Welcome to The Velvet Onion – the central hub for an interconnected range of alternative comedy and more.  Click through for the LATEST NEWS, and see what’s so hot right now below.

TVO ON TELLY

This week sees the continuing adventures of Trollied (featuring Aisling Bea) on Sky One, and Toast of London (written by and starring Matt Berry) on Channel 4, whilst Not Going Out – the BBC One sticom featuring Katy Wix alongside Lee Mack, takes a break for Children In Need, returning next Friday (Nov 21st).

Miss Bea also makes an appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks alongside pop veterans Lisa Stansfield and Ana Matronic, and fellow comedian Joe Lycett, and the regulars Rhod Gilbert, Phill Jupitus and Noel Fielding.

If you missed it last week, there’s also the opportunity to catch up with Richard Ayoade joining David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Dame Shirley Bassey and Annie Lennox on The Graham Norton Show via iPlayer, which is available until Friday evening.

There’s one other little treat for TVO fans out there this week, with a round of popular quiz show Pointless featuring Cult Sitcoms, which aired on Tuesday, November 4th.  The question asked 100 people to name actors who appeared in two or more episodes of Spaced, The Mighty Boosh and French & Saunders oft-neglected 80s sitcom Girls On Top.  Surprisingly, those polled were clearly not regular readers of The Velvet Onion – as quite a number of our regulars came up as pointless answers! Check it out, 36 minutes in, over yonder.

TVO TOASTS

The nominations for this year’s British Comedy Awards were announced this weekend, with a huge number of shows having TVO connections.  As we noted in our news post, the nominations include a whopping – and totally deserved – eight nods for Matt Berry via Toast of London and his recent short The Lone Wolf.

With Toast currently in the midsts of its second series, as mentioned above, there’s no better time to check out what all the fuss is about!

In fact, the nominations go a long way to proving what we’ve been telling you all for almost half a decade now: that Onion Land is a talented place indeed.  All four nominations for Best Sitcom and three of the four for Best New Comedy Programme have TVO connections, as do fellow nominees, The Inbetweeners 2, Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos and How To Make A Hit Pop Song.  It’s a glorious time for British Comedy indeed.

Our huge congratulations go to all the nominees, but especially our regulars Matt Berry, Aisling Bea, Katherine Parkinson, Reece Shearsmith, Dan Skinner, Spencer Millman, Simon Farnaby, Chris O’Dowd and Steve Coogan.  Good luck to you all!

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VIRAL

Three stories caught the public’s imagination this week in ways we didn’t quite expect.  First up, Paul King‘s forthcoming Paddington movie – featuring cameos from Steve Oram, Tom Meeten and many more amongst its star studded cast – began the biggest part of its publicity campaign, with a series of statues of the titular bear being erected across London.

The full blown Paddington Trail, detailed on the official Visit London website, features a whole host of Paddingtons designed by celebrities: with the likes of Peter Capaldi, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Sheen, John Hurt, Emma Watson and Julie Walters amongst those making their mark on the famous bear.

The film itself is due out on November 28th, and there’s a new trailer for it below.

On the subject of all things film related, the bad news this week was the closure of Teddington Studios, which will be demolished to make way for a series of luxury homes, as reported here by The Express.

Starting life as a film studio in the 1910s, Teddington was at one time a home for Warner Brothers productions of quota-quickies, before being taken over by ABC, and later Thames Television – in that time making shows as diverse as THe Avengers and Morcambe & Wise.  It became an independent studio in the mid 90s, and was leased to Pinewood for the last decade or so – but with the expiry of their lease, time is up for the legendary studio.

In recent years, Teddington has housed The IT Crowd, Harry Hill’s TV Burp, Black Books, Man To Man With Dean Learner, Brass Eye, Not Going Out, Starlings and Dick And Dom’s Funny Business – all featuring a bevvy of TVO regulars.  It will be missed by the industry, but its legacy will live on.

Whilst Teddington leaves behind a positive legacy, the one ITV2 are making at the moment has been the source of much concern over the weekend, with friend of TVO (and cult comedian) Nathaniel Tapley being on the receiving end of abuse – alongside his collaborator Abi Wilkinson – after they dared to criticise ITV2 star Dapper Laughs for his remarks about women and the homeless.  The furore shows no signs of slowing down, but if you’ve missed it all, we recommend you start catching up here, then read the follow up pieces from BBC News and Huffington Post.  We’re firmly on Team AbiTap, here…

THE BRAINS! THE BRAINS!

The campaign for The Day They Came To Suck Out Our Brains fundraising continues apace – and you can help make the movie happen! Join the campaign over yonder, and watch the splendid Neil Cole make a tit of himself in the name of moviemaking below.

AND THE REST!

As always, there’s so much going on, that we’re using Twitter to keep you informed quicker these days. Join the other 11,900+ of our regular readers by following us there, and get regular updates such as these:

Not sure if you fully appreciate the awesomeness of this picture. Partridge & Barratt…together!! pic.twitter.com/AV0BcAg4UI

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 6, 2014

Think you know Michael Smiley? Check out this lively interview with Moviehooker and learn even more: http://t.co/S5BGME1C4J

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 9, 2014

There’s so much coverage of Noel Fielding’s tour (interviews & rave reviews) that we can’t contain it all. So here are 2 new photos instead:

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 9, 2014

…New today anyway! Thanks to http://t.co/4AHYV6LRfo and http://t.co/eMKz7rlhTv for these pic.twitter.com/uwlQAdiaq9

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 9, 2014

Loving Dave Brown’s photo exhibition currently showing at Berns in Stockholm…& now you can buy the prints online: http://t.co/KHifrA9gjd

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 9, 2014

[Sunday Catch-up:] Steve Coogan tells some funny stories on Richard Herring’s podcast: http://t.co/MBChWj8uDY pic.twitter.com/1BrTXSHsTU

— British Comedy Guide (@UKComedyNews) November 9, 2014

A campaign to get ITV to cancel Dapper Laughs show in light of recent actions has 25k signatures & rising. Join em: https://t.co/oB9zz1bqhy

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 10, 2014

Signed copies of ‘Ayoade on Ayoade’ available here: https://t.co/t3BIB0M8Tf

— The Velvet Onion (@thevelvetonion) November 10, 2014

See you next week… until then, keep on peeling!