Live

Harry Hill paces the stage in oversized shirt collars, barking rapid-fire non sequiturs with the urgent delivery of a seaside compere having an episode. The set operates on pure nonsense logic: an electrified fly zapper so lethal that insects have cardiac arrest an inch before touching it, or chimpanzees reacting in baffled silence when shown video footage of their own warning calls.

Taped at London’s Queen’s Theatre and released directly to VHS in 1995, the hour caught Hill shortly after he left medicine for the stage. He had already claimed the Perrier Best Newcomer award at Edinburgh and established his voice on BBC Radio 4’s Fruit Corner, but this was his first full stand-up show committed to tape.

It serves as an early catalog for characters and routines that soon migrated to television. Dr. Matt Bradstock appears as his bewildered sidekick, Mary Maxted and Eileen Matthews pop up as elderly bystanders, and Hill works a blue felt cat named Stouffer before marching into a rudimentary badger parade.