a giant condemned to carry people across a river until finally he drops one in the water, and everyone stops asking him, and so he's free) but in the end we never got to witness that. John didn't drop a thing. That's my only disappointment regarding this otherwise perfect answer to the question "How do you follow the Heist Episode from series 7?" And I will definitely at some point write more about it from the beach in my mind I'm spending the rest of my life on because I got to be in it.

 

 

*This* is why I wouldn't call it a sketch show though.

"The origins of chain saws in surgery is debated."

  It's probably for the best you can't make out the faces above as I've no idea what's announceable yet, but he were are again – or aren't –  embarking on a new thing from the brain of Bottom Left. Monday therefore has been exciting. I don't remember how the conversation got onto chainsaws; it was Top Right, I think, who said she had recently discovered they were invented originally as an aid to childbirth, which I looked up immediately, and... Happy International Women's Day, everyone!

 

Before the invention of gasoline motors, osteotomes such as this were powered by Charades.

 The pop shield I was sent didn't reach from the stand, so I tried holding it over my face like a French fan. Could something perhaps be installed to stop me popping permanently – enquired Bottom Right – like a nose bag? 

 We wracked our brains for something that could be worn over the mouth.

 – Whathever man invents the machine that can make Simon quieter– began Bottom Left.

 – Or woman, I interrupted, in celebration of the day.

 – Whatever man invents the machine... or woman... that can make Simon quieter– Bottom Left corrected himself.

 Whatever we finish making should be available in a couple of months, which is exciting, until which time, I think, I get to keep the whole recording caboodle, which is also exciting. Maybe I'll make some rap. I've been relistening to Rob Hubbard's old Commodore 64 sountracks recently: they're stirring, and would make an excellent bed. Don't copy me.

 

 

Parallels (or: Who got the pain when they go "Bwooorp"?)

TOUR NEWS!!!!

 John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme did a tour! Yes, the radio show I'm in! It's over now though, sorry. 

 But I bought some great stuff at CEX. And the Finnemore gang were angels over those two months, only funnier, and John wrote an incredible show, obviously, and I prefer saying lines when I've memorised them anyway, which I did! Here we all are, peeking through a curtain at how good the show was and not believing our luck:

 Further details of John Finnemore's Flying Visit can be found over on my Instagram under the hashtag #Finnetour if you fancy some photos of lovely theatres, cities, wind turbines, and shopping. We played twenty-six shows in total, including the matinee in London, hence those second, artfully Cabin Pressure-inspired hashtags: #Anewcastle, #Bleeds, #Cnottingham... etc... #Treading – That one works!

 Yes, it was a good-looking show. Here's a thing though: There's a sketch in it where Patsy Straightwoman interviews Cabin Pressure's Arthur Shappey that made me realise a parallel between Martin Crieff and his far less irritating creator which had never occurred to me before in over a decade's acquaintance: Remember the finale of last year's Souvenir Programme? The one with the heist? Possibly the most impressive single episode of a sketch show ever written? Well, Arthur explains that Martin had to take a citizenship test in order to get married, but it's okay he continues, because you only have to get sixty per cent, but it's not okay, Arthur then clarifies, "because Martin does NOT want to get sixty per cent!"

 Now... that sounds very John.

 

Of course we had to do another series this year, but how do you follow something as perfect as the heist? Well, I have a theory about Series 8, and the series has been online for almost year now so you can go and check it out for yourself: The only way John could follow the Series 7 was by pretending he'd never written it, nor indeed any sketch show before ever, which is why, for example, the first two "Since You Ask Me"s of the new series (our name for the stories at the end) sound so much more like actual spoofs of M. R. James and Conan Doyle than anything that went before, and why there's no sense at all of what-have-I-not-yet-done about the material, but it's still so fresh... Because Series 8 was in fact, subliminally at least, not the Eighth Series at all, but the first series again from a Parallel Universe!  

 Now obviously, this theory is nonsense, or so I thought until... I happened to look back over John's own blog written when the show's very first episode aired back in 2011, and there – on the disused leg of a spider diagram illustrating how he'd come up with the idea for the sketch about the man who wants to make the noise for the Tardis – I was dumbfounded to find notes for a sketch that appears in Series 8's episode 3, about a princess who wants to become a police dog handler! Notes which John now claims to have no memory of writing!

Some things one just cannot unknow. 

 As for what ghastly deal John must have struck to be able to mine such pan-causal seams (because I honestly and absolutely believe John has never had the time to read through those old notebooks) or with whom he might have struck this deal... or what... that I shall leave unguessed. But note: even in that post from 2011, celebrating the realisation of "the one thing" the author claimed to have wanted more than any other, he provides in the Tardis sketch a clear warning against the sanity-extinguishing consequences of "following your dream", a warning made all the more stark by closer examination of the illustration chosen to accompany it: Pooh tied to a balloon trying to steal honey from some bees, or – to quote the show – "the reckless desperation of an addict!"   

 Series 9 records next year.

(John also drew both of the superb diagrams above, of course. More photos of the show can be found here, in lieu of me actually being able to find out who took them, although I know our excellent sound engineer Nick Burkinyoung took the one of our bums and shoes. Thanks entire to all who turned up as well. I loved that show. I still love it. I hope John never loses his addiction. And in other news, here's hoping your today has been, oh go on then, this:)