Lately, I’ve been dipping into Rewind TV’s reruns of The Cut Price Comedy Show, a short-lived oddity that first aired on Channel 4 in 1982 – right around the time the channel launched. It passed me by back then, but now it’s proving to be a colourful and intriguing time capsule.

The early ’80s was a period when alternative comedy was storming British television, with brash, anarchic shows like The Comic Strip Presents… and The Young Ones leading the charge. Cut Price, by contrast, feels like it missed the revolution: it’s an unlikely mix of vintage variety show, Monty Python surrealism, and low-budget amateurism.

My own encounter with the show began with a fast-forward skim – a personal habit when auditioning old shows. Two familiar faces jumped out at me from very different corners of British entertainment:

• Roger Ruskin Spear of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Multi-instrumentalist, eccentric sculptor, and the mad genius behind off-kilter Bonzo classics like Shirt and The Trouser Press (“Trouser it to me…”).

• Stephanie Marrian, former Page 3 model, here gamely cast to “wear saucy outfits and tell jokes… all of which go wrong.” (For some NSFW reasons she was popular at the time, see our bonus gallery: Maid Marrian.)

Rounding out the cast were three less familiar performers:

• Caroline Ellis, a lady who radiated so much upbeat energy there was probably no need for studio lights. She may be known to you from her later recurring role in Only Fools and Horses.
• Lenny Irving, co-writer and resident tragic magician, whose act involves endearing attempts to win the audience’s sympathy with ever-sadder tales of personal failure.
• And Royce Mills, the show’s urbane host. He has the air of a man who’s played many vicars – but went on to voice the Daleks in Doctor Who.

So what exactly makes The Cut Price Comedy Show “cut price”? Well, it’s filmed entirely on a single stage with a shoestring set and a few wobbly props. It feels more like a radio sketch show that’s accidentally wandered into a TV studio. The charm lies somewhere between under-rehearsed chaos and the ‘we’re all in this together’ feel of a school play.

The jokes? Uniformly terrible. Deliberately groan-worthy punchlines were a familiar feature of 70s and 80s comedy shows, but still depended on a sense of timing and delivery to land properly. Those are completely absent here. One episode even has a segment dedicated to “bad jokes” — though it’s hard to tell what made those any worse than the rest.

There are musical interludes, led by Ruskin Spear, a band of eccentrically dressed goofballs and Spear’s mechanical creations. I found the sub-Bonzos wackiness of the songs pretty embarrassing, but one did stand out: the haunting Krautrock pastiche My Friend’s Outside, which you can find in low-resolution here

Below are a few screen grabs from the episodes I’ve managed to catch — to give you a flavour of the mayhem.

The Cut Price Comedy Show was cancelled after just ten episodes. Frankly, it’s a miracle it lasted that long. But despite the dodgy gags and clunky pacing, there’s something disarmingly enjoyable about its gleeful amateurism. The studio audience seem to be genuinely having a good time, and maybe – just maybe – you had to be there to get the joke.

Kudos to Rewind TV for digging up this oddly fascinating relic and giving it another moment in the spotlight. Long may they keep unearthing the overlooked and the outright bizarre from the forgotten corners of TV’s past.