Between The Wheels

So for this year's televisual odyssey I have decided to watch every episode of The New Statesman. There are four series, 29 episodes in all (including three specials).

1:1 Happiness is a Warm Gun

This evening then I watched the very first one, in which the ultra-Thatcherite, devious, scheming, completely amoral and utterly self-serving Alan B'Stard is elected as MP for the constituency of Haltemprice after arranging accidents for his two main opponents.

Unfortunately for Alan, the local Chief Constable knows exactly what he's done and blackmails him into having a law passed, to arm the police. Needless to say, Alan manages to come out on top.

The New Statesman is of course a parody of Thatcherism and the Conservative Party. I was arguably more of a Tory at 27 than I am now, and yet I loved this. I recorded all of them to VHS and watched some of them (including this first one) many times.

To my mind Rik Mayall is the funniest human being ever and he portrays Alan's incorrigibility with brilliant tongue-in-cheek panache. There are lovely touches. I particularly like the casual disregard and discourtesy Alan shows to the two fellow Tories he shares an office with, especially the long-suffering Piers Fletcher-Dervish. But Rik could raise a laugh just with an eyebrow or a knowing smirk.

I hadn't watched this for years - fantastic to see it again. A laugh-out-loud moment every minute.

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1:2 Passport to Freedom

Sarah inherits 200,000 shares in Ocelot Motors, which makes her wealthy enough to afford a divorce. This presents a problem for Alan, because her father controls the local Conservative Party. The second he's divorced, he'll be out on his arse.

Alan's solution is to ruin Ocelot, making Sarah's shares worthless. He manages to provoke a strike.

I particularly enjoyed the dialogue between Alan and a German airline employee early on in the episode. "I don't need a passport, we won the war", he tells her.

It's the little details that make The New Statesman brilliant, like Alan not bothering to swerve to avoid his old gardener as he arrives home in his Roller.

1:3. Sex is Wrong

Alan involves himself with a moral campaign spearheaded by a prudish aristocrat called Lady Virginia Imry and cleverly manages to connive some money out of it in an episode that satirises both the puritanism and sexual depravity of the average Tory. I'm firmly in the latter camp myself.

Off the scale physical comedy in this one. Subtle, bit hilarious. There's no way to script this stuff.

Why did I never think of watching this in the last three decades or so? I remember it well and it's hilarious.

There's a joke that won't mean a lot to people in the present day, about Peter Wright, who'd just published Spycatcher, a book banned at the time in the UK.

1:4 Waste Not, Want Not

An old lockup in Hull is scheduled for demoolition. This presents a problem for Alan, because some time ago the Argentinians paid him £55,000 to dispose of some nuclear waste, and that's where he had it stashed.

Fortunately, there's a disused coal mine in the constituency. Alan's transsexual accountant Norman points out that the mine runs under an infant school - but Alan reminds him that it's only a council school.

Alan's xenophobic father-in-law Roland who owns the mine is prominent in this one. Played by Charles Gray, who was Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever as well as appearing in You Only Live Twice.

Sidney Bliss, the former hangman who runs the Hangman's Knot Inn is played by Peter Sallis.

Very good, though not one of the better first series episodes.

1:5 Friends of St James

Brilliant. Alan meets an old acquaintance at a school reunion event. His old school chum is now president of a marijuana-rich Caribbean island.

(https://i.ibb.co/20V4Zgfp/stjames.avif)

Or so he claims. After sampling some of the island's "special tobacco" and getting conned out of £1000, Alan hatches a scheme to open a bank on the island, get people to invest their money in it - then keep the cash for himself.

It doesn't quite go to plan, but the devious Tory manages to come out on top. Very good.

Interestingly there's a bit of racial language - "honky" is used twice, and Alan describes his old school acquaintance as a "black con merchant".

1:6 Three Line Whipping

Always loved this one. Alan spends the night at a brothel and gets into trouble when he turns up at TVAM, not knowing the result of the previous day's by-election.

