I had not seen this show for twenty years until the BBC rebroadcast it in 2015 and it brought back memories of the era when this show was made in early 1994.
The two stars of this programme were riding high at that time. Enfield had broken nearly a decade earlier, first at the kebab selling philosopher Stavros, then as the signature character of 1980s greed 'Loadsamoney' and in the exquisite South Bank Show pastiche 'Norbert Smith,a Life' before his sketch show was aired on the BBC from 1990 onward. Whitehouse had been a writer for Enfield and wrote for that BBC show but in it he also appeared in front of the camera in a variety of the show's characters. One of these characters was as the blonde, relentlessly cheery but essentially humourless, ludicrously self important DJ Mike Smash (Smashie) in a series of skits with fellow DJ Dave 'Davenport' Nice (Nicey) - a ludicrous, pompous, oaf played by Enfield.
That Enfield show was the best thing either man ever did- it was certainly better than the slightly later 'Harry Enfield and Chums'or the much later 'Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul' and it starred characters like the Old Gits and the irritating man who would announce 'Only Me!' but it was those two prattling, inane disc jockeys who provided the shows funniest moments - and for the first time since Monty Python provided sketches which young men in pubs could recite verbatim.
Smash and Nice worked at the fictional Fab FM which was a very thinly disguised take on the BBC's flagship pop music station Radio 1 which had been on the air since 1967. Radio 1 was very popular - it was the only truly nationwide show broadcasting pop music in what was a glorious epoch for British pop music and the station's DJs were very well known and, for a time, very popular. But the station was never 'hip' and many of its biggest names were by bywords for all that was naff and patronising about a broadcasting organisation that had a very ambivalent attitude to pop and rock music and those who listened to it. Millions listened to Edmunds, Bates, Read, Travis and the rest but only because there was precious little alternative on the airwaves.
Enfield and Whitehouse were very much part of that generation who had listened to but also slightly despised Radio 1 and Smashie and Nicey were their 'tribute' to the station. Smash is superficially based on Tony Blackburn - the man who was the very first voice heard on the station- and Nice on Alan Freeman but in truth the characters are an amalgam of the most long serving DJs on the station like Steve Wright, Noel Edmunds ( both Smash) and Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, Mike Read and to a lesser degree Tommy Vance (Nice)- interestingly Blackburn and Freeman appear in 'The End of an Era'but the others did not. I recall the wretched Travis - an endlessly wacky but utterly humourless buffoon sounding off about Enfield and Whitehouse's creations in Q Magazine.
Radio 1 overhauled itself in 1993 with many of the above named being ditched as if in reaction to Smashie and Nicey. Enfield and Whitehouse had already tried to drop their two alter egos but the demise of so much of what they plainly despised seemed to good an opportunity to miss as well as allow the pair to draw a line under their own most famous characters.
Some of the jokes and the skits in 'The End of an Era' work better than others. The 'Top of The Pops' send ups are bang on the money and Nicey's spoof ad for 'Deptford Draylons' although an obscure reference for anybody born after 1967 or so is very funny. The intermingling of the two characters with archive film mostly works too but really Bill Grundy interviewing the Sex Pistols is funny enough in its original version and whilst taking the mick out of Kenny Everett at the time the man was dying is on the boundaries of taste it would surely have been Smashie who would thought he was a great comedian and not Nicey . The 'Peeping Tom' style footage from Smash's childhood are excellent and although the 'Tessa!'reference caused Enfield to apologise to Tony Blackburn it is nevertheless very, very funny. Overall far more comes off than not and unexpected depths are found for both men.
Enfield and Whitehouse were at their zenith here and never worked together quite as well again and in this show there are suggestions that their partnership was only slightly less fraught than the two characters they mock here. In one scene the DJs -supposedly 'great mates'- score points of each other by claiming to be slightly more popular than the other. In the early nineties there were suggestions in the media that Enfield was less than happy that his underling was thought to be funnier and more talented than the headline star. This may or not have been true but it is worth remembering that Whitehouse' next project was 'The Fast Show' which did not feature Enfield and was considered to be superior to Enfield's own show (which still had Whitehouse in it) that was broadcast in the weeks before Whitehouse's project. Near the end of 'The End of an Era' a sozzled, whisky sipping Nice tells us he hates 'Smashey' and it was easy for some to think that this was Enfield speaking and not Dave Nice.
'Smashie and Nicey - the End of an Era' is very much of its time I suppose - many of the jokes and characters spoofed will mean nothing to anybody under the age of 40. But if you were there at the time it was one of the climax of a gloriously funny, sarcastic send up of an institution that was so deserving of ridicule.
The two stars of this programme were riding high at that time. Enfield had broken nearly a decade earlier, first at the kebab selling philosopher Stavros, then as the signature character of 1980s greed 'Loadsamoney' and in the exquisite South Bank Show pastiche 'Norbert Smith,a Life' before his sketch show was aired on the BBC from 1990 onward. Whitehouse had been a writer for Enfield and wrote for that BBC show but in it he also appeared in front of the camera in a variety of the show's characters. One of these characters was as the blonde, relentlessly cheery but essentially humourless, ludicrously self important DJ Mike Smash (Smashie) in a series of skits with fellow DJ Dave 'Davenport' Nice (Nicey) - a ludicrous, pompous, oaf played by Enfield.
That Enfield show was the best thing either man ever did- it was certainly better than the slightly later 'Harry Enfield and Chums'or the much later 'Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul' and it starred characters like the Old Gits and the irritating man who would announce 'Only Me!' but it was those two prattling, inane disc jockeys who provided the shows funniest moments - and for the first time since Monty Python provided sketches which young men in pubs could recite verbatim.
Smash and Nice worked at the fictional Fab FM which was a very thinly disguised take on the BBC's flagship pop music station Radio 1 which had been on the air since 1967. Radio 1 was very popular - it was the only truly nationwide show broadcasting pop music in what was a glorious epoch for British pop music and the station's DJs were very well known and, for a time, very popular. But the station was never 'hip' and many of its biggest names were by bywords for all that was naff and patronising about a broadcasting organisation that had a very ambivalent attitude to pop and rock music and those who listened to it. Millions listened to Edmunds, Bates, Read, Travis and the rest but only because there was precious little alternative on the airwaves.
Enfield and Whitehouse were very much part of that generation who had listened to but also slightly despised Radio 1 and Smashie and Nicey were their 'tribute' to the station. Smash is superficially based on Tony Blackburn - the man who was the very first voice heard on the station- and Nice on Alan Freeman but in truth the characters are an amalgam of the most long serving DJs on the station like Steve Wright, Noel Edmunds ( both Smash) and Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, Mike Read and to a lesser degree Tommy Vance (Nice)- interestingly Blackburn and Freeman appear in 'The End of an Era'but the others did not. I recall the wretched Travis - an endlessly wacky but utterly humourless buffoon sounding off about Enfield and Whitehouse's creations in Q Magazine.
Radio 1 overhauled itself in 1993 with many of the above named being ditched as if in reaction to Smashie and Nicey. Enfield and Whitehouse had already tried to drop their two alter egos but the demise of so much of what they plainly despised seemed to good an opportunity to miss as well as allow the pair to draw a line under their own most famous characters.
Some of the jokes and the skits in 'The End of an Era' work better than others. The 'Top of The Pops' send ups are bang on the money and Nicey's spoof ad for 'Deptford Draylons' although an obscure reference for anybody born after 1967 or so is very funny. The intermingling of the two characters with archive film mostly works too but really Bill Grundy interviewing the Sex Pistols is funny enough in its original version and whilst taking the mick out of Kenny Everett at the time the man was dying is on the boundaries of taste it would surely have been Smashie who would thought he was a great comedian and not Nicey . The 'Peeping Tom' style footage from Smash's childhood are excellent and although the 'Tessa!'reference caused Enfield to apologise to Tony Blackburn it is nevertheless very, very funny. Overall far more comes off than not and unexpected depths are found for both men.
Enfield and Whitehouse were at their zenith here and never worked together quite as well again and in this show there are suggestions that their partnership was only slightly less fraught than the two characters they mock here. In one scene the DJs -supposedly 'great mates'- score points of each other by claiming to be slightly more popular than the other. In the early nineties there were suggestions in the media that Enfield was less than happy that his underling was thought to be funnier and more talented than the headline star. This may or not have been true but it is worth remembering that Whitehouse' next project was 'The Fast Show' which did not feature Enfield and was considered to be superior to Enfield's own show (which still had Whitehouse in it) that was broadcast in the weeks before Whitehouse's project. Near the end of 'The End of an Era' a sozzled, whisky sipping Nice tells us he hates 'Smashey' and it was easy for some to think that this was Enfield speaking and not Dave Nice.
'Smashie and Nicey - the End of an Era' is very much of its time I suppose - many of the jokes and characters spoofed will mean nothing to anybody under the age of 40. But if you were there at the time it was one of the climax of a gloriously funny, sarcastic send up of an institution that was so deserving of ridicule.