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Friendly Phrases
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.
The setup
Watch on YouTube
Watch onYouTube
The premise
Here’s the bit.
At a struggling slogan agency, the boss reviews a series of increasingly redundant pitches for delivery companies, paint makers and government departments. His staff share his enthusiasm for making money from pointless work, but their own promotional material is failing to express just how unpleasant the business really is.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 4
Say it with us
Highly quotable.
Making paint for obvious reasons.
Being the governmental department named above.
Behind the scenes
The people who made it.
David Mitchell
Writer
Script
Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.
- 00:01
Boss
Come on, come on! Guys, what has happened to this dream factory? When I first started coming up with friendly phrases that put a positive spin on what some organisation is self-evidently doing, people said that that was totally unnecessary and no way for an honourable man to earn a living. Then I landed the 10-7 water contract and came up with bringing water to people who need it.
- 00:25
Boss
Stick that in fake handwriting on all the vans, I said, and that will in some way be good. Guys, I'm afraid we're getting tired. Tim, have you come up with anything for that fleet of delivery vans?
- 00:37
Tim
All right, it's when there's a thing in a place, but the people whose thing it is need it in another place, then wouldn't it be good if there was some kind of system where...
- 00:45
Boss
Too long! Much too long! Brian, what about the one for the Dulux paint vans?
- 00:51
Brian
Making paint for obvious reasons.
- 00:53
Boss
No, you can't say it's obvious! That's death! It's all obvious! Julie, Department of Health?
- 00:59
Julie
Uh, working with you to stop you dying. Brackets sometimes.
- 01:03
Boss
Department of Education.
- 01:05
Brian
Hopefully ensuring you can read this. Ooh, in fact, I've come up with one that will work for all government departments. Being the governmental department named above.
- 01:13
Boss
That's a disaster! You can't give them a multi-purpose one.
- 01:17
Brian
But it'd be a big saving in terms of...
- 01:19
Boss
What? Money they'd give to us? What we're selling to them is the idea that people can no longer cope with things being simply labelled but need some kind of hand-holding accompanying phrase.
- 01:30
Boss
Now, I'm a certain sort of evil. Not death camp evil, not serial killer evil, but I take a perverse pleasure in having been paid through the nose for nothing of any value. That is my dream, and I'm not going to let it die!
- 01:45
We're all completely behind you on that one.
- 01:47
Tim
Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually used to be a serial killer, but then I realised that this sort of evil reaches so many more people.
- 01:53
Julie
That was what I realised the last time I left a kitten on the dual carriageway.
- 01:56
Tim
That's a moment. Maybe our problem is that we're the victims of our own success.
- 02:01
Boss
That would be gratifying, but at the same time a pisser.
- 02:04
Tim
What I meant was, the pointless accompanying phrase with which we advertise our own services might be letting us down.
- 02:09
Boss
Remind me what it is.
- 02:10
Julie
We're currently using two. On the business cards, we've got writing what people are doing on things. And on the notepaper, we've got writing what people are doing on the thing that they're doing it in, beside or with.
- 02:21
Tim
You see what I mean? It's bland and it doesn't reflect our malevolent purpose.
- 02:25
Boss
you're right so what were you thinking
- 02:27
Tim
how about sweetening your bullshit and spraying it into the faces of your potential critics
- 02:32
Boss
it reflects the conflict at the heart of everything government departments hate the people companies hate their stupid customers and I hate everyone in this room
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
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