(The Required Reading series returns this week, along with the return of featured writer and past podcast guest Mike Blejer. Enjoy!)
This sketch first appeared as part of the third series of the BBC Radio show “That Mitchell and Webb sound” in 2007 and then came out as a video sketch on “That Michell and Webb Look” in 2008.
It’s a great sketch that you could really imagine being done as a part of a stand-up routine. But why bother going to all the effort of imagining it when you can see it in the following clip:
To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that Whitney Cummings stole this bit, and for all I know she could have been performing it long before the Mitchell and Webb series wrote it. Sir Issac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invented/discovered the principles of differential Calculus at around the same time in the 1600s, so I wouldn’t get too riled up about it, though I’m sure that some people back then were all like “Leibniz did it first, Newton just had a bigger microphone, whatever the hell that is! Newton is a theory thief! Blacklist him from this æfen’s Middeneaht Show with Conan O’Brien, that dirty Irish cur!” (Because A. people were even more racist then, and B. The name Conan comes from “An old name from con “a hound” or “swift-footed warrior” and in the form conan means “little hound” or “little warrior.” Get it? “Little hound” the cur? Cur means mongrel dog? oh man, I crack etymologists UP!)
Anyway, I just think it’s a testament to the power of the observation (the way people talk about sports teams is funny). But mostly I think people should check out that Mitchell and Webb Sound and Look, because them is some damn good sketches. Very tightly constructed and a great display of game-based sketch writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Mitchell_and_Webb_Sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Mitchell_and_Webb_Look
Also in addition to those shows, Peep Show, and Magicians they did the I’m a Mac I’m a PC ads in the UK. Check them out Here
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I used to do a bit in my stand up about people saying “we” when talking about sports teams, so it’s pretty easy to believe they came to it independently. When I saw that Mitchell and Webb sketch I thought “they are doing that bit I used to do much better than I did.” (For the curious the big punchline was “you’ve arbitrarily picked a team based on their geographic proximity to your house.”)
I ain’t trying to make no enemies.