#The Cambridge Footlights

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) self-portrait in All the Vogue, Cambridge Footlights, 1925 | src Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

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[zingaplanet]

Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson met in Cambridge when they were 19, were president and vice-president of the famous Cambridge Footlights Comedy Club (along with Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, and many of their friends). They dated but even after they broke up they continued writing comedies together and remained good friends for over 40 years.

Imagine meeting your first love in a drama club in Cambridge amongst a group of friends you'll grow old together with and falling in love with his soul so much that even when it didn't work out, he's still there as a best friend decades later, presenting you with your Hollywood Walk of Fame.

P.S. Here's a hilariously sweet sneak peak of their Cambridge Footlights bio that they wrote of one another:

[lastweeksshirttonight]

@spacemacandcheese showed this to a few of us a few days ago and, well, uh

Y'all need to see him

(This photo has haunted me)

[katsuobushii]

Pre-TDS John Oliver || 22/x

[wilsoncology]

Help Finding Picture: PLEASE

So there is this picture with Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie behind the scenes of Alfresco or the Footlights Revue... it's discolored and they're dressed a little funny... not paying attention to the camera, just talking. Does anyone know this?

[devouringyourson]

wait wait...i knew will sharpe as this cool british japanese director doing interesting things in tv and indie films frequently collaborting with his brother a talented composer but turns out he's also like model good looking and a super talented actor starring in the white lotus that's too much mate

[hallofsnaps]

[thejohnfleming]

Bye Bye Baby: Hello thrills and comedy and two new British movie talents...

Bye Bye Baby: Hello thrills and comedy and two new British movie talents…

Recently, for the third year, I sat through (most of) the annual London Film School graduates’ short film screenings. This year, I saw the best film I have seen in those three years – Bye Bye Baby. It was a joy. Jessie (left) and Maria in London’s Soho… So I had a chat with its writer/director – Jessie Barnett – and its co-writer Maria Pawlikowska, who also played the part of Jemima, a…

[socialoutsider1a]

In House MD, House was an only child, I think and had a good relationship with his mother but was afraid or at the very least, angry at how his adoptive father treated him.

It's a shame we never got to know who House's biological father was.

In real life, Hugh Laurie who played House and who's also English is the youngest of five children. He adored his father, Ron who won a gold medal in rowing at the London Games in 1948 which inspired HL to begin his rowing career which he did while attending Selwyn College, Cambridge. However, after suffering from a bout of glandular fever, HL was forced to give up on his dreams of rowing and instead joined the Cambridge Footlights, the oldest comedy club in the UK which has produced many well-known actors and comedians with that decision leading HL to begin an acting career that started sometime in 1981 and continues to this day.

HL's relationship with his mother, Patricia on the other hand was a strained one, HL saying, "I was frustration to her. She didn't like me".

His mother died from ALS in 1989 at the age of 73 while his father died from Parkinson's disease on September 19, 1998 at the age of 83.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

New Taskmaster lineup announcement! That’s fun, isn’t isn't it? Let’s go over some of the new people.

I first learned the news the day after I booked tickets to see Emma Sidi in Edinburgh this summer, so that was good timing. I booked those because I like her in some other people’s Radio 4 things, she was good in Pls Like, she does amusing characters on YouTube, I read some good things about her stand-up show this year for which she’s currently doing WIPs, and she hangs out with Rose Matafeo so she has to be all right, hasn’t she? Oh, and I’ve spent too much time trying to get my hypocrisy-averse brain to reconcile my dislike of the dominance of socio-economically elite institutions over the arts, with how many of my favourite comedians were in Cambridge Footlights. I’ve done the work of reconciling that already, I may as well use it a few more times.

I'm much less pleased about Jack Dee, but it could be worse. I’m pretty strongly biased against Jack Dee because one of the first things I ever saw him do was be on the QI Girls Versus Boys episode, which was the first episode of QI to ever feature two entire women. They had Ronnie Ancona on with Sandi Toksvig, and they discussed gender-based topics, and it was terrible. A lot of Fry-era QI was pretty bad; panel shows got a lot funnier when they invented diversity in 2014. Also Stephen Fry is annoying and Sandi Toksvig should be Prime Minister, but I’m getting off topic here.

