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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Man Alive

Harry Hill

1997 · 66 min

Surrealist stand-up featuring non-sequiturs, fake cats, and badgers.

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Harry Hill steps onto the stage of London’s Lyric Theatre in 1997 wearing his oversized collar to deliver an hour of surreal nonsense. He operates by abandoning jokes halfway through, repeating non-sequiturs like “Go away from the flats” until they wear the audience down, and demonstrating rhyming memory systems to dictate what dogs should eat. The performance relies entirely on his commitment to the bit, trading traditional setups and punchlines for eccentric repetition and a heavy reliance on a rubber hand puppet named Stouffer.

Released on VHS the same year his self-titled Channel 4 show debuted, Man Alive captures the comic just as his peculiar brand of absurdism was reaching the British mainstream. He incorporates multimedia with a black-and-white opening film about a boy with a big face, then spends the live show pulling audience members on stage for awkward interactions with his fake cat. The hour also includes his widely referenced “two scoops of mash” anecdote before ending exactly the way a live performance of this era should: with a badger parade.

The set list

5 bits

  1. The Boy With The Big Face

    A supporting black-and-white film about an adopted boy whose face is flattened by an angry lollipop lady, who subsequently becomes famous after saving Harry's life.

  2. Stouffer the Cat and audience desensitisation

    Hill brings out his rubber glove-puppet cat Stouffer and brings a female audience member on stage to desensitise her to cats by bringing Stouffer progressively closer.

  3. Two scoops of mash and chops

    A signature storytelling routine about mash and meat chops that became one of his most recognized early bits.

  4. The Badger Parade

    A live stage stunt featuring badgers sweeping across the stage alongside Hill demonstrating his singular gymnastics skill.

  5. Go away from the flats

    A nonsensical catchphrase and non-sequitur Hill repeatedly shouts at random throughout the performance.

How it plays

Tone
Delightfully absurd, surreal, silly, and bonkers.
On stage
Balding, bespectacled funnyman in oversized collars; hunched over, nervous, and mumbling, yet in total command of his absurd world.
Pace
Rapid-fire nonsense delivered through 'cut-up comedy' where multiple joke premises are initiated, abandoned, and revisited like spinning plates.
About
Surreal stories, Mundane observations, Family eccentricities, Food and confectionery, Wordplay and rhymes

What the critics said

Praised as off-the-wall and certifiable silliness, showcasing Hill's inventive cut-up comedy and absurd storytelling at full strength.

In the room: Kept the crowd laughing continuously for over an hour, with enthusiastic reactions to awkward crowd participation and surreal stage tricks.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: letterboxd.com, plotexplained.com, actoragecheck.com, wikinerd.com.br, allmovie.com, welleyenever.com, annalisabarbieri.com, en.wikipedia.org, adamnostalgia.wordpress.com, messengernewspapers.co.uk.

Backstory

Released on VHS in late 1997 around the time of his Channel 4 series, featuring a companion short film starring his wife Magda and co-written with Sean Lock.

Details

Released
Taped
The Lyric Theatre, London
Runtime
66 min
Director
Harry Hill, Peter Orton
Topics
Before
Live (1995)
After
First Class Scamp (1998)

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