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

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. Monkfish? Never was funny, I remember that. Ted and Ralph? Really could have been a hell of a lot better.

Most popular

Ross Clark

Could China collapse the US economy?

Then we got to the sketch featuring the rude, suntanned South African cosmetics saleswoman played by Arabella Weir. A woman in a wheelchair tried to buy some scent. Rude South African woman explained, in so many words, that the disabled were non-people for whom attempts at self-enhancement were a complete waste of time. The woman in the wheelchair took umbrage and called her out on her vile bigotry…

And at that point, I’m afraid, I simply couldn’t bear to watch any longer. What deep and telling observational truth, exactly, was this sketch trying to impart? That white South Africans are rude and hateful? That disabled people are horribly discriminated against? That our attitudes to disability, these days, are so thoroughly enlightened and marvellous that we should all give ourselves a big congratulatory group hug?

The Story of the Twos, on the other hand, was pure comedy genius throughout.