1984-1989
'OXFORD vs. COMEDY'
Pictured - Oxford's Covered Market, 1980s.
By 1984, English undergraduate Rebecca Front was well-established in the equally laborious worlds of academic life and student comedy. Having dedicated herself from childhood to both an acting career and attendance at Oxford, the frustrations of amateur drama had caused Front to pivot to more humourous endeavours [source].
"The queues for the straight plays were always longer." - Rebecca Front, 1997 [source].
Her earliest experiments in comedy had been a sketch show at St Hugh's College she had written alongside her older brother Jeremy, then a London-based student of fine art [source][source].
"An... advantage of working with someone you’ve known your entire life is that you have an almost psychic understanding of what the other is thinking. Don’t mis-quote me, I’m not saying it’s literally psychic, but ideas, lines or jokes can be signalled with a look or a raised eyebrow. It’s a great short-cut especially when you’re writing to a deadline." - Jeremy Front, 2012 [source].
As a burgeoning musical comedian in particular, Rebecca Front had also begun to regularly perform as a member of the Oxford Revue. Following the mysterious absorption of the Etceteras earlier that decade, the Revue had adopted its modern-day guise - a troupe which engineered multiple Oxford-based comedy shows around the nucleus of an annual Edinburgh Fringe production. In many ways, however, the institution remained unacceptably old-fashioned, which is how, in 1984, Front found herself an unwitting milestone of some significance.
"I agreed to direct [an Oxford Revue] college ball show chiefly because then I'd get as many tickets as I could sell... at the end of that, I kinda heard that I was the next president of the Oxford Revue. I remember thinking, 'That's a mistake, that wasn't really meant to happen. I was meant to do this [show], get my free tickets and then go back to writing songs and having a nice time.' ...I think nobody else wanted to do it, is the truth... And then when I realised there hadn't been a woman doing it at the point, I thought, 'Well, actually, I should do it really, because otherwise it would be another bloke, and it really ought to be me.'" - Rebecca Front, The Oxford Union, 2019 [source].
In her final year, Rebecca Front became the first female president of the Oxford Revue - a full 16 years after Diana Quick broke an equivalent ceiling in the hierarchy of O.U.D.S. [source].
"It was a real devil of a job getting women to come to castings cos women would come in and they'd just assume they were gonna be playing the secretary or the straight part, and you'd have to say 'Well, just try doing a funny voice... have you got any sort of jokes you'd like to do?' There was a real feeling that women were not meant to be funny." - Rebecca Front, Chain Reaction, 2012 [source].
Pictured - the logo for the 1984 Oxford Revue - Stop The Weak. The show played not only in Oxford and Edinburgh, but in Salisbury, Romsey and London's Gate Theatre [source].
Through her experiences within the Revue, Front befriended fellow performer Sioned Wiliam, with whom she would establish 'The Bobo Girls' [source] - a sketch and music double act which saw notable success in the 1989-1991 BBC Radio series Girls will be Girls (also co-written by Jeremy Front) [source]. The Bobo Girls also undertook a number of Edinburgh Fringe stints [source] [source].
"And finally the revue sketches. Oxford presented a cynical actor proving that any nonsense could sound Shakespearean if orated in Olivierian cadences... while the Bobo Girls offered a teacher trying to keep the plot of Hamlet straight in her head and never quite succeeding." - Gerald M. Berkowitz, Shakespeare at the Edinburgh Festival, 1986 [source].
Above all else, Rebecca Front's resolve to pursue acting was solidified yet further, resulting in her eventual enrollment in the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art [source].
"I was coming to the end of my English degree and I was talking to an actress who I was in the Oxford Revue with. And I sort of said, 'What are you doing after this?' and she said 'Well I've just got a place at drama school.' And I suddenly thought, 'Shit! Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do!'" - Rebecca Front, The Oxford Union, 2019 [source].
