Party Creatures and Concept Meetings

''Click the pictures if you're interested in a detailed analysis of these sketches. Read on below if you're curious about how we connected them all.''

Discussion
Written by Heleendje

The most easily recognisable type of personification happens when FAH select a 'whole' (tangible or abstract) as the theme and choose the different 'parts' of that whole as their characters. We could call this type of sketch a Multicharacter Meet-Up. They cast the roles among them to try and cover every relevant part of the whole (even though a handful of characters sadly end up on the cutting room floor). These characters are then put in a common and recognisable situation, such as a party or a meeting. The premise always revolves around how we deal with daily life and with other people. For example: in A Party with the Days of the Week, the theme is 'working 9 to 5', the premise is that workdays are boring wallflowers who look up to (i.e. forward to, if it were us) the weekend.

Setting
Parties and conventions are well-chosen settings for a collection of characters: the first is a social gathering, the second a professional one. There's no story without conflict, and there's plenty of that to be found in either situation.

When characters with huge differences in skill, status, and outlook meet, it prompts them to evaluate their lives, giving them a goal. Questions arise such as: Do I want to get higher up on the social ladder? Does that person need taking down a peg?

A party, or a meet up among friends, is supposed to be an enjoyable social occasion. A party brings together a wide variety of personality types who have something in common, but don't necessarily all get along. They were invited because they belong to a specific group; in these sketches the group is of course a collective noun, i.e. the parts of a 'whole' (a week, a year, a house). It's part of the narrative of course that the Months meet once a year at the start of summer hols, whereas the Days have a weekly get together at Saturday's gaff. The meet up between the various Apps, Websites and Browser Settings at the Internet Café has all the awkwardness of a high school reunion.

A work-related meeting on the other hand, is a professional gathering organised to achieve a goal, discuss productivity, or solve a problem. There's always some level of competition between its members, who find themselves having to defend their point of view with the necessary finger pointing along the way. Putting the Parts of the Body at a meeting instead of a party makes a lot of sense, because we talk of them in real life in a way that corresponds well with office terminology: healthy (an efficient worker), vital (a top function at the office), vestigial (a slacker who should be fired) and so on. Brain hosting a party would just leave us wondering how they're keeping the body alive, and that might be one disbelief to suspend too many. The Diseases storyline even involves a fight against a common enemy (Cures and Prevention).

Typecasting
A lot of FAHns wonder about how FAH divide roles between them, especially for these types of sketches. The ratio of available roles to FAH members is well over 2:1 for most sketches, so there's plenty to choose from. It's interesting to keep track of which performer picks which role, especially because looks don't really come into play here: one FAH boy may perhaps look more like a newsreader than the others, but the same can't really be said for the roles of Bathroom, Google, Saturday or Poundland (with some exceptions).

The casting process for these sketches is any FAHn's guess of course. It's possible they start with a table read, showing each other their personal takes on accent and voice, body language and ticks for each character. Every concept being personified obviously already has some connotation in terms of its personality, or it wouldn't have worked as a sketch. In some cases, a personality translates easily to a look: Fitness World will need to look fit, Bladder like an old man, S.T.I. like a pimp. Only one of those can't be faked, the rest is down to the costume department.

Everyone makes their own personal abstraction of concepts like days and months, so every clue to their look is in the script FAH wrote themselves. Who gets to play the party animal and who's more of a wallflower type? Who is a convincing host and who can act drunk the best? I would guess that the more extravagant characters are cast first, because the skills of each performer will be more obviously suited to one or the other. The more moderate characters can then be filled in to even out the numbers.

Rooms and shops are real-life places and easily characterised by decorating the characters with items you would find in them, but that doesn't mean they demand a particular face or body to go with them. In other words: anyone with a toilet seat around their neck can play Bathroom, really. The question is: what did they look for in that character that got Arms the part in Rooms (as Bathroom), while having previously chosen Hog in Amazon (as Bathroom World)? Incidentally, there's a little Easter egg hidden in the character of TripAdvisor from the 2015 Internet Café sketch, as Arms would reprise that role years later - but this time as a real person - in Travel Knob Guy (2016) and Start-Ups Vol. 2 (2018). He clearly found a type there... or he just didn't want the others to wear his traditional Indian outfit.

