Peter Richardson on the legacy of The Comic Strip Presents...

The Comic Strip had Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson - a great double-act , highly energetic and funny - along with Alexei Sayle, still the best stand-up around, and the legendary French and Saunders, who have created some brilliant comic moments. Along with Nigel Planer and myself, we became something of a comedy force in the early eighties.

It began in a Soho strip club owned by Paul Raymond in 1980. The Comic Strip opened as a comedy show set in Raymond’s unsafe place of seedy glamour, away from any conventional art centre or fringe pub. Even though Time Out called us ‘the guerrillas of new wave humour’, it took a couple of weeks for the show to become a hit. It then ran for a year and was visited by several Hollywood stars like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman. Robin Williams often turned up late asking to do a spot: “I’ve got David Bowie with me, can I just do five minutes?”

Without Channel 4, the Comic Strip would never have appeared on our screens as it did on the opening night of this new alternative channel. As Comic Strip producer, I loved films, creating a story and taking the audience on a comedy journey. I was less keen on us getting harnessed to a studio set, playing the same characters each week. This gang of comedians were so good, they could play anything. We could be the new Ealing Films. In the end we did both, and The Young Ones became a big hit on the BBC.

Most television comedy is, or was, built around repetition. People love seeing more of the same, so the Comic Strip presenting six different comedy films was initially not a great fit for television. Luckily, Channel 4 were looking to be different and with the arrival of two more comedy greats, Robbie Coltrane and Keith Allen, we were given the go ahead.

Two of the films in that first 1982 series hit the spot with Bad News Tour, a spoof documentary about a hapless heavy metal band on tour, and Five Go Mad in Dorset, a send-up of the Famous Five books highlighting the racist, sexist attitudes of those entitled kids.

Over the next 30 years we made 45 films, all different, of which about a dozen can still entertain. Ealing Films made 100 comedies over 20 years and only about 15 are still remembered. Seeing the Comic Strip’s best films on the big screen and hearing the laughter is a lot more fun than sitting alone on a sofa watching it on TV.

Some of our most successful films were the satires like Red Nose of Courage and The Hunt for Tony Blair, which were only ever seen once on TV. Red Nose features our ex-Prime Minister John Major running away from a circus to become an MP, while The Hunt For Tony Blair sees another PM on the run from the law attempting to prove his innocence. It’s loosely a comedy version of The 39 Steps.

Apart from the movie The Supergrass (2 August), which has been recut for a modern-day audience, we’re also showing a new cut of Fistful of Traveller’s Cheques and Four Men in a Car, along with The Strike and Bad News Tour.

The first Edinburgh weekend (2-3 August) features our guest Alexei Sayle giving us three of his best film performances, including the hapless motorbike cop in the new cut of The Supergrass. The following weekend (8-10 August ) features guests Keith Allen and Phil Cornwell and screenings of Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown and Gino - Full Story and Pics, along with one film we’ve never screened before, Les Dogs (8 August), starring Kate Bush and Miranda Richardson with a Jeff Beck soundtrack. It’s weird and surreal, but some like it that way.

Finally, where better than the Edinburgh Festival is there to show the best of the Comic Strip on the big screen, including a Best of Rik Mayall spot on the 8 and 9 August?

The Comic Strip Presents…. is at Just the Tonic Nucleus, 2-3 and 8-10 August at 1pm. www.edinburgh.justthetonic.com

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