I've finished watching through the rest of "That Peter Kay Thing" and once again I'll attempt to give my take on the remaining episodes.
Starting off with "The Ice Cream Man Cometh" which for me is the funniest of the lot involving a rivalry between traditional scooped ice cream seller Robert Edge AKA "Mr Softy Top", and "Italian" ice cream man "Signor Whippy", both played by the man himself.
As business is slow, Robert gets most of his money by selling videos of "adult art" from his van with titles including "Look Who's Porking", "The Phantom Penis" and "Shaving Ryan's Privates".
Highlights included a well observed spoof of Taxi Driver where Softy Top prepares for the Bolton Show by practising scooping ice cream and covering his vest in raspberry sauce.
The episode has me laughing in many places such as the scene when he comes out of the kebab shop finding out that Signor Whippy has priority by yelling to the fella on his mobile; "you stupid set of bastards!". The delivery of that line is just perfect.
And of course there's the scene near the end where after almost running out of ice cream due to double helpings for the price of one, Robert's assistant returns with tubs of melted ice cream and Crunchies instead of Flakes which result in him effing and blinding and causing a fit in his van which had me laughing so badly, so it wasn't really too good for my throat.
Other characters played by Peter in this episode included the return of Alan McClarty, and Chorley FM DJ Paul Le Roy who had a stand at the Bolton Show.
Although this is my favourite episode, I can understand why Peter, Dave and Neil decided to go with the the club as the basis for the following series as there's a lot more you can get out of that scenario in six episodes than an that of ice cream man.
It's worth mentioning the policeman character who appears in this episode and at the end of "Eyes Down" when Keith Lard gets arrested, as he happens to be played by little known actor Peter Slater who went on to appear in Phoenix Nights as Armchair Superstore presenter "John Lennon", and other possible namesake "Jeff Bitch" who appears as one of the comedians at the alternative comedy night in episode 5.
The reason I presume he's a namesake is that his name sounds very similar to
ex Invicta FM presenter Geoff Fitch and I almost thought it was the exact name.
However unlike Keith Laird, I doubt the radio presenter/now paramedic would take any offence to that.
However he's not the only erstwhile presenter from the station to have his name ridiculed in the series as there used to be a presenter there called Bob Le Roi although it's unlikely he was a direct influence on Paul Le Roy. However whilst at college around 2002 one of the students came from Margate and saw someone coming out of the building of what used to be known as TLR before they got turned into KMFM, and she thought he looked very similar to Peter Kay's DJ character.
Episode 4 was "The Arena" which was based on Peter's experience as a steward at the Manchester Evening News arena where apparently he's still on the books.
This episode saw the return of Northern Irish namesake Matthew Kelly who was starting his first shift as a steward at a "Super Sounds Of The Seventies" concert.
Still with ambitions to be an actor he was also appearing as Mr Bumble in Oliver with
co stars Lennie Bennett from "Lucky Ladders" and Bob Carolgees playing Bill Sikes along with Spit the Dog as Bullseye.
Other characters included Shaun and Chris from concert promoters Live Sec who bounced off each other during their seminars for employees. Both were played by Peter and fellow writer Neil Fitzmaurice respectively with the funniest of their scenes being near the end where Sean is stood in front of a whiteboard with a penis drawn above him.
I'm surprised that I've never noticed that joke until now.
There's also the return of "Utah" the coach driver who takes a load of dressed up 70s fans to the concert where they persuade him to play a tape of disco tunes. I really love how they've made it sound as if the music's played on a tape player slightly off key from the actual track with some of the tunes including "Working My Way Back To You", and "Le Freak".
Utah gets fed up with it and switches it over to a tape of old country tunes such as Glenn Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" and a brilliant song called "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" by Charlie Daniels.
Other music heard in the episode includes a rarely heard KC And The Sunshine Band tune called "Queen Of Clubs" which works brilliantly in the scenes where everyone's arriving prior to the concert.
Other appearances include the debut of Daniel Kitson as an attendant from the St John's Ambulance. Daniel went onto appear as Spencer in Phoenix Nights and Peter in his DVD commentaries now refers to him as "the bastard" after he won the Perrier Award in 2003 and said that it was "the experience he was least proud of".
This coming from someone who appeared on Blockbusters and didn't even get onto a Gold Run.
I liked how they managed to show in the episode that working as a steward at a concert venue isn't as cracked up as it's said to be as Matthew ended up working in the carpark during the concert and they had to check all the seats before going home.
