A Comedy On This Day: The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer - Flight 709 (9 June 1995)

How nice to have your garments removed by a bird of prey these days.

 The final episode, and there's an end of term, exhausted, feel to this one. There's more corpsing than usual, which reminds you just what a fine line there is between it being a charming glimpse of the real friends behind the personae and the point where it becomes annoyingly amateurish. If they were small children, this would be the point where you'd say, "I think they're getting over-tired now".

 I'd forgotten that Charlie Higson's Swiss Toni first appeared here, almost fully formed, years before The Fast Show. He attempts to sell the bra men a convertible - "You know, I can picture you now, driving along in the summer with your top down."

A Comedy On This Day: The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer - Muscles (2 June 1995)

MORTIMER: Hey, Vic! 'Footloose' - What a lovely song.

REEVES. Yes, it was a great pleasure to sing 'Footloose' but remember, ladies and gentlemen, loose feet are a very REAL problem and it does affect people in older age. And that's why us, as performers, donate all our money to the rectification of loose and missing feet.

 This one is a perhaps a little overbalanced by a special guest appearance from Sting. While its interesting to watch the very famous man corpse when asked personal question by Donald and Davey Stott, I think I'd prefer to have seen Charlie Higson or Matt Lucas in grotesque and outlandish prosthetics as 'Sting'.

 There's an infestation of singing owls in the studio this week. They pop up from under the desk and get squashed back, Whac-A-Mole style, during Reeves and Mortimer's hammer and frying pan Tom and Jerry scrap. This confusing new random element of pushing owls - on top of the rhythm of alternately giving and receiving blows - is clearly too much for Vic and Bob to follow, and provides an little moment of insight into just what a high-level performance skill comedy can be.

A Comedy On This Day: The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer - Hang-Dry Clothes (26 May 1995)

 For me, The Smell is probably the peak of Reeves & Mortimer's comedy. The humour of Shooting Stars was much easier for a wider audience to assimilate, but its thrown-together charms have often worn thin as they've milked it over the years.

 It’s probably their most crafted series, and it certainly had more resources put into it than Big Night Out ever did (filmed inserts! great big sets!). You can see the value of this investment in this episode's opening musical number, a medley of 'Never Let Her Slip Away', 'Without You' and 'I've Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts' (the song selection funny in itself), a sequence of clever visual perspectival jokes given the same care and craft as a big 'shiny floor' Light Entertainment spectacular musical routine.

 There's an acute choice of supporting guest artistes, always adding something distinctive without taking anything away from the leads. As well as Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams in Slade in Residence, this week's grotesque parody (Masterchef with Reeves as Lloyd Grossman with huge bulbous head levitating around the studio) is elevated by a very early appearance of Matt Lucas (as toff cannibal chef Quentin Mint) and - especially - a terrifying Morwenna Banks as Christian martyr Joan Baptiste serving her own severed ears to complete a portrait of Christ in food.

 Peculiar Wikipedia fact: "As a result of his appearances, Paul McCartney became a fan and invited Charlie Chuck to perform at one of his birthday parties". I saw his act at the time and it was quite intimidating ("Charlie, Charlie, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck went to bed with five young ducks. One DIED! Charlie CRIED!", attacks drum kit and repeat with four ducks, etc). I'd have played safe with a conjurer, I think...