The state of the Revue by the mid-1980s was symbolised by how its inaugural female presidency stemmed from logistical necessity, as opposed to an active troupe-wide drive for progression and advancement. Student comedy was certainly still popular amongst its namesake demographic - there was adequate motivation, for example, to officially register the O.T.G. in 4th March 1986 as a charity (ostensibly to support the production of 'educational plays' and 'encouragement of the arts') [source]. However, the days of nationally recognised trail-blazing were now consigned to history. On the other hand, alternative comedy had become a core of British culture in little more than five years, often with far fewer resources than those available to Oxbridge students.
"The use of the term ‘alternative comedy’ has obscured a diverse movement that contained many different strands and tendencies, which included punk poets, street performers, chansonniers and improvising double acts...Amateur performers flourished in the 1980s and their use of bricolage to create new performance styles from an assortment of cultural genres marks them out as self-taught practitioners of whichever entertainment discipline they belonged to." - Raymond Campbell, Comic Cultures: Commerce, Aesthetics and the Politics of Stand-Up Performance in the UK 1979 to 1992, 2016 [source].
Nonetheless, some quiet innovation began to emerge within the comic ventures of Oxford students.
David Schneider matriculated as an Exeter College modern languages student in 1981 [source], playing a number of light-hearted roles in dramatic productions. He only joined the O.T.G. Oxford Revue during the summer between his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Schneider's physical slapstick was an appealing contrast to the dwindling returns of that year's sketch comedy, earning him praise and position within the troupe - including, eventually, Revue presidency. His name even adorned the footer of officially branded Revue documents from this time, along with Sebastian Munden and Tony Brennan (the latter of whom will be discussed in depth later).
Pictured - the Oxford Revue's logo throughout the 1980s.
Also attending that Fringe was David Schneider's future writing partner, Armando Iannucci, who had pursued philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Iannucci had arrived at Oxford the year after Schneider to study English literature [source].
"I had a very good time in Oxford. What I loved was the fact that you could be thoroughly academic and no one would tease you about it – it was actually OK to read lots of books, and to go to lectures that had nothing to do with your subject, just because you were interested, and to talk about stuff without feeling a bit embarrassed. You know, that was good." - Armando Iannucci, High Profile, 2015 [source].
A fan of the stage since childhood [source], Iannucci's presence at Edinburgh was indeed to partake in Oxford student comedy - albeit not via the Oxford Revue itself.
Armando Iannucci had previously been part of a double act with Andrew Glover (the pair dubbing themselves 'A Pair Of Shorts') while also performing alongside Sarah Smith [source]. Iannucci and Schneider, forming a sturdy comedic pairing the following academic year, would eventually work alongside said colleagues again in the BBC series The Day Today and The Friday Night Armistice [source][source]. Other student collaborators included Guy Browning, with whom they would construct the Oxford Comedy Showcase at Hampstead's New End Theatre.
"Yiddish is a combination of German, Hebrew, Arabic, Slavic and Romance languages. It has many words for idiot and God. ...And Yiddish has great curses." - David Schneider, The Guardian, 2010 [source].
"[They] boasted a significant amount of Germanic component items that possessed a mystical signification or created a mystical effect by virtue of their alienation from more usual styles of Yiddish... The Germanic terms that do not possess a mystical feel by virtue of their unfamiliarity to the spoken language often take on a sense of the mystical through metaphor..." - David Schneider (discussing Yiddish texts), Is There A Mystical Dialect in Modern Yiddish Drama?, 1988 [source].
"The unifying factor in Armando Iannucci’s work is, in his own blunt phrase, “a fascination with evil bastards”. He found his calling for political satire in surprising circumstances: reading “Paradise Lost”, John Milton’s epic religious poem, as a student. As I take out my copy and place it on the low table between us, Iannucci leans over and says with a conspiratorial chuckle, 'Satan has all the good lines.' When God is introduced, he says, 'it suddenly goes almost consciously dull.' For Iannucci, Milton’s Satan is the original evil bastard of literature." - Ethan Croft, The Economist, 2020 [source].
