Michael Spicer chose his five favourite sketches for us ahead of his new comedy podcast and it’s a 5-star treat
The magnificent Michael Spicer has a new Radio 4 sketch podcast coming to BBC Sounds, a 10-part series called Michael Spicer: No Room.
The new show is an ‘entertaining critique of the modern world by a comedian who isn’t really suited to living in it’, brilliantly capturing everything that provokes us – culture, politics, work … and other people.
Bringing his distinctive style of sketch comedy to podcast listeners for the first time, two episodes will drop every week beginning on Wednesday (24 April) – available to subscribe now – before they air on Radio 4 later in the spring.
And to mark the occasion Michael kindly agreed to be our latest guest columnist, choosing his five favourite sketches from his back catalogue and explaining how they came about (and why he chose them).
1. The Unrehearsed Voiceover Artist
‘I made this 13 years ago after realising that the concept of a voiceover artist who never prepared was just a funny idea. I posted a link to the clip on YouTube through Twitter because Twitter had no function for playing videos back then.
‘To my shock and delight, people enjoyed it and shared it. It didn’t go viral but crucially what it did was reassure me that I was funny and that it might be worth making more sketches like this for the small Twitter community that existed back then. It felt like a community anyway. It was warm and friendly and very entertaining.
‘Today it’s just sponge commercials and tech bros. All because a billionaire pissed himself. It’s a shame really.’
2. Skype Chat
‘This sketch is from a year-long project I undertook where I made three 15 minute sketch shows called Rec. 601. It’s the strangest, darkest material I’ve ever written.
‘Admittedly I took a lot of cues from Chris Morris but I did try to put my own spin on things by linking sketches with some of the most obscure TV archive I could find. I am obsessed with televisual ephemera. I trawl YouTube on a daily basis to find newly discovered fragments of forgotten shows and general TV presentation.
‘One of the sketches from Rec. 601 is called Skype Chat, and it’s about a woman (played by the very talented Rachel Stubbings) who has made up the most spectacular lie to avoid seeing her boyfriend.’
3. Paradise Males
‘This was a short film I made with Diane Morgan just over ten years ago.
‘Here’s what happened: I posted a short film I made a few years earlier and encouraged my followers to watch it. A few hours later I got a DM from Diane saying ‘I think we have the same taste in comedy, we should make something together’. I read this DM while I was at work in my soul-destroying job on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. Reading Diane’s DM was like being woken up by defibrillators. So I went home and wrote Paradise Males.
‘A month or so later we filmed it in a Premier Inn. We’ve been friends ever since. She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I’m still very proud of this short, I think it really stands up.’
4. That Scene in a Christopher Nolan Film When You Give Up Trying to Follow the Story
‘This is my most popular YouTube video and I agree with everyone who watched it. It’s probably my best sketch. It was hard to write, act in and edit, but the satisfaction of making it will never fade.
‘I don’t have anything against Christopher Nolan but after watching Tenet, I just couldn’t help poking fun at the way the dialogue in his films is treated as if it was just another sound effect to add to the mix.’
5. The Room Next Door – Donald Trump and the OTHER Room Next Door –
‘This is my favourite Room Next Door sketch because I had fun with it. I turned it into a piece of science fiction, I played around with established tropes, and not only that, I stumbled across the best punchline I’ve ever written. I still remember thinking of it while I was out on one of my lockdown walks. I virtually ran home to write it.
‘With most of my Room Next Door sketches, I tried to find something new to do, to play around with the form, to parody themes, to go beyond the room next door where possible, and this sketch was the absolute pinnacle of that creative period.
‘In fact when I made it, I decided that this would be my last one, so when I filmed it, I quickly made a model bus and put it in the crawl space shot, a reference to Boris Johnson and his infamous hobby which – thankfully – he told an interviewer about and consequently handed me my career. Of course, other Room Next Door sketches came after ‘Donald Trump and the OTHER Room Next Door’ because…well, the government carried on…you know, being the government.’
Last word to the man himself!
You can subscribe to Michael Spicer: No Room on BBC Sounds here
And you can follow @MrMichaelSpicer on Twitter here, on YouTube here and on TikTok over here!
