Wow! Sweet! And he's going to be doing 4 lectures in Oxford on the state of British comedy ( on 24 January 2005, 31 January 2005, 7 February 2005, and 14 February 2005); here's a quote from the
OU website:
Discussing the theme of his lecture series, which will be given in Oxford during January and February 2006, Armando said: 'If British TV has a heritage, then comedy is its most precious commodity. Most people's lists of the best television from the past forty years invariably have great moments of comedy at the top. Today, though, British Television Comedy is at a crossroads. Just as it get more daring and varied in format and technique, and just as audiences get more and more sophisticated in the breadth of comedy they're willing to watch, viewing figures for comedy shows are in decline. Less comedy is being made for the mass audience channels BBC1 and ITV, while the commissioning of comedy shows is increasingly in the hands of TV professionals from outside comedy production, under pressure from advertisers and schedulers not to take risks. And reality TV has recently shown that mass audiences can be won over by programmes far cheaper to make than the average comedy show. Over the next five years, TV comedy has the chance either to reclaim the mass-appeal, large viewing-figure slots that were previously theirs by right, or become a fragmented web of innovative, interesting but niche programmes. These lectures will outline precisely how British TV comedy arrived at this crossroads, and the possible routes it can take.'
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