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Saturday Live / Friday Night Live (1985-88)
 

Synopsis

Warning: screenonline full synopses contain 'spoilers' which give away key plot points. Don't read on if you don't want to know the ending!

Episode originally transmitted on Channel 4 on 29 April 1988

Ben Elton hosts and introduces the acts throughout. He opens this final episode of the run with a topical humorous rant ranging over the Thatcher/Edwina Currie plans to fund the NHS with lottery money and have commercial companies sponsor operations; a union dispute about ferry workers and the then newly announced ban on smoking on internal flights also provide fuel for his ire. Featured band Was (Not Was) perform 'Everybody Walk the Dinosaur' and then regular Harry Enfield appears as Stavros, his mock-Cypriot Arsenal-loving kebab vendor. A brief Outside Broadcast follows to allow a snatch of Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries), who is due on set later.

Next up is Australian comedienne and former journalist Wendy Harmer, whose act pokes fun at Australian men, and then regular duo Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty as Donald and George lampoon the public gallery audience of the House of Commons. Music follows, with Enfield in character as Loadsamoney with a band including Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse performing their just released Loadsamoney rap ('Doin' up the House') with audience involvement and interspersed cue cards everytime the word 'Dosh' is repeated.

Josie Lawrence appears as Florence from Cradley, spoofing the Channel 4 Video Box, before Enfield premieres a new character, 'Bugger All Money,: the antithesis of Loadsamoney, he is a Viz comic-influenced, stereotypical Geordie, complete with mullet hair, multiple cigarettes ('tabs') and white T-shirt with boastful slogan. Les Bubb, a mime artist, gives a change of pace and emphasis, and then Dame Edna makes her main appearance.

The final sequence brings the Australian Doug Anthony Allstars, a musical-comedy trio. Ben Elton rounds off the comedy with an extended piece about language, beach culture, nudity and sex. Was (Not Was) close the show with 'Out Come the Freaks'.