Picture Special: The Two Heathers

Star of TV Burp Steve Benham, otherwise known as TV Burp’s Heather, has sent Harry Hill Fansite some fantastic photos from the final episode, including some of the great guest stars:

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A huge thanks to Steve for sharing these great photos – don’t forget you can book Steve as Heather at your event via heatherssausage.com

Interview: Daniel Maier, TV Burp Writer

As part of our final TV Burp interviews,  TV Burp writer Daniel Maier has given us his insight into the show and his upcoming projects!

What is your favourite TV Burp moment over your time on the show?

Courtesy of @danielmaier

An early favourite was a joke that involved intercutting footage of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall messily chopping up an eel in the bath with Harry in a dressing gown, knocking on the bathroom door. Folks think it was all clip-gag-clip-gag in the old days, but if anything there was probably more sketchy stuff then. The gas canister in the Coronation Street garage that transformed into Bev Callard was another fun one. It would be remiss of me not to bang on the clips I brought in, of course, of which a particular favourite was the shadow on The Bill which looked like an elephant carrying a briefcase in its trunk. I also painstakingly harvested examples of Phil Mitchell sighing/breathing for our ‘Phil Mitchell is deflating’ joke. I sort of wish we’d held that back almost indefinitely, until we had five minutes’ worth.

Other than the amount of TV required, what has been hardest about working on the show?

Shows have got increasingly unusable, for various reasons. The Bill was good for us in the early days, then it went a bit filmic and polished and we couldn’t seem to get any purchase on it any more. Then Essex/Chelsea-type dramality shows began, which I despise more than any other genre. These were no good for us as everything was so set-up and knowing. We did feature clips that were funny in their original context, but had to be careful we weren’t just going a bit ‘Tarrant on TV’. We’d often reject a clip because it was ‘their joke’.

What are you going to miss most?

The meetings, on the whole, were fun. Showing your clips and watching everyone else’s, including funnier versions of the ones you’d brought in. Also, there was something comforting about the nights drawing in around October, knowing I could stay in and watch TV all day and not feel guilty about it. But some of that is us basically becoming institutionalised.

What are your upcoming plans?

I have co-written a detective spoof with Charlie Brooker, called A Touch Of Cloth, which goes out on Sky in August. And a sitcom pilot for Channel 4 called The Function Room, originally made for last year’s Comedy Showcase season, which will hopefully be on around the same time.

A big thanks to Daniel for doing the interview!

TV Burp Ends With 3.37m + 4.58m Average, Audience Share Up On Autumn

Harry Hill

TV Burp has ended the show with 3.37m and 15.1% after going up against the first episode of The Voice.

An unsurprising result, the show achieved a below par performance against the new ratings giant, which got 8.43m (37.6%). However, despite the last episode’s performance, the series rated well overall.

It has improved its performance throughout the run whilst going against Let’s Dance and the series achieved an average of 4.58m, which was on par with the Autumn’s series of 4.6m, which went up against Strictly Come Dancing. However, the run beat the Autumn series in the all important audience share, with 20.35% compared to 18.61%.

The +1 series average was also up from 197,571 to 250,500, with this week’s episode achieving a high rating of 329,000 (1.4%), the third best +1 performance for the show and just shy of the series high of 336,000 from episode 5.

The ratings over the series have been as follows (this week’s figures from Digital Spy):

Date	Ratings (m)	Reach (%)	+1 Ratings	+1 Reach
24th March	3.37	15.1	329,000	1.4
17th March [l]	4.70	22.6	251,000	1.1
10th March [l]	4.56	21.4	270,000	1.2
3rd March [l]	4.64	20.8	336,000	-
25th February [l]	4.62	20.4	140,000	0.6
18th February [l]	4.21	17.5	190,000	0.8
11th February [l]	5.14	22.6	236,000	1.0
4th February [l]	5.42	22.4	252,000	1.0
Series Average	4.5825	20.35	250,500	1.01428571

Also, here is a summary of the last 4 series, showing the ups and down:

Series Averages	Ratings (m)	Reach (%)	+1 Ratings	+1 Reach
11B (2012)	4.5825	20.35	250,500	1.01428571
11A (2011)	4.59625	18.6125	197,571	0.7
10B (2011)	4.90625	21.9	264,571	-
10A (2010)	5.86875	23.5125	-	-
9B (2010)	5.71375	24.7375	-	-
9A (2009)	6.23	25.35	-	-
8B (2009)	5.414	25.79	-	-
8A (2008)	5.913	24.46	-	-

Don’t forget – Best of TV Burp returns next week!