By far the most prolific performance space for Schneider and Iannucci, as well as for countless other Oxford-based comics, was the subterranean 'Jazz Cellar', beneath the Victorian-era chambers of the Oxford Union [source]. The Cellar, which was later converted into the 'Purple Turtle' [source] then 'Plush' nightclubs [source], could not be described by the most generous of pundits as especially attractive. Encased in black brickwork, the gloomy apex of its arched roof was lined with flourescent lighting, and its long and thin dimensions were not especially ideal for hosting comedy events - as many who frequented the venue would assert.
Nonetheless, every fortnight, curious visitors to the Jazz Cellar's depths, maybe looking for the student discos regularly hosted there, could instead relish in a boozy evening of live entertainment, which proved not only to house the next generation of British comic talent, but to redefine the Revue troupe's entire thesis. Tony Brennan's 'Oxford Revue Workshop' was founded in 1986 and modelled after the stand-up nights which had cemented their foothold in London and the United States.
"We provide a venue for writers and performers to try out new comedy material. What you do and how you do it is up to you BUT plagiarism is strictly forbidden and unfunny acts often heckled harshly. On offer to our audiences, 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours of original comedy in the Union Jazz Cellar; 8pm Sundays of 2/4/6/8th week [of term]. For those interested in writing and performing, scriptwriters meetings are held every Monday in Wadham [College] 5/3 at 9pm." - Oxford Revue Workshop advertisement, 1987 [source].
Born in west London to Sydneysider parents, Tony Brennan was a mathematician at Wadham College, with a particularly keen enthusiasm for cricket [source][source], and a future etched in professions as diverse as an IBM Systems Engineer, a teacher in Zimbabwe, and diplomatic positions in Sudan, Tanzania, Czechia and Australia [source]. His ability to encourage supportive environments was an asset in both the peaks of his career - he was due to become the Slovakian ambassador in the autumn of 2019, were it not for his passing that year [source] - and, indeed, in the Jazz Cellar. His Revue Workshop inherently forged rapid and informal cooperation between the university's comedic voices.
Pictured - Tony Brennan, as the British Deputy High Commissioner to Australia (2012-2016).
One student who enjoyed the opportunities dispensed by the Workshop was Richard Herring, a history undergraduate [source] from Cheddar, Somerset with a childhood obsession with Rik Mayall [source] (an absurdist comic some consider integral to the genesis of alternative comedy, even predating Alexei Sayle by 3 years [source]).
"I've had a secret for many years now,
I've never dared expose,
You've seen those people on 'That's Life'
Who can sing through their nose.
"Well I do something similar
I've practiced it for years
And though audiences may shut their eyes
They never block their ears.
"You see that
My Penis can sing
(Puts mike to to penis and badly ventriloquises like Orville [the Duck]) 'Yes I can, yes I can.'
...You can always hear him come
And if you think that's incredible
You should hear my bum.
'Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah [FART]'"
- Richard Herring's 'My Penis Can Sing' script extract, ~1984 [source]
Academic dedications limited Workshop attendance in his first term to a single performance, but nonetheless Richard Herring followed through on Brennan's request for a warbing Elvis-inspired recital of penile ventriloquism. Met by front row sneers at the time, 'My Penis Can Sing' did facilitate Hering's later encounter with a fellow new arrival - an English Literature student who was keen to deviate from the usual menagerie of Oxford student sketches, which tended to simply parody TV shows or celebrities.
"When I was about four my grandfather very nearly went to Cheddar Gorge to run a hotdog stand. But then he became ill and we didn't go. If we had moved, though, Rich and me would have gone to the same school." - Stewart Lee, The Independent, 1999 [source].
Stewart Lee had, at 16, become enamored and inspired by the particular anti-comedy stylings of comedian (and fellow West Midlander) Ted Chippington, later lauding him as the 'missing link of modern British stand-up' [source]. Lee's teenage decision to pursue an Oxford degree, on the other hand, was informed by the words of a part-time employer, who had performed with a 1970s Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Fringe [source].
"The first cappucino I ever tasted was in the Queen's Lane Coffee House in December 1985, when I went up to Oxford for university interviews, and it came with a tuna mayonnaise roll, served in a seeded bun with salad. At that time, the mid-eighties, these two items comprised the most exotic mela I had ever seen, and I remember the shock of the taste to this day, Back then, exciting food was still a novelty. Even pizza was regarded with suspicion." - Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, 2010 [source].
