Oi, darling, get your knickers on and get me a cup of tea.  This season I are mostly wearing a thong.  Does my bum look big in this? Ooh, suits you Sir! I was a full six hours in make-up. No offence, I'll get my coat.  Wearing a coat is like making love to a beautiful woman, hardest game in the world.  So different in the old days, small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts.  Chriswaddle!  I can't do the accent.  You ain't seen me, roight?

Having known each other since University and worked together for years writing for and appearing with Harry Enfield, the pair were looking for a chance to branch out.

After seeing a cut-down showreel of "Harry Enfield and Chums" highlights they were inspired to take a new approach to sketch shows, bringing characters on just long enough to establish a situation and say a catchphrase before whisking them off again.

Joined by Caroline Aherne, Simon Day, Mark Williams, John Thomson and Arabella Weir and with additional writers of the quality of Arthur Mathews, Graham Linehan, Bob Mortimer and Craig Cash, the show swiftly became the major purveyor of frivolity to the nation, its catchphrases repeated from bars to boardrooms and pulpits to playgrounds. 

Scratchy black and white footage announced Arthur Atkinson, a perfectly plausible pre-war comic, right down to the nonsensical "Where's me washboard?" patter.

Even characters such as Rowley Birkin QC, whose unintelligible and extraordinary ramblings - "'Snake! Snake!' she cried!" - always ended in a confession of having been "terribly drunk at the time" had moments of genuine pathos, in Birkin's case leaving him to deliver his catchphrase with tears streaming down his face after telling the tale of his lost love.

The Fast Show ran for three series plus a Ted and Ralph special, as well as a three-part "Last Fast Show Ever", a one-off made up of previously unshown sketches and a theatre tour.

Re-titled in America it was known simply as "Brilliant".  Quite right, too.