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Flushed Grollings

A Bit of Fry & Laurie 1990 Season 2 Episode 1

SKETCH-O-VISION

A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

A customer reads out a hardware order made entirely of baffling, faintly rude-sounding parts, and the counter assistant knows every one of them.

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Community rating

– / 10

The funny people

Meet the cast. 2

Highly quotable.

Do you want the nipples greased?

Five olive spantles, jigged and onioned.

Whatever you do, don't forget to lubricate your slip hole before any grip jigging.

The premise

Here’s the bit.

A customer in a hat and raincoat works through a long shopping list at a hardware trade counter. Every item is invented technical jargon, yet the assistant treats each request as routine, fetching parts from the shelves and asking about finishes, sizes and fittings while the names drift further into innuendo. When one item is out of stock, he suggests a substitute and explains how to fit it. After the assistant offers a last piece of installation advice, the customer slaps him in the face for his rudeness, and the assistant apologises.

Behind the scenes

The people who made it.

Stephen Fry
Writer
Hugh Laurie
Writer

A little extra

Notes from the archive.

The script was published in the 1990 book A Bit of Fry & Laurie. The broadcast version departs from the printed text in places: on screen the assistant adds a final warning about lubrication before the customer slaps him.