 | Johnny Vegas: Encyclopedia II - Johnny Vegas - Fame
Johnny Vegas - Fame
Johnny Vegas - Early performances
His career took off when he won the Festival Critics' Award at the 1997 Edinburgh Festival, and was the first newcomer to be nominated for the Perrier Award.
His early shows The Johnny Vegas Gameshow and The Johnny Vegas Show contained elements such as Butlins style sing-a-longs, onstage pottery, verbal abuse of the audience, actual drunkenness and generated charges of sexism. Audience members report great variation in the quality of the shows, the talent for ad-libbing seeming to desert him on occasion to be replaced by a shambolic, fragmentary performance.
The pathos in these shows is often remarked upon as it is often hard to identify how much of the apparent disintegration of Vegas is performance and how much is a genuine, guileless display of personal pain.
Johnny Vegas - Major projects
He appeared as "Al" in a series of adverts for ITV Digital around 2001/2002 with a monkey made out of wool, whose name was simply Monkey. The ubiquity of these adverts made Vegas a household name, though Vegas now has to fend off (and does so with good humour) remarks about the failure of ITV Digital as an enterprise.
Vegas gave an award-winning performance as Charlie in 2001's Happiness, marking his transition from stand up comedian to actor.
He starred in the 2004 film Sex Lives of the Potato Men. He has displayed unshaking pride in the latter venture, despite very poor reviews, some going so far as to label it the worst film ever.
He wrote and starred in a BBC Radio 4 sitcom called Night Class, seemingly heavily autobiographical, about an ex red coat, pottery teacher called Johnny Vegas.
In 2004, he co-starred in Dead Man Weds. The writer and co-star of this series is Dave Spikey.
He appeared in the 2005 comedy-drama Ideal, playing a drug dealer. Vegas also started presenting an unconventional Friday night chat/comedy show on Channel 4 titled 18 Stone of Idiot.
Later in 2005, he appeared in straight acting roles on BBC One, first in their high-profile adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House (as Krook), and then as Bottom in an updated, modern-language version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Johnny Vegas - Appearances
Vegas is well-known for his impromptu rants at awards ceremonies, notably addressing Dustin Hoffman from the stage at the Empire Magazine movie awards in 2003.
He was given his own segment on The Big Breakfast shortly before the show came to an end in 2002.
In the same year, he was seen as a regular panelist on team B on Shooting Stars, with pint of Guinness perched by his buzzer.
He enjoyed a memorable guest appearance on Room 101, revealing an unhealthy obsession with an internet chat room called Beauty's Castle.
He managed to break the icy exterior of hostess Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link in 2000.
Other related archives18 Stone of Idiot, 1971, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Anne Robinson, BBC One, BBC Radio 4, Bleak House, Bottom, Butlins, Channel 4, Charles Dickens, Dave Spikey, Dead Man Weds, Dustin Hoffman, Edinburgh Festival, English, Glasgow, Guinness, Happiness, ITV Digital, London, Merseyside, Middlesex University, Old Spice, Perrier Award, Roger Law, Roman Catholics, Room 101, September 11, Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Shooting Stars, St Helens RFC, St. Helens, The Big Breakfast, The Generation Game, The Weakest Link, Victoria and Albert Museum, William Shakespeare, Win, Lose or Draw, a monkey made out of wool, aftershave, ceramic design, comprehensive, pathos, pot, pottery, priesthood, rugby league, seminary, sexism, stand up comedian, third class degree
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Fame", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
