Mr Jolly Lives Next Door

Mr Jolly Lives Next Door

Mr Jolly Lives Next Door is a 1987 comedy film made for British television as part of The Comic Strip Presents... series and was originally broadcast on Channel 4.

Plot

It features Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson as the (un-named) proprietors of an escort agency, Dreamytime Escorts. Mayall's character is devious, low-minded, calculating and stupid; Edmondson's merely very stupid.

Unusually, rather than providing businessmen with female companionship, the activities of their escort agency essentially involve the pair swooping on unsuspecting foreigners who call them, and forcing them to take part in a drinking binge at their expense. The two are alcohol-obsessed; when their home-brewed beer (which takes all of two days to brew and has a head made from washing-up liquid) isn't available, they steal from the delivery lorries pulling up at the off-licence downstairs: Edmondson's character dives out of the window into a large builders' bucket and is hauled back up with the stolen exploding tonic water by Mayall.

Their next-door neighbour is the eponymous Mr Jolly, a psychopathic contract killer played by Peter Cook. Jolly's modus operandi is to hack his victims to death with a meat cleaver while playing classic Tom Jones tunes from the 1960s to drown their cries.

Heimi Henderson, who owns the off-licence downstairs, has refused demands for protection money by Mr Lovebucket, an effete gangster played by Peter Richardson whose abiding love is his Citroën DS car.

Mayall and Edmonson intercept a request intended for Mr Jolly to "take out" the radio presenter and game show host Nicholas Parsons, who