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''Rutland Weekend Television'' was a television sketch show on BBC2 , written by Eric Idle with music by Neil Innes (formerly of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band , longtime songwriter for and performer with Monty Python , and later to be part of musical acts The Grimms , The World , and The Rutles ). Two series of six shows apiece were broadcast, in 1975 and 1976 . It was Idle's first television project after '' Monty Python's Flying Circus '' the previous year. ''RWT'' centred on "Britain's smallest television network", situated in England 's smallest county, Rutland . Rutland had been abolished in the 1974 local government reforms (although it has since been restored), and the setting of the (fictional) TV network there was said to be a convenient tax dodge. The show's title alludes to the real television broadcaster London Weekend Television (London at the time being covered by two ITV Franchise s, one broadcasting Monday to Friday, and the other on weekends). A Rutland TV station would be pretty small, so a Rutland ''Weekend'' Television would have to be ridiculously tiny. The joke was doubly meaningful, as Idle had accidentally been granted only the budget for a talk show — not sketch comedy — so the weekly patter about their inability to buy props and sets was quite real. Indeed the last show of the first series featured Idle and Innes, stripped and shivering in blankets under a bare bulb, singing about how the power's about to be shut off. Idle speaks bitterly about these conditions now but his attempts to overcome them formed the basis of a lot of the show's best jokes. Each show featured songs and accompanying strange vignettes by Neil Innes. One show introduced The Rutles, a four-piece band fronted by Innes spoofing The Beatles , singing "I Must Be In Love", a masterly Pastiche of some of the early Lennon - McCartney tunes. This led to a spinoff film, '' All You Need Is Cash '', featuring Idle, Innes, Rikki Fataar and John Halsey as the "Pre-Fab Four". Innes wrote the music for the film, most of which was parody of well-known Beatles songs. On RWT (including the clip featured later on '' Saturday Night Live '', which vaulted the Pre-Fab Four to stardom) the Rikki Fataar part was played by David Battley. Battley, a RWT regular, is best remembered for his performance as the schoolteacher in '' Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory '' (1971). "as you can imagine" presents Rutland Weekend Television.]] One episode features George Harrison as himself, though in a highly unlikely manner (singing a lively song about pirates). Neil Innes was friendly with Harrison and the Beatles from his days in the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (the Bonzos were featured in the " Magical Mystery Tour " film, and Paul McCartney produced the Bonzo single "Urban Spaceman"). Incidentally, Innes acted in Gilliam's first non-Python film, '' Jabberwocky '', and Harrison's company Handmade Films financed Terry Gilliam 's second non-Python film '' Time Bandits ''. Idle, in a 1975 Radio Times interview, said of his RWT colleagues "'Neil Innes is superb. I must be his biggest fan. Henry Woolf played Toulouse-Lautrec in the West End. He's the best small philosopher in London at the moment. And David Battley – what can I say? Straight, pale, dead-pan brilliant. Our cameraman, Peter Bartlett, filmed the Queen but says I'm easier to work with.' On ''RWT'' he remarked, 'It was made on a shoestring budget, and someone else was wearing the shoe. The studio is the same size as the weather forecast studio and nearly as good. We had to bring the sets up four floors for each scene, then take them down again. While the next set was coming up, we'd change our make-up. Every minute mattered. It's not always funny to be funny from ten in the morning until ten at night. As for ad-libbing, what ad-libbing? You don't ad-lib when you're working with three cameras and anyway the material goes out months after you've made it.'" Aside from the legendary first appearance of the Rutles, the show features some brilliantly surreal humor in the Python tradition. One sketch features the Lone Ranger (Idle) transformed into the Lone Accountant, with Innes as Tonto accidentally murdering holdup victims while trying to rescue them ("too many gin-and-tonic at lunch... You think it easy to be Indian ''and'' accountant?"). Another scene features Gwen Taylor (who played Mrs. Mountbatten and Chastity in "All You Need Is Cash") visiting the doctor to complain of her constantly changing costume and surroundings and being diagnosed with "bad continuity." The prescribed treatment is editing out two weeks of her life, after which she says she feels well, and a bit hungry... though her soundtrack is still off. She then becomes a victim of recurring film flashbacks, eventually disappearing back into her childhood. The show's commercial unavailability on video, a disappointment to many Monty Python fans, is said by Neil Innes to be a result of Idle's "bad memories" of that period in his life. Innes next went on to create and star in '' The Innes Book Of Records '', a pre- MTV show that wove together strange guests and Music Video s in a bewildering array of musical styles and visual styles. SPINOFFS As well as providing the basis for The Rutles , ''Rutland Weekend Television'' also spawned its own LP and book. RUTLAND WEEKEND SONGBOOK BBC Records 1976 (BBC REB233). (CD issue MSI MSI 10079 Japan only) Side One L'Amour Perdu/ Gibberish (a sketch)/ Front Loader/ Say Sorry Again/
Twenty-Four Hours in Tunbridge Wells/ The Fabulous Bingo Brothers/ Concrete Jungle Boy/
Stoop Solo/ Song o' the Insurance Men Side Two Testing/ I Give Myself to You/ Communist Cooking/ Johnny Cash/ Protest Song/ Accountancy Shanty/ Football/ Boring/ L'Amour Perdu Cha Cha Cha (a sketch)/ The Hard to Get/ The Song o' the Continuity Announcers
THE RUTLAND DIRTY WEEKEND BOOK by Eric Idle 1976 A dense and lavishly illustrated parody of the Television, films and print media of the mid- 1970s . In addition to being funny in its own right, ''The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book'' is notable for the issue of "Rutland Stone" bound inside. The back page of this issue carries a full-page advertisement for The Rutles' latest album ("Finchley Road"), a single ("Ticket To Rut"), and an assortment of Rutles merchandise. Quite unassociated with Idle or similar, there is now a small film society suspiciously named Rutland Weekend Films. EXTERNAL LINKS |