Canned Carrott (1990–1995)

I’m not joking, but Jasper Carrott could quite possibly be my favourite comedian. It’s hard to pick a particular series or programme of his as my favourite, but I’m going for Canned Carrott as it’s probably the one I saw most of.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jasper Carrott – real name Robert Norman Davis – started his entertainment career in 1969 performing folk songs. You still get a whiff of that in some of his early comedy, and someone looking hard enough might even find one or two of the jokey songs. The Magic Roundabout is probably the easiest: it appeared with Funky Moped on a double A-side single that reached the UK Top 5 in 1975.

He soon found himself doing stand-up comedy… although quite often sitting on a stool.

Those performances started finding their way onto television, and Carrott perfected something that I particularly love: long-form anecdotal stories with multiple jokes threaded through them.

Perhaps that explains a few things about The Reluctant Patient.

Canned Carrott mixed stand-up with sketches. There were two regular features:

Wiggy – a bit like Mr Bean, but with Jasper Carrott wearing a decidedly dodgy wig.
The Detectives – featuring Briggs (Robert Powell) and Louis (Carrott), which was later developed into a television series of its own.

I think this was also where he did comedy versions of popular British television adverts of the time. Carrott had form here: he also presented Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown, featuring funny television adverts from around the world.

But the main attraction for me was the stand-up.

The stories would take an ordinary, recognisably British situation and keep building on it, often involving Birmingham, where Carrott is from. Sometimes he’d talk about being a Birmingham City supporter and someone in the crowd recognising him with a heavily Brummie:

“Oi! Jasper!”

Or:

“Oi! Carrott!”

One of the routines I remember best is also, I think, from Canned Carrott. It’s about nine minutes long and concerns the family’s adoption of a psychotic cat that his children name Lollipop.

Carrott concludes that the cat must have been a mascot for the SAS because all it does is eat, sleep, kill and bonk.

And because a psychotic cat apparently isn’t enough material for one story, we also get a demonstration of Carrott’s legendary DIY expertise when he attempts to install a cat flap in the garage door.

The result?

He can now almost get the car into the garage without opening the garage door.

From the Case Files