But it’s only the computer screen it’s on as the show is available only online via Fosters.co.uk.

The series started on November 11^th and it certainly hasn’t disappointed us die-hard fans who enjoyed it so much the first time around during the mid 1990s.

Lots of our old favourite characters are back like Dave Angel, eco warrior, the Chanel 9 “scorchio” TV channel, the “does my bum look big in this?” woman and lots more.

It’s particularly heart-warming to hear from Rowley Birkin QC, once more, rattling on about his former life in most unintelligible mumbles with the off lucid snatch with like: “I opened my eyes and by jingo, I realised I'd married three of 'em!” or … “the sound of a small child’s voice; ‘Mama… Mama!’” Of course, he always ends his eulogies with "I'm afraid I was very, very drunk."

Some of the Fast Show’s best known catchphrases became used in just about every type of media over the years. "Football isn't it?" “I’ll get me coat” "You aint seen me, right?" "This week I have been mostly eating…" "Suits you sir!" the list is almost never ending.

The shows creators Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson created a legend and with the passing years have lost none of their cutting edge whatsoever. The show works at different levels from the repeated nonsensical simplicity to sharp satire, deep pathos and wonderful observational humour.

Different again are Reeves and Mortimer who are also on Foster’s website with some of the most inexplicably funny stuff you’re ever likely to see with their afternoon delights; don’t miss either!

Advertising agency copywriter (and gifted cartoonist) Dave Cornmell has let his fevered imagination run around this topic and come up with a bizarre selection of episodes from Santa's life.

Apparently, because he orders all the presents online and the elves do all the manual labour, poor old Santa is bored out of his mind.

There's trouble in the toilet, hypochondria (the lump on his arse turns out to be a half eaten prawn) and reindeer up tho their necks in their own poo due to Santa's failure to muck them out. There are imaginary adventures involving french bread, bananas and carrots, strange visits by Big issue sellers in the bathroom and getting stuck in the ice at the North Pole.

It's all very irreverent and sometimes extremely near the knuckle but always a tour de force of the imagination and the cartoons are superbly crafted with an easily identifiable style.

Well worth cramming into somebody's Christmas stocking.

Buy it HERE: 364 Days of Tedium by David Cornmell

Simon Ellinas

THE RELAUNCH OF the insane asylum Bedlam was visited by 5.1million people eager to witness, once again, the entertaining antics of the deluded and desperate inmates.

People gawped at the arrival of patients suffering from a whole range of mental afflictions, the most prevalent of which is imagining that they are someone famous.

There is fevered speculation that over the coming weeks, the inmates might actually talk to eachother, have arguments, go to sleep and then wake up in the mornings.

Current inmates include failed actors, unknown models, someone who used to be married to someone who was a bit famous, the publicity-crazed wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons and a twin-headed warbling leprechaun with stiff vertical hair-dos.

With entertainment like that, who needs television?

A GENERATION OF British folk can remember three TV channels, test cards and nearly-all-day religious programmes on a Sunday. There was absolutely nothing on during the day except horse racing. Families used to stay in to watch a Saturday night film and all those variety shows as the valves in the sets got hotter and hotter before the 11 o'clock shutdown.

But a fairly regular face was a ventriloquist. Nowadays hardly anybody knows what a ventriloquist is. But this guy was the best. Ray Alan and his drunken Lord Charles, complete with monocle. He was great. Look up a sketch on Youtube where Lord Charles is trying to become a ventriloquist to see how clever and funny he was.

I cant help thinking how many messages of condolence the Queen has received from some foreign leaders who have heard that 'Lord Charles' is no more. 

Tim Leatherbarrow

Featuring Nikki Lamborn of “Never The Bride” (the original Persian Moll) and Silky Longfellow-Stanshall as Elma the Electrifying Elver, plus a full hand-picked band, plus special guests each night, and a very special Master of Ceremonies, it will run for four nights: July 20-22 and the 24th.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in all things Vivian should make every effort to get their arse down there for this. I shall be there, probably dressed as Nigel Nice. Or not, as my banjolele is booked in for a service that week.