The point is that the first time QI had two women on at a time, it was so they could make those two women listen to a bunch of gender essentialist bullshit that they used as answers to the gender-related questions. At one point, Stephen Fry explained that the gender pay gap isn’t real because women play fewer sets than men in professional tennis. One of the questions was “Why are there more men than women on panel shows?”, and I thought the answer would involve one of the 300 levels of casual and institutionalized sexism that women tripped over on the path from making jokes on the playground to getting spots on television comedy shows. Nope. The answer Stephen Fry was looking for was “according to an American study”, audiences don’t find women as funny as they find men.

Through this, Ronnie Ancona in particular did a great job of walking the very thin line between trying to point out a bit of the bullshit, while not being the "argumentative feminist", and being funny at the same time so she’s not a killjoy feminist proving that women aren’t funny. She did this funny riff about female comedians locked in a paddock, and then she went back and forth with Sandi a bit about it, in literally the first moment in QI history of passing the Bechdel test, and Sandi started to say something about how rare and nice it is that she gets to sit next to a woman on a panel show, and Jack Dee interrupted Sandi mid-sentence to ask whether the reason they don’t have more women on panel shows is “once you get them started they don’t shut up”.

Now, obviously he was joking. The gruff, curmudgeonly persona is his thing, and this was meant to be part of that. But he got in a lot of "joke" sexist comments throughout that whole episode, a lot more than anyone else did even though this episode was essentially dedicated to comedic sexism. It doesn’t help that the YouTube comments are full of people unironically agreeing with Jack Dee’s comment that women don't shut up.

I saw this relatively early in my time watching all the long-running panel shows, so that was the lens through which I saw all Jack Dee's other appearances, and maybe because of that bias, I noticed that he interrupted women a lot on panel shows, and picked a lot of inappropriate moments for sexist jokes, often aimed at women in general on an all-male episode, or at the only woman in an episode, always a woman who was used to always being the one woman on panels and hearing jokes like that constantly. But at least when most of the men made those jokes they’d have laugh to suggest they didn’t mean it, Jack Dee would just glare at the women like it was their fault. And yeah, being grumpy is his persona, but he would sometimes break that and have a laugh with the men. Never women.

I don’t even mind a good ironically sexist joke. Honestly, I probably mind them less than I should. I enjoy a lot of comedy where a better feminist than me would reasonably say “irony is not a good enough excuse for how offensive this is”. I know irony is used to mask genuine bigotry and I hate that, but also, if I’m convinced enough that the person isn’t masking genuine bigotry, I can laugh at some pretty harsh stuff. You need to build up some cred before I’ll trust you with sexist jokes. If Nish Kumar went on a panel show and said all women should shut the fuck up, I’ll be pretty sure he’s kidding and it’s all right. But if Jack Dee has enough feminist cred to make those jokes okay, then I sure haven’t heard about it.

Also, Jack Dee showed up on Catsdown a lot and did the grumpy thing similar to Sean Lock, but was much much less funny about it, and yet everyone else on the show treated him like he was hilarious, and that annoyed me. Also, after Sean died, Jack Dee sat in for him as a guest team captain once, doing his significantly less funny version of Sean Lock's shtick (yeah it was probably Jack Dee's shtick first, I don't care), and I had a strong visceral reaction of

All right, that is way more words that I’d meant to write about Jack Dee. Honestly, after all that, he’s probably not that bad. He was mildly funny in Josh Widdicombe’s mildly funny sitcom. I heard some of his recent stand-up recently, and a bit of it made me laugh. I just don’t like him because I saw him on too many panel shows.

Babatunde Aleshe I know almost nothing about, except that he’s supposed to have been particularly good on Off Menu once (I wouldn’t know, don’t do food shows), and sometimes he does reality TV. I’ve seen him on Catsdown and WILTY and Rhod Gilbert’s Growing Pains, where he was never particularly memorable, but he was probably fine. I hope he’s entertaining.

And then there’s seat number five, and that’s sure an interesting one. Of course I'd thought about Rosie Jones as a potential Taskmaster contestant before, but I didn't expect it to happen. Not that I didn't expect them to have any physically disabled people. They've had Jonnie Peacock and Lenny Rush and one of these days they’re definitely going to cast Adam Hills and he’ll win and then Australia will annoyingly pull ahead of Canada in the competition for who has the most UK Taskmaster champions (it’s currently 2-2). But all those people are able to do most of Taskmaster without disability accommodations. I didn't expect them to cast someone who'd need significant accommodation.

