When Trigger Happy TV first aired on Channel 4 in 2000, it could have so easily been mistaken for just another prank show. There was a man in a giant squirrel costume harassing innocent bystanders and a guy with a massive Nokia phone screaming the unlikely catchphrase “HELLO?” in public. But Dom Joly’s hidden camera series had a secret weapon that set it apart from the competition.
Instead of canned laughter or wacky stings, Trigger Happy TV paired absurd sketches with the likes of Grandaddy, Blur, The Beta Band, Babybird and Pulp. The effect was surreal, often moving and quite unlike anything else on British TV. It was a crash course in indie melancholy disguised as slapstick – and it opened up an audience to a different musical world.
“I think it often gave Trigger Happy unwarranted depth,” Joly tells NME, 25 years on. “You’re watching two dogs beat the shit out of each other listening to Jacques Brel thinking, ‘Why am I moved by this?’ Deep without a meaning. That’s how I described it.”
Ahead of a “celebratory” anniversary tour, Joly tells us how the influential soundtrack came together, getting chummy with The Cure’s Robert Smith and what the future of Trigger Happy TV could be.
Trigger Happy TV let Joly live out his rock star dreams
Dom Joly was never all that keen on the idea of being a TV prankster. “‘Prank’, to me, means what it used to mean, which was just fucking idiots and jocks doing stupid shit.” Instead he saw the hidden camera format as an art form.“In a way, what I was doing in Trigger Happy was sampling. I was taking bits of songs and dropping them in between the comedy.”
A self-confessed goth, Joly had previously played in the band Hang David and was drawn to sad music by impulse. “I find it beautiful but also it’s got pathos,” he explains. “I was a singer, but I wasn’t a great musician. Putting music on Trigger Happy was kind of my way of doing that because I love music more than comedy.”
The soundtrack was the punchline
In making the show for Channel 4, Joly found himself in a uniquely fortunate position. A blanket licensing agreement meant that he was able to use virtually any music he wanted. When it came to international broadcasting, however, things proved trickier.
“It was insanely expensive and the only country that paid for the whole original soundtrack was Germany, which was incredible,” Joly says. “MTV wanted to buy it but with this terrible international soundtrack that I’d had to make – a sound-alike.”
For Joly, it highlighted just how important his needledrops were. “I’d edited the whole show more for the music than the comedy,” he continues. “If you just plonk some shit lift music on top of it, it just changed it. In the end, I sold it to Comedy Central with the shit soundtrack, but it was always very depressing that America never saw it properly.”
Each character had their own theme song
UK viewers were rewarded with recurring musical motifs. The Chelsea pensioner hobbling down steps, or over a zebra crossing was accompanied by The Beta Band’s ‘Dr. Baker’. Grandaddy’s ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot’ scored solemn clowns pelting each other with custard pies in parks and laundromats. The opening moments of James’ ‘Born Of Frustration’ played out over scenes of Joly turning an elevator into a temporary fine dining restaurant or pretending to use a bathroom showroom’s toilet, much to the shock of the public. “It wasn’t like, ‘Here’s the lyric telling you what the joke is’. What I tried to do was have theme songs for characters.”
Joly’s all-time favourite remains the giant snail crawling across a road near Redcliffe Gardens in Fulham – a timeless pairing with David Bowie (later replaced by Muse’s ‘Unintended’ on home video releases).
“I could ring someone at that time and say, ‘I need a snail costume’ and six days later I’m in a tight body stocking with a massive snail costume,” he recalls. “I put ‘We Are The Dead’ by Bowie on it and it’s just perfect… It’s the most surreal idea. Everyone around the world understands it. It’s odd, funny and it’s got this amazing music that gives it kind of art house depth.”
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A chance encounter saved Trigger Happy TV
When it came to a theme song for Trigger Happy TV, ‘Connection’ by Elastica was Joly’s first and only choice. The story of how he secured it is almost as odd as one of his sketches.
“The blanket agreement didn’t include titles, so you had to pay,” he recalls. “It came back and they said no… I couldn’t think of what other song to use, because it was so in my head.” Deflated, Joly headed to HMV for inspiration only to bump into Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann at a cash point on Portobello Road.
“I run up to her, and she looks totally freaked out,” Joly explains. “She probably thinks she’s going to get mugged. I go, ‘Look, I’m really sorry. I know this is weird, but I’ve just made this show. I think it’s really funny. The title sequence used ‘Connection’. We asked your guys whether we could use it, and they said no.’” As it turned out, no one had asked her, but she was intrigued.
‘I said, ‘Fine, I know where you live. I’ll drop it off.’ And that completely freaked her out. At the time she was living with Damon Alban from Blur and it was around the corner from me in Notting Hill. The next day, I’m walking up to her door. There’s a very nervous-looking Damon staring out the window, so I waved, put the video through and then I went away. The next day they ring up and say, ‘Yeah, we absolutely love it. You can use it.’… I thought, ‘Right, we’re blessed here.’”
The show has plenty of famous fans
In addition to soundtracking Trigger Happy TV with his heroes, the show actually connected Joly with several of them in unlikely ways.
“I was at one of my gigs, this kid queued up and he said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you, because your shows were the only ones that me and my dad laughed at together’,” Joly says. Turns out the dad in question was Mark Hollis from 80s art-rockers Talk Talk. “That honestly just broke me – the idea that this guy whose music I loved watched my stuff. I also I knew he was quite a sad guy so [the fact I’d made him laugh] was amazing.”
Goth icons The Cure were also fans. Frontman Robert Smith later appeared as Joly’s best man in spoof documentary Being Dom Joly while a photo Joly took of Smith in his own kitchen after a night of drinking together in the early 2000s recently became the punchline to a joke 25 years in the making.
“I posted some silly meme about The Cure being depressing and some fucker said, ‘They’re not depressing. I don’t think you know anything about 80s music, especially The Cure’.” So Joly shared the photo of Robert Smith in his kitchen. “‘Just because he’s been in your kitchen, doesn’t mean you know anything about them’,” replied the disgruntled fan. “It’s like, dude, you’ve lost. Fuck off.”
25 years on, Dom Joly is still making mischief
This October, Joly brings Trigger Happy TV back for four celebratory live shows alongside co-creator Sam Cadman. “It’s difficult because it was a show with members of the public,” Joly observes. “This is more of a celebration. If you enjoyed the show, come and enjoy, you know? Wallow in some nostalgia.”
With classic characters set to make appearances, could it lead to something else? “Sam and I were thinking about maybe trying to film a weird hybrid, doing some jokes, but also making it a bit of a road trip with the characters, as though they’re back together,” he explains. “I don’t know what it’ll be. It’ll probably be very wanky but we’re going to make a little half an hour thing, put some music on it, and then see if anyone’s interested.”
The ‘Trigger Happy TV’ 25th anniversary tour kicks off October 7 at Birmingham’s Town Hall before visiting Glasgow, Manchester and London. Tickets are available here.