Vic Reeves Big Night Out

The first television outing for Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. Developed from a three-hour live neo-variety show which Jonathan Ross once went to see and then commissioned them to make a cut-down half-hour version for TV. Allegedly the idea came about because Reeves (real name Jim Moir) ended up running a conventional variety show, but worked out that he could save money if he fired all the acts and performed them himself.

Its surreal humour made it an alternative comedy favourite (being particularly popular among students in the early 1990s) and rocketed the duo to stardom.

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Tropes used in Vic Reeves Big Night Out include:

• Absurdity Ascendant
• Arch Enemy (Graham Lister)
• Ascended Fanboy Legend has it that Bob joined the show having sat heckling at one of the live performances, whereupon he was invited to do better himself. Bluff called, And The Rest Is History
• Butt Monkey: The Man With the Stick.
• Catch Phrase:
  • Vic: "That was my idea!" ; "You wouldn't let it lie, would you?!"
  • The Stotts: "Marzipan's private, Davy!"
  • The Ramblers: "But it's not all rambling, is it?"
  • Wavy Davy: "Hiya!!!!!"
  • Bob: "Oh Vic, I've fallen" (sometimes followed with) "I can smell the chafing!"
• Cloudcuckoolander (practically everyone)
• Department of Redundancy Department (and Product Placement) ("The new Reeves and Mortimer (name of product), by Reeves and Mortimer!")
• Downer Ending: parodied by the final episode. Vic's closing song is interrupted by Lister, and they fight with everything that comes to hand including a beer bottle from the Man with the Stick's stick. Lister is left unconscious or dead. The Man with the Stick, now despondent and alcoholic over Vic's mistreatment of his children, fires a gun randomly, hitting Vic and possibly Les as well, before slumping in despair and putting the gun to his own head as the curtain falls. Vic's hand waves goodbye weakly from beneath the curtain.
• Everything Is Better With Explosions (The Stotts insist on starting their act with "a nice explosion", consisting of igniting a saucer of oil, which later became a Running Gag when they reappeared on Bang Bang It's Reeves and Mortimer)
• Hey, It's That Guy! (modern viewers may start at the first television appearances of the stars of The Fast Show such as Simon Day, in minor guest roles)
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: In the second series Vic would periodically go on a live video feed "to our Swiss counterparts, the Ponderers", who were blond shirtless versions of Vic and Bob with giant strap-on chins to aid their pondering.
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly (Vic delivers a tribute to the then-fading phenomenon of punk rock in an incongruously 1920s-music-hall style)
• Once an Episode (The Man with the Stick, Les Facts and other regular features)
• Phrase Catcher ("And what do we cry when we see a man with a stick?" "WHAT'S ON THE END OF THE STICK, VIC?")
• Product Placement (All the Reeves and Mortimer products)
• Running Gag (Les cannot help smiling every time he sees a spirit level, but is mortally afraid of chives - among others)
• Satan (Wavy Davy)
• Talking to Himself: Used a few times. In one episode Vic decides to listen in on backstage and hears all the characters insulting him, including the characters he himself plays. In another episode, Vic calls back all three contestants on Novelty Island, even though two of them (Graham Lister and Wavy Davy) are played by Bob Mortimer. This was achieved by Wavy Davy being played by an extra with a giant black and white cardboard cutout photograph of Wavy Davy's face as a mask.
• The Igor (Les)
• The Voiceless (Les)