Having said that, I was very happy to see they’d proved me wrong and are, in fact, going to do that. I think she’ll be great. There are lots of ways to make Taskmaster accessible – just because I thought they wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean I thought they couldn’t.

Rosie Jones’ style of humour will go great on Taskmaster. Some recent seasons have lacked a bit of spark of contestant interaction in the studio, and Rosie Jones is always going after people. She won’t leave anyone alone, which I think will work great on the show. She can be the chaotic wildcard ball of energy that Taskmaster needs to really get going. And she is very funny. That’ll be great. I'm excited to see her get into it with Greg and Alex as well as the other contestants. And to see her yell at people when anything happens during tasks.

So that’s the new lineup announcement. Have I covered everyone? I think that's all the important stuff. It’s good to have the lineup out there.

[panelshowsource]

could you make a post about all the books from comedians you own/have ordered and which are your favorites I want to buy all of them but don't know where to start ++++++++ would love to know if you know of a way to order a signed copy of David's book if I don't live in the UK

you know, in a stroke of what may be relevant information, i'm actually an editorial director by day and even used to be a literary agent here in nyc — none of which is obvious on account of my billion rushed typos and...just...general existence :) (i promise i'm supremely carefully handed in my editing!!! and have a lot of resources, at my job hahahahaha oh god maybe i shouldn't have mentioned this!!!) — but i'm really no book critic and have no idea how my tastes stack up against what a lot of you are looking for. i'm happy to share some of my general, poorly articulated internet thoughts but it may be more worth checking out goodreads or talking with others who have more experience with autobiographies (which a majority of these types of books are)!

to begin with a disclaimer, one of my friends texted me recently, "why do you only watch sad movies?" i love sad films, sad music, i love to cry, catharsis, sentimentality which is always a little self-indulgent. it's a bit ironic, because this is a comedy blog and you guys know me as someone who loves to find things to laugh about and i fill my life with so much silliness through his huge, life-long hobby, but, all the same, that is only one side of me, i guess. i'm saying this now because you're about to hear me talk briefly about a few somewhat-to-incredibly sad books and be like "oh i didn't know this what i was getting into" 😅

books i do recommend:

just ignore him by alan davies — this isn't a book review but i am self-conscious about just how i describe this book, because it's so sensitive and i carry a lot of respect for alan. at the time of publication, alan actually didn't want any of the press to know and/or discuss the most tragic elements of the book, so readers wouldn't be influenced in any direction before confronting it themselves. (it's okay to talk about now of course, and anyone should know there are major trigger warnings for death, child abuse, sexual abuse, and pedophilia.) it is a sad book about his earliest years: the complexities and nuances of male power and manipulation, of unimaginable loneliness, of a lost child. alan said it wasn't cathartic to write—that is was indeed very painful—but the vulnerability, the commitment to shirking himself of the painful silence he endured for most of his life, is exceptionally moving. alan's writing can be quite thorough, even flowery, in creating vivid places and images, so so much of the heaviness feels piercing and even disturbing. if you read other comedians' books, a decent majority of them are written in the style of standup or, say, a ted talk — with performance in mind, specific structures and beats that mimic how they'd tell these stories on stage. i would argue this is quite different to that, that while the writing is in a style and structure that benefits being read aloud this is a very different alan to alan the performer. and, very honestly, i'm really not an audiobook person, not to mention listening is a wholly different experience to reading — but the audiobook for this is phenomenal: alan narrates and, while of course it's his story so he'll tell it best, he is a very gentle, thoughtful storyteller. this will be you by chapter 4:

