This poor quality and poor taste quickie shows why I did well to stick mostly with lyrics.
The best Fred and Rose West material in NewsRevue was Debbie Barham’s wonderful English Country Garden song. I take a tiny amount of credit for that one having contributed the opening line, “How many stiffs can you hide without a whiff?” at the idea’s birth during a writers meeting. When Debbie retorted, “How many tendons in the rhododendrons?” I insisted that she would do a better job of that lyric than I possibly could – and I was right.
My sketch below is very very pale by comparison:
JOHN WEST REJECTS
(A quickie to hail the trial of John West, Fred West’s ne’er do well brother)A weirdo walks across the stage. It will transpire that he is Fred West. He happens upon two women.
WOMAN ONE:: Oy, Fred, what are you staring at?
FRED: I was thinking about offering you lodgings, but I’ve decided against it. Push off.
WOMAN ONE: OK Fred.
FRED: (Sings) Now I’m a ripper ripper…….
WOMAN TWO: (Innocently enters with luggage) Excuse me, I saw your sign advertising lodgings………..
FRED: Bugger off. We’re full.
VOICE-OVER: It’s the chicks Fred West rejects, that makes John West’s victims the best.
(While the voice-over is going, all three look upwards and around, trying to trace the source of the voice-over)
WOMAN ONE: What sort of pilchard put this sketch in the show?