The final episode of Going Live! aired on the 17th April 1993. I was distraught. My favourite TV show: gone forever. I made sure I recorded the whole thing, and it was a treasured possession for years, until I gave the tape to a girl I tried – and failed – to have sex with. That’s the kind of symbolism which gets you chucked out of film school for being too obvious.
Regardless: let’s get back to being 11 years old. The one thing to cling onto from Going Live! ending was Trev and Simon’s tour – starting just a month later.1 I got my tickets for the Nottingham Theatre Royal date on the 30th May, a week after my birthday, and waited patiently.
Needless to say, it was bloody great. Sadly, most of the specifics have escaped me due to my ridiculously dreadful memory, but I can recall thinking it was absolutely amazing, and being distraught2 at leaving the programme behind by mistake in the theatre. I’d love to still have a copy.
But here’s one of those odd things. I loved Trev and Simon, got up early to see them every week, and watched Trev And Simon’s Stupid Video and Trev and Simon’s Other Video to the point where I could recite them religiously.3 But somehow, I never knew that their ’93 tour had actually been released on VHS. Which seems so strange in 2017 – it’s difficult to avoid knowing far too much about any given topic you happen to be interested in. In 1993, it was far easier to remain ignorant.
Luckily, it is now 2017, so I can rectify my ignorance for free on YouTube. (Though if you do, I would suggest buying some current Trev & Simon merchandise would be in order.) But what I really want to talk about here is the section of the video featuring The Rogers Brothers – those all-round entertainers in the traditional manner. Characters which are about as bleak as Trev and Simon got, and all the more brilliant for it. I personally find nothing funnier than a washed-up old music hall act getting upset over their dead parents.
For more on The Rogers Brothers, and the act which inspired them, see this excellent post by Trev and Simon themselves.4 But let’s take a look at one particular point in the video above – specifically, at 9″28′ in.
RUDY: Randall, Randall – look. My end is flashing!
RANDALL: Careful, Rudy. Remember, “my end is flashing” didn’t mean then what it means now.WE CUT AWKWARDLY TO A WIDE SHOT OF THE THEATRE.
RANDALL: It’s really not that clever, you know, it really isn’t.
Clearly, something was removed in the VHS release of the tour – not only evidenced by the awkward cut to the wide shot with an accompanying dodgy audio edit, but also with the non sequitur in the dialogue afterwards, and the audience reaction. But what was cut?
I know what was cut. Because there’s one thing I do remember about going to see that tour when I was 12. A tour which plenty of parents took their kids along to… and I suspect were rather surprised and discomfited by some of the material, while their children laughed gleefully. It’s a joke which has stuck with me for well over two decades.
So I can exclusively reveal that the cut line was:
RANDALL: Careful, Rudy. Remember, “my end is flashing” didn’t mean then what it means now.
RUDY: No. But throbbing penis did.
And that’s the story of how Trev and Simon said the words “throbbing penis” in front of a whole load of kids and their parents. I would note however, that despite this being cut, Randall shutting the piano lid on Rudy’s penis so he could sing soprano is left fully intact.
Quality family entertainment.
And cheekily advertised by Trev and Simon themselves in their final sketch, which was then reiterated by Sarah Greene. “Just say it”, she says, in glorious contravention of the entire spirit of the BBC. ↩
Again. I spent a lot of time distraught. ↩
Fun fact: the linking material to Other Video gets funnier and funnier the older you get. I went from not being quite sure about it, to it being some of my favourite material Trev and Simon have ever done. ↩
Nope, I can’t explain why that post talks about Randolf, when it’s Randall in the video. Either it’s a mistake, or Trev and Simon used both names at different points. ↩
3 comments
Andrew Bowden on 24 September 2017 @ 9am
Now I owned that VHS and I never really noticed the clunky edit.
When I had a VHS player I watched them all very regularly. I did digitise then all before the player died. Time to drag them out I think.
clem on 24 September 2017 @ 10pm
That is brilliant. I watched all three of those videos quite recently and the specially-filmed stuff on Other Video is indeed great. (In fact both the sketches and links on Other Video are quite a lot stronger than the ones on Stupid Video imo.)
I didn’t see them on that tour but I did get to attend this just last year: http://thewaitingroom.uk/events/an-evening-with-trevor-and-simon/
Dave on 25 September 2017 @ 1pm
Never saw Trev and Simon, but when I saw the Chuckle Brothers in about ’96, one of the few things I remember was a routine involving Barry inside a barrel, poking a cucumber through a cheekily-positioned hole and wincing as Paul hacked it off. There was presumably context.
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