An "Across The Pond Christmas Eve" at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog

Had it with that "family Christmas" business? Like TV commercials hawking $45,000 stocking stuffers for the holidays about as much as stomach cramps? Avoiding shoppers and malls as if they carried live Ebola virus? Can't bear the thought of seeing one more graphic advertising anything for Christmas?



Then, watch this Christmas Eve compendium of clips and cartoons! Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we find that, unlike shopping, British humor (by jove) is our cup of tea. Let's start with a cartoon featuring absolutely no holiday content whatsoever, Loch Ness Legend (1948), from George Moreno, Jr. and his crew at British Animated Productions, creators of Bubble and Squeek. Mickey, Pluto, Donald, Mulan and the Disney Princesses, feh. . . Willie the Worm and Colonel Rat, YEAH!



We searched for a complete Red Dwarf Christmas show and did not find one online, but did find this compliation of clips from Red Dwarf episodes with a holiday theme.



The Goons suggest something I absolutely enjoy doing under the tree, provided there are no glass ornaments and plugged-in chainsaws on the floor - walking backwards.



Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like . . . The Beatles!





And Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. . . with special guest John Lennon!





And The Goons, Beyond the Fringe and the Beatles begat. . . the Pythons.



If only John Cleese was doing our holiday season commercials!



This British comedy fan awards the mantle of spiritual descendent of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers to Rowan Atkinson's series Blackadder.



A subsequent series starring two key cast members from Blackadder, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, also did a pretty darn funny Christmas show.





A frequent guest star on Blackadder was the late, great Rik Mayall, who played the always randy, revved up and rarin' to go Lord Flashheart. Here's Rik, playing a character about as far from the swashbuckling Lord Flashheart as imaginable, although equally energetic. The following series, Bottom, astonishingly, did a Christmas show.



John Cleese, who wrote the two Fawlty Towers series with Connie Booth, no doubt was familiar with the acerbic 1950's situation comedies, on both radio and TV, of the ever-cranky and sardonic Tony Hancock.





We close with an episode of the television version of Hancock's Half Hour and raise our eggnog-filled glasses in a Christmas Eve toast!

Toons Around The World: George Moreno Jr. And British Animated Productions

Señor Blogmeister seldom recycles/rehashes previous postings, but here's an exception to that rule: a spotlight on British Animated Productions, producers of a Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog favorite, the Bubble & Squeek cartoons.






The series, starring a pub ale-swilling cabbie and his anthropomorphized lil' car, was the brainchild of former Walter Lantz Studio and Fleischer animator George Moreno, Jr.




This blogger will take a Bubble & Squeek cartoon over a Disney from the same era (with the exception of those directed by Jack Kinney, the Jedi Master of The Goof) any day of the week.





The Bubble & Squeek series and British Animated Productions had a brief but memorable run, which abruptly ended when an influx of cartoons imported from the U.S. hit Great Britain screens in 1948.



The British Animated Productions staff included director Harold F. Mack, animators Pamela French, Jimmie Holt, Leslie Boyd, Fred Thompson and Hugh Gladwich.



The animators appeared in the following British Pathe newsreel.



My favorites are the two cartoons co-featuring an irascible rodent known as Colonel Rat and his sidekick Willie The Worm. Yes, that's right, Colonel Rat and Willie The Worm, slated for their own offshoot series.







Well, that Colonel Rat and Willie The Worm series didn't happen. The tax on imports was reduced in 1947, an influx of U.S. cartoons from Warners, Disney and MGM on British soil (not unlike the mid-1960's invasion of British rock bands on American soil) resulted. . . and it was bye bye British Animated Productions and David Hand's GB Animation. The cast of characters did survive for awhile in comic books.



For more info, check out the British Animation and UK Animation blogs.