God is a DJ. He doesn't do requests.

October 13, 2007 4:38 AM

Attention Scum! You can now catch Simon Munnery's occasionally brilliant comedy series on YouTube. If you only have three minutes to spare then make do with this fuzzy three minute clip of The Security Guard. If video is not your thing then you can enjoy Munnery's superb articles here (you could start with this one). Finally, you could treat yourself to his book How To Live which contains large chunks of all the above.
posted by dodgygeezer (10 comments total)

Attention Scum was brilliant. The one-liners alone were worth the entire series. I thought it was a shame that the BBC didn't seem to have any idea what to do with it. Munnery has the kind of articulate twisted insight that I remember word for word years later.
posted by gds at 6:13 AM on October 13, 2007

I used to absolutely love this when it first came out. Must have been 1997 or 1998? Now I'm all grown up (ha!) and for whatever reason I don't find it as consistently funny any more. But it definitely has its moments. Thanks for the post!
posted by Ted Maul at 6:13 AM on October 13, 2007

Yeah, I should say that Attention Scum does have it's problems. It was done on a shoestring budget so there's lots of repetition and filler which really slows the pace. The Combat Opera sections are a bit of a mixed bag. The 24Hr News sections with Johnny Vegas are chronically unfunny and don't fit with the rest of the show.

Munnery on the other hand is great. His lines are really well crafted and his delivery gets the most out of every one of them.
posted by dodgygeezer at 6:45 AM on October 13, 2007

The League Against Tedium! Hurrah! May I recommend episode 2 part 2, where Munnery harangues America from the seacoast? About 4 minutes, 20 seconds in, after the overlong sketch about transporting fish.

"Ah, the Atlantic! Some call it the Pond: I call it the Moat!"

"I've got nothing against any individual Americans, because there aren't any."

Also, in the same way you can do Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for mainstream American celebrities, you can do Four or Five Degrees of Kevin Eldon for just about anyone in British comedy.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:22 AM on October 13, 2007

I prefered Alan Parker, Urban Warrior.
posted by Artw at 7:46 AM on October 13, 2007

Never heard of him, but I'm liking what I'm seeing. Thanks.
posted by quin at 10:15 AM on October 13, 2007

I prefered Alan Parker, Urban Warrior.

Ignorance is a weapon! (Starts at 5.21.... but it's all good.)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:17 AM on October 13, 2007

I thought the Security Guard bit was really quite funny, but all these Attention Scum excerpts seem singularly unfunny to me. The quick moving between sketches reminded me of Monty Pyton, but, say, without the funny.

I prefer comedy that is actually humorous. But, as I've observed before, comedy is one of the most subjective of human experiences, and what is one man's comedy gold is another man's bum.
posted by MythMaker at 6:30 PM on October 13, 2007

Good.
posted by asok at 3:30 AM on October 14, 2007

There's a video of Cluub Zarathustra knocking around the P2P underbelly. And yes, the 'comedian's comedian' line is over-used, but Munnery is one of those comics whose impact is better measured by his influence on others. (I also think that his stuff works better on stage or radio than TV, but I'd say that about Little Britain too.)

I'm more of a fan of Alan Parker (even though you can point to Dave Spart as his comedic forebear) and I'm only surprised that no-one's done an American equivalent, given that the source material is quite rich.
posted by holgate at 2:17 PM on October 14, 2007