Kelly Monteith

[colchestersid]

Death of Kelly Monteith announced today. Although his early 80s show was very BBC light entertainment he did play around with the format and my parents thought he was great (I thought he was better than Jasper Carrott at least which was the pretty low benchmark at that time)

Anyway, RIP Kelly

[Toby Gymshorts]

Well, this is a bummer. I have very fond memories of watching The Kelly Monteith Show with Gymshorts Snr.

RIP.

[Sits]

RIP, enjoyable shows as I remember.

[Ray de Galles]

Aw no, I loved Monteith's BBC shows and when I first saw Seinfeld's his stuff strangely reminded me of him for some reason.

Kudos too for getting the goddess Gabrielle Drake to play his screen wife.

[Sits]

Kudos too for getting the goddess Gabrielle Drake to play his screen wife.

Another UFO watcher then?

[Jah Womble]

RIP. While I personally found the series a bit 'hit and miss', it has always surprised me at how rapidly Monteith disappeared off the radar following that successful BBC run.

I guess I've just had no clue as to what he'd been up to since about 1985...

[Stumpy Pepys]

Not to claim he invented--for want of a better word--observational comedy, but he was a very early exponent of the genre. His show was also quite novel in its habit of breaking the fourth wall.

[Benjm]

I remember enjoying the show but not too much of the actual content other than the innovative presentation. I had completely forgotten that his character was married, for example.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Another UFO watcher then?

Nick Drakes's sister, as you probably knew.

[Sean of the Shed]

Six seasons his show ran for, that's a surprise. Like Benjm I remember the show clearly but none of the content.

[Sits]

Nick Drakes's sister, as you probably knew.

No I did not!

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Six seasons his show ran for, that's a surprise. Like Benjm I remember the show clearly but none of the content.

Same here, though also remember it seemed quite an exotic thing at the time having an American fronting a BBC sitcom, and remember he was on chat shows and specials quite a bit so the BBC certainly made him work.

Just looked it up on TV Genome and note the Radio Times describing him as "one of America's brightest young comedians", when he would have been nearly 40. Also quite the array of usual suspects turning up in guest roles.

[Capybara]

Another UFO watcher then?

Or Crossroads.

[Nocturnal Submission]

No I did not!

Apparently she's quite the keeper of his musical flame, or whatever the correct expression would be.

[Benjm]

Or Crossroads.

Having checked out GD's Wikipedia entry off the back of this thread, I wasn't expecting her to be the link between Crossroads and J.G. Ballard's Crash, although Crossroads was originally a motel so very much in tune with the automotive century.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Another UFO watcher then?

I found out last year that Space 1999 came out of the cancelled second series of UFO, which was going to be set on the Moon. A lot of the design for the series had already been done before the producers pulled the plug, much of which reappeared in Space 1999.

(I don't believe Kelly Monteith was involved.)