If you were a desert island cast away, which records would you take along? Innovative character comic Joseph Morpurgo wouldn’t pick Mozart records or The Beatles. He’d take albums of obscure TV theme tunes, aerobic workouts or ‘Holiday Sound Effects’.
The set-up for Morpurgo’s new solo show – which was nominated for the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe and received a gushing five-star review from yours truly – is a faux episode of Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’. He’s in conversation with the voice of Kirsty Young (whose dialogue has been painstakingly spliced together from actual episodes) and Morpurgo then transforms into the strange characters on the sleeves of his zany selections.
It’s one of the most inventive comedy shows of the year so far, and took him months of rummaging through record store bargain bins to find the weirdest discs. So what narrowly missed the cut? Here are a few oddballs from Morpurgo’s collection.
‘In which the little blue folk are assisted by a middle-aged Dutchman in bowler hat and full Amish beard. I’m sure this makes sense in context but, to the uninitiated, it’s inexplicable – imagine if Wilfrid Brambell suddenly turned up during an episode of “Teletubbies”. Deep cuts include “Pinocchio in Smurfland”, “Smurfing Beer” and the searing “Do Smurfs Cry” (answer: an emphatic yes).’
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