The Comic Strip: The Troupe That Took Alt Comedy to Television
A strip-club theatre in Soho, a handful of unknowns called Mayall, Edmondson, French and Saunders, and a parody of the Famous Five on Channel 4's first night. How the Comic Strip turned British alternative comedy into television.
The Comic Strip was a London comedy club, and then a troupe, that turned the new British alternative comedy of the late 1970s into television. It opened in a small theatre inside a Soho strip-club complex in October 1980. Two years later its members had their own series of short films, The Comic Strip Presents..., which launched on Channel 4's very first night. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Nigel Planer all came out of it.
From the Comedy Store to the Comic Strip
British alternative comedy started at the Comedy Store, which opened above a Soho strip club in May 1979 with Alexei Sayle as its compère. It was a rough, open-mic room with a gong, and within a year a group of its best performers wanted somewhere they could control themselves.
The driving force was Peter Richardson, who performed in a double act with Nigel Planer called the Outer Limits. In October 1980 he opened the Comic Strip at the Boulevard Theatre, a small venue inside Paul Raymond's Raymond Revuebar. Sayle was the compère. The bill was a set of acts that would define the next decade of British comedy:
- Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, performing as 20th Century Coyote, a violent, childish slapstick double act.
- Peter Richardson and Nigel Planer, the Outer Limits.
- Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, who joined soon after the club opened.
- Arnold Brown, a dry Scottish stand-up who was the opposite of everyone else's energy.
- Alexei Sayle, compèring with his ranting, political, surreal act.
The Comic Strip was an instant hit with London's media crowd and toured, including to Australia. It shared the Comedy Store's rejection of racist and sexist club comedy but was more theatrical: character pieces, double acts and sketches rather than straight stand-up. That theatre-school sensibility made it a natural fit for film.
The Comic Strip Presents... on Channel 4
Channel 4 launched on November 2, 1982, with a remit to be different from the BBC and ITV. On its opening night it showed Five Go Mad in Dorset, a Comic Strip parody of Enid Blyton's Famous Five adventure books, with the gang uncovering a plot while being casually snobbish, xenophobic and obsessed with lashings of food. It was a statement of intent for the channel and for the new comedy: affectionate in its detail, merciless about the attitudes underneath.
Instead of a sketch show or a sitcom, The Comic Strip Presents... was an anthology of self-contained films, around half an hour each, shot on film rather than video, with each episode a different story and different characters played by the same core company. Peter Richardson directed many of them and co-wrote many with Pete Richens. The series ran on Channel 4 until 1988, moved to BBC Two from 1990 to 1993, and returned for occasional specials into the 2010s.
The best Comic Strip films
Five Go Mad in Dorset
The opening-night parody of the Famous Five. Still the best introduction to the group's tone, and it spawned a sequel, Five Go Mad on Mescalin, and much later Five Go to Rehab (2012).
The Strike
A Hollywood studio turns the 1984–85 miners' strike into a glossy thriller, with Richardson as Al Pacino playing union leader Arthur Scargill and Jennifer Saunders as Meryl Streep. A sharp satire of how the film industry rewrites politics; it won the Golden Rose of Montreux.
Bad News Tour
A mockumentary about a hopeless heavy metal band, played by Edmondson, Mayall, Planer and Richardson, released a year before This Is Spinal Tap. The fake band went on to release real records.
Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door
Mayall and Edmondson as alcoholic escort-agency owners caught up with a murderous neighbour played by Peter Cook. Pure chaos, and a preview of the duo's later Bottom.
The Supergrass
The first Comic Strip feature: a man pretends to be a drug smuggler to impress his girlfriend and gets caught up in a police operation. Small but charming.
Didn't You Kill My Brother?
Alexei Sayle, who co-wrote it, plays twin brothers on opposite sides of the law in Thatcher-era London.
Other features include Eat the Rich (1987), a crude anti-Thatcher satire, The Pope Must Die (1991), with Robbie Coltrane, and Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004). Later TV specials include The Hunt for Tony Blair (2011, Channel 4), a black-and-white 1950s noir pastiche, and Five Go to Rehab (2012, Gold).
The members and what they did next
| Member | Best known for afterwards |
|---|---|
| Rik Mayall (1958–2014) | The Young Ones, Blackadder, The New Statesman, Bottom |
| Adrian Edmondson | The Young Ones, Bottom, later music and drama |
| Dawn French | French and Saunders, The Vicar of Dibley |
| Jennifer Saunders | French and Saunders, Absolutely Fabulous |
| Nigel Planer | Neil in The Young Ones; actor and writer |
| Peter Richardson | Director and co-writer of most Comic Strip films |
| Alexei Sayle | Alexei Sayle's Stuff; novelist and memoirist |
| Robbie Coltrane (1950–2022) | Regular in the films; later Cracker and Hagrid in the Harry Potter films |
| Keith Allen | Regular in the films; actor |
The Comic Strip and The Young Ones
The two are often confused. The Young Ones (BBC Two, 1982–84) was a sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton and Lise Mayer, and it shared several cast members with the Comic Strip, including Mayall, Edmondson, Planer and Sayle. It began on the BBC within days of the Comic Strip's Channel 4 debut, and the two shows together announced that the alternative comedians had arrived on television. Both share the same anarchic energy, but the Comic Strip was the more varied and more cinematic of the two.
Legacy
The Comic Strip launched more major British comedy careers than any other single group of the 1980s. It showed that alternative comedy could work as film, not just as stand-up or sketches, and it gave Channel 4 its early comic identity. Its parodies of British institutions and genres, from children's books to political cinema, set a template that later British comedy still follows. For the full story of the movement, read our history of British alternative comedy, and see how it compares with other troupes in our list of the greatest sketch shows.
Frequently asked questions
Who was in the Comic Strip?
The club's original line-up included Peter Richardson, Alexei Sayle (as compère), Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Arnold Brown, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Robbie Coltrane and Keith Allen were among the regulars in the TV films.
What was the first episode of The Comic Strip Presents?
Five Go Mad in Dorset, a parody of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books, broadcast on November 2, 1982, the night Channel 4 launched.
Where was the Comic Strip club?
At the Boulevard Theatre, a small venue inside Paul Raymond's Raymond Revuebar in Soho, London. It opened in October 1980.
How many Comic Strip films are there?
Around forty television films were made under The Comic Strip Presents... banner between 1982 and 2016, plus several cinema features such as The Supergrass (1985) and Eat the Rich (1987).