moab is my washpot + fry chronicles by stephen fry — the first and second of his three autobiographies covering some of the most sensational times (stephen is willing to admit) of his childhood and teen years + his rise to fame through the cambridge footlights. these are good reads for 1) stephen fry fans duh and 2) people who can enjoy the inspiration of auden, waugh, wilde, wodehouse, quintessential english writers who inform the foundation of stephen's relationship with literature and appreciation. stephen is painfully honest — and often sorry for it, apologising for what he perceives to be his shortcomings — and you can't help but feel, even early on in the first book, that his view of his own world is somehow even more subjective than everyone else's views of their own worlds. maybe it's because he's so judgmental, maybe it's his oscillating mental health, maybe it's the shocking thrust with which he was confronted with the wideness of the world...i'm not sure, but stephen's life through stephen's eyes is so very stephen-y. i think that's why we love him‚ though i can see some people loathing the less admirable sides of him, which he does show, so don't read this if you want to maintain some image of him that helps you cope or keeps you perfectly entertained. if you're not british, the fry chronicles is an especially good read to scratch some of your anglophilic interests (lotsss of namedropping and backstage chat)!

delicacy: a memoir about cake and death by katy wix — one of my recent faves and another book that isn't thoroughly funny. told in 21 vignettes either centered around or vaguely related to cake, katy talks about her school life, grief and loss, self-esteem and body image, misogyny — in ways that are just...matter of fact...opposed to lessons learned or things she's working on through therapy. she's accepted a lot, but she's also afflicted by a lot to this day; she's capably honest about where her reality stands. for this reason, it can be a bleak and certainly very raw read. i listened to the audiobook for this one, which was nice, but i much recommend the actual written book as the vignettes are in different formats (short story prose, letters, email exchanges) that often anchor time and place, intention, even the little peeks of light of comedy. katy's writing is very lovely, both my heart and mind were touched.

back story by david mitchell — a mildly vulnerable, moderately insightful, and quite humorous exploration of david's up-and-coming years. i really appreciate the premise — due a bad back and sciatica, he begins taking very long walks every day, and these walks trigger memories and anecdotes as he passes certain places — that really doesn't come off as a gimmick. it's a very easy read (or listen) and what i'd consider an uncomplicated, unproblematic bio, but it would be difficult to enjoy if you're only a casual fan of david mitchell or only like him in his most recent dad years, as it was written in his peep show heyday and is so much about those years of his life, his relationship with robert webb, etc. a good intro-to-the-genre book and the very first britcom book i read way back in 2010!

i also really enjoy graham norton's books — especially for the goss, but he's a great writer and his debut fiction novel got quite good reviews! — and tim key's books of poetry, though you really need to be a fan of tim key to read tim key :')

books i do not recommend:

before & laughter by jimmy carr — this book is much less of an autobiography (details are scant and anecdotes are few; it's cute when he refers to karoline as "my girl") and much more a collection of 1) jimmy's interpretation of contemporary comedy and what it means to be a comedian, and 2) how that journey, and his evolving attitudes, shaped him + became advice he would offer to others. this is why he calls the book adjacent to self help & motivational speaking. i don't think it teaches you anything new about him — literally or as an writer — so i don't recommend reading it, though the audiobook (where he's truly performing the writing like a ted talk) is an easy listen. a lot of people will not understand that jimmy is overwhelmingly sincere in regards to all of the topics and personal philosophies the jimmy nearing 50 espouses. he's someone with very studied, thorough personal philosophies (if you've seen him on podcasts talking about his life and career then you'll know just what i mean) and he explains them deftly, but they can feel a bit...how should i say this...flat to people who have heard a lot of it before, in hollywood movies or from their own parents or wherever. he didn't write this just for another stream of income — he is passionate about these conversations and that counts for something. overall i already knew a bit about the guy and didn't need this.

my shit life so far by frankie boyle — i have never read one of frankie's fiction novels (crime is really not my thing, so someone needs to let me know if richard osman's book series is a smash because i'm only going to check them out if i'm convinced to), but as a long-time fan of his, knowing how much of a wordsmith he is, and how intentional he is in everything he says, i was surprised by how dull i found this. his shit life was just that — uninteresting, meandering. his anecdotes may have worked better aloud than on paper, but they didn't grab me. you learn a bit about his young adulthood, but like jimmy he's intensely private and i could feel that distance between us even while reading an autobiography. it didn't work for me, super sad about it :(

can everyone please calm down? by mae martin — instead of criticising this book, i'd rather just make a disclaimer or two. if you are already engaged in queer discourses and dialogues, you are not going to learn very much from this book. both the descriptive writing and presentation of research is "accessible" to the point i'd call it more adjacent to YA than adult literature; if you prefer more creative, complicated, and/or signature writing styles, this book is not for you. if you are a big fan of mae martin and would appreciate an overview of their journey on the identity spectrum (going so far as to even rejecting it, in some capacities) in one place, then this may be convenient — but even then, at this point, it's somewhat outdated. imo a well-intention skip.

