Rutland Weekend Television

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Rutland Weekend Television
Genre	Sketch comedy
Created by	Eric Idle
Written by	Eric Idle
Directed by	Ian Keill
Starring	Eric Idle Neil Innes David Battley Henry Woolf Terence Bayler Gwen Taylor
Music by	Neil Innes
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	2
No. of episodes	14
Production
Running time	approx. 30 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC2
Release	12 May 1975 (1975-05-12) – 24 December 1976 (1976-12-24)
Related
The Rutles

Rutland Weekend Television (RWT) was a television

It was Idle's first television project after Monty Python's Flying Circus, which had ended the previous year, and was the catalyst for The Rutles. Rutland Weekend Television ostensibly centred on "Britain's smallest television network", situated in England's smallest (and mainly rural) county, Rutland. Rutland had been abolished as a county in April 1974 so, supposedly, there were tax advantages to broadcasting from somewhere that did not legally exist. This framework allowed for a range of sketches and material to be presented, all as part of the fictional network's hosted programming. Nevertheless, even this very loose concept was frequently ignored, and material was presented with a more stream-of-consciousness approach, with no particular tie-in to the RWT framework. Typically, in addition to sketch material, each episode also featured two music videos (a term not yet coined in 1975) of Neil Innes songs, which were woven into the flow of the show.

The show's title alludes to London Weekend Television. A Rutland television station would be pretty small (representing roughly 30,000 people in an area less than 150 square miles), so a Rutland Weekend Television would have to be ridiculously tiny. The joke was doubly meaningful as Idle had to work with the very limited budget of the BBC Presentation department^[1] instead of the more lavish budgets associated with light entertainment – so the weekly patter about their inability to buy props and sets reflected reality. 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 was about to be cut off. Idle spoke bitterly about these conditions years later but his attempts to overcome them formed the basis of a lot of the show's jokes.

Idle, in a 1975 Radio Times interview, 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."^[2]

A typical episode

The episode begins with the in-vision announcer, usually with something going wrong or with something unusual, from announcements catching fire to open auditions for the announcer itself. Occasionally the announcement was sung or performed by more than one person. In one episode, the announcements are performed by "The Ricochet Brothers" (spelled Ricochet but pronounced Rick-ot-chet) who begin the episode as a pair, and expand to a full cast, each group speaking the announcement in unison.

The role of the announcer was to announce the "programmes" (typically sketches) – many programmes would lead into, or announce, one of many songs and accompanying strange vignettes by Neil Innes. Innes recalled that the cheaper-looking sets added to the show; "It was sometimes a problem but that was in fact the whole raison d'etre of the programme. It was such a cheap budget programme that it worked in our favour. You could actually show how cheap and cheerful it was because it was Rutland Weekend Television. It was made in a studio at the BBC called Presentation B, which is where they do the weather from."^[3]

Cast and guest stars

Regular cast

• Eric Idle - As the star of the show, Idle plays many of the lead roles in the series. He is also the first person to appear in the show, as an interviewer in the first sketch, "Gibberish", in which Idle and Woolf talk in completely nonsensical sentences:

Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kipling-duff geriatric scenery, maximises press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendour, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.

