From: MDuPree@world.std.com (Micky DuPree)
Subject: >>Re: Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Keywords: Whose Line Is It Anyway, John Sessions, Sandi Toksvig
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 07:43:23 GMT

[There are *many* other article references besides the one listed above
in the header, but I'm still working out how to get them up there.]

Thanks to everyone who offered additional cast notes and episode guide
updates.  I'll gather them all together and probably re-post when the
1992 series of WLIIA finishes running on Comedy Central.  (Since I'm
going to do it anyway, I may as well save the rest of you the work).

I'm going to continue to post WLIIA commentary primarily to
rec.arts.tv.uk, with cross-postings to rec.arts.tv and
alt.comedy.british.  There's some nice chat going on about the show in
alt.comedy.british but not everyone gets the alt. newsgroups.

In article <1992Mar31.184916.18549\@spuddy.uucp> spark\@spuddy.uucp
(Steve) writes:
>I wondered - Is 'Who's line is it anyway' shown over in the US?

As near as I can tell, we've gotten all of the 1988, 1989, and 1991
series, and the Comedy Central cable channel is currently in the process
of telecasting the 1992 series (which is breathtakingly quick
considering that it only just finished up in the U.K.).

>Incidentally, Greg Proops really gets up my nose with his snide
>anti-british comments. (Just had to get that out of my system)

I haven't noticed him being any more anti-British than any of the others
(that could just be cultural insensitivity on my part), but he puts me
off with his socially-inept-little-boy-geek persona.  Even though he's
competent for the format -- he can make up songs and think on his feet
-- I never look forward to him appearing on the show.  Or were you in
the audience during recording and heard anti-British comments he made
off-camera that the rest of us didn't hear?

>Unfortunately, I don't think you got the earlier series, which had some
>real classics in, mostly by John Sessions.

Sessions is my sentimental favorite -- he has an amazing mind and a lot
of discipline for staying in character -- but when I'm being honest with
myself, I don't think he is ideally suited for the format and vice
versa.  In the first place, he seems to be better suited for long,
involved pastiche and parody.  I'd be willing to wager that the
"Authors" game was designed around him so as to show off his familiarity
with literature and his mastery of dialects.  This is the kind of
performance that provokes the warm smile of recognition and admiration.
But as WLIIA evolved, the others turned the game more to quick laughs
and the outre' (e.g., Paul Merton choosing "Nostrodamus" as his author
and Tony Slattery opting for "mistranslators of European pornography"),
and it's difficult for the warm smile to compete with the belly laugh on
an equal footing.

The second problem with fitting John Sessions to the format is that he's
not the world's best team player.  (Christ, he doesn't NEED to be; he
could probably be the world's first one-man Shakespearean rep company.)
Some of the others turned this to advantage on WLIIA; e.g., after
Sessions used up the whole stage doing a bit of Chekhov, Jonathan Pryce
broke character, turned to Clive Anderson, and said, "If I had known the
role was going to be this small, I'd have never taken the part,"
prompting Anderson to say, "I see you've never worked with John before,"
which gave the audience and the other players a huge laugh, and made
Sessions look appropriately abashed.  But there were other times when
Sessions really did make his supposed teammates look superfluous.  I
don't think he's doing it on purpose.  He just expands to fill all the
space and time available.

In article <1992Apr1.133316.1\@acfcluster.nyu.edu>
axd7104\@acfcluster.nyu.edu (Aaron Dickey) writes:
>I was in the audience for four of the six shows taped here in New York
>[....]
>The one thing I wonder most about that show is the relationship between
>Greg [Proops] and Clive Anderson.  Those two just sniped at each other
>constantly during the tapings.

I've never really noticed this on the show itself.  Got any good off-
camera stories to tell?  Anyone else out there -- Brit or Yank -- have
WLIIA recording session stories?

(Hey Aaron!  Did Clive use any of your suggestions?)

In article <1992Apr2.163930.24981\@spider.co.uk> andrewc\@spider.co.uk
(Andrew Cannon) writes:
>[Anderson] is a lawyer by proffesion but also host's his own show
>called 'Clive Anderson' talks back. Talk show sort of thing (although
>he takes the piss out of his guest's alot !)

I think I can get the general feeling of the phrase from context (we've
seen Anderson one-up the players on WLIIA often enough), but for future
reference, what exactly does it mean to "take the piss out of" someone?
It's not an expression I've ever heard in the States.

What kind of guests does "Clive Anderson Talks Back" have?  Actors and
entertainers?  Politicians and pundits?  Both?  Neither?