Anyway, I can think of none better to say a few words on the matter than the lady Ki Stanshall herself. Far be it from me to lower the tone by resorting to the sort of dross dredged up by 99% of the entertainment media. Questions should be relevant to the event or production, meticulously researched, respectful and, above all, put interviewees at ease whilst gently cajoling them into revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings, yet avoiding, at all costs, invasion of privacy and flippancy – so,

˜Tell me, Ki, what’s your favourite colour?

“Oil slicks. But – once upon a time, my husband Vivian Stanshall and I wrote a musical for my good ship THEKLA sailed by me to Bristol and called by us “The Old Profanity Showboat.” “Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera” was seen really only once and has never truly been seen again.

A cluster of unique friends intend to change that – to see it up and running in varied venues. There was nothing like it then and there’s nothing like it now, crammed full as it is of Vivian and, yes, me.

With the hope of attracting interest in a revival of the full scale musical we’re staging “Stinkfoot in Concert” on the ship it was born on. For four nights (dates above), we’re throwing a very special Stinkfoot party. The element of surprising “special guests” is part of our mystique.

It’s on all online ticketing agencies plus Thekla’s.

All come! But buy your ticket now – they’re going.

It has its own wikipedia article.

Andy Sanson (& Ki Longfellow-Stanshall)

St Just Cartoon Festival banner from 2008

Crowds at St Just Cartoon Festival

CARTOONS, CARICATURES AND cartooning have yet to be elevated to the status of ‘artform’ by the Arts Council in the UK. And perhaps this is a national attitude reflected in the difficulty of establishing a regular celebratory festival of the art (I’m going to use the term just to spite them) in this country. The few that have surfaced in recent decades have been lucky if they ran for more than five years and at all times all struggled against huge budgetary constraints due to inadequate sponsorship.

By contrast, the artform (there – I said it again) has been celebrated with numerous festivals, large and small, throughout Europe with an astonishing conglomeration hosted by our nearest neighbour, France. Unfortunately many of these have fallen by the wayside too, with St Estève and Louviers now committed to the great Festival in the Sky. Louviers ran for 11 years virtually on a shoestring and yet managed to conjure up the ‘festival’ atmosphere so essential to differentiate these events from mere ‘exhibitions’ or ‘conventions’.

UK Cartoons on display at St Just Cartoon Festival

But the Grandaddy of them all, it seems, is the unstoppable festival at St Just-le-Martel which celebrated its 28th year this year. This needs repeating: Twenty-Eight! I had barely stepped out of the ranks of the employed to attempt to become a full-time cartoonist when it started. I had heard it mentioned in hushed tones by several veteran cartoonists at the Cartoonists Club of Great Britain and since becoming a sort of veteran myself, at Louviers, had always been curious to sample its delights. And I wasn’t totally disappointed.

Once in Limoges, via a free train service from Paris, we were efficiently herded onto a coach for the fifteen minute drive to St Just-le-Martel. The town seems to be a mixture of cattle farmland and commuter-belt homes for workers in Limoges.

The local football club was half taken over by huge marquees for both the capacious dining area and the festival exhibitions and activities. With over 125 cartoonists attending, many with partners, plus the local families giving them living accommodation over the weekends, the throng inside the hospitality tent was throbbing vibrantly.

Once we were found by our respective host families we settled down to dinner: a sumptuous carnivourous feast of huge steaks with rural salads, bread and wine.

The Dining Hall at St Just Cartoon Festival

But down to the business of the cartoon festival.

There were numerous exhibitions on a panoply of themes with special guest slots from a deputation from Korea, Egyptian illustrator Baghory, Dutch cartoonist Willem and the New Yorker’s New Yorker, Liza Donnelly. Countries represented included all of Europe plus Argentina, Lebanon and Serbia. The quality was extremely high with no exhibits eliciting the ‘What’s that doing here?’ response. This was quite exciting because it means that despite free-for-all nature of the application process, that the art of cartooning is taken very seriously by its practitioners around the world. Which can only be good news for cartooning.