He kills a cab driver by accident, then while impersonating said cab driver in the process of getting rid of his body, ends up giving a lift to the Prime Miniser and her chief whip. We never actually see the PM but the voice impersonation is spot on.

Needless to say, he gets himself off the hook.

Lots of funny incidental humour in this one. I love the fact that the brothel's clientele consists mainly of senior judges, politicians and high-ranking police officers. Also the way Alan inspects the girl he's with like a farmer inspecting cattle. Brilliant.

Some of the scenes are set in Dulwich, a part of London I came to know well. I don't think the real Dulwich is used. Hadn't seen this since the '80s and never made the connection when I lived there.

1:7 Baa Baa Black Sheep

Alan's father-in-law Roland is intent on deselecting him from his constituency. But the delinquent MP's accountant Norma (previously Norman) comes up with an idea - to have the American fast food tycoon Willoughby Guzzler open a factory in Haltemprice, rather than Wales.

Alan's plan to do this involves smearing the Secretary of State for Wales. Willoughby and his wife are devout Christians.

Brilliant telly.

There's a joke about Mark Phillips, then married to Princess Anne, and a trial which I didn't understand at all but the studio audience clearly loved it.

2:1 Fatal Extraction

Alan discovers oil under Hackney Marshes, and does his best to ingratiate himself with the leader of Hackney Council, a socialist firebrand black cutie called Georgina Pitt, so he can make a fortune out of it. he doesn't.

Hilarious scenes when he's being obnoxious to her on a panel show (definitely based on Question Time, the Robin Day character even has a bow tie) then tries to cop off with her when he gives her a lift home.

(https://i.ibb.co/F487Gb1m/georgina.avif)

I've always remembered this one fondly. I seem to remember that the second series is not quite so good as the first, but it definitely gets off to a cracking start.

One thing that really dates this (arguably apart from all the jokes about Georgina being black, although they aren't hateful) is that Alan blackmails the Tory chief whip after finding out that he's gay.

This was first broadcast in January 1989. I was in the final year of my degree, my last few months of living in Hartlepool. Where did the time go?

2:2 Live from Westminster

TV coverage is introduced to the House of Commons. Alan takes full advantage, becoming a national sensation and taking an opportunity to make some money from a bit of product placement.

The way that live broadcasting from the Commons is depicted is hilarious, with TV cameras all over the floor, makeup assistants all over the place and a director cueing up contributions from the MPs.

Very different from the real thing which started a few months after this was broadcast.

Alan's new-found celebrity gets him an appearance on the TV gameshow What's The Question? hosted by Nicholas Parsons. A show so vulgar that, as Sarah puts it, even their servants don't watch it.

(https://i.ibb.co/5CRDZgr/commons.avif)

But Sarah also plans to capitalise on her husband's place in the spotlight by publishing a brutal, sensationalist memoir about her life with Alan in one of the papers.

It turns out that Thatcher, tired of being upstaged by B'Stard, put her up to it!

But of course - Alan has a solution.

Good one. I'd forgotten about this one apart from the game show scene. Nicholas Parsons appears as himself. Would have filmed this about a year after he appeared in the brilliant Comic Strip feature Mr Jolly Lives Next Door with Rik and Adrian Edmondson.

Come to think of it - what a shame Ade never had a cameo role in The New Statesman. A hapless, bespectacled and bewildered SDP MP, perhaps.

2:3 The Wapping Conspiracy

A memorable episode that starts with Alan copping off with a girl guide to whom he's supposed to be giving a guided tour of Parliament.

A reporter for The Times - publishes photographs of the lecherous MP engaged in group sex with underage girls.

Alan enlists Sarah's assistance - for a substantial price of course, to play the loving wife in a libel case. The court case itself is clearly a parody of Jeffrey Archer's case against the Daily Star. I've just looked it up, it's hilarious:

"Remember Mrs Archer in the witness box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?" - actual words spoken by the judge in Archer vs Daily Star, 1987. In this episode, Sarah B'Stard is also described as "fragrant" by the judge. Twelve years after this episode was shown, Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice during the trial, and of course got prison time.

