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While Naked Video directed much of its mockery at Scotland, its parodies of
popular culture and satirical attacks on British and international politicians
translated well to a wider audience. Material was variable, but when it hit the
target Naked Video was very funny, with a recognisable debt to Not the Nine O' Clock
News (BBC, 1979-82) and similar anti-establishment credentials.
Originally a BBC Radio Scotland show entitled Naked Radio, it was brought to
television by Colin Gilbert, who had produced two earlier BBC Scotland sketch
shows, A Kick Up The Eighties (BBC, 1981-84) and Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My
Licence Fee (BBC, 1984). Welsh comedians Helen Lederer and John Sparkes joined
the otherwise all-Scots cast of Gregor Fisher, Andy Gray, Elaine C Smith,
Jonathan Watson, Louise Beattie, Kate Donnelly, Tony Roper and Ron Bain. Each
episode contained quick-fire sketches, a satirical musical number and monologues
delivered in character. A spoof news desk presented by Gray and Lederer was
replaced by Fisher's brilliant turn as Gus, news anchor at the Outer Hebridean
Broadcasting Corporation.
Naked Video dealt mostly in caricature, most successfully with Fisher's Rab C
Nesbitt, a perpetually outraged Glaswegian drunk and amateur philosopher who
proudly described himself as 'scum'. Rab eventually won his own show, Rab C
Nesbitt (BBC, 1998-99). Lederer's drunken Sloane was a pitch-perfect parody of a
familiar 80s type. It was Sparkes, though, who provided
Naked Video's most fully-rounded character in the shape of his creation Siadwel, a hopeless young man who deludedly fancied himself a poet. Despite his inept verse, Siadwel's
monologues were brimming with pathos, cheerfully delineating his weekly depressions
and humiliating encounters.
By the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and her Tory colleagues were hate
figures in Scotland, and Naked Video targeted them regularly. It was not unusual
for an edition to feature three or more sketches directed against them. Attacks
on Scotland's alcohol consumption, religious divide and cultural history brought
some of the biggest laughs, although such references may have been lost on
non-Scottish viewers.
As well as providing early writing gigs for The Fast Show's (BBC, 1994-97;
2000) Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse, Naked Video proved to be influential
for Scottish comedy. Sparkes left in 1989 to join the cast of Absolutely
(1989-93), while Fisher, Smith and Roper reprised their respective roles in Rab
C Nesbitt, and Watson continues to mock Scottish football every Hogmanay in Only
an Excuse? (BBC, 1993-).
Kevin Sturton
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1. How to get a hangover (1.08)
