What a completely excellent idea the “Comedy Roasting” series on Channel 4 was. I suppose it could be seen as a modernising of the awful ‘This is your life’ programme, and bringing it into a more succinct youthful context.
Basically, a ‘roasting’ is people taking the piss out of somebody who isn’t there. Meanwhile, this ‘comedy roasting’ was a nightly collection of (mainly) stand-up comedians taking the piss out of somebody who was there. Over the three nights, with one ‘roastee’ per night, we saw the likes of Jimmy Carr, Jack Dee, Sean Lock, Jonathan Ross, Louis Walsh and plenty more take turns at a podium in front of an audience sat at tables, being rude about Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osborne, and Chris Tarrant. At the end of the roasting, the roastee could take to the podium with the right of reply, usually with equally cutting and awful, yet extremely funny, things to say about the roasters.
One would think that the close to the knuckle nature of the roastings would actually offend the roastees, and one wonders if later, behind the scenes, little precious strops were pulled and fights of a Springer show nature actually broke out. I suspect not though, since I’d guess it’s all just a bit of show business really.
Whatever the truth, it was an immensely funny idea for a format, and for me it worked. Although the Brucie roasting contained a lot of references to him being old, still alive, and in need of a ‘carer’, it took the Sharon roasting to bring out the liberal sexual innuendo about roasters wanting to shag her or her daughters, and extensive use of ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ without the need for the words to be bleeped out (and, I note, with no complaints from the annoying cunts that normally complain about swearing on tv). By the Chris roasting, the complete disrespect of the roastee’s career had reached an all time high, not to mention their personal life and marriages.
I found all three shows good natured laugh out loud funny, and highly recommend them to anybody with three hours to kill and a good access to the 4OD replay service. I think that self-deprecation is the way forward for comedy and this format was a bit of creative genius for which we should thank those behind the series and, more importantly, the commissioning editors of Channel 4 who were brave enough to go with it. It’s probably a moment in time, and I suspect there aren’t other roastees in the pipeline with the temperament to take it, but I could see this format building a real cult following.
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