As with Armando Iannucci and David Schneider, Herring and Lee became yet another double act gestated within the dreary walls of the Jazz Cellar, yet they by no means performed their co-written skits alone.
"I really wanted to go to Oxford. I lived on a council estate, no one in my family had ever gone to university so I don’t know where that came from — maybe reading Jude the Obscure when I was 12..." - Emma Kennedy, The Financial Times, 2015 [source].
Pictured - a 1987 caricature of the Seven Raymonds by Emma Williams (now Kennedy).
The Seven Raymonds group - consisting initially of Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Emma Williams, Michael Cosgrove, Rich Canning and Jo Renshaw [source] - marketed themselves as an entirely distinct breed of sketch comedy (even if they could not avoid the parodic crutches Lee and Herring so despised - one of Lee's earliest student scripts was about George Michael [source]). Founded in the spring of 1987, their rapport built upon the intimate personality-led revues favoured by Rowan Atkinson, but with a newfound anarchic flair of improvisation - embracing the club atmosphere of the Jazz Cellar to garner a sizeable student fanbase. Their flyers bore the aesthetic cues of punk fanzines, decorated with askew newspaper clippings and self-referential anecdotes jotted in pen scrawl.
"...'fanzines' have been integral to the creation of a thriving communication network of underground culture, disseminating information and personal views to like-minded individuals... For fanzine producers, the DIY process critiques mass production through the very handmade quality it embraces..." - Teal Triggs, Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic, 2006 [source].
"James Anderton of the Greater Manchester Police Force says: God told me to say 'The 7 Raymonds are shit so don't go to see them.'
The Raymonds reply: 'We're not too concerned. We all know that he doesn't really exist. I mean, some people would argue that God doesn't either.'
Ah well, the joke's [sic] can only get better." - Seven Raymonds advertisement, 1987 [source].
"You're so special that we're inviting you 'specially. (But you've still got to pay. You're not that special)." - Seven Raymonds ticket design, 1987 [source].
The Seven Raymonds was Oxford's most direct attempt at alternative comedy yet, and all during an uncertain period of the city's theatre history. The traditional nucleus of student performance, the Oxford Playhouse, had closed under financial duress that same year, despite the efforts of O.U.D.S. and the E.T.C. (the latter even raising nearly £5000 via a production of The Tempest, featuring the stage debut of Helena Bonham Carter) [source].
It is notable that Oxford embracing more modern comedic styles only really came about when those who had actually grown up with said styles reached university age. Perhaps student drama is inherently resistant to the horizontal transmission of new aesthetics and directions, an insularity driven by the exclusive social cliques of Oxford theatre (e.g. the Murray vs. Rudman rivalry of the 1960s and the Atkinson-associated coterie of the 1970s). Perhaps the evolution of the Oxford stage has always developed around generational turnover above all - after all, the duration of influence from even the most enthused student actor is limited to the length of their academic degree.
While the Seven Raymonds' material touched upon a diverse range of topics, the class commentary seen in alternative comedy was a common angle. One 1988 or 1989 Seven Raymonds recording includes a sketch about the xenophobic lens through which Londoners viewed the North, followed by another about a working-class Mancunian household faced with the prospect of a somewhat patronising television sitcom. The second half of the Mancunian sketch, starring Stewart Lee as a crockery-obsessed teenager, was directly recycled from the middle section of a previous three-part skit about yokels and a man with a nuclear missile stuck in his head - which was itself adapted from a piece about a 1940s West Country man with aspirations to conquer the moon [source]. This 'First Man on the Moon' sketch, in turn, extrapolated upon the first comedy script Lee and Herring ever wrote together, concerning a village called 'Incester' [source]. Collectively, this demonstrates how the environment of the Workshop, uniquely within Oxford, facilitated a near-constant evolution and honing of comedic voices.
Some topics touched upon by the Seven Raymonds - albeit sometimes with little in the way of tact - reflected the anxieties surrounding current affairs, including the ongoing AIDS pandemic [source].