I was quite surprised at the depravity of the sex acts alluded to in this episode, as well as the allusion to sex with underage girls.

Hartlepool gets a mention, in what I think is a gentle poking of fun at northerners. It's a throway bit on a news item, read by the real Peter Woods, just before he reports on the libel case. The oldest cat in Britain has died and its owners, an elderly couple from Hartlepool, say they intend to eat him for Sunday dinner.

2:4 The Haltemprice Bunker

Following a meeting at a restaurant with a business associate, arranged for a bit of insider trading, Alan decides to expose an old Nazi war criminal who lives in his constituency whom he's been blackmailing for years.

But Helmut, the war criminal in question, pays him off with £500,000 in Nazi gold.

I don't think I'd seen this one since 1989, when it was shown. The end of the war happened only 45 years earlier, which in current terms is roughly when Moving Pictures came out.

(https://i.ibb.co/KxM6TPnh/rude.avif)

The scene in which Helmut gets pushed under a train is very impressive - the stunt man really does seem to go off the platform right under a moving train.

Alan's business associate is played, with delightful insouciant arrogance, by Stephen Fry. The waiter to whom they are unspeakably rude is Hugh Laurie.

(https://i.ibb.co/TBPNWJZT/frylappy.avif)

There's something delightfully of-its-time about this one, particularly in the yuppie stereotype portrayed by Stephen Fry. The 1980s laptop, the early brick mobile phone, the stripy shirt.

2:5 California Here I Come

Alan goes to Hollywood with Piers, to pitch his idea for a soap opera about the Royal Family at a party given by a TV director. He cops off with a sex-crazed TV star hottie.

But after chaining her to her bed, at her own request, he manages to lock himself out of her hotel.

(https://i.ibb.co/DPt072G1/nscutie.avif)

Shortly afterwards, he gets arrested and imprisoned by the local sheriff - played superbly by Mac McDonald, who was Captain Hollister in Red Dwarf.

It's not a great one but the ridiculous bedroom scenes and the redneck sheriff rescue it.

2.6 May The Best Man Win

Improbably, Piers is getting married to an upper class hottie. Alan agrees to be his best man, and briefly manages to get off with his fiancee - but when she insults his sexual prowess and tells him she's going to prevent Piers from acting as his lackey, he attempts to murder her.

Brilliant one this. Alan's behaviour at Piers' fiancee's stately home is delightfully imperious, rude and obnoxious.

Celia Imrie reprises her role from the Comic Relief sketch of 1988, in which she played Thatcher's secretary.

2:7 Piers of the Realm

Alan returns from Yorkshire, where he's made some money on a fixed horse race, to find that Piers has been given a junior minister role and is no longer subservient to him.

But why? Well it turns out the hapless Fletcher-Dervish is being manipulated by his boss, the Secretary of State for the Environment, to rubber stamp a scam.

Alan has also secretly been videotaping his wife's fleshly lust with their gardener, unknown to her of course, and she's riding high (so to speak) in the German porn charts.

The episode (and second series) ends on a cliffhanger, with Alan being shot dead in the street as he's about to climb into his Bentley.

Is he dead? And who's the culprit? Jeff D'ckead, the Sunday Sport's political editor, who bet £1000 on the horse that Alan had nobbled? Sir Greville MacDonald, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who knows Alan's found out about his scam? Sarah, who's found out that he's made her an unwitting porn star? Or Piers, whose teddy bear Alan tortured and burned?

I've always remembered this episode for two scenes - one in which Alan cons a senile old woman into selling him her seven bedroom house for £500 - and the teddy bear torture scene. Only Rik Mayall could have done that.

I was curious about the actress who plays Sarah B'Stard as I don't recall seeing her in anything else. She is Lady Marcia Mary Josephine Fitzalan Howard, the third daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk! She was about five years oler than Rik.

Was quite annoyed by the cliffhanger at the end of this one, which was shown in February 1989. Had to wait nearly a year for the next instalment.

