The Jasper Carrott Trial

Jasper Carrott stands accused of being a comedian. Framed as a literal courtroom trial, the 1997 BBC One project places the Brummie comic in the dock across from a spectacularly humorless Queen’s Counsel. The prosecutor takes the comedy entirely literally, forcing Carrott to defend the mechanics of a joke to a man who considers a punchline about a dog with no nose to be casual animal cruelty.

Originating as a Radio 2 broadcast before jumping to television, the six-part run was filmed at Teddington Studios. Carrott was already a British broadcasting fixture at this point, coming off the sketch show Canned Carrott and the sitcom The Detectives. Between answering to the court, he delivers straightforward observational routines. He details a scuba diving trip to Bali that culminates in an underwater shark-feeding session, and voices his intense frustration over the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest. The event was held in his native Birmingham, yet organizers handed the hosting duties to Ulrika Jonsson and Terry Wogan instead of a local.