phil wang and tom allen are two more i think don't convince me with their writing, but i'm still making my ways through a couple of books and could probably talk more about this later!

i have never made this kind of non-fiction bio a priority on my long reading list, so i still have a lot of exploring and catching up to do, but i'm finding that i do prefer the books that explore the events of comedian's past as well as those that walk the reader through experiences in the comedy & tv industries. there are a lot of books about mental health and identity, which may be more of what many of you are looking for (sara pascoe, fern brady, jon richardson, and more).

okaY PHEW SORRY i always type too much 😒

first, as for david mitchell's new book, you can order it signed from waterstones as they ship to the usa — and it's currently half off!!!!! if you want to buy it unsigned from a usa retailer amazon is cheapest and target & bookshop are the cheapest non-amazon options :) an audiobook is coming out as well, so i do believe i will be able to add that to googledrive before too long, but no guarantees on a good time frame!

you can go here to download any of the ebooks & audiobooks i have on my googledrive!

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Cecil Beaton self-portrait, Cambridge Footlights, 1925 | src Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's via anOther magazine

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[evenyouyouweirdo]

This is a collection of pics that I have found online of David Mitchell when he was in the Cambridge Footlights or right after uni.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

Ahhh my tiny tiny babies 💖💖

[cinemaocd]

Jenny's ongoing list of films watched 2024

January

RRR (2023)*

Peter's Friends (1992)*

The Lady Eve (1941)

How to Get a Head in Advertising (1988)*

High Fidelity (2000)

Frieda (1947)*

Oh...Rosalinda! (1955)

The Quick and the Dead (1995)*

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)*

The Life and Death of Col. Blimp (1943) Commentary Track (2012)*

Rhubarb (1951)*

The Birds (1963)*

House of Yes (1997)*

Cassandra Cat (1963)*

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Night of the Comet (1984)

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)*

For Me and My Gal (1942)*

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The Small, Back Room (1949)

House of Games (1987)

Water (1985)*

The Ballad of John and Yoko (2023)*

The Meaning of Life (1983)

Track 29 (1988)*

*New to me

Thoughts on the New to Me films:

New Year's Eve we watched RRR, a lot of fun, energetic, bright and action-packed. I enjoyed the way that little attention was given to the British characters. They were straight up villains in ill fitting ahistorical costumes, kind of like the way Indian/Asian characters are treated in Western films most of the time...$$$

New Year's Day we watched Peter's Friends, a drama/comedy from the early 90s starring all of the famous Cambridge Footlights. Big Chill-ish film set in a country house over the Christmas holidays. $$$

How to Get a Head in Advertising was weird and also really good. Had a similar vibe to Withnail and I (possibly because of Richard E. Grant, but also possibly the mixture of the surreal with the realistic). Quite stage-y in some ways but clever and savage in it's satire of life in the 80s. $$$

Frieda: Oh I loved this! Weird World War II melodrama about a German girl marrying a British boy and all the trouble it causes with his complex family situation. Such a stellar cast including the late, great Glynnis Johns. $$$$

The Quick and the Dead: I set my expectations quite low for this and was pleasantly surprised. I liked Sam Raimi's comic book-y take on gunfighters and esp. loved Sharon Stone's character. We love to see a female action hero with no love interest. A nice twist on the Man with no Name trope. Excellent cast as well with Russell Crowe, Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider and Woody Stroud in his final film. $$$

The Barefoot Contessa: Joseph Mankewitcz is one of the geniuses of old Hollywood but this ain't it, chief. Just kind of all of the place melodrama that makes no sense and relies too much on Ava Gardner looking amazing in technicolor in the South of France. A bit of a commentary on Grace Kelly who a few years earlier married minor royalty on the Riviera. Even Rossano Brazzi can't save this mess for me. $

Rhubarb: Two genres I usually kind of hate (family-friendly animal centered film, sports film) combined into one and it's actually a lot of fun. Ray Milland and a bunch of classic character actors as the baseball team (also Leonard Nemoy has a tiny part as a mobster) in this slight/ predictable romp. $$

