Erstellt am: 12. 12. 2014 - 18:03 Uhr

Why Is There Something and Not Nothing?

Reality Check: British comedy television legend John Lloyd talks 'Spitting Image', the Queen's giggle, what's really the matter, and a whole bunch of other stuff that will make you laugh and think.

Peek-a-boo, I see you John Lloyd.

Andrew Crowley Photographer

Being a teenager who loved all things British but lived in the suburbs of Toronto back in the eighties, meant Adrian Mole and I were best buddies, I was going to probably marry either George Michael (hoppala) or John Taylor from Duran Duran and John Lloyd's work was, without me knowing it, setting the wheels in motion towards what would eventually really happen to me in life.

I really ended up having a career that had to do with current events and comedy - sometimes both things at once, sometimes separated by time and formats. Imagine if only one person was the force behind Jon Stewart's Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Russell Brand's Revolution Tour, The Simpsons, South Park, and Maschek.
Well, John Lloyd is the producer of 80's and 90's British television comedy CLASSICS.

Blackadder, Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the long-running comedy panel show hosted by Stephen Fry, QI.

There is something so refined about a certain type of British silliness to me. The combination of smart, eccentric, and completely whack-job out-there appeals to me. Which is why the body of John Lloyd's TV work has always cracked me up and made go, "hmmm..."

Back in the mid-eighties when I was 15 or 16 and not the only young person convinced that imminent death was approaching either by way of nuclear war or by some sex-thing called AIDS, watching grotesque puppets represent incompetent grotesque world leaders, it was a psychological relief to just point my finger at the (puppet, in more ways than one) powers that be and say HA HA.

John Lloyd isn't done with creative madness (the good kind) and measured reflection (not the self-indulgent kind). He hosts BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity , has written a heck of a lot of books, has a bunch of cool stuff up his sleeve (listen to the show), and gave the best TEDTalk I have ever seen and I have seen a LOT of really, really good ones.

When I interviewed John, I turned into a major fangirl. It's painfully obvious how professionalism flew right on out the window for me during the interview but I don't mind because the talk was so full of truths about contemporary comedy, television, philosophy, not malicious gossip, and it was all like I was finally catching up with an old friend and there was a comfortable warmth in our conversation. Plus I had the chance to say thanks John Lloyd for fuelling my imagination so. That was really cool.

Reality Check Special with John Lloyd

Thank you Pippa and Veronika at GlobArt for bringing John to Austria and to the FM4 Studio!