The Seven Raymonds were, in fact, almost transferred to the Fringe as 1987's Oxford Revue outright. Instead, the Oxford Revue - Don't shoot me, I'm only the horses, don't they? [source] played at Edinburgh's St. Mary's Hall at quarter past 11 at night (with an additional 1:15 am show on Saturdays) [source], while the Seven Raymonds' KMNO4- the Potassium Permanganate Extravaganza played a separate 1.30pm lunchtime slot at the same venue [source][source]. The symbiosis between the two shows was a world away from the historical rivalries between multiple Oxford-originated Fringe revues. Yet, in spite of the Raymonds' previous triumphs, neither they nor the Revue proper made much of an impression with Edinburgh audiences (though I'm only the horses did receive some positive press attention for director David Schneider's focus on physical comedy).
"...superb performers with real talent for mime and precision timing..." - The Independent, 1987 [source].
"The astonishing thing about this Oxford Revue, at which I have to admit I laughed long and loud, is its mimetic virtuosity... surreal serendipidity..." - The Financial Times, 1987 [source].
"Do not go to see it at all! These people are the Songs of Satan. Their 'so-called' 'funny' 'sketches' undermine the politival [sic] and moral life of this great Conservative country of England; We too have come especially from Oxford to ban this show." - KMNO4 parody advertisement, 1987 [source].
Sizeable cracks were beginning to span the steady hull of the Seven Raymonds. The theatre programme for KMNO4 saw Jo Renshaw demoted to a mere 'Extra Special Thanks', represented in photographs by a ephemeral phantomic smear named 'Chuck Romp'. Rich Canning, meanwhile, is credited inexplicably as 'Richard Zippee' [source]. Sure enough, Renshaw and Canning would exit the group before its first post-Fringe performances in Oxford, replaced by English student Tim Richardson [source][source].
Even so, the glittering celebrity of the Seven Raymonds within Oxford was unaffected by the reshuffle. Throughout the first week of the 1987 Michaelmas (autumn) term, the group mercilessly advertised itself as 'direct from the Fringe', and, as a result, played to sold-out audiences against the star-patterned curtains of the Balliol College Lindsay Rooms [source] [source]. It seemed inevitable that the following Fringe's Oxford Revue come from the Raymonds.
Sure enough, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee came to write 1988's Fringe Revue - Waving At The Pigeons, starring Herring and Emma Williams and featuring musical contributions from Michael Cosgrove and Tim Richardson. Catherine Hood, Ben Moor and pianist Ben Pope (the younger brother of Radio Active member Philip Pope) completed the line-up of performers, while Tony Brennan managed the show's pre-Fringe UK tour [source] The tour saw mixed success - after one gig at an near-empty Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow, the cast were told by some bar-going Scots that they should have done more jokes about the Piper Alpha disaster (an oil rig explosion that had killed 167 people less than a month prior).
Pictured - the programme for 1988's Oxford Revue - Waving at the Pigeons. An earlier iteration of the show, titled That's Right Madam, depicted an anthropomorphised carrot slicing up a woman on its programme cover [source].
"I was walking along the High Street watching the people busily going about their daily rounds... Then, from out of the darkness, came the face of a small child being pushed hurriedly in a pram. And that baby ignored all around her to wave at a pigeon on the pavement. I suddenly thought that this attitude- the loss of innocence, the beauty and the sadness of the world juxtaposed, and the challenge to the established values of the so-called 'adult' world - summed up the spirit of our comedy. A few days later, a friend said to me, 'No, it doesn't' and 1 realised he was right, but it was too late, by then the poster had been printed." - Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, Waving at the Pigeons programme, 1988 [source].
