Cambridge Footlights Revue - 1982 Revue - "The Cellar Tapes" - Sketches and Songs

Sketches and Songs

The order of sketches and songs featured in the revue is as follows.

• A melodramatic opening credit sequence featuring all of the cast members running through the woods in slow motion in a manner reminiscent of the film Chariots of Fire.
• Two short blackout-type sketches, the first with a lone radio announcer (Hugh Laurie) cryptically asking, "Is there anybody there?... Is there anybody there?...," then, "This is Radio 3, is there anybody there?" and the second set at a disco where an apparently enthusiastic dancer (Tony Slattery) lures a girl (Penny Dwyer) onto the dance floor in order to steal her chair.
• A sketch about a Shakespeare masterclass ("an actor prepares"), where a teacher (Stephen Fry) with delusions of grandeur gives pretentious, nonsensical acting advice to his eager student (Laurie).
• A sketch about a chess tournament, with an experienced Russian champion (Paul Shearer) beaten by a clueless beginner (Slattery) who chooses moves that constitute a brilliant strategy despite not knowing the names of the pieces or the rules of the game.
• A monologue about Dracula read by Fry, consisting largely of puns and wordplay. ("Tell me, what blood type are you?" "A?" "I said, what blood type are you?" "O!" I said. "B.")
• A sketch with Slattery and Laurie as two privileged would-be revolutionaries, featuring their performance of the song "If You Can't Smoke It, Kick It to Death," which has the refrain, "They hate you/Everybody hates you/You better look out behind you to see them stabbing you between the eyes".
• A sketch with Emma Thompson as Juliana Talent, a West End actress accepting an award in the most obnoxious, falsely modest manner possible. ("At this point I'd like to say a very warm 'hello and good luck' to Glenda, who's taking over for me tonight... brave, brave lady...") Shearer plays the presenter who gives her the award.
• Another blackout depicting "today in Parliament," which consists of an exterior shot of the building, the voice of Fry calling for order over sounds of unrest, and the voice of Laurie demanding to know why there is "only one monopolies commission."
• A sketch with Fry, Laurie, Slattery and Dwyer, set after dinner in the living room of a couple hosting a father and son. Themes include marital tensions, sexism, and the father's displeasure with his son's acting aspirations and implied homosexuality. The characters also play a game of charades that quickly deteriorates into shouting and name-calling due to Fry's character's ineptitude.
• Slattery singing the song "I'm Going to Shoot Somebody Famous." This is the only non-comedic segment of the revue.
• A last blackout, with Laurie babbling gibberish sounds in the style of someone emphatically arguing a point, and Fry firmly telling him, "Now that's a lot of nonsense, and you know it."
• A sketch with Thompson as a bedridden Elizabeth Barrett and Fry as Robert Browning coming to visit her. In ridiculous, affected accents, they have a classically romantic conversation that ends with Browning finally enticing Barrett out of bed (in spite of her feeling "so desperately weak") by promising to "whip senseless."
• A choral performance featuring all of the cast members, led by Thompson and Dwyer. The song is a satirical exhortation to join the British Movement, full of racist and militaristic imagery. The final stanza describes the party's goal:

Imagine a society with skinheads roaming wild and free
And not a pair of thick lips in sight!
Fumigate the Underground and sterilize the cricket ground,
White hope and white elephant, white wash and white Christmas,
White horse and white rich and white poor,
White dirt and white licorice, white helmets, white truncheons,
White face and white Willy Whitelaw!