Let's close our eyes for a second and leave the costumes for what they are (you can find more on this if you click the buttons displayed above), and review the personality of the partygoers and meeting attendees we've met so far. To make this a little bit more manageable, we shall start from the assumption that each FAH boy plays to their own 'type' and then check if this hypothesis holds true. Note: the sketches used to support the arguments below are mainly the Body Parts Meeting, Disease Convention series and the Party With series.

The Foil Type
In these chaotic multi-character sketches with their wacky premises of 'objects being people', we - the viewers - need at least one character we can identify with to guide us safely through this merry mess. If there's no one there to provide some sense of normality, it'd just be a menagerie of weirdos piling up the puns. Even the silliest sketch needs to feel a bit realistic, to 'make some sense' to us. Enter the straight man!

At a party it's hard to be really boring (you'd leave) but there's definitely always a 'straight man' type present. They are the ones who are still holding coherent conversations by the end of the night. The dominant straight man functions as the Master of Ceremonies (a.k.a. the host). Foil's Saturday suits him very well for that reason: he's the one moving the plot forward by telling other characters where to look and what to do. Among the Rooms, Kitchen and Next Door's Bedroom behave most like ordinary people and Foil has that boy next door look about him that make him perfectly cast for these roles. Bedroom and October quietly hopping to the music minding their own business are completely Foil-like as well: approachable and easygoing, cool and mild-mannered, that guy who's always great craic to have around.

But Hog pulls that straight man role off rather well too as both June and Living Room. We're already familiar with him in that role from the McCormack series, where he's the only sensible person in a ridiculously over-the-top family. He's arguably the best out of the three at 'playing it straight' given the silliness of the premise, giving off a very convincing 'laid back guy' vibe.

At a meeting, the people in charge are supposedly more serious and 'straight' than the underdogs, who get to be silly and incompetent. Yet the leader types are invariably played by Arms (Brain and Cancer), who does a great job pretending to be a patronising stuck up snob. It's extremely funny watching Arms' characters' story arcs, usually starting off firmly in charge but by the end of the sketch besides himself with rage. His vocal range adds to the hilarity in a way that Foil's perhaps wouldn't: just imagine the roles of December and January being switched and you'll see what I mean. It's all personal taste of course, but I'd say there's no pay-off more enjoyable than a red-faced Arms character flailing about in a fit of rage, screaming mild obscenities in a falsetto voice, only to get cut off by the Doomdah.

The Arms Type
Both parties and meetings are the perfect playing grounds for clumsy characters to come along and mess things up. Arms's roles as Hair and Appendix, February and Sunday, were all perfect fits: he does the gormless idiot, slacker and cry-baby types exceptionally well (see Human Smartphone Live!) and his lanky physique is perfect for these roles, even when sitting down. At first viewing I didn't really spot the clumsy type in the House Party, until I realised that two drunks are portrayed by Arms: Good Room and Bathroom! As discussed above, his lankiness is also what makes his bouts of rage so hilarious, like a human Kermit the Frog.

As the tallest and most broad-shouldered of the group it is perhaps an obvious choice for him to take on the roles that require an imposing physical appearance. The fuming mad January needs to be able to tower over an oblivious December, and the same goes for the condescending Good Room who of course turned into February's twin after too much wine. Another characteristic of Arms, which even live show reviewers have picked up, is his ability to play camp. He always throws in some campness when playing his 'idiot types' (see above), but tends to inject a dose of camp into his nerdy characters as well, such as Hallway and Good Room, Tuesday and Wednesday, and of course September. It's rare, but tough guy Arms characters do exist, most notably Garden, Chicken Pox and S.T.I.

But Foil can play an all-arms-and-legs character too: the tantrum-throwing Playroom reminded me instantly of the Babies sketch. He's utterly endearing even when he aims for annoying, and his wide-eyed look of disbelief is unmatched.

The Hog Type
There are plenty of puns to go around so Hog can never be said to hog them all. But his range of accents and his expressive face (with the caterpillar eyebrows) make him the go-to guy for the most eccentric of characters, such as the Pantry and the Penis. Boiler and Basement are shifty characters just like the criminals he portrayed in Lockdown is Tough on Everyone. Pantry is pure pantomime and a delightful visual gag.

Hog's body type - as he's commented himself in an interview: "I am not a big man" - serves him well to play the more cartoonish creatures: the court jester outsmarting the king, or the scrawny underdog who may soon turn evil. The premise in If Diseases Were People, where Hog's Acne keeps fangirling over Arms's Cancer, worked especially well because Hog and Arms are distinctly different types in terms of looks and stature.