In line with the philosophy of the Seven Raymonds, the sketch line-up for Waving at the Pigeons changed significantly over time. 'Dictionary' (a comedic pub conversation between the anthropomorphised words 'Nonny', 'Yuppie' and 'Bastard') was removed before the pre-Fringe tour, while 'Ashley Hilarious' was cut before the troupe reached Edinburgh [source]. Sketches that appear to have made the final cut included 'CO2 Hoarding' (about a man's attempt to kill his plants by holding his breath and denying them carbon dioxide), 'Coathanger Time' (about mind-altering coat-hangers peddled by TV star 'Coathanger Tim'), 'Wandrin' Barber' (a musical number sung by Ben Pope, following in his older sibling's footsteps) and the eclectically genred 'Doubting Thomas' [source][[source].
"JESUS: Oh no it's Scoobey Doo [sic] and Shaggy.
(ENTER SHAGGY AND SCOOBY)
SCOOBEY: Scoobey doobey doo
SHAGGY: Yes that's right and we've seen through your cunning ruse. This isn't, as it seems, Jesus Christ risen from the dead to haunt us all, but is in fact...
(LIGHTS DOWN FOR A SECOND AFTER WE HAVE SEEN SHAGGY REACHING FOR THE BEARD, AND TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON IS IN PLACE OF JESUS WHEN LIGHTS COME UP)
ALL: Charlie the caretaker.
...
THOMAS: Well, I always had my doubts." - 'Doubting Thomas' script extract, 1988. Contemporary notes suggest that a song element of the sketch was removed at some point - lyrics include "They call me doubting Thomas but the nick-name isn't my fault, Anything that happens around the Dead Sea has to be taken with a pinch of salt" [source].
The 1988 tour and Edinburgh run received the expected array of mixed press reviews, with the most praise aimed at Ben Moor's rubber-faced performance [source]. Stewart Lee, who was absent as an actual performer due to a backpacking trip around Turkey and Kurdistan, managed to encounter a somewhat scathing review in a copy of The Independent, while on a visit to Ephesus [source]. On the other hand, the cast of Channel 4's Who Dares Wins, a show of whom Philip Pope had been a cast-member, were clearly happy to see Ben Pope, as they took him out for a drink just hours before the show's opening press night. The young musician was thus thoroughly intoxicated throughout the performance.
What had not been anticipated by anyone, however, was the way the rest of the Fringe responded to the show in 1988. Waving at the Pigeons, the Seven Raymonds and the Oxford Revue Workshop had been certainly nourished upon the aethers of alternative comedy, and wore such inspirations upon their respective sleeves. The success of this approach within Oxford may well have seemed like a harbinger of the Revue's escape from comedic lethargy - a reclamation of its long-lost throne.
But the content of Waving at the Pigeons did not actually matter, when all was said and done. It wasn't alternative comedy. There was simply no way the Oxford Revue could be considered 'alternative', in fact - whatever its comedic trappings or aesthetics, and whatever the class background of its performers. Any theatrical show originating from Oxford University, the centre of higher education that has disproportionately defined British culture for centuries, could not sensically engage in counter-culture. It could only, at most, respond to it.
Comedy producer John Lloyd's Channel 4 documentary The 39,000 Steps: A Day In The Life of The Edinburgh Fringe was shot that same year, and reveals to a modern observer the fact that the Fringe functioned almost identically then to how it does today. The pursuit of theatrical profit by Rowan Atkinson and his contemporaries, along with nearly a decade of alternative stand-up, had accelerated the cutthroat battle for space between the Fringe's ~1000 shows [source]. This is exemplified in Lloyd's film when he receives a huge quantity of advertising flyers from a series of desperate performers on Edinburgh's 'Royal Mile', before promptly dumping nearly all of them into the bin, on camera.
"Every step, underfed artistes thrust brightly coloured junk mail into your fist. The Fringe is so gigantic, traditional advertising methods are simply not enough. ...Desperate companies will do virtually anything to get your attention." - John Lloyd, The 39,000 Steps: A Day In The Life of The Edinburgh Fringe, 1988 [source].
The Edinburgh Fringe had always been challenging but now it was codified into its mythologised modern form - official posters from the 1988 festival depict an enormous Artemision Bronze statue of Zeus shrouded in tartan [source]. Many alternative comedians thus seemed to decide that year that there was not even the capacity to grimly tolerate the presence of Oxbridge comedy. Ironically, the alternative comedy world the Seven Raymonds had so admired from afar wanted them gone in no uncertain terms - by any means necessary.
