It started in a strip joint and ended up bringing alternative comedy to our TV screens. Ahead of a new Edinburgh show, Peter Richardson tells us why his riotous creation still makes audiences laugh 40 years on
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise.
At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television.
