After a motorcycle accident resulting from an untimely sneeze, TV and radio personality Victor Lewis-Smith has been deposited in a BBC-owned hospital that serves as a dumping ground for burnt-out broadcasters, scriptwriters, and other unwanted TV people. As Victor lies in a full body cast suffering from a comic coma, a doctor hooks his life-support machine up to a television in order to stimulate his subconscious by pumping his brain full of dull old programs. Trapped within his body and searching in vain (and in vein) for a way out, Victor brings new meaning to the idea of introspection as he embarks on a taxi tour through his ventricles. In the first of a series of weekly phone pranks indulging his alter ego's need to ""lash out"" at society, Victor phones a masseur who has placed an ad in a newspaper.
Hospital staff members are bemused by the discovery that Victor's subconscious, having been saturated with old television programs, has begun transmuting the input and spewing out original images and comedy skits, using the television hooked to his life-support system as a channel to project the disturbed workings of his mind. The BBC nurse takes a fancy to Victor after inspecting his curvy X-rays, and he receives a visit from the National Elf Service. Overcome once again by the need to lash out, Victor's alter ego places a call to the Monopolies Commission.
Having learned that Victor is acting as a transmitter broadcasting to the entire hospital, the BBC doctor and station officials begin making plans to phase out the BBC's current staff and equipment and replace them with this far more economical one-man transmitter. But first, they will need to open up Victor's brain and have a rummage around, in the national interest. Victor's alter ego insults a Belgian.
Victor is prepped for surgery to have his brain cut open and inspected by BBC officials, prior to being launched as a cheap replacement for all existing BBC programming. However, he and the hospital staff are trapped in the lift on the way to surgery. When supplies run low, the others may be forced to eat bits of him for sustenance. Victor's alter ego consults the office of a New York plastic surgeon.
The doctor concludes that desperate measures are called for and subjects Victor to ""Edison Medicine"" (i.e., an electric shock administered directly to the head), leaving him susceptible to paranoid delusions of conspiracy. As Victor's subconscious ruminates on the Kennedy assassination, his wife informs him that she has rented out his room and intends to appeal to the court for his right to a dignified death. Victor's alter ego rings a Japanese newspaper with a scoop about a possible conspiracy in connection with the death of River Phoenix. The Director General of the BBC sends the order to have Victor terminated.
The TV Vicar visits in preparation for Victor's imminent termination. Victor's wife agrees to donate his bits to medical science because that's against everything he stands for, and his father arrives eager to lay claim to his few remaining possessions. Just when it seems there's light at the end of the tunnel, Victor's intravenous taxi service -slash- narrative linking device comes to an unsavory end. Before the BBC pull the plug to terminate both Victor and the series, he has time to indulge his alter ego with one final phone call, which he uses to pester a florist.
Up Your Arts. A one off special, written by and performed by Victor Lewis-Smith for Channel 4's Club X from around 1991 or '92. Victor himself makes a rare appearance in this show.
Originally shown as 5 minute segments in the otherwise almost entirely forgettable C4 series Club X (a precursor to The Word), Buygones was quite possibly the first attempt to mine the nostalgia seam of comedy that so many have cashed in on since. Anyone remember Spangles eh? This is the compilation of the best parts broadcast as a standalone programme some time after Club X went to live on a farm in Wales......
Victor Lewis Smith Fabulous British Cuisine
Part of the 'TV Hell' night, "Going Logo" investigates TV Logos over the years, in the inimitable style VLS fans will be used to.