"Gilded Balloon is notably renowned for producing its own in-house late night comedy line-up show, Late‘n’ Live. Funny, outrageous and more than a bit sweary, Late ‘n’ Live is the last stand of proper, raw, live comedy – where anything can, and does happen because the audience are still very much in control." - Gilded Balloon, 2024 [source].
"Rather angrily I wrote a double act with Ben Moor called "Herring and S**z" in which Ben was essentially my mentally disabled younger brother, who I made dance for a Twix, which I then stamped on. I remember one of the Doug Anthony Allstars correctly berating me afterwards, as did another woman whose mentally disabled sister had recently died. I had had a pretty miserable year and I guess I had let it get to me." - Richard Herring [source].
The Cambridge Footlights (who took the time to support their Oxford peers [source]) also faced similar aggravation in the face of their show Sheep Go Bare, starring Simon Munnery, Mel Giedroyc and Tom Hollander [source].
The Revue's return to Oxford after Waving at the Pigeons proved a strange post-mortem. On one hand, the Seven Raymonds were still an adored part of Oxford life. On the other hand, it was quietly decided that the rise of Richard Herring (head writer and performer at Waving at the Pigeons) would be soundly stunted. The 1988 Revue had changed the dynamic forever - Emma Kennedy, who was elected Revue president after Waving at the Pigeons, even blames the pain associated with the 1988 Fringe for her then-decision to abandon comedy and pursue law.
Stewart Lee was also beginning to pivot away from sketch comedy and towards the stand-up he so loved - with growing ambitions to play venues beyond the Jazz Cellar and even Oxford.
The 15th January reel-to-reel recording was Lee's fourth ever stand-up set and kickstarted a year of further London gigs at the Banana Cabaret and even the home of alternative comedy, the Comedy Store [source].
"When I played that [Comedy Store] gig in 1989, I was booked by Eddie Izzard. ...all the comics I used to play that room with...they were the greats to me. ...Malcolm Hardee, Johnny Immaterial, Fay Presto, Ian Cognito." - Stewart Lee, Tornado, 2022 [source].
"It’s possibly more ambitious than funny, although this is clearly a young man with ideas for comedy... Largely his approach is similar to his contemporary persona so loved by comedy aficionados, if less sophisticated, and without the grumpy weariness of middle age that fits him so well... a jibe at the undergraduates of Wadham College also shows that Lee couldn’t entirely raise his comedy scope above parochial student in-jokes." - Steve Bennett, Chortle, 2011 [source].
With such professional solo aspirations, it is surprising that Stewart Lee was also charged with running the 1989 Revue, with only Ben Moor and Mike Cosgrove returning [source]. Yet this production had no intention to replicate Waving at the Pigeons - indeed, it would be the most structurally unique Revue since 1977's Beyond A Joke. Oxford's famed Fringe sketch show would, in 1989, have no real sketches.
"We wanted to take advantage of each performer's particular abilities, while maintaining a narrative to the show. We decided to do what a good pantomime would, and bring the audience into the story too. While The Oxford Revue perform, the whole Earth floods leaving the cast and audience as the only survivors of the human race... While they decide if the show must go on, or whether their main responsibility lies in saving mankind, a crazed killer stalks the theatre aisles... The whole theatre becomes involved in a cannibal gameshow where the winner get cooked in a cordon-bleu sauce of his choice. Two of the cast find love, while all of them must fight for survival against Al Murray [an Oxford Revue Workshop regular and cast-member], who commits murders with every weapon known to man using only his mouth." - Stewart Lee, Oxford Revue 1989 press release, 1989 [source].
"AL: ...Call it chance but I happened to be taping the news the moment the storms started..
HELEN (Morris): Storms?
AL: And floods... I think it would be better if we let the tape speak for itself.
(STARTS TAPE AFTER THEY HAVE ALL GATHERED ROUND. LIGHTS CHANGE)
[TAPE:]...And here is the news. As this evening's freak rains continue, it seems that flooding of the entire United Kingdom as well as the rest of the world is imminent, news which until now we'd put after the football scores because there were no Britains involved...