1990 Special: Who Shot Alan B'Stard?

I've always known about this one. And yet, about five minutes in, I realised that I'd never seen it! It was first broadcast in January 1990. By this time I'd finally moved away from Hartlepool and had just moved into a new house in Leicestershire. Don't know why I missed it. Don't think we had a VCR at that time.

Anyway I was doubtful that the format would sustain double the usual duration, but it does just about manage it. I don't think it works as well as the usual half hour, including ads.

A relatively complicated one in which it turns out that Alan faked his own murder in a convoluted money-making scam involving a fake charity, a bet on the reintroduction of hanging and a contract to have gallows manufactured in large numbers.

But everything backfires when a talk show host who's done a bit of investigative journalism and uncovered Alan's corruption gets killed accidentally. Alan ends up being sentenced to hang.

There's a trial scene that goes on a bit too long. Otherwise it's pretty good.

I always smile at the topical gags. In this one there a joke about the Commons atmosphere being "as tense as Ken Dodd passing a tax office".

The character of Sidney Bliss returns from the first series. This time the veteran hangman is not played by Peter Sallis but by a pretty convincing lookalike / soundalike.

Dickie Davis appears as himself, presenting the public execution for television.



This was shown a year after the end of series two, but was the only New Statesman instalment of 1990 - the third series starts a year later. Rik had already started to make Bottom (I'd forgotten that they overlapped) so perhaps it was due to time pressure.

3:1 Labour of Love

First shown in January 1991, by which time I was, sadly, lodging with a colleague from my place of work. I remember this episode well but don't remember watching it there, oddly.

A new MP called Victor Crosby arrives, following a by-election. He's intent on usurping Alan's position as most right-wing Member of Parliament. Naturally Alan sets about undermining him immediately, in an elaborate plan involving leaking documents to the Labour Party and convincing Victor that Thatcher's planning a comeback (she had been ousted about two months before this was broadcast; perhaps a hasty rewrite was done).

It's a good one. I recall that the third series was not quite up to the standard of the first two, but we'll see.

Oh for the days when the most right-wing MP was a Tory.

3:2 The Party's Over

The government's Chief Scientific Advisor reveals that, contrary to previous expectation, North Sea oil reserves are due to run out at any time - which will trigger a catastrophic economic collapse.

Major calls a snap election - ostensibly to make the most of it before the general public find out. B'Stard is put in charge of the campaign.

He transforms the party's fortunes; it's not long before they're way ahead in the polls. Unfortunately this wasn't the required outcome. The idea was that Alan's campaign would be so odious that Labour would win, leaving them to cope with the economic catastrophe and ultimately triggering a nationalist backlash that would sweep them into the gutters of history.

So Piers is put in charge of the campaign instead.

This is a brilliant one. I remember it best for Alan's Party Election Broadcast which is absolute comedy gold.

3:3 Let Them Sniff Cake

Alan upsets the animal rights brigade and becomes the target of a series of assassination attempts. Meanwhile Lord Penistone, a foppish, bewildered coke-fiend acquaintance, asks Alan to acquire some cocaine for him.

Joan Bakewell, still in her 50s and still quite hot frankly, makes a cameo appearance.

I was quite amused that Peter Mandelson - soon to become Member of Parliament for Hartlepool - gets a mention. Alan argues that Kinnock should sack him, in a throwaway remark. Plus ca change.

I only vaguely remembered this one and unfortunately it seems I've entertained a false memory about it for a long time. I remembered Alan carving dolphin steaks at the dinner table. In fact he's carving a pig's head while talking about dolphins. "Just because they smile all the time, people think they aren't fish", he says.

The also now-sadly-late John Sessions, best known perhaps for his weekly appearances on Whose Line Is It Anyway - or perhaps for Stella Street - plays the cocaine-addled lord.

Michael Robbins, aka Arthur from On The Buses has a minor part. He died a year after this was broadcast.

Good one, not one of the best.

3:4 Keeping Mum

Alan proposes an amendment to a social security bill, to require "old age homes" (as they are referred to in this eposide) to close, insisting that the elderly should be looked after by their families.

