Last weekend was sadly the final time that Harry Hill will mock and point fun at the week’s television as TV Burp finished after 11 years. What started off as a late night Thursday comedy show ended up becoming essential Saturday family viewing. However, after months of speculation about the future of the show Hill has now confirmed that the show has ended.
Whilst this is sad news and means that you can no longer watch television finding the bits that you expect to be ridiculed by Hill later in the week, we here at TV Talk have decided to remember the good times and take a look at his best bits.
The characters
TV Burp had an array of characters ranging from soft toys to caricatures. One was a spoof of Heather from Eastenders who was in fact a man dressed as a woman who was also on the lookout for a sausage. And in a strange twist of fate Heather from Eastenders, a character that Hill had lovingly poked fun at since her arrival on the square, was killed off in the same week as the last TV Burp.
During The X Factor in 2010, the show created Wagbo the supposed love child of two of the year’s contestants Mary Byrne and Wagner. Wagbo was a bit of a wild child and each week would escape the confines of the studio and go on the rampage throughout the UK as the show played footage of him scaring people in shopping centres as well as on the sets for a variety of ITV programmes.
But I think my favourite character has to be Knitted Character who was originally seen in Eastenders and then ended up being involved in a lot of TV Burp sketches. During his time he was a judge on The K Factor: So You Think You Can Knit? as well as playing a part in Where has the Knitted Character been this week? where he would hide in different television shows each week to be spotted by eager viewers. He was also keen on riding a particularly wobbly jelly, which Hill would allow him to do regularly.
Phrases
In a bizarre TV Burp moment Hill latched onto a character in Emmerdale saying “cataracts?” once and made this into a recurring joke. Each week more and more people would say ‘cataracts’ for the fun of it leading to an impressive finale where 41 cameos where made in total just to say cataracts.
For some reason repeating a word in a funny voice is hilarious when Harry Hill does it, which is why his coverage of BBC Three show Freaky Eaters was a must see. Each week the participants of Freaky Eaters would confess that they had survived the past three years by eating nothing but only one kind of food and then it would fall to Hill to deal with this in an proper manner — by shouting the foods they would eat in a silly way. The best was, of course, chippy chips.
The fights
The fights have become part of popular culture now and are easily the best bit of the show. To find out if that statement is true there is only one way to find out … watch the video below.
So there we have it, the end of an era and the end of a very good show. I think it is safe to say that there will be nothing else like on Saturday evenings ever again. To catch the very last episode before we are left in a world which is TV Burpless then head over to ITV Player.
