This Morning With Richard Not Judy

This Morning With Richard Not Judy or TMWRNJ was a British comedy television programme, written by and starring Lee and Herring (the comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring), and made and broadcast by the BBC. Two series were broadcast between 1998 and 1999. The name was a satirical reference to ITV's This Morning which was at the time popularly refered to as This Morning with Richard and Judy.

Related Topics:
British - Comedy - Lee and Herring - Stewart Lee - Richard Herring - BBC - 1998 - 1999 - ITV - This Morning - Richard and Judy

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The show was a reworking of old material from their previous work together (radio and tv) along with new characters. The show was hosted in a daytime chat show format in front of a live studio audience. It was structured by the often strange obsessions of Richard Herring, examples include his rating of the milk of all creatures and attempting to popularise the acronym of the show (TMWRNJ) (in the style of Tiswas). The show featured (and acknowledged its use of) repetition, with regular and vigilant viewers being rewarded by jokes that would make no sense to casual viewers. The show seemed to oscillate between the intellectual and peurile, however irony was often used, even though the citing of irony as an excuse was mocked by the show's stars in one of many self-referential jokes.

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Regular segments included:

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• The Curious Orange - Questions about life from Richard Herring's illegitimate orange son, played by Paul Putner. The name is derived from the song Kurious Oranj by The Fall, which was used to introduce each Curious Orange segment. The Orange was crushed to death at the end of the first series but later reconstituted by a mad scientist. For a while during the second series he was replaced by The Curious Alien (due to Putner's commitments elsewhere). By the final episode, the Curious Orange had mutated into a character reminiscient of Doctor Who's Davros, albeit that the resemblance was not exact enough to invite litigation.
• Histor's Eye - Ostensibly a Sky TV children's television programme featuring two pirate crows: the titular Histor and his young uninformed friend Pliny. Histor's ability to transport himself and Pliny through time would be used to satirise current affairs, and the script would without fail be peppered with deliberately weak but dense bird-related multiple puns, which would increase in volume and weakness as the series progressed (For example, Pliny would say 'Egg feather bird Earth tit' in place of 'I've never heard of it', or 'Feather me wingers' in place of 'Shiver me timbers') and Histor and the viewers would try to work out the meaning. Pliny's idiocy drives Histor to murder him by stuffing him with eggs until he burst (only for Histor to be subsequently haunted by his ghost).
• Extra Final Scene - This would take the form of a tacked-on ending for a different film each week, such as the one for Blues Brothers 2000 which saw "Dan Aykroyd" and "John Goodman" laughing and urinating on the grave of "John Belushi" before driving off in the Bluesmobile.
• Sunday Heroes - In one sketch per week a disciple would pose a question to Jesus, usually on a topic of importance that would split Christianity (eg Transubstantion vs Transignification). Instead of answering directly He would make a vague comment (such as instructing them to "consider the lily") and say "ah" in a mysterious manner, causing all but Matthew to "ah" along with Him and leading him to become frustrated with the evasion. Judas would also laugh at words which were different out of context. Stewart Lee played Jesus; the disciples were Carlton Dixon (Peter), Richard Herring (Matthew), Paul Putner (Thomas), Trevor Lock (Thaddaeus), Kevin Eldon (Judas Iscariot) and Emma Kennedy (Ian). These sketches tended to cause some controversy given the time of the show and the day of its broadcast.
• Pause for Thought for the Day - The Unusual Priest, played by Kevin Eldon, would present moral dilemmas, dealing with them in increasingly ridiculous fashion throughout the two series.
• The Ironic Review - a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a so-called cutting edge magazine, featured in the first series.
• The Lettuce Family - a bizarre sitcom in which the main characters were lettuce leaves.
• Men of Achievement 1974 - A short item in which the details of an entry in the book of the same name would be read out.
• When Insects Attack - A parody of the show When Animals Attack, with a voice-over supposedly by actor Greg Evigan (actually Mark Gatiss). In the second series this was replaced by When Things Get Knocked Over, Spill, or Fall Out Of Cupboards.
• Roger Crowley - the self-styled most evil man alive, played by Roger Mann. During the first series he would regularly break into the programme to outline his latest absurd plan for world domination. Based on Aleister Crowley, evident in the costume (triangular hat).
• The Organ Gang - A spoof children's series, drawn by Joseph Champniss and narrated by Brian Cant, in which the characters were all organs of the human body. It bore some resemblance to the real children's series The Munch Bunch in which all the characters were fruit and vegetables.
• Nostradamus and his horse David Collins - A regular feature in the second series, medieval seer Nostradamus (played by Emma Kennedy with a false beard) would give his predictions for the week ahead, which would often be either completely absurd or extremely vague.
• King (or Queen) of the Show - in each edition, a member of the audience would be crowned "King or Queen of the Show", either at random or as a reward for sending in an especially entertaining letter. After being crowned, they would be offered various items from a trolley. A running joke was that the items would often include a box of Golden Grahams. The crown and trolley would be brought on by the normally mute ("we can't afford to pay you to speak") Trevor and Natalie (Trevor Lock and Natalie Brandon) who would always be dressed in outlandish costumes. At this point Trevor would invariably be mocked by Stew for having "a small face".

Kevin Eldon also reprised two of his characters from the earlier Lee & Herring series Fist of Fun, Simon Quinlank (the "King of Hobbies") and his portrayal of "the false Rod Hull" as a jelly fanatic with a false arm and giant chin. A run of sketches featuring Eldon as the false Rod Hull was filmed for the second series, but dropped when the real Rod Hull died just prior to the start of the series. A new sketch was filmed as a tribute and featured as the closing item of the last programme in the series. (Rod Hull had taken this in good humour and had featured in one episode of Fist of Fun as a guest, pouring scorn on the false Rod Hull.)

Related Topics:
Kevin Eldon - Fist of Fun - Rod Hull - Jelly

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TMWRNJ gained many complaints on Points of View, largely due to the suprisingly adult content for a programme shown at Sunday lunchtime. The Jesus sketches were much remarked on in Points of View due to the time of broadcast and uncertainty as to whether they were making fun of Jesus or people's take on the scriptures themselves. Like Fist of Fun it remains a cult series well-remembered by fans. Despite rumours that the original tapes had been misplaced by the BBC, the series does in fact exist in full in the BBC archives, however the chances of it receiving either a commercial release or a repeat run are slim.

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