Article or info about UK comedy tradition of making messes

July 8, 2023 7:56 AM

Sometime between 2002 and 2007, I read an article in a dead tree magazine that described a history of messiness in UK comedy. I remember it was something of a long-read. The article cited a low-circulation but long-running newsletter or magazine on making messes, and pondered the connection to hygiene anxiety and fetishism. Not only can't I find the article, I can't find *anything* discussing or mentioning such a tradition. Did I dream it?

This is coming up for me after binging Taskmaster, which fits nicely into this tradition, if such a tradition actually exists.

posted by longtime_lurker to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "messiness" or "making messes". If you could give some more examples from UK comedy, it might be easier to identify something helpful.
posted by plonkee at 3:52 PM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm with plonkee: you need to specify what you mean by "messiness" etc. Do you mean feces? In 2017, The New Statesman ran an article by Polly Evans on "Poo Jokes and Pessimism – the scatological legacy of British humour". Might you be thinking of that, or of a similar earlier article?
posted by brianogilvie at 9:53 AM on July 11, 2023

Response by poster: Sorry to be so vague! It's not scatological; it's pretty much all about food I think.
posted by longtime_lurker at 7:08 PM on July 13, 2023