This backfires somewhat when his own mother, a disgusting old bag, turns up on his own doorstep.

This proves a massive embarrassment for Alan and Sarah when Andrew and Fergie come to dinner, although these days having Mr Mountbatten-Windsor round would be embarrassment enough on its own.

Meanwhile - Piers' father dies and he inherits a baronetcy, becoming "Sir Piers".

Always remembered this one for Alan's disgusting mum. There's a delightfully creepy moment when he almost snogs her.

3:5 Natural Selection

Alan discovers that he's been deselected and replaced as Conservative candidate for the Haltemprice constituency by a local builder, Ken Price. Ken is about to take his company public.

So, with Sarah's help, Alan sets out to ruin him.

Also has an entertaining sub-plot about Piers' interest in stamp-collecting. And there's a nice joke about David Owen working as a waiter in one of the Commons bars.

Ken Price is played by Maurice Roeves, who was quite a familiar sight in TV and film in the '80s. He was in Who Dares Wins with Lewis Collins, as I recall. Died in 2020.

It's not a bad one but I do think we've reached the point in the canon where the quality starts to drop.

3:6 Profit of Boom

During a highly successful lecture tour of the Soviet Union, Alan is contacted covertly by senior officials in the KGB and MI6. They want him to bring the good old days back, and reignite the cold war.

So Alan attempts to assassinate Gorbachev, with Piers' unwitting help of course.

I did remember this one, but only barely. I suspect I only saw it once.

Happier times. Set in the dying months of the USSR, when the old hostilities between East and West appeared to be fading into the past.

This is the last episode of the third series. There's a particularly grim end for Alan, which makes me wonder if it was intended as a potential finale to the entire canon. I didn't like that.

But as we shall see, the insuperable Tory MP will return.

4:1 Back from the Mort

Alan returns from the gulag apparently no worse for wear for his three years there, although in fact this was shown in November 1992, about a year and nine months after the previous episode. Which makes no sense when you consider all the topical political references, but hey.

Anyway I remembered Alan's triumphant return from the Soviet Union, but the rest of the episode, not really.

I do recall that the fourth series is the weakest. I wouldn't say this one is bad - Rik puts his usual irrepressible bonkers self into it as usual. But Alan's scheme to overcome his difficulties - he's lost his seat in the Commons and Sarah has got all his money - is just too easy. It's not really devious or clever. Grossly unethical and illegal, yes. Brutal, perhaps. But lazy writing.

This series sees Alan climbing aboard the European Union gravy train. Would have been highly topical at the time, shortly after Maastricht.

Was glad to see that the dye job Rik was sporting in the third series has gone now. A bit of grey suits him.

Just five left, now.

4:2 H*A*S*H

Alan, now an MEP as far as I can tell, attempts to have cannabis legalised in order of course to line his own pockets with bribes from the big tobacco companies who want to get in on the act. But he comes up against organised crime lords, who of course would prefer it to stay illegal.

I barely remembered this one. I very vaguely remembered the scenes set in the Atomium (there's quite a big of location filming in this fourth series) but that's about it.

Two big problems with this final series, I think. The EU setting just doesn't work as well as Westminster. And the plot ideas just aren't there. This one in particular is far too outlandish - there was always an element of absurdism in The New Statesman but this is beyond ridiculous.

Some of the fun has definitely gone out of the show at this point.

There's a joke about Diana that lands a bit differently now.

4:3 Speaking in Tongues

I don't remember this one at all, but my personal life was fairly torrid when this was shown in November 1992, so it may have passed me by.

The plot, this time, is surprisingly complicated - so much so that I'm not sure I followed it completely. There's a thread about Alan upsetting the EU's translation department by having one of his porn mags translated, then antagonising them by having them relocated to a slum.

But the main element of the plot involves Alan having an Autobahn routed through beautiful German countryside instead of derelict old industrial land. Unsurprisingly it's a money-making scam. I think the connection to the translators is that provoking a strike is useful to this end, somehow.

There are some very funny moments but it's not a great one. One thing I did like is that the EU is using an experimental computerised translation device called Polyglot. Absolute science-fiction in 1991, everyday reality now.

