Blue Jam
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Blue Jam was an ambient radio comedy programme produced by Chris Morris. It aired on BBC Radio 1 in the early hours of the morning from 1997 to 1999.
The programme gained cult status due to its unique mix of surreal monologue, music, synthesised voices, heavily edited broadcasts and recurring sketches. It featured the extreme voice talents of Kevin Eldon, Julia Davis, Mark Heap, David Cann and Amelia Bullmore. Morris himself delivered disturbing monologues, one of which was revamped and made into the BAFTA-winning short film, My Wrongs 8245 - 8249 and 117.
Chris Morris is known for pushing the limits of what is acceptable for the media, as is illustrated by an incident surrounding the sixth episode of Blue Jam, named after the sketch which precipitated it, "Bishopslips".
Bishopslips
In a 'sketch' commencing approximately thirteen minutes into the sixth episode of Blue Jam, Morris re-edited the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech at Diana, Princess of Wales's funeral to make it appear that he was making inappropriate comments regarding AIDS and the British Royal Family. The broadcast of this episode was halted in the middle of the edited speech, which was "broadcast almost in its entirety before being faded by a transmission engineer" [1] (http://peteashton.com/002310.html). It is unknown who ordered this, either a BBC employee receiving complaints (before the sketch had ended?), or Chris Morris himself as a stunt. The same episode was later rebroadcast, with "Bishopslips" omitted.
Derivative shows
The series was later made for television and broadcast on Channel 4 as Jam. It utilised unusual editing techniques to achieve an un-nerving ambience in keeping with the radio show, and largely repeated the radio sketches. A subsequent "re-mixed" airing, called Jaaaaam was even more extreme in its use of post-production gadgetry, often heavily distorting the footage.
In place of closing credits the show had a link to jamcredits.com (http://www.jamcredits.com/).
External links
- Blue Jam Sketch Guide (http://www.angelfire.com/id/bjsg/mainindex.html)
- Details of the shows, some sound files. Note: the free hosting of this site comes at the cost of a great many invasive pop-ups.