This reminds me of when Peter mentioned in the commentary and in his autobiography how he didn't like having to be present at the Arena on a Sunday morning as it meant he missed Rawhide.
Another indication of how times have changed.
Episode 5 was focused on Leonard De Tompinkinson, a Bolton resident who was to win an award for being the town's oldest paperboy. The character was inspired by a real man also called Leonard who used to pop into see Peter when he worked at Esso and told him all about his friends, although he died in 1991 and Peter was upset when a small amount of people turned up to his funeral.
This episode was the one of two to have Peter playing just one character but there was a really good supporting cast including Jayne Tunnicliffe as a woman working in a cafe, Ted Robbins, otherwise known as being Paul McCartney's cousin, sister of impressionist Kate Robbins, one time presenter of "Chain Letters" and more recently as "The Guv'nor" in CBBC's "The Slammer.
Ted played the owner of a newsagent which was a direct opposite in comparison to the evil Den Perry who he went on to play in Phoenix Nights.
The most interesting cast member was the early appearance of Catherine Tate as Valerie, the pregnant community leader who organised the awards and did a good job at it as well.
But even more importantly was the fact that Bob Carolgees made an appearance as himself alongside Spit The Dog, presenting the award to Leonard which was followed by Leonard asking him "what hand do you wipe your bottom with?".
The final episode was one of the best which returned to look at Marc Park,
the Mick Hucknall lookalike and one half of Park Avenue from episode one. This episode was done as a mock rockumentary following the split between the two due to Cheryl getting pregnant despite Mark mentioning that "it was amicabble".
The episode saw Mark hire a manager by the name of Bernie St Angelo who owned a company called BS Entertainments, one of the sister companies of BS Taxis.
With an agency name like that you're bound for success.
Mark's solo career starts to take off with him releasing a dodgy cover of David Essex's "Gonna Make You A Star" which I doubt my Aunt Helen would want to hear, complete with Timmy Mallet esque Ah Yeah!'s.
This then leads onto Mark recording an album containing rather self indulgent Queen covers and a song with African group "The Somambe Singers" who Mark just patronises constantly, and enlists them to perform on a self written tune called "African Tears" the melody of the chorus sounding very similar to Chris De Burgh's "Lady In Red".
Bernie also manages to get Mark appearances on Channel 5's Night Fever on the biggest one of all, The National Lottery Live but things start to take a turn for the worse after the BBC airs a documentary on the downfall of Cheryl portraying Mark as a villain.
Undeterred Mark goes on to record his attempt at a Christmas single under the name of "Christmas 2000" as mentioned on the site a few days ago.
However things continue to fall badly as Cheryl releases her own single covering Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" whilst Bernie's business collapses resulting in Mark having to sell his expensive house and possesions with his appearance on the lottery dropped,
and guess who ends up replacing him on Night Fever?
That's right, Bob Carolgees.
The funniest part of the episode is when Marc opens up an ASDA supermarket and someone throws an egg at him yelling "take that yer twat!". That line for me is just hilarious and it seemed to have a similar effect on Peter and the rest of the people on the commentary.
Despite being an idiot throughout the episode you do start to feel sorry for him near the end when he moves in with his brother Frank played by Smug Roberts and ends up in tears watching Cheryl perform her song on The National Lottery Draw.
Definitely a brilliant end to the series.
If I could be compared to any of the characters played by Peter, it would be a toss up between the obvious choice Paul Le Roy due to his crazy enthusiasm for 80s music such as "Dolce Vita" by Ryan Paris, and "Hey You" by The Rocksteady Crew. The other character would be Leonard as one of the characters mentions that "he's everyone's friend, but he's got no friends".
After watching the DVD I had a listen to the Christmas special of "The Unbelievable Truth" on Radio 4 where David Mitchell's guests were creator Graeme Garden, Armando Ianuuci, Sean Lock and Jack Dee where they had to smuggle truths amongst a series of blatant lies on a seasonal subject.
I may head up to radio again to see if there are still people editing although I doubt I'll make it to the screening of "The Dark Knight" in the halls common room, as I don't want to end up giving people my cold, and also because last time they did something like this it was a disaster.
That being the Mamma Mia singalong where out of 400 students living in halls, only 8 turned up.
Although bearing in mind the Undercroft is closed, the turn out may be a bit higher.
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