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Comedy


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Macadamia #3

By coosh

14 June 2007

A production company asked me to send variations on a sketch I'd submitted - I have no real idea how to develop these things, so I posted it here...

[IGOR’S COUNTERFEITING BUSINESS, OUTSIDE SAINSBURY’S IN BRATISLAVA, HAS EXPANDED TO A SMALL, REVOLVING POSTCARD-TYPE STAND; INSTEAD OF POSTCARDS, THE STAND COMPRISES MULTI-COLOURED ID DOCUMENTS]

IGOR: Passport, credit card, driving licence… Get your new identity here… [TO ALI] You look like man with head screwed on… [HOLDS UP PASSPORTS] Estonia? Buy two, get one free….

ALI: Give me UK…

IGOR: Out of stock…

ALI: Everywhere same. [MAKING AS IF TO LEAVE] I go round bend…

IGOR: Wait! You are lucky…. I am doing unrepeatable promotion on next best thing… [FINDS PASSPORT] France..

ALI: What is France like?

IGOR: Hot crêpe, tête-à-tête, vis-à-vis, vol-au-vent… [ALI LOOKS UNIMPRESSED] … soupçon flambé up Champs-Elysées… [HANDING HIM PASSPORT] … freshly-ironed velours, feel the quality… I was Minister of Haute Couture for seven years… you think I flog any old chic…

[ALI OPENS THE PASSPORT – IT PLAYS ‘JE NE REGRETTE RIEN’]

ALI: [READING] Catherine Deneuve? Do I look like lusty but elegant nineteen sixties sex bomb? Why you show black and white picture of very succulent joint of beef?

IGOR: I don’t do pictures. I use old Sainsbury’s meat catalogue. Just to give you idea. Anyway, passport photo never do people justice. [LOOKS MORE CLOSELY AT ALI'S FACE] Well, in most cases. [HANDS HIM ANOTHER PASSPORT] Try this. You will feel like new man.

ALI: [READING FRONT OF PASSPORT] Made in Taiwan. [OPENS PASSPORT – IT PLAYS SERGE GAINSBOURG’S ‘LEMON INCEST’, COMPLETE WITH EROTIC MOANING. ALI SEEMS APPRECIATIVE] Nice video. French people look very friendly. How they get chicken to stay in same position when cement-mixer is moving so quickly?

IGOR: Overwhelming national charm. And not just with poultry. On arrival, border guards greet all tourists in English, with foie gras canapés, glass of Beaujolais, and miniature telescopic 3-speed camembert-spreader, disguised as delightful memento of President Mitterand’s illegitimate daughter.

ALI: You got anything less noisy? With graphic equaliser.

IGOR: All EC passports now contain personal data, encoded in sounds of traditional national culture. [POINTING TO PASSPORT IN ALI’S HAND] This tell me you spend early life playing in piano bar, once set fire to 500-franc note on chat show as protest against taxation, and are now buried in Montparnasse Cemetery after suffering fatal heart attack in unmarked transit van near red light district.

[ALI OPENS ANOTHER PASSPORT TO REVEAL THE SOUND OF A HOWLING WIND]

ALI: Ah! Maurice Chevalier. This would make nice birthday gift for sister-in-law. [PUTS PASSPORT TO HIS EAR] She enjoy hoovering to old crooners.

IGOR: That, my friend, is unmistakeable sound of Mistral, on chilly afternoon in Marseilles. During filming of ‘French Connection 2’. If you listen carefully, you can hear Gene Hackmann going through cold turkey.

ALI: [POINTING TO STAND] What else you got there? Brigitte Bardot going through warm soufflé. During eruption of Vesuvius.

IGOR: There are things one can only dream of. I see from your flippant Arabian pleasantries that you are bloody timewaster. I have to satisfy very demanding wife, who is arachnophobic plumber’s mate with inferiority complex. Every evening I must flatter her U-bend installation before lightly spraying her with insect repellent. She have dream to eradicate venomous, nipple-sucking assassin spider from all domestic water systems by two thousand and ten.

ALI: [PUTS PASSPORT TO HIS EAR] Why is it ticking?

IGOR: In five minutes promotion will go off. If you buy now, and leave on midnight cattle-truck from Prague, you can be outside Madame Jo-Jo’s before cock is up. I throw in free work permit. Special seasonal job opportunity. For desperate foreigner.

ALI: What job opportunity?

IGOR: Women in France only shave armpits in spring, every five years, all on same day, in special ceremony in town square. This require huge casual immigrant labour force to sweep up hair, which they purée with leftover croissant crumbs, and use to stuff rugby balls.

ALI: I do not need job. I run very lucrative flag business in Middle East. Highly inflammable Stars and Stripes. For demonstration purposes. I hear white is very popular colour in France.

IGOR: Listen, I am very busy man. And do not have time to waste with fussy flag magnate. [OPENS ANOTHER PASSPORT – SOUND OF CASTANETS] How about Spain?

ALI: [LOOKING AT TEXT MESSAGE ON HIS MOBILE] Sorry, my friend, I get better offer from more sympathetic idiot round corner. Half-price Emerson Fittipaldi. [WALKING AWAY] With tree frog. And Green Shield stamps.

IGOR: [OPENS ANOTHER PASSPORT IN A LAST-DITCH ATTEMPT – IT MAKES A RESOUNDING SATISFIED BELCHING NOISE] Belgium?