The Birds: Woah, shit this was good. I should have known. Amazing tension created and Hitchcock just sells the surreal horror with lots of rear projection...so. much. rear. projection. $$$

House of Yes: How about House of NOPE. Ugh what a mess this was. Some good performances and intriguing story, but it was very stagey and I don't know why the 90s couldn't make a story about adult children and their parents without reducing everyone to cliches and stereotypes but this and Six Degrees of Separation are definitely guilty of that, but the latter is just a better film. $

Cassandra Cat: Takes a long time to get to the cat which given that this was a family film from the 60s might be a problem for some viewers, expecting a more cat-centric movie. Interesting riff on fairy tales from the Czech New Wave. Beautiful Demy-esque technicolor and settings make this 60s nonsense fly by. $$

The Day the Earth Caught Fire: 60s nuclear panic disaster film that really just shows the earth as it is now in the throws of global warming. Yikes. Thoughtfully written and well acted by a bunch of folks I'd never heard of. $$

For Me and My Gal: Directed by Busby Berkley and starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland and set in the 1920s on the Vaudeville circuit, I was expecting a lot more fun, dancing, color, costumes etc. This is actually more of a black and white war time melodrama with some music shoved into it and the dancing is very rudimentary. (I think this is probably because Garland esp. at this stage wasn't in the same league with Gene Kelly and I think it would have been too noticable...). Filmed at the entry of America into WW2 this was quite a deliberate propaganda piece. $$

TLADOCB Commentary: I've watched this movie 20 times at least but the commentary really made me think about a bunch of things differently. Can't say I recommend unless you are fanatic though as it's obviously pieced together from interviews Michael Powell and Martin Scorcese $$

Water (1985): If you smoke the exact right strain of sativa and ignore some of the more dated aspects of this 80s comedy, that reads as if Local Hero were a Cheech and Chong film--this is a total classic. Irreverent Michael Caine just straight up breaking character the minute he turns into a guerilla fighter in the jungle and being far too competent and cool, and then snapping back to sweetly shy, inept British Civil Servant, finding he actually loves his hated backwater post (the invent Casara part Caribbean, part Devon Jurassic Coast) while having to actually do his job. Political satire and fully both barrels to Maggie Thatcher and Reagan. Good on em. Filmed in St. Lucia, the movie has a zany heart and little taste, hoovering up vast quantities of competent TV players from my youth: Herman Munster and Reginald Perrin to name but two. Awkward love story and some uneven acting from Valerie Perrin and Brenda Vaccaro. I enjoyed myself, heartily, anyway. $$$

The Ballad of John and Yoko: Technically a video essay with amazing production values (the licensing alone was epic) dragging together disparate topics around the central theme of women being blamed for bad things happening to infantalized male geniuses. Is it the most coherent argument? No. Does it absolutely tap into many unexpressed or implied ideas that have been floating around since me too? Absolutely. $$

Track 29: This was some of the worst casting I've ever seen in a film. When I think of Texas nurse who is into trains and spanking, I don't automatically think of comedian Sandra Bernhardt. When I think of an actress of that era who was old enough to play Gary Oldman's mother, I don't think of Theresa Russell who is the same age as Oldman and looked every bit as young as he did in the film. Maybe that was the point? I'm not sure. The story was weird, like a Southern Gothic melodrama/black comedy ala Flannery O'Connor, but there was something off about the whole thing.

[delightfullysubatomic]

An unfinished and not fully accurate timeline of the NMJ Lads 2000-2012 (Tim-centred tbh)

Summer 2000: Alex goes to Edinburgh with 'How To Avoid Huge Ships'

Academic year 2000-2001: Mark in year ? of uni, Alex in his final year of uni year of uni, Tim has just graduated. Tim decides to do a play because he didn't do one in his final year at uni.

Alex was also doing stand up in another strand of Footlights (I think, idk how it works)

2000 (Cambridge, term 1)- Alex writes a panto of Treasure Island, Tim auditions and gets a role. Performances are late Nov-early Dec. Tim also auditioned for Bouncers by John Godber. He got both roles and fortuitously decided to do the panto.

