Weird scenes and sad songs: How music shaped the mad world of ‘Trigger Happy TV’
As Trigger Happy TV turns 25, creator Dom Joly explains how a chance meeting with Elastica's Justine Frischmann and pissing off Gordon Lightfoot informed the show's legendary soundtrack...
By Dom Joly
Trigger Happy TV is twenty-five years old this year. That makes me feel very old, mainly because I am. To mark the occasion, I’m doing four massive live shows to celebrate the comedy and the music. Yes, music was integral to the show. I never really wanted to be a comedian. I always wanted to be in a band, and I was for a bit. I was a singer in an indie outfit in the late Eighties, that curious period before Grunge and Madchester kicked off when there was nothing really going on apart from Pixies and Pavement.
When I made Trigger Happy TV, I always knew that I’d put music on it. Most of the show came together in the edit. My editor was my old drummer and I did things the wrong way round. I’d choose the bits of a track I wanted and then stretch the joke to fit the music. It’s not how you’re supposed to do things apparently, but rules are made to be broken. I wanted Trigger Happy TV to be funny, surreal and beautiful. I wanted it to be the total opposite of cheesy mainstream shows like Beadle’s About and Game for a Laugh. The idea, if there was one, was to make a show that was a bit like a beautifully produced album. You put it on and it flowed, taking you with it and not giving you a moment to say “Shall we watch something else?”
When I gave the first series into Channel 4, there was some confusion. It turned out that we were the first comedy series to ever have a soundtrack. We were even marched into a focus group where eight women from Essex watched the show and then proclaimed that it was “quite funny, but the music is too sad. They should put cartoon music on it.” Thank God I stood my ground.
We had three soundtrack albums that sold very well. It was the closest I’d come to being a successful musician. The most requested song was “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot. I decided to contact him and suggest that we re-record it together and then do a video and get the Christmas Number One- bosh! Several weeks went by with no reply. I telephoned his manager and asked what was happening.
“It’s a no.” He said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Gordon watched the show and thought it was shit.” He replied.
I’m married to a Canadian and now realise just how big a deal Gordon Lightfoot is in Canada. He was really not impressed by some guy dressed as a squirrel ringing him up and wanting to collaborate.
We used a lot of bands that I loved- House of Love, James, Love and Rockets, Eels, The Church, Babybird, The Beta Band, Slade, Grant Lee Buffalo, The The, Mercury Rev…God I loved Mercury Rev. I also used slightly more obscure stuff like Television Personalities, The Crocketts, Jacques Brel, Deus and a band called The Honey Smugglers who, apparently got back together and went on tour following their surprise appearance on the soundtrack. I’d also get messages from people who had loved the show so much that they’d named their band after sketches. My favourite of these was Soggy Chimps, named after something on a strange list of items that I read out to a confused man in the timber section of a Travis Perkins.
Channel Four had a blanket agreement which meant that I could pretty much use any track I wanted on the show, which was amazing. This became problematic however, when the show went big and we sold it to eighty countries. To use the soundtrack abroad you had to pay…crazy money. Surprisingly, Germany was the only country that did just that and had the whole show as it should have been. For everywhere else in the world, we had to commission a frankly, god-awful sound-a-like soundtrack that was unceremoniously dumped on my carefully edited show. It was a crime, but there was not much I could do.
I held out for America for a while. MTV wanted to buy the show, but I refused unless they paid for the proper soundtrack, which they didn’t. In the end, I sold it to Comedy Central with the rubbish music.
I met the guys from Grandaddy when I was in California and they told me that they remembered watching the show and hearing what sounded like a rip-off of their song “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot” and being very freaked out. I showed them the original, which they loved.
The only thing we did have to pay for in the UK was the title music. I’d decided very early on that I would use Connection by Elastica, a song that had more than a little help from Wire’s Three Girl Rhumba. I’d already commissioned the graphics to go with the song when we heard that Elastica had said no. I was totally discombobulated because the song now was Trigger Happy TV to me. I was wandering around Portobello Road trying to think of some other track when I spotted Justine Frischmann, the lead singer of Elastica, standing at a cashpoint. I ran up to her, she looked freaked out. I babbled on about how I had made this show and how I wanted to use Connection, but that her people had said no. She listened patiently, and then told me that nobody had asked her. I mentioned, rather creepily, that I knew where she lived. Could I pop a copy of the pilot round to her house which she shared, at the time, with Damon Albarn? She agreed, nervously.
So, the next morning I found myself traipsing up to her front door and spotted a rather suspicious looking Albarn staring at me from behind the curtains. I popped the tape through the letter box and walked away.
The next day I got a message. Elastica had approved the use of the song for the titles. It appeared that Trigger Happy TV was about to be introduced to the world with the full backing of the King and Queen of the fading Britpop scene. The Connection was made.
Dom Joly is heading out on tour to mark 25 years of Trigger Happy TV. You can check out the dates in full below and buy tickets here.