Reviews

Written by Phil (6836 comments posted) 14th June 2007

Enjoyed this. Particularly liked:

IGOR: Hot crêpe, tête-à-tête, vis-à-vis, vol-au-vent… [ALI LOOKS UNIMPRESSED] … soupçon flambé up Champs-Elysées… [HANDING HIM PASSPORT] … freshly-ironed velours, feel the quality… I was Minister of Haute Couture for seven years… you think I flog any old chic…

Sounds a bit like Reggie Bolovski (Young Ones)

Good luck with it. If they're showing interest you must be getting warm at least.

Phil

From the real world..
Written by gerardconnolly (1186 comments posted) 14th June 2007

Hello David.

Smashing to hear you have got a proper hit!!

A really good piece, wordwise.

If I can be of any help just drop me a line.

Slan!

Hi Coosh
Written by jean.day (2326 comments posted) 14th June 2007

I really laughed at the idea of the five year underarm hair being used to stuff rugby balls - with a few croisant crumbs thrown in of course.

Best of luck. Good stuff.

Great stuff!
Written by woody44 (777 comments posted) 14th June 2007

This deserves a much wider audience David. The humour comes thick and fast and I admire the way you have strung it seemlessly together. The underarm gag had me in stitches. All the very best with it.

Woody

Written by coosh (887 comments posted) 15th June 2007

Cheers, Phil - I'd forgotten about Alexei Sayle - it was flattering to be asked, I think this is what fishermen (and others) call a "wee nibble".

Many thanks, Gerard - particularly as it was you who encouraged me to continue them - it needs more polish and fleshing out idea and direction-wise, but still... I'd decided that maybe most sketch comedy actors wrote their own material, so it was a limited market - however, one guy did say to me that given the choice between reading a 120-page filmscript and a dozen pages of sketches on a Friday afternoon, he'd go for the latter... so they can work as nice little pitches. I can't sign off in the vernacular, as it only extends to "lang may yer lumm reek", which, surprisingly, is not a commonly used phrase down the ale-houses of the Gallowgate. I hope your Cromwellian endeavours are making good progress, and Jennifer is not playing up too much. Cheers.

Thanks Jean, you could probably knit it into an attractive scarf as well, handy when you pop out for bridge of a winter evening... I notice you're doing Laura's Letters, so will check it out at some point in the not too distant.

Cheers Woody, I've no idea if it'll go anywhere, but as you're well aware, persistence, graft and a wee bit o' fortune may change everything. Best of luck and many thanks.

Written by Livinginanattic (465 comments posted) 15th June 2007

Once again a very funny piece from you, and I'm really pleased to hear about the interest you're getting for this. I also liked the underarm gag. The inflammable Stars and Stripes made me laugh as well though I couldn't help wondering if there really is an illicit trade in them somewhere out there. Might explain a few things.

Best wishes,

Ben

Written by ellipinnock (1753 comments posted) 15th June 2007

Oh very good, I particularly liked,

'If you listen carefully, you can hear Gene Hackmann going through cold turkey.'

As weird and wonderful as your best stuff is :grin

It's a nice concept this one - a fair amount of mileage in it. Good stuff.

Elli

Written by coosh (887 comments posted) 18th June 2007

Thanks, Ben - I think it's a subsidiary of the guys who bring us all those wonderful effigies...

Cheers, Elli - yes, all that heavy breathing he did, as we waited ages for the most unfit-looking man in the world to run the entire length of the seafront in Marseilles. My regards to the larvae.

Written by Witzl (1585 comments posted) 23rd June 2007

I loved the image of the annual armpit-shaving ceremony in the town square. Phil, Jean and Elli have said everything I was about to say, so they have saved me from being long-winded.

Finally, I've just written a mildly flirtatious chapter in which my two protaganists are attending to a blocked U-Bend pipe, so I found your pipe reference an enormous coincidence. Mine doesn't have any nipple-sucking spiders in it, though.

Written by coosh (887 comments posted) 24th June 2007

Thanks, Witzl. I tried it with a 'flush pipe' (as you may have done yourself) but there isn't the same sense of romance. Best of luck with 'Foreigners'.

Written by Fledermaus (3448 comments posted) 28th June 2007

Heheh... Nice. Are you going to do all of the EU? I can already imagine what he'll say about the Netherlands: Marihuana and prostitution... I somehow think Igor'll like that

Dank je wel, amigo
Written by coosh (887 comments posted) 28th June 2007

Yes, I think you've spotted the flaw, here, Fledermaus. The other sketches are less nationality-oriented, otherwise the whole thing could just descend into some xenophobically-driven, stereotype-laden, windmill-spotting, tulip-greasing, clog-sniffing, polder-dancing, Cruyff-fondling, pot pourri-smoking, hooker-humping farce. Which would be tasteless. (Plus those are the only things I can remember about the Alkmaar cheese market).

Written by Bottleblondesurfer (3445 comments posted) 3rd July 2007

I've come to this a bit late, I guess by now you've sent it off and have landed a job scripting all those spontaneous ad-libs by Jonathon Ross. I think this would read well [I don't know if you have heard it read out loud] What I liked was using potential stereotypes and then taking it off into such a surreal direction. Because they were so surreal the gags hardly needed any setting up and what I really admired was the way you topped the gag at the end [Andy Hamiton is a master at that] It's a sign you know what you're doing. Ihope it impressed the prod co. I'm envious, I've never had any one ask me for stuff- well done
cheers
Jane

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