BEN: So we're the last survivors of the human race?
HELEN: The audience... and us... we're the only people left alive in the whole world?
NICK (Caldecott): And do you know what that means? That means we are currently the most successful theatre company in existence. On with the show." - Stewart Lee's Oxford Revue 1989 script extract, 1989 [source].
The surreal storyline allowed for ample improvisation (improv comedy being a staple at Lee's beloved Comedy Store from 1985 onwards [source]) and even stand-up. The pre-Fringe tour included especially scheduled promotional stints at Newcastle and Southampton, the latter involving a 26th July take-over of the regional news programme Coast to Coast, presented by Fern Britton [source].
"FERN: You seem to be in charge (POINTS AT STUART [sic]). First just who do you think you are.
STUART: Well actually we're the Oxford Revue Group... like the Cambridge Footlights only you don't have to be a genius to get the jokes." - Coast to Coast shooting script extract, 1989 [source].
Nonetheless, the show was not well received - The Financial Times apparently called it 'the worst show on the Fringe' (though Stewart's personal stand-up endeavours at the same festival did receive praise) [source]. The Oxford world still could not provide anything meaningful to the world of alternative comedy, even with Lee's bold creative swings, and there was little that could be done about it. With that, at the approximate midpoint between the Revue's inception and the modern day, the glory-days of student comedy were provably over.
***
So if Oxford comedy had reached such a dramatic low in the late 1980s, why did so many students from that generation become famous comedians? Such a line of questioning is misleading, implying a direct parallel between the graduates of Tony Brennan's Oxford Revue Workshop and the Revue success stories of other decades. As we've seen, the strength of the Workshop was not it replicating alternative comedy authentically, nor did it automatically set individuals upon a trail to fame and fortune.
The best part of Brennan's work was its role as a gestator. It acted as a microcosm in which Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, the Seven Raymonds, Al Murray and others could safely train their respective passions as artists and performers, and struck dead the troupe-wide stagnation of motivation that had so let down Rebecca Front years before. It had taken this long for comedy based at the University of Oxford to formally start acting like a university itself - a centre of education and self-fulfilment. Student-written comedy is always doomed to be archaic and cringeworthy, but then again, so are student-written essays. In both cases, the capacity to learn and hence improve is tangible.
"I think the reason I stopped doing [stand-up] was because it was tough and in my heart of hearts I didn’t have a thick enough skin... People play piano recreationally but to be a recreational standup is a slightly odd thing. To be honest, I am a bit more relaxed about it now and I think I am better at it. I’ve got more to say..." - Tony Brennan (discussing his return to stand-up while simultaneously holding the position of British deputy high commissioner to Australia), The Guardian, 2015 [source].
The Oxford Revue Workshop persisted into the 1990s (though did not survive to see the new millennium [source]), and from its warm arms sprung a bounty of revues, ironically most well documented in the archives of Cambridge University - Thrash (1990), Full Frontal Greenery (1991), Such an Immense Machine (1994), Space (1995), No British Please We're Sexy (1996) and One Night Stand (1998), to name a few [source]. Revue alumni originating from this time include Sally Phillips and Ben Willbond, while other Oxford comedic performances included a stage version of Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently (adapted by Arvind Ethan David and attended by Adams himself) [source].
Those who had previously graced the stage of the Revue Workshop returned to Oxford from time to time, in order to stoke the flames of inspiration within yet more budding student talent - and, more practically, to warn of the work and sacrifice pursuing a comedy career requires.
"The students weren't a bad bunch and their sketches showed some promise, but it was a little sobering to be reminded of those days twenty years ago when Emma, Stew and me were in the same position, writing and putting together out first Edinburgh show... Hopefully we helped them a little bit overall." - Richard Herring, 2007 [source].
But was this really it for the development of the Oxford Revue? In a world still dominated by stand-up comedy, how could a student sketch troupe evolve ever again? With the value of the group now being what it inspired in people - as opposed to what it tangibly was - was it even important for it to change?