(I don't think Alex and Tim became close yet)

2001 (Cambridge, term 2) - Tim does the Spring Review (sketch show) and starts to write a bit (was Mark in this??)

2001 (Cambridge, term 3) - Tim and Mark audition to be in the Footlights Summer Tour, which is what Emma Thompson, High Laurie et al did. They perform at Edinburgh and are nominated for Best Newcomer. It's directed by [friend who still directs plays w Tom Basden]

I don't know if the Spring and Summer sketch show / team are/were the same as each other but Tim conflates the whole year into one when telling any stories about it. Not sure either if they figured out about Tim not being a student during the Spring or the Summer.

2002: Tim and Dinky Donk contribute to an EP of Concrete Cow sketch show on Radio 4

Tim and Mark move to London. IIRC Tim moved back to Cambridge after a bit (maybe after losing his job at Hamley’s?), not sure when he moved back to London - suspect 2003/2004 as he’s still doing stuff in Cambridge at that point.

2002: Mark wins the Telegraph Open Mic Award. Tim's stand up career starts and ends in the space of 10 ok to terrible gigs

2003: Making Fish Laugh - Alex’s first solo show (Tim as assistant). Nominated for Best Newcomer

2003: Alex is on Brain Candy on BBC3 (stand up variety show)

2003: Mark and Tim direct the Footlights tour show(?) Starring some future Inbetweeners

2004: Mark's first 24 hour show (Tim as assistant). Mark gets engaged. Mark also does a show with Rhod Gilbert.

2004: Alex's second show Every Body Talks (Tim as assistant)

2004: Tim performs Luke and Stella at Edinburgh

2004: Mark's first novel is published

2004ish: Tim starts writing poems

2005: Alex gets married

2005: Mark does his first solo show and another 24 hour show

2005: Mark is nominated for Best Newcomer

2005: Alex’s third show When in Rome (Tim as assistant)

At some point Tim lives with Alex (and wife?)

2005-2007 (?): Tim performs in Cowards in Edinburgh (they also did it in London and in early days Alex, Mark and Rick Edwards were involved)

2006: Mark wins the inaugural Edinburgh Panel Prize and Time Out Critics Choice Award. He is nommed for the Barry Award (Melbourne)

2006: Mark starts appearing on Mock the Week and other panel shows

2006-2008 (+Xmas 2009): Tim adapts All Bar Luke for Radio 4

2006-2007 Alex and Dinky Donk try to meet someone from every nationality. I don't know if they get a show out of this!

2006: Mark and Tim are in Time Trumpet

2007: Mark writes 2 pilots. One stars Tom Basden and the summary sounds suspiciously like Tim's life at that time

207: Mark starts his Radio 4 show with Tim and Basden

2007: We Need Answers at Edinburgh

2007: Alex's fourth show Birdwatching at Edinburgh

2007: Tim’s first solo show Slut In The Hut in Edinburgh. It is produced by new comedy company The Invisible Dot, which is Tim’s comedy home until 2016ish.

2007: Herb McGwyer (nominated for Best Short Film BAFTA in 2008)

2007: Tim lives with his brother

2007ish: Cowards on the radio

2008: We Need Answers (2) at Edinburgh

2008: Alex's fifth show Wordwatching at Edinburgh

2009: Tim’s second solo the Slutcracker show in Edinburgh. He wins the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

2009: Mark does The Hotel immersive (hey there recent Taskmaster Ep)

2009: We Need Answers on TV

2009: Birdwatchingwatching by Alex and Tim's first poetry book are published

2009: Cowards on BBC4

2010: Taskmaster in Edinburgh (1)

2010: The Horne Section begins

2010ish: Tim joins the Alan Partridge world

2010: Tim is in Party by Tom Basden on Radio 4

2011: Taskmaster in Edinburgh (2)

2012: Tom start Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme

2008-2012(ish): Tim lives in a box room in Limehouse. During this time he wins the Edinburgh Comedy Award and is on TV quite a bit. He said during ep 1 of Taskmaster that he had no space for anything but kept the lintel(?) From his Edinburgh show. In the Taskmaster podcast Josh said Tim implied he was homeless but he would have been referencing the fact that he had a box room’s worth of living space (I included this because Josh thought Tim was lying in the show but i’m pretty sure he wasn’t).