James Delingpole James Delingpole

Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos is just too funny for its own good

If BBC2 is as smug and pretentious as this genius show suggests, how come someone at BBC2 commissioned it?

Paul Hollywood (Harry Enfield) with Mary Berry (Paul Whitehouse) in a spoof of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ [BBC Pictures] 
issue 31 May 2014

On Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos (BBC 2, Sunday), there was a particularly cruel sketch in which Paul Whitehouse gave Harry Enfield a Paxman-style grilling as to whether he felt bitter that his comedy series had never won a Bafta award whereas its big rival The Fast Show (featuring, inter alia, one Paul Whitehouse) had won lots and lots and lots. The more Enfield tried to deny that it had bothered him, the more Whitehouse pressed him to admit that it had.

But the real victim of the joke, as it would turn out this week, was not Enfield but The Fast Show. Its first episode in years — revived as part of BBC2’s 50th anniversary celebrations — was so embarrassingly bad that it made you wonder why any awards committee might ever have considered it worthy of notice. Riding a bicycle is like making love to a beautiful woman? Nope.

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