For that matter, can anyone out there tell me what "John Sessions Tall
Tales" is/was about?

In article <1942.imc\@uk.ac.ox.prg> imc\@prg.ox.ac.uk (Ian Collier)
writes:
>I think they ought to sack Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops and give some
>other people a chance...

I'd miss Ryan.

>Contestants who I wish had been included:
>
>Stephen Fry

Amen.  I'd love to see Hugh Laurie try his hand at WLIIA, too.

>Sandi Toksvig

I miss her and Mike McShane already.

>Jan Ravens

She was pretty good.

P.S. Thanks for the episode guide update.  It appears that Comedy
Central is not showing the 1992 series in the U.K. broadcast order.

In article <1992Apr2.113811.4848\@doc.ic.ac.uk> ijp\@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian
Palmer) writes:
>Mike McShane and Sandy Toksvig have both given up doing "Who's Line is
>it anyway?" because they both got board with it. [....] Both have
>stated that they have no intentions of going back to it yet.

Awwww.  A pity.  Maybe time off and a little more variety in their
schedules will make it look better to them in the future.  (I think
they'd be terrific at the new game "Scenes from a Hat.")

>They have both been doing it since well before it got onto television
>(I think it started at the Comedy Club (London)).

And in article <1992Apr2.164345.5850\@doc.ic.ac.uk> jrg\@doc.ic.ac.uk
(James Grinter) writes:
>I remember [WLIIA] starting as a BBC Radio 4 programme [....] IMHO it
>worked better on the radio.

What's the scoop on this?  Does anyone know the definitive history of
WLIIA?  Did it go from live cabaret to radio to TV?  Was Anderson the
moderator in the earlier incarnation(s)?

Does anyone have audio tapes of the WLIIA radio broadcasts?  I don't
suppose there have been commercial audio tape releases?

>Sandy Toksvig also stated that she was rather narked with one of the
>producers as one time when they took a break he come down and asked her
>if she could try to be funnier.

Wow.  The only time I can remember her having difficulty holding her own
was in one of the 1991 American episodes when she had a rough time with
one of the songs.  But some of the cleverest bits in the entire series
were her and Mike's "Film and Theater Styles."  Who could forget "The
Housewife and the Plumber" (Sandi: "I'll get the *plunger*.") or "The
Automobile Accident," a.k.a. "Robocar"?  She gets my vote for overall
Best with Dialogue.  Of course, she can't sing worth a damn, but I
always reckoned they invented the game "Musical Producers" so that she
and Paul Merton could sit out the musical numbers (and give the singers
merry hell).

In article <1992Apr2.162205.8520\@acsu.buffalo.edu>
dunleavy\@acsu.buffalo.edu (Houston Dunleavy) writes:
>In article <1992Apr02.061438.10856\@crash.cts.com> osiris\@crash.cts.com
>(James Lanaghan) writes:
>>I think my favorite part of the show is when they are using the
>>propts, what about others, what do you like the most?
>
>I am a big fan of this show too, but my favourtie section has to be the
>"World's Worst" bit.

I think the show works best with the short takes, such as "Props" and
"World's Worst."  The long segments, such as "American Musical" or
"Opera" based on the life of someone in the audience, involve an awful
lot of boring setup with Clive trying to coax some useful material (and
some strained laughs) out of an invariably unhelpful audience member,
and if the payoff isn't big, that's a big investment of time and energy
gone to waste.

BTW, I think my single favorite segment is "Tag-Team Improv," and I
think Tony Slattery is the unsung hero of this game.  He picks up on
what others want him to do without so much as blinking, like when Ryan
Stiles started using him as a submarine periscope and without exchanging
a single word, Tony was in perfect synch.  Now THAT'S teamwork.

My least favorite game is one whose exact name I forget, but it's
something like "Where's Charlie?"  In it, one guy plays "Charlie," and
the other three talk about his awful bad habits.  "Charlie" eventually
shows up and has to act out all the bad habits they described.  It's
slightly funny in the setup, when you see the evil relish on the faces
of the three as they think up horrible things to stick to the fourth
(and sometimes to one another), but when "Charlie" has to act out all
those things it can border on the unpleasant as well as the stupid.  As
Clive once said, "Who thought up this game, anyway?"

In article <1490\@tymix.Tymnet.COM> cdm\@hydrogen.Tymnet.COM (Concert Data
Manager) writes:
>In article <1992Apr3.000018.20104\@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
>sidi\@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Sadiq Yusuf) writes:
>>Here in Chicago, I saw [WLIIA] on PBS, usually late nights [....]

