As Smack the Pony announce their comeback, we look at the beloved sketch show’s best offerings so far … and find they haven’t aged at all

In news that will have comedy fans feeling that perhaps 2019 will not be a totally grim year – as the world seemingly falls apart at the seams – the cast of the much loved sketch show, Smack the Pony, has told the Guardian it is working on new material.

When the show first aired on Channel 4, it was a female produced-and-fronted vehicle in a very male-dominated medium. (Unfortunately, still an issue not overcome 20 years down the line.)

There were female comics – Victoria Wood, French and Saunders – but it was the explosion of the Spice Girls and their brand of girl power that apparently gave then-Channel 4 comedy commissioner, Caroline Leddy, the impetus to pilot a brand new female sketch show.

‘We’re working on the reunion’: Smack the Pony comeback Read more

Producer Vicky Pile – who followed up Smack the Pony’s success with the likes of Green Wing – once explained the genesis of the show thus: “We set out to show that women could be sexy and self-deprecating and stupid … and still be funny and appealing.”

It made stars of its leads: Fiona Allen; Doon Mackichan; Sally Phillips and Sarah Alexander, who had before appeared in smaller roles in shows such as The Day Today or I’m Alan Partridge.

To celebrate this hopeful news, here’s a look at some of the best Smack the Pony sketches, and incredibly, how they don’t seem to have aged at all.

Young professionals

Phillips and Alexander’s characters are in the back of a black cab, both wearing suit jackets and exaggerated power shirts – with Harry Hill-type collars – talking awful corporate speak, before looking at each other and screaming with laughter at the idea they have “a pretty good understanding of the marketplace”. “We’re 27!” guffaws Phillips.

The denouement provides the biggest laugh as Phillips wrestles for quite a time with the FT. “I can’t even hold a big newspaper!” she cackles. It’s amazing how this sketch has stood the test of time, even though the millennial generation is supposed to be an entirely different kettle of fish. Aren’t we all just winging our way through careers and life? Especially – it seems more and more obvious – the business class. This bit was made two decades ago, and yet here we are, with fresh-out-of-uni graduates spouting big words leading to sub-prime mortgage crises.

Hair

One area where Smack the Pony excelled, for obvious reasons, was humour specifically aimed at – or at least particularly understood by – women. As Ian Hislop once said of the show: ““I was aware that these sketches would not have been produced by men”.

Hair was a running theme because, as we know, hair is a feminist issue. Women’s hair, wherever anatomically it may be, is apparently always up for public scrutiny and comment. But the flip-side is the genuine conversations and insecurities women share among themselves. Here, Mackichan shows her incredible bush or, as she puts it, “a few little wisps”. Then there’s the bit on full-body waxing to remove “an Airedale up my bum crack”.

Leaves

Smack the Pony always did random absurdism just as well as its skewering of social mores. A great example of this was Leaves, in which Allen is pursued down a street by a seemingly dangerous leaf while ominous horror movie music plays over stylised blue-hued camerawork. It was the kind of “lunatic silliness” (to quote Hislop again) that the Smack the Pony stars could really make work, such was their comic chops. Smack the Pony gave the actors the freedom to “just let women be clowns”, as Mackichan has put it.

The pole

A series three gem in which Mackichan’s character, laden with shopping bags and dressed sensibly in trench coat and trousers, breaks out of quotidian monotony by pole-dancing around a streetlamp. I haven’t worked up the courage to do this yet, but there’s still time.

The kiss

This scene of Phillips and Mackichan as two soap actors sharing a lesbian kiss has the triple recommendations of: being very funny indeed; subtle commentary on attitudes to sexuality; and also, at the start of the millennium, still a relatively rare example of same-sex snogging on the box.

Phillips’ actor is clearly enamoured with her co-star, whose attitude to the on-screen kiss could not be more unaccepting. “Disgusting,” she says, as an offscreen director yells cut. “Call my fiancee, tell him I love him”. Phillips, with a cheeky grin, makes them go again, “maybe with tongues?” It’s a smart rendering of the casual homophobia that exists in Mackichan’s character, but also, in Phillips’ performance – as any LGBT person either in the closet or coming to terms with their sexuality will recognise – the escape of feelings often not fully expressed.

Goodbye

In a genius combination of physical comedy and beautifully observed social humour, Goodbye is one of the most memorable sketches – and it works on many levels. Even before the final curveball, the mocking of middle-class dinner parties (“What an amazing thing to do with a trout!”) and what Bridget Jones would call “smug marrieds” is belly-laugh perfect.

The perfect man

There could be no roundup of the best Smack the Pony moments without including one of the fan-favourite video dating scenes. Smack the Pony was way ahead of its time in mocking the burgeoning tech hook-up trends, which have now exploded to become as everyday as air.

One of the best examples was Phillips’ take on people’s ridiculously high expectations – no, nigh impossible expectations – of potential paramours. If this character existed in 2019 (and hopefully will again soon), she would be swiping left on every Tinder profile.

“I want a man who has a really high-powered job, maybe in the City. But he shouldn’t be motivated by money at all.” “He should be really spontaneous when it comes to presents. But it should be mainly be stuff that I wanted already.” “He should have quite a large penis – but he shouldn’t feel that he has to use all of it, all of the time.” The sketch is as fresh and relatable now as it was then, and given the pace of change in the intervening 20 years, that is quite something. Cheers, then, to the forthcoming re-smacking of the pony.