16th March 1991 - The first programme of what would turn out to be Syd & Eddie's final series at the BBC. I've had to edit out Chesney Hawkes' performance to placate the copyright police
Felt like utter crap so thought I'd relive some forgotten youth. Absolute dogshite, made my fever seem like a welcome friend. To be a fly on the wall when Eddie Large was told the show was cancelled.
If you can upload more Little and Large I would be eternally grateful. Their complete and utter lack of talent makes their show strangely hypnotic. It's like a car crash, I can't turn away
It's so random. Grease, Its Bitsy Teenie Weenie ..., Coronation Street, Blind Date, Rab C Nesbitt, Kwik Fit and AA adverts. And all results in a load of crap!
Thanks for this upload. A pity there isn't more Little & Large online - there's only the Christmas special, and now this. It's not great TV, but that could be said of much of what we watched back then.
Now many will think "How on earth did these two get on TV?", but you have to remember, back in the early 90's only 2759 people lived in England, and everyone else worked in the NHS.
You must remember in 1991 we didn't even have Channel 5 - licence fee was and still is compulsory, so the BBC could put out whatever nonsense they wanted and get away with it. I'm 49 now, but I remember at the time of day this was usually broadcast, families had just had 6 hours of Grandstand and World of Sport occupying the airwaves, little of interest on BBC2 and Channel 4 and this was considered about as 'family friendly' as you could get. All these pre-watershed programmes were exactly the same. Russ Abbott, Michael Barrymore, Paul Daniels, Les Dennis and Dustin Gee, Keith Harris, Bobby Davro - none of these performers/comedians would survive today but back then if you weren't in a position to have satellite or cable, this was as good as it got. It was cringe then, and moreso today, but Little and Large used to regularly get 10 million plus viewers every week. Thanks for uploading.
@@kate_cooper noooo, don't get me wrong - my parents were very much BBC people and we never watched ITV - I'd only get to watch him as a kid when I stayed at my nans. He was very funny then, particularly when up against the utter TRASH the BBC were putting out, but he'd have to be seriously PC nowaydays which I doubt he'd be capable of. He was a man of his times and at the top of the pile. Blunderwoman these days would be considered 'fat shaming' and C. U. Jimmy would be considered racist. Against ginger haired Scottish folk.
@@SegaStation Russ also had a sketch where he played a man who had a sex change (as it was called in those days) to become a woman, so the woman who was interested in him had one as well to become a man and proposed, only to find that Russ had become a nun. I thought it was pretty funny at the time but anything that could be considered making fun of transpeople would be a huge no-no right now.
I knew this was going to be god awful, but I forced myself through the entire thing - what utter dreck. But thanks for the sheer cringe I just had for the last 26 minutes. Never thought they were funny when I was a kid, and this is frankly an embarrassment. An amusing time capsule of crap TV though, so thanks for uploading :)
@@stanmonzon5788 No. It wasn't. It went on forever and they had to drag Kenny Baker into it because "funny dwarf". What was funny about it? They just did that stupid dance that NKOTB did and Eddie did a horrendously cringeworthy "rap" over it. Look, I like daft comedy, I grew up with it, but this by even their standards is weak.
30 years from now people will see footage of the shite we watch now like strictly, anything with Ant & Fucking Dec etc and will be as perplexed as we are watching this
Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room from Inside No. 9 comes to mind when looking at this and the quote, "We weren't even Mike and Bernie Winters." Little and Large were the real life Cheese and Crackers. This is the equivalent of watching your older family members trying to get down and be cool with the kids.
RIP Eddie Large ,deepest respect to his family, I know they saying ,coronavirus in later stages ,but he had ,major surgeries, and believe diabetes, and in his 70s,,
The past is a foreign country where they do things differently to us. Seriously I was around 10 when this was one tv and remember belly laughing with my dad every Saturday night when they were on. No matter how I position that thought and I just can’t get my head around why.
This type of comedy doesn't have any intelligence or heart behind it. This is something you can only realize when you have watched a lot of other comedy. Your dad should have known better though...
Neil, if you have the episode from the 1991 series where they play MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, I'd love to see it. Well, love might be too strong a word.
I used to love this show back in the day I was 19 when this episode came out I don’t think it holds up to the still brilliant and funny two Ronnies morcambe and wise and Laurel and Hardy Dick Emery and many others still very funny.
I can't see the comment you're responding to but this is correct. Alternative comedy had been out before Channel 4 started. The difference between the likes of L&L and alternative comedians was mainly the watershed - I was still in High School in 1989 and Alexei Sayle's Stuff, Naked Video and The Mary Whitehouse Experience were already part of our lives and can still stand up 33 years later.... L&L and their contemporaries were killed off when people started getting more TV channels so you weren't forced to watch them any more. My humble opinion
Arthur Askey in his movies was dated ... but still with moments of class ... and even true humour. Will Hay looks like ancient history, but he did what he did with professionalism and some kind of gravitas that stands the passage of time. Laurel and Hardy yet more so - their humour will never die, I believe. Undefinable in the end, but...
Sometimes I think back to watching Little and Large on the telly back in the day and wonder `Were they really that bad?` Then...then you watch it and realize not only was it that bad BUT time had been kind to my memories, as they were truly bloody awful. `91 also had Bottom, Alexei Sayle's Stuff, Absolutely, Vic Reeves Big Night Out and Smith & Jones airing that year - thank goodness for those as otherwise comedy on telly would have been complete and utter shite.
I remember when it first started in the late 70s, The L&L Show was pleasantly routine, if nothing else........... By the mid-80s, it was unwatchable... I hadn't realised it was still going as late as 1991 either - and just from watching the first sketch here, its hardly surprising at all that this was the final series! Truly, cringe-worthily awful! Syd and Eddie were two genuinely very nice guys, but absolutely dreadful comedians!
I wouldn't judge Little and Large by this. I remember them in the mid-seventies, when they were new and energetic. They were a good turn at that time. I was never sure they had enough to sustain full-length programmes, but they managed to be popular. They went on too long on TV. I suspect they had a long-term contract and saw it out. Still, it has a quality of its own. I've seen far worse.
Saw both of them in Blackpool few years ago what great show it was. RIP Eddie Large sadly taken from us this week due to conv19 RIP. My thoughts with co partner Sid Little and Eddie's family and friends and colleagues at this sad time.
Sid and Eddie - two very genuinely nice guys, but extremely poor comedians... I remember watching this show every week back in the early days of this show - initially it seemed mildly amusing and pleasant for the first couple of years - but it had become totally unwatchable by the mid-80s... Quite frankly, it looks truly cringe-worthy some 30 years on... In all honesty, I didn’t even realise the series was still going as late as 1991 (and from watching this, its unsurprising that the 1991 series was the last one)!
I was waiting for the laughs to start, 25 insufferable minutes later the credits rolled and I can't recall anything that happened, but I know I didn't laugh.
You cannot judge a career on one episode at the end of their tv series. Times have changed also humour has but they were funny for the era of light entertainment.
God give me strength, these 2 were painfully unfunny, they're weren't even funny in a surreal way, or funny for being unfunny, they were irritating to the extreme
Back in the day when there was bugger all on tv and we had to put up with this unfunny tripe, People only watched this because we only had 3 or 4 channels, not everyone had video's and people. I put this in the league of the krankies and cannon and ball, Kids stuff forced down the throats of adults. Painfully unfunny. Doing a comedy cover of a full song shows a huge lack of skits available, anyone else would do about 30-45 seconds worth and move on to the next. This is absolute crap
