The Fast Show: Encyclopedia II - The Fast Show - Characters

The Fast Show - Characters

The show featured many memorable characters, they are listed here by performer.

The Fast Show - Charlie Higson

• (with Arabella Weir:) Friendly but naked newlyweds.
• Colin Hunt, unfunny office practical joker.

• Johnny Nice Painter, who goes insane at the mention of the colour black.
• Geoffrey Norman MP, the Tory politician who denies everything.
• Swiss Toni, a car salesman who compares everything to making love to a beautiful woman.

The Fast Show - Paul Whitehouse

• Rowley Birkin QC, drunk old upper class man (presumably a retired barrister from the QC appellation in his name) tells mostly unintelligible stories at the fireside. Occasionally, his speech becomes intelligible for a short while, containing strange phrases such as "the whole thing was made completely out of rubber" or "Snakes! Snakes!".

• Brilliant Kid, a parody of British Children's TV presenters who walks through a series of peculiar backgrounds describing various innocuous, everyday things as 'brilliant!'
• The Hearty Hiker. This is a character who thoroughly enjoys rambling. He once met a disturbed garage attendant and was chased down the road by said attendant, who was shouting: "STUCK DOWN A HOLE! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WITH AN OWL!"
• The 13th Duke of Wybourne, posh, rumpled dinner jacketed, cigar smoker, finds himself in unsuitable places

• Archie the pub bore. Talks to people in the pub, and when they mention their profession, no matter what it is, he always claims to have had the same profession.

• Ron Manager, nonsense talking football pundit. Doesn't actually know very much about football.

• Unlucky Alf, the lonely old pensioner for whom nothing ever goes right. Often heard to utter the phrase "Awww bugger!"
• The "monster" who terrorizes a young woman in her bed in the middle of the night with betting tips. His physical appearance is based on Nosferatu, his voice and catchphrase is taken from football agent Eric Hall.

• Chris the Crafty Cockney, claims to be an incurable kleptomaniac ("I'll nick anything me"). He is left alone with something valuable, and invariably steals it. Often says that he's "a little bit woah, a little bit wayyy, a little bit whooosh!"

The Fast Show - Charlie Higson & Paul Whitehouse

• Bob Fleming (Higson), the host of Country Matters, who has an extremely bad cough, along with his friends; sneezing Jed Thomas; hiccupping Murtagh Blethyn; and, of course, Clive Tucker (Whitehouse), the man who can't stop saying "ARSE!".
• Ted & Ralph - country squire Lord Ralph Mayhew (Higson) attempts to strike up an intimate relationship with his estate worker Ted (Whitehouse).

• The Offroaders, Simon Bush (Higson) and Lyndsay Mottram (Whitehouse), filmed by their friend Baz while they try impressive extreme sports, but fail to hide the fact that they are disastrously hopeless at such pursuits.

The Fast Show - Mark Williams

• Jesse and his strange diets, fashion tastes and experiments.

• 'You Ain't Seen Me, Right?' is scruffily dressed, and always appears in passing, pausing only to dispense his eponymous warning.
• 'I'll Get Me Coat' always says, wears or otherwise does something inappropriate for the social situation in which he finds himself. Shocked, other characters stare at him before he delivers his line and ends the sketch.
• Patrick Nice, a man who may or may not stumble into amazing circumstances on a regular basis, but remains very calm. Wins lottery twice in a row, and sees R.E.M. perform an impromptu concert at the ceremony where his son is awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

The Fast Show - Simon Day

• Competitive Dad, who criticises his children for not being as good at something as he is.
• Dave Angel, Eco-Warrior, who's into saving the planet (with a somewhat dubious methodology), Mike Oldfield records, and swinging. A parody of a late-night magazine program presented by Mike Reid.
• Carl Hooper, Australian presenter of That's Amazing, a spoof on pop-science shows.
• Billy Bleach, pub know-it-all who gets it all wrong. (This character starred in his own series, 'Grass' which was shown on BBC Three.)
• John Actor, who plays Inspector Monkfish, the tough uncompromising cop.

The Fast Show - Arabella Weir

• No Offence, a rude South African department store cosmetics sales woman.
• Insecure Woman, who constantly irritates people with demands for reassurance about her looks: "Should I have put my hair up?" "Do you think I should have chosen different earrings?" "Does my bum look big in this?" At one point she frightens away a mugger with repeated questions about his opinion of the shoes she's wearing.

The Fast Show - John Thompson

• Brilliant Kid's Father, who walks around moaning about everyday things that are 'rubbish', which seems to include everything and everybody except Des Lynam.
• Chip Cobb, the Deaf Stuntman, who mishears normal things as instructions to perform some dangerous stunt ("We just need to reset the wire ..." "Set meself on fire? OK!")
• Louis Balfour, presenter of Jazz Club (a very obvious parody of The Old Grey Whistle Test).

• Professor Denzil Dexter of the University of Southern California and his various bizarre scientific experiments.

The Fast Show - Caroline Aherne

• Checkout Girl, who comments on every purchase.
• "Our" Janine Carr, teenage mum with a unique world outlook. She refuses to reveal who the father of her baby is because "it's not fair to grass on your headmaster" and, even though she claims to be a vegetarian, she thinks it's perfectly acceptable to eat sausage rolls given that "there's no such animal as a sausage"
• Poula Fisch, weather presenter on "Chanel 9" (see Mixed performances below).

The Fast Show - Jeff Harding

• Ed Winchester, an American TV presenter, presumably of travelogues, who only gets to introduce himself.

The Fast Show - Mixed performances

• Chanel 9, a Mediterranean television channel with low production values based on a combination of languages (but mostly Italian).

• Meterologicos (the weather forecast) presented by Paula Fisch (perhaps a reference to former weather presenter Michael Fish), played by Aherne; the weather is (almost) always the same everywhere: hot ("Scorchio!"). One occasion when the weather was "Cumulio" resulted in mourning from the whole channel; on another occasion a forecast of "nimbocumulus!" sparked urgent, excited investigative reportage.
• Advertisements for the 'Gizmo', an orange pump-action device (which is actually a plastic plumbing trap attached to the end of a squeeze mop). A number of these are advertised by bikini-clad women for a multitude of different purposes, in spite of the fact that the device is always exactly the same. Its features are described in terms of evocative phrases like "Novello proboscis - molto molto kinagrophos". The device is usually described as being "Un action pumpo".
• Advertisements for cheesy peas.

• Disco Baby, Sexy Baby song performed by Higson dressed as a hairy overweight '70s disco star.

• Arthur Atkinson, parody of 1940s music hall entertainers such as Max Miller and Arthur Askey, played by Paul Whitehouse, introduced by Tommy Cockles (Simon Day), himself a parody of presenters of TV history.

• Roy & Renée (Thompson & Aherne), endless chattering from Renée and her verbally challenged husband Roy.

• Ken and Kenneth, the "Suit you!" tailors who bombard potential customers with innuendo-laden suggestions about their private life, (Whitehouse and Williams).
• The Patagonians, a group of South American musicians who seem to never be able to get further than a few seconds into a song before it degenerates into a tuneless shambles. They play in bizarre locations, and notable instruments they use are pan pipes, an acoustic guitar and maracas.
• The Fat Sweaty Coppers, two heavily overweight and generally useless coppers who think about food before crime, they usually get in a variety of strange situations, and usually both get stuck in between doors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Characters", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki