This CD combines the 1960 EP
Pieces of Eight and the 1961 LP
One Over the Eight -- both taken from the revues of the same name, featuring the original cast -- into one disc. It's droll, arch British humor that makes much use of contrasting accents and class backgrounds.
Kenneth Williams is involved in every sketch, but only does a few on his own; on most of the 16 pieces, he bounces off another member of the cast as a foil. It's perhaps not as notable for
Williams' own talents (though his send-ups of British character types are accomplished) as the material, most of which was written by a young
Peter Cook in the period just before he started his rise to fame as a comic performer in his own right. For the international audience,
Monty Python's Flying Circus is the most familiar touchstone in measuring the influence of British comedy predating the late '60s, and you can hear some seeds of
Monty Python here, especially in the banter between stuffed-shirt archetypes and loutish semi-loonies with funny voices. Most specifically, "Buy British" (from the
Pieces of Eight EP), in which guests at a French restaurant are offered all manner of disgusting delicacies, sounds very much like a prototype for
Monty Python's memorably gross sketch featuring the proprietor of a candy company offering such items as "crunchy frog." "Hand Up Your Sticks," about a botched stickup, will also trigger memories of several
Monty Python bits when criminals and policemen can't quite get their lines straight. There are other worthy routines here without such specific future reference points, though, like "Interesting Facts" and "Not an Asp" (both based around seedy bores who won't leave their upper-crust partners in conversation alone) and "Evils of the Weed," a self-damning anti-smoking message by an incessantly coughing narrator. This compilation might be more understated than uproarious, but it has its place as an important source of modern British comedy.