But Hog has a trick up his sleeve: he's such a chameleon actor that he can play totally different parts in the same sketch without it being just about the visual gag. Although wigs and accessories certainly help, the effect of Hog simply acting really well shouldn't be underestimated. In most scenes in the Diseases sketch, Hog either appears twice in split screen (Acne and Malaria) or in shot reverse shot (Malaria and Measles). Arms is doubled up in split screen too, but his Mumps and Rubella are just as much a visual gag as Tuesday and Wednesday or the pair of Kidneys are: they are meant to look similar, like the twin girls in the Simpsons always appearing together. Hog's characters in that sketch are however totally different and it's very easy for viewers to suspend their disbelief that it's Hog each time (I hadn't even fully realised Foil was missing on first viewing!). His Workday Monday is the polar opposite of his Friday and Bank Holiday Monday, but they are dressed exactly the same (the Mondays being of course a 'before and after') so it's all down to acting techniques. We get everything we need to know about these characters from Hog's facial expression, posture and intonation. No one does that quite like him... except perhaps for Animal from The Muppet Show.

Status
A well-known narrative strategy, and a classic trick in improvisation comedy, is to give a character either a high or a low status and then have them interact with each other. The pairing of Thursday and Friday is a pitch-perfect example of why a status difference works so well: the tension that arises because low status Thursday is awkwardly trying to get into high status Friday's good books, is painfully relatable. Even the whole build up to Friday appearing as one of the main storylines in this sketch is built on the premise that they belong to different layers in the social hierarchy. Tuesday and Wednesday's low status is also one of the punchlines, when it becomes clear that the other weekdays (especially the high status ones) see them just as we do: as identical and interchangeable. This implies that one of them is disposable. The status each day has been given in the script obviously refers to our own conscious classification of weekdays as days to either 'try to get through' or days to 'look forward to'.

And then there's the infamous status switch which makes this sketch stand out: weekday Monday has the lowest status of all, being the slave of the week, the one day everyone (in a 5-day work week at least) is always dreading, the one day no one wants to think of during a party. What happens at the exact point in the sketch when it turns out Monday is in fact Bank Holiday Monday? We get transported from a relatively meek 'office do' to a wild affair with Monday at the top of the status pyramid. It's clear that status wholly depends on the context it is being used in and isn't an integral part of a character per se.

There's no other sketch in this series that plays with status differences quite like this, but they are definitely there. February has the lowest status of all the Months, perhaps on par with Northern Hemisphere November who's talked about but not seen. July swans in beaming confidence and clearly has high status, even though he might be the nicest of lads, and the same goes for the host June. October is clearly higher in status than December (presuming it was he who turned the Christmas jingles on). But watch out: whereas January is the one giving December a lecture, it is nevertheless December who has the higher status in that conversation. In the conversation between May and September, May has the lower status as he can't get a word in edgeways. The rule is: if you're the one getting worked up, you're losing!

In the Diseases series, the status differences are blatantly obvious of course. That's because they are set in an environment that's naturally hierarchical. Compare the hierarchy at your place of work to the hierarchy in your social circle: the latter is definitely always there, but much less pronounced and usually implied rather than explicit! In this universe, the dangerous diseases are firmly at the top and personified as leaders (Cancer), celebrities (Plague) or a feared villain (COVID-19). At the bottom are the non-threatening afflictions, Acne in particular, who is nevertheless the main character in the first Disease Convention sketch because we get to meet the other diseases through his eyes. Having a low status character as a protagonist is perfectly possible of course, and often makes for much more interesting storytelling.

The experts-at-work professional context is also why the punchline in The Body Parts AGM works so well: starting off very high status, the Brain seems to have it all under control, putting other Body Parts on the spot in his evaluation of their work. But he's taken down by Penis, who's given high status by his supporters chanting for him. Underdog Appendix is more difficult to pin down, because he's got the kind of attitude that might make Brain's life a lot more difficult, thereby undermining his status as well. Hair, of course, is an eejit and will never be seen by anyone as having higher status than them.

I'd like to invite any readers to have a go at judging the status of the various Rooms! Remembering that status is contextual, it's easiest to take them in pairs. Bedroom and Hallway, or Kitchen and Basement, are easy pairings to get you started. You can comment on room statuses below this article if you like!

