Contemporary Parodies
Spike Milligan wrote a parody of Nineteen Eighty-Four for The Goon Show entitled 1985, broadcast on 4 January 1955. The cast of characters included Worker 846 Winston Seagoon (Harry Secombe), Miss Sfnut (Peter Sellers) and Worker 213 Eccles (Milligan); Big Brother was replaced by the Big Brother Corporation (i.e. the BBC) and Goldstein's revolution by Horace Minikstein's Independent Television Army. Jokes included such stabs at the BBC as:
Announcer (Sellers): "Attention BBC workers! Lunch is now being served in the BBC Canteen. Doctors are standing by."
Seagoon is tortured in Room 101 by being forced to listen to clips from Ray's a Laugh, Life with the Lyons and the singing of Harry Secombe. Unlike the original script, Seagoon is freed from Room 101 and the ITA overthrows the BBC after a three-day phone call and a £10 bribe. However, when Seagoon hears the ITA's output, he wants the BBC brought back.
The programme was such a success that the script was performed again on 8 February 1955. This was not a repeat – it was a new broadcast of the same script with minor changes. One change was the recorded addition of John Snagge as the BBC announcer previously portrayed by Sellers.
The first version exists in pristine form in the BBC archives, the second performance only as a lower-quality off-air recording which excludes the first five minutes of the programme and both musical interludes, preserving about 18 minutes of material.
Read more about this topic: Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV Programme)
Famous quotes containing the words contemporary and/or parodies:
“I have the strong impression that contemporary middle-class women do seem prone to feelings of inadequacy. We worry that we do not measure up to some undefined level, some mythical idealized female standard. When we see some women juggling with apparent ease, we suspect that we are grossly inadequate for our own obvious struggles.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)