Entertainment was on offer from a variety of booked jazz, oompah and novelty bands, the wine and beer flowed freely all day long. The public were slow to show on Saturday but positively streamed in on the Sunday. This is the same as at Louviers where Sunday was always the busiest day. The cartoonists who chose to do so were kept busy in the main public area, drawing the public or simply demonstrating their craft. And there were prize givings.

There were no workshops for the public as far as I was aware but there were panel discussions on the main stage on both days, with a prominent ‘cartoon of the day’ by Willem.

A symbolic beginning of a wall was erected to signify the start of building a permanent museum and home to the festival and on Sunday morning we were invited into the home of the local Pastor for aperitifs.

We were given an aperitif in Pastor's House on Sunday

The Brits present were John Landers, Alex Noel Watson and myself with Jock and Trish Williams making an appearance on both afternoons. Fellow Brit Clive Collins made the journey the previous weekend and left his mark with a stunning selection of cartoons on display. Dutch FECO president, Jean Gouders and his wife Liliane introduced us to the guitar and harmonica playing Dutchman, Martin Reekers who is well on the way to establishing a cartoon festival in his home town of Rotterdam.

Old friends reunited included Robert Rousso, Gab, Fidel Castro (the brother of Daniel Chabouis, organizer of Louviers), Batti from Corsica, Philippe Moines, Genny, Luis Vuitton, Ric et Rac (crazy name, crazy guy) and the ever charismatic Maurice Zabuski. New friends included Dutchman Nol and Kiki the vegetarian.

Simon Ellinas with Robert Rousso at the St Just Cartoon Festival

The festival lacks a souvenir catalogue which would have been a great collection over the last 28 years for regular visitors and also serves as a great way to engage the public. The fact that the cartoonists are dispersed over a large area at night does rather bring a damper on proceedings. Many cartoonists were driven away at 10.30pm! If they had all been staying in the same hotel, as in Louviers and Shrewsbury, the festival atmosphere and camaraderie would have been heightened. The trick of using local families does help to attract public to the event, but the fact that the houses are a minimum of 12 kilometres away shattered my vision of being given a front door key and being allowed to come and go as I pleased. Having said this, I was overwhelmed by the hospitality I received.

The house where I stayed at The St Just Cartoon Festival

This, of course, is a minor gripe in the face of a cartoon festival which has thrived and continued to grow for twenty-eight years. All of us who entertain thoughts of mounting similar events must surely pay attention to this tried and tested formula and see if it can be adapted to our plans.

I was honoured to be allowed to attend and look forward to next year if the preceding opinion has not blotted my copybook!

WOODY ALLEN’S fame for extracting humour from the serious side of life is well-known. And in many of his films, humour is noticeably absent as he mines the darkest recesses of the human psyche and relationships.

So, a return to his earlier work, at a time when he was writing and performing stand up comedy is extremely refreshing.

His unique viewpoint is the equivalent of surreal cartooning while often underlining many universal wisdoms. All this in an admirably economical use of language and cunningly crafted storylines.

Although the style is sometimes dictated by his Jewish/American heritage, the subject matter is too wide ranging to be contained within such a narrow definition. And the subject matter is diverse.

On psychic phenomena: “There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtrown and how late is it open?”

On compassion: ” Needleman…was capable of great compassion, and after witnessing a particularly horrible mine disaster once, he could not finish a second helping of waffles.”

Sex: “…I found myself in a state of waxy flexibility as the last piece of bikini underpants slid noiselessly to the floor around her ankles while I lapsed inexplicably into the Dutch National Anthem.”

Every paragraph contains extraordinary flights of imagination. One short story, The Kugelmass Episode could have been one of his screenplays. It concerns a professor, trapped in a loveless marriage, who discovers the existence of a machine which allows one to actually exist alongside the characters of any book in the machine at the same time. Hence, Kugelmass has an affair with Madame Bovary, prompting students across the country to wonder “…Who is this character on page 100? A bald Jew is kissing Madame Bovary?”

The flight of fancy ends with the hero accientally jettisoned into a copy of Remedial Spanish and being chased for the rest of his life by the word tener (‘to have’), “a large and hairy irregular verb”.

Essential study for humour writers to this day!