5 of the best skits from the original Trigger Happy TV
HELLO?! HELLO?! YEAH, I'VE MOVED ONLINE! ONLINE!!!!
Most pranks today are found on YouTube, where often if they’re not dangerous to an idiotic level, they’re faked.
So it’s good news that Trigger Happy TV, Dom Joly’s seminal hidden camera prank series is returning next week. Joly’s pranks always managed to toe the line between public bemusement and genuine inconvenience successfully, so it will be interesting to see what he’s managed to think up in the intervening years since the show ended in 2003.
To tide you over before the new series begins, here are five of the best skits from the original series.
The big phone man
To many this is the quintessential Trigger Happy sketch, as Joly’s overly loud man answers calls on his overly large phone in places where one would usually be expected not to be overly loud. The wriggling discomfort from members of the public too afraid to confront him speaks to many a commuter’s fear to speak up to unseemly behaviour on public transport.
More like this
The snail
Years before French prankster Remi Gaillard made it mainstream, Joly made drivers at a zebra crossing squirm in their seats as he crossed the road at the pace of a… well, you can see for yourself. The clip in question starts at about a minute in.
The mob
Imagine: you’re walking down a street in broad daylight and then suddenly you are the target of one hundred screaming people all wearing animal costumes. You probably would do an abrupt about-face wouldn’t you? This comes bundled with one of the
The London guard
Guards at the Tower of London probably watch this every day at the end of a shift for some much needed catharsis, after being gawped at and mocked by tourists for hours on end.
The pigeon
As with all of them, this one is pretty straightforward: a man is prejudiced towards overly large pigeons: instead of giving them food, he’d rather throw it at them as a weapon. What a horrible man.
Trigger Happy TV returns to All4 from Monday September 26