There are some German / Nazi jokes, they do seem a bit anachronistic now. Virginia Bottomley gets a mention! I'd forgotten about her, wonder what she's up to these days?

4:4 Heil and Farewell

Actually quite a good one. I'm sure I'd never seen it. Until I started this New Statesman-athon I was under the impression that I'd seen all of them; no wonder I couldn't remember the fourth series very well.

A pleasingly bizarre, clever plot which involves Alan taking over a group of Nazis, Hitler's cryogenically-preserved penis, Nicu Ceaușescu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicu_Ceau%C8%99escu), Sarah and one of the MEPs attempting to assassinate Alan, and Nazi (or Romanian) secret treasure.

The episode opens with Alan watching a news item about neo-Nazi thugs attacking a hotel where migrants have been located.

There's a scene in which Alan, having assumed leadership of the local Nazis in his constituency, addresses them in a brownshirt uniform. I don't think it could be made now.

His rhetoric about so-called refugees staying in luxury hotels at the taxpayers' expense has a remarkable resonance to present day events.

4:5 A Bigger Splash

Alan buys the supposedly recently-deceased Robert Maxwell's yacht, in order to visit Herzegovina with Piers - ostensibly to transport humanitarian aid there in the midst of the Yugoslav Wars, but in reality to help Robert - who is still alive and hiding there, having faked his own death - to escape on his old yacht. Naturally Alan stands to make a large sum of money from this - in the sum of half the pension funds he's embezzled.

Robert Maxwell's yacht is called Lady Ghislaine, named after his daughter of course and who'd have thought she'd be in the news all these years later? It still exists, called Dancing Hare now and is owned by one of Rupert Murdoch's ex-wives.

Maxwell appears himself - with seated interview footage being edited in to look like a conversation with Alan in a hotel room. Of course it's not remotely convincing but as a joke, it works.

Boycey from Only Fools and Horses plays one of the local military commanders.

I have to say I was a bit uncomfortable with this one since I have old friends who lived through that war. The hotel where the episode mostly takes place is seen to be in the middle of a war zone, with walls being raked by gunfire and bombs going off. Really very strange to set an absurdist comedy in that context. There's even a joke referring to ethnic cleansing.

A joke about Diana not being able to keep her dinner down has aged badly, as well.

Despite all that - there are some genuine laughs.

4:6 The Irresistible Rise of Alan B'Stard

An episode which some would find quite prescient, this.

"My shares are going down faster than old jug ears does on Camilla", laments Alan. His investments in aerospace, nuclear and so on are suffering and he calculates that stirring up enough anti-EU resentment in his party will lead to a solution.

His plan is so effective that a special party conference is held. Alan's anti-European rhetoric strikes a powerful chord among the party faithful. "Are we going to allow these faceless people to seel us into euroblivion? Or are we going to stand up in this great British party and demand our country back?" he demands.

Ultimately a new, highly successful populist euro-sceptic party is formed with B'Stard at the helm.

Has a somewhat different resonance now than it did in 1992, doesn't it?

Ultimately Major resigns, Britain leaves the EU, Alan wins the election that ensues and becomes Britain's head of state.

The Camilla joke made me laugh. This was broadcast on Boxing Day 1992, only two weeks after Charles and Diana announced their separation, so it must have been made some time before that.

I'd never seen this final episode before. It's one of the better ones of the last series for me, because despite the EU angle it's mainly about domestic politics.

There was a New Statesman special made two years after this one called A B'Stard Exposed - essentially a spoof interview with Brian Walden. I did watch it but I didn't think it was that funny - it seemed more to be making a hostile political point than aiming for laughs. I probably won't bother with it.

B'Stard also pops up in an ad for the "NotoAV" campaign in 2011. Just found it on YouTube.  It's a bit jarring to see B'Stard 20 years older, all of a sudden.



Well - I did enjoy that run through the canon of The New Statesman. Especially the first couple of series, made in the late '80s. God, where has all the time gone?