• Neil Innes - A former member of the
  Grimms, and later to lead The Rutles, Innes wrote and performed most of the songs in the show, often in the guise of another character, such as Stoop Solo
  . Innes and members of his band, Fatso, also performed many songs written or co-written by Idle during the tenure of the show. Aside from the musical items, Innes was also a regular cast member, performing in many of the sketches.
• David Battley - Best remembered for his performance as the schoolteacher Mr. Turkentine in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and the hapless Ergo in Krull (1983). In the show, he was often the straight man, and second only to Idle in the number of his performances throughout the series. He was the Paul McCartney character in the original (RWT) Rutles sketch, but was not involved in the TV special All You Need Is Cash (1978). Battley also appears in the final episode as David Frost, whom he had also portrayed in a stage production.
• Henry Woolf - Often paired with Battley, appearing at his side in many sketches, though occasionally complains about being cast as "the short one", or "The Jewish One". He later starred as the Surrey mystic, Arthur Sultan, in All You Need Is Cash. In the fourth episode of series two, Woolf bitterly complains that "I'm a writer—I've had plays on!" Both claims are true.
• Gwen Taylor - As the main female performer, Taylor appeared in a lot of sketches, but is still much more noticeably absent than Idle or Battley. Credibly, she frequently plays genuine female characters, instead of the more "decorative" roles from the other female contributors. She too starred in All You Need Is Cash as the mother of Leggy Mountbatten and Ron Nasty's wife, Chastity; as well as appearing in Palin and Jones's Ripping Yarns and in several roles in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), including Mrs. Bignose ("Don't pick your nose!"), the elderly woman bent double under the weight of a dummy donkey and the ineffectual heckler during Pilate's passover address ("and a pickpocket!"). It could be said that she was an official "new" fringe member of Monty Python around this time, alongside Charles McKeown and Terence Bayler, frequently appearing in its creators' projects.
• Terence Bayler - Appearing from the last episode of series one onwards, Bayler played a variety of characters, including a shy and apparently forgetful announcer, the greasy presenter of "Rutland Showtime", and the Pink Panzer (a pink-uniformed SS officer who greets the camera with an effete Nazi salute and a breathless "Heil Hitler"). He later appeared as the manager of the Rutles in All You Need Is Cash, and as Gregory ("I'm Brian and so's my wife!") in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).

Guest stars

• Bunny May, Lyn Ashley, Carinthia West - Three performers who were given the more "token" roles, often playing attractive, silent characters, in sharp contrast to the well rounded performances of Gwen Taylor. May^[4] was not in fact an actress but an actor who occasionally appeared in drag. Ashley was Eric Idle's wife at the time (they divorced between the show's two series). West, romantically associated with Mick Jagger & Bryan Ferry at various points in her life, increasingly provided the glamour over the two series.
• Fatso - The band featured regularly, both as a group and as individuals. Members included Innes himself, as well as John Halsey, Billy Bremner, Brian Hodgson, and Roger Rettig. Halsey played Ringo Starr facsimile Barry Wom in Idle and Innes' Beatles parody, The Rutles, which originated as a sketch on RWT (Innes and Idle portrayed the Lennon and McCartney parallels, Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly). He also appeared as one half of the "Fabulous Bingo Brothers" (the other half being musician Zoot Money), and as the defence lawyer in the "Rutland 5–0" sketch. Roger Rettig now resides in Florida, USA. In England, Roger backed Lonnie Donegan and Roy St. John, as well as participating in the band Klondike Pete and the Huskies. Brian Hodgson, regularly tours with guitarist Albert Lee in a band called Hogan's Heroes. Billy Bremner is one of the UK's top session guitarists who now resides in Sweden. He was also a member of Rockpile fronted by Dave Edmunds. Also in the band was Nick Lowe. Billy released a solo single on Stiff Records
  in 1981 called Loud Music in Cars.
• George Harrison - The Christmas special features George Harrison as "Pirate Bob", dressed in appropriate attire and frequently interrupting the action throughout the show, before being given the chance to sing at the end in normal clothing. After leading the band through an intro to his 1970–71 hit "My Sweet Lord", Harrison switches off and starts singing a lively tune about pirates known as "The Pirate Song", co-written with Eric Idle. Innes's connection with Harrison and the other The Beatles, as well as Harrison's to Monty Python and its members, are equally notable. Innes' Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band appeared in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film, and Paul McCartney produced the Bonzos' 1968 single "I'm the Urban Spaceman", while Harrison founded HandMade Films for the purpose of financing Python's Life of Brian; HandMade later also produced Python alumnus Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. In addition, Harrison appeared as a news reporter – interviewing Michael Palin – in Idle and Innes' 1978 Beatles parody, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash.
• Wanda Ventham appeared in two episodes of the first season. Like Gwen Taylor, she assayed the female roles in sketches where one of the male cast in drag would be inappropriate. Her most memorable appearance was in episode five as a television presenter who interrupted by her boyfriend Frank (Battley) proposing to her on air and their relationship becomes a running gag throughout the episode.

Idle said of his RWT colleagues (in the same