Gender
Before we dive in, let's briefly go over some terminology. In theatre, a travesti role is a male actor playing a female part, and a trouser (or breeches) role is a female actor playing a male part. In each case, the narrative has nothing to do with gender or cross-dressing, because the characters aren't a different gender in disguise. Travesti is typically used for when the female character must be tall, ugly, and evil (the stepmother type). Trouser roles are well-known in opera, used for when the male character must be childlike or angelic (the Orpheus type).

The lads often perform travesti roles in their sketches, but not just to 'make up for the lack of women' in their comedy group. Their multi-character 'meetings' sketches, which includes the ones in realistic settings (for example Every Committee Ever), more often than not have at least one female character sitting at the table for a specific reason. U.T.I. is female because this infection is indeed more common in women. Making her the only woman in the sketch highlights that medical factoid and is sure to delight the knowledgeable viewer when they clock that cleverly chosen detail.

The Parts of the Body were once again all male, but it was clearly stated by Brain that they were in charge of a 30-year-old male body, so that does stand up to scrutiny. We also mustn't forget that these two 'meeting' sketches (Other Diseases Are Angry and The Parts of the Body AGM) were filmed in lockdown, when only Hog had access to any wigs at all, having ordered a whole bunch of them online.

What we will zoom in on here is that so far not a single female character as turned up in the "A Party With" sketch series, even though these were filmed at their office with all their costumes and props at hand. That seems a bit off, doesn't it? Is it a simple oversight, or simply not relevant? Maybe there's a valid reason, or maybe we've missed a subtle clue... Let's try and think it through.

Office Blokes
In Days of the Week, all partygoers are portrayed as employees from the same office meeting at Saturday's gaff for pints. Even back in 2018 an all-male office block was highly unlikely, so what's the deal? Is there an underlying assumption here that only the lads want to meet up for pints?

The host is obviously quite laddish and it's likely that FAH modelled this character on themselves in their (slightly) younger days; you only have to watch footage from DramSoc to see the parallels. A female Saturday pushing for shots might have made for slightly uncomfortable viewing at best, because the viewer would find themselves thinking: hang on, who are they trying to mock here?

The other issue has to do with wardrobe. Lads dressed as women always look at least a little bit clownish, so the stuffy twins Tuesday and Wednesday are out: put a wig on them, and the caricature fails. Making Monday a girl would have been sexist: you can't have the only unwanted guest, who turns into a binge drinker no less, to be the only female, what message would that send out?!

The charm of Thursday is that he seems to have a serious soft spot for a fellow (male) co-worker. That's a subtle gay vibe done well and it wouldn't have come across if either Thursday or Friday had been a woman. On the contrary: it might have made viewers think the lads had wanted to shy away from implying any sexual tension between two male characters, which isn't like them at all.

That leaves Sunday! Well, Arms's hair was simply too perfect to put a wig on for that role.

Long Time No See
There were 9 Months invited to June's Party, once again none of them girls. For some of them, that was a good decision, for example January's weight gain would've made me cringe if he'd have been a she. December had so much going on already in the costume department, being in full Santa dress-up. Arms as Southern Hemisphere November had enough work to do on the Australian accent without asking him to go into falsetto, so that's fair as well. February as the lovesick lad crying over flowers and chocolates was funny because he was male, in a reversal of stereotypical gender roles.

What about July though... we learned in An Interview with Winter (which premiered the week after) that Summer is a 'she', and I for one would have appreciated a prosecco woman-like character flaunting her 'Irish tan' while guzzling her cocktail out on the decking. June is even a girls' name, as is April (who was missing from the party and might have been female, if the character ever even made it into the script), and an elegant female party host would have been an interesting change from the rowdy Saturday. The dialogue 'couples' September/May and March/October had nothing specific about them that required gendering them either way.

Everybody in the House
There's no real limit to the number of rooms you can have in a house, so the lads were free to choose whichever room they felt could generate the best puns. And still, not a single room was female. The argument that a lad's gaff would logically have all-male characters personifying the various rooms doesn't really hold up, at least not as well as a man's body would naturally have all-male body parts does.

