'My Office' Better Than 'The Office'

Stick with this for a piece of TV news that made me laugh. Hard.

A year and a bit ago now, I directed and shot - and edited, and wrote tiny weeny bits of - a pilot for a TV sketch show. The whole thing was low budget, but also rushed - certainly in the shooting - and just wasn't as good as it could have been. However, it was still pretty damn good - certainly in parts.

My favourite sketches revolved a character dubbed "My Office" because he kept saying "My office" - logical, really. He was always comparing things to films - badly - and kept on about an unsavioury sounding character called Gartshaw, who he idolised. A pretty funny character, some very funny sketches. They starred Dominic Frisby as "My Office" - he also wrote the sketches, and produced the show - and featured James Dowdeswell in a non-speaking but endlessly hilarious role as "My Office's Mate".

The show was never picked up, sadly, but weirdly enough, next Thursday night, 28th September 2006, UK viewers will get a bite of both Frisby and Dowdeswell - at exactly the same time.

Dominic Frisby is doing voiceover for I Smack And I'm Proud - which is, I gather, a kind of Hardcore Anti-Supernanny 'Documentary' on ITV1, while over on BBC2, Dowdeswell is appearing in the second episode of series two of Extras - Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's follow up to The Office.

I'm not a fan of Gervais and Merchant, but let's not get into that here. I'll be torn as who to tune into - Frisby is a good friend, and I really love watching shows he has done VO for... but... on the other hand... Dowdeswell is playing a character called...

...wait for it...

...cliched drum roll please...

...Count F***ula.

And if you aren't laughing as much as I did, maybe it's because you don't know James, what he looks like and acts like. To give you a clue, there's a picture below - admittedly, an out of date one, but maybe the best quality one I could find.

And here's Frisby, so you have a face to put to the voice - a voice you have heard on countless TV ads and continuity announcements over the years: promoting Lord of the Rings chess pieces or Velux blinds, plugging shows about Peter Sellars and a myraid of other things.