The Fast Show is back and its characters are funnier than ever. If you haven’t seen the online series of the Fast Show 2011 yet, then you need to get over to fosters.co.uk and get reacquainted with the old favourites like Dave Angel – eco warrior, Ted and Ralph, Billy Bleach, the Suit You tailors and Rowley Birkin QC.
Although we all thought the Fast Show had finished in 2000, when they did their ‘last-ever’ episode featuring Johnny Depp, the creators of the Fast Show were persuaded to make the online series when they heard just how many people were searching for YouTube funny videos from the previous hit series. So Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse went back to their writing desks and got the old cast together to make the Fast Show 2011.
In Episode 1 we were treated to a spoof on Downton Abbey – Upstairs Downton, as well as seeing Ted and Ralph and Rowley Birkin QC. The next episode saw the return of our Janine, the teenage mum who has now got the hang of social networking, and the Suit You tailors.
Music hall star Arthur Atkinson is still coming out with rubbish punch lines and Swiss Toni compares cooking eggs to ‘making love to a beautiful woman’ in the third episode.
The more recent episodes have seen the return of Louis Balfour to the Jazz Club and a second part to Upstairs Downton. In the fifth episode, Chanel 9 returned and we saw Johnny Nice Painter who’d suffered a knock to the head. There was also a new ad for Cheesy Peas.
In the last episode we’ve seen Billy Bleach the pub bore talking a woman to tedium about smartphone technology and Ted and Ralph weighing up whether they can be friends on Facebook or not. Ralph sums up a lot of people’s feelings about social networking by saying nervously to Ted – ‘do you Tweet?’
The next episode is online in January 2012 – don’t forget to get online to watch the Fast Show. And if you haven’t seen any of the episodes so far, they’re all available to view on fosters.co.uk.