I don't suppose anyone would know if there's any difference between the
PBS versions and the Comedy Central versions (any difference in editing,
for instance)?

>>(the woman, forgotten her name - she was a bit of a regular - she was
>pretty good too)
>
>You must mean Josie Lawrence (sp?).  Her improv songs were great, but
>she never could quite get the hang of the alphabet...

I wish they'd run more outtakes like that one.  It was hysterical
(although I bet poor Josie didn't think so.)  I couldn't BELIEVE that
someone who had every rhyme in the English language at her fingertips
didn't know the alphabet.  It would also help if they'd run the outtakes
somewhere in the same episode that they were originally taken from.  In
the segment as originally aired (and the editing was seamless), Clive
tells Josie and Sandi to start with "A," and when Sandi gets to "Q" she
says, "Queen's Regiment are taking us up," which gets a big laugh.
First time I saw it, I thought they were just laughing because Sandi had
found an interesting way to handle the difficult letter Q.  It wasn't
until I saw the outtake on the compilation show that I realized they
were laughing because they had originally started -- three or four
times! -- at Q with the line, "Queen's Regiment are taking us up," and
Josie simply could not remember what order the letters were supposed to
come in unless they started at "A."  So the audience was laughing
because it had taken them that long to get all the way back 'round to
where Sandi had originally started.  (If they had *sung* that game I bet
Josie would have breezed through it.)

Another time, they were playing "Party Quirks," with Tony as the host,
Mike as a Hell's Angel, and Josie as Little Red Riding Hood.  Josie
looks at Mike and says, "Oh, what a horrible, hairy man," and Tony says,
"He's a good kisser, though," which gets a laugh from the audience.
When I watched it the first time, it just looked like Tony being his
usual off-the-wall self.  The true meaning of that line wasn't revealed
until the compilation show, when they showed a fragment of a discarded
sketch (probably a "Where's Charlie?" where they were sticking it to
Mike) that obviously took place earlier in that same recording session.
Josie asks Mike, "Have you given up all your bad habits?"  Tony jumps
in, saying, "No.  He still picks his bottom."  Mike replies (while
picking his bottom), "Damn you!!  And I haven't stopped kissing men on
the lips!!" whereupon he *grabs* a startled Tony and plants a big one on
him while the audience roars.

In article <672\@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> dl1\@ukc.ac.uk (D.Langford) writes:
>I've seen the play [with McShane and Toksvig ....]. Sadly, though, it
>sucks. A good idea in theory - a professional (not amateur) production
>of Shakespeare using only 6 people. Lavish sets; Sandi spends much time
>flying in and out on a wire...

A pity.  A U.K. correspondent tells me that Sandi used to do something
like that on a children's show called "No 73."  There was a regular
feature called "The Mini-Epic" where three people had to act out all the
roles in a big story (with much flurry and changing of costumes).  An
example segment was Sandi and two other people enacting "The Three
Musketeers."  Since Sandi was playing both D'artagnon and his
girlfriend, they had to have the Cardinal's guards kidnap the girlfriend
in the first 3 minutes, and from then on in the play, D'artagnon and his
girlfriend were always just missing each other :-)

In article <1992Apr7.105147.1\@acfcluster.nyu.edu>
axd7104\@acfcluster.nyu.edu [hi Aaron!] writes:
>Sandi always seemed so high-strung to me.

Really?  I had never gotten that impression just from watching her on
the screen.  She always seemed so cool under fire.

In article <1992Apr10.200044.1\@acfcluster.nyu.edu>
axd7104\@acfcluster.nyu.edu [hi Aaron!] writes:
>In article <1992Apr9.175008.28182\@sdf.lonestar.org>
>joeisham\@sdf.lonestar.org (Joe Isham) writes:
>>Comedy Central is now airing series 5 of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"
>>[....]
>>Time Out called this series "the one that finally banished the ghost
>>of John Sessions from the set".

Why was that?  Simply because he didn't appear?  Was there some kind of
ill will going on behind the scenes?

>That's not even the newest series.  The newest ones are six "WLIIA in
>America" shows taped in February.

QUESTION: I've been breaking down the series by copyright year.  Does
anyone know of more canonical breakings?  E.g., can anyone tell me why
Joe called the earliest of the 1992 episodes "series 5" rather than
"series 4"?  And were the 1992 American episodes aired separately from
the 1992 British episodes in the U.K.?

More speculative question: are there no non-Caucasian improv performers
in Britain, America, or Canada?

-Micky