Portraying Downstairs Bathroom as a man definitely was the right choice: it's a room designed for nudity and dirty business, which in human form screams lad, not lady. However, having a Mrs. Hallway taking coats would have tickled me, especially if she'd been the Irish mammy type. And wouldn't it have been hilarious to have Bedroom be a ravishing babe in a silk peignoir? She'd have shouted at Upstairs Bathroom to pick up that damn towel for once. You can call that a stereotypical view of the heterosexual relationship, but we'd still keep the cheerful lad as Kitchen and the grumpy tired dad in the children's duvet as Next Door's Bedroom of course. And besides, it didn't get much more stereotypical than the pair of outsiders Garden and Shed in that sketch. A much more sensible view to take might perhaps be to point out the limitations to what three boys can achieve with a wig and a pair of stockings, no matter how good looking they are.

There are a couple of outliers in this sketch who were a perfect fit for their assigned gender. Study was obviously going to be male as the stuffy old professor from an Agatha Christie novel. Attic as a sort of foul creature was on point as well. Good Room is so over-the-top camp (and reminiscent of February) that he had to be a man for the joke to 'work'. Finally, Pantry dressed up as an unlikely 'historical butler' within a narrative that's already totally unrealistic, was nothing short of genius.

Mostly Neutral
There is of course a third option: these characters aren't really male at all! Being inhabited by male actors' bodies it's logical for them to refer to each other as 'he', but nevertheless they mostly come off as gender neutral beings. A female sketch comedian would have made Tuesday and Wednesday work just as well, dressed in a pant suit and putting on a posh accent. A ruffled, drowsy lady Sunday would be the Bridget Jones of the week. And Edina Monsoon would be a cracking Mrs. Saturday.

Garden had a naturally blokey feel to him that conjured up a neatly mowed lawn and trimmed hedges. We could imagine this character’s female counterpart as a willowy blonde hippy girl with flowers in her hair, babbling about bees and butterflies. But that would have been a totally different joke! And besides, apart from him and his mate Shed, none of the other characters had a strong 'traditionally masculine' look to them anyway. Take Playroom: you won't read here that he had 'typical boys' toys' draped around him: Bob The Builder is perfect for any child.

Mr., Mrs., Ms. or Mx. ... does it even matter? Well, of course not, and it bears repeating that this is just FAHns having a laugh with FAH sketches. They 'design' their characters to fit the sketch (and the joke), giving them a look and a voice that works best, and they then dress up for that part using the wardrobe and props they have. That look-voice-combo may turn out to be female, or male, or anywhere in between, or non-specific altogether. And in this case, we're discussing characters that aren't meant to be human beings at all. They look mostly male because they are portrayed by three 'comedy boys'. But as characters, they are as genderless as a Tuesday or a living room are. Unless of course you speak French, in which case all your weekdays are definitely male. And remember:

"'Qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera.'" Speaking of boys... we could write a whole chapter on age gaps between characters, but let's leave that for another set of sketches, shall we?

Observe!
To be a skilled comedy writer you must also be a keen observer of social behaviour, which is why these sketches ring so true to us, despite their ridiculous premise. Days and Months and Body Parts and Rooms are a cute gag on a superficial level but there's a lot of thoughtful writing supporting it. These 'Beings-that-aren't-living-things-in-real-life' showing affection towards or disdain for one another, getting stressed or drunk, behaving like loons or pricks,... we all know people like them and we can usually find at least one character we can identify with. If you find yourself at a dinner party pondering "oh, she's such a Thursday", or at a meeting mumbling "ugh, why is he being such a Stomach", don't be alarmed, every group has one. That's why it's not surprising at all to see so many FAHns cheer when FAH release a follow up in a series: we get attached to these characters because we recognise them, and we want to know how they're getting on in 'life' just like we would if they were our friends.

The lack of any social interaction is perhaps why the Amazon Sketch never really did anything for me: it's all visual gags and puns, the stiffness and formality of the characters being part of the joke. Furthermore, this sketch doesn't simulate a social situation we might be familiar with from daily. Instead, they went for an alien environment that parodies a scene from a blockbuster movie set in a Galaxy Far Far Away. It's a tricky thing to do and it certainly achieves the intended effect (which is still to make people laugh, let's not forget!), as this sketch made the top 25 FAHn favourites list!

Whichever your favourite sketch in this 'category' is, the attention to detail in all of them is what makes these sketches the perfect binge material. They are a FAH staple at this point, and we can't wait to see more of them.