Do Not Adjust Your Set

Back in August one of my Sunday music videos featured a Bonzos song from the 1960s children's series Do Not Adjust Your Set. Thanks to LoveFilm I have now watched the discs mentioned in the comments on that post.

The chief interest in these episodes today lies in seeing Michael Palin, David Jason, Terry Jones and Eric Idle when they were all ridiculously young. The sketches, a mix of silliness and satire on television conventions, appealed to the youthful studio audience, to judge by the laughter on the soundtrack.

I know that I used to watch this show because I remember the slapstick serial Captain Fantastic, which featured Jason and Denise Coffey. I remember it as being rather scary, but then I must have been seven or eight when I last saw it.

Though Do Not Adjust Your Set is an important piece of comedy history, because of its obvious role in the evolution of Monty Python, its chief interest today probably lies in the appearance of the Bonzos.

Not only did the band perform songs like "Hunting Tigers", they made up the numbers in sketches where they were needed. You see them briefly at the end of this one and, together with the whole cast, in The Two of Us. And Eric Idle sings with them on the theme song to Captain Fantastic.