Bad News Tour – Nostalgia Central

1 9 8 3 (UK)
1 x 30 minute episode

“I could play “Stairway To Heaven” when I was 12. Jimmy Page didn’t actually write it until he was 22. I think that says quite a lot.”

The Comic Strip team present a mock fly-on-the-wall rock documentary (mockumentary? rockumentary?) spending some time on the road with controversial British Heavy Metal band Bad News.

A hard-hitting film crew accompany the inarticulate and supremely untalented band as they set out on their ill-fated UK tour.

The cameras follow guitarists Alan (Adrian Edmondson) – who calls himself “Vim Fuego” – and Den (Nigel Planer), bassist Colin (Rik Mayall), and drummer Spider (Peter Richardson) as they have trouble starting their van, pick up a schoolgirl groupie named Tracy (Dawn French), and meet up with rock journalist Sally Freidman (Jennifer Saunders) at a motorway service station where they argue about the cost of sausage and chips.

The band eventually vent their frustrations on the film crew, beating them up and stealing all of their recording equipment and their van.

Written by Adrian Edmondson, the show was coincidentally in production at the same time as American director Rob Reiner’s eerily similar full-length mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap (1984).

More Bad News followed in 1988 and the actors played a number of live gigs (in character) as Bad News – including the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in 1986 and the 1987 Reading Festival. They also recorded a self-titled album (1987) and a single (a cover of Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody) that made the UK charts.

Alan Metcalfe (Vim Fuego) 
Adrian Edmondson
Den Dennis 
Nigel Planer
Colin Grigson 
Rik Mayall
Spider Webb 
Peter Richardson
Tracy
Dawn French
Sally Freidman
Jennifer Saunders
Cheryl
Serena Evans
Neighbour
Bert Parnaby
Manager, Grantham Roxy
Neville Smith
Girlfriend
Judy Hawkins
Cashier
Chara Bala Choksi
Sandy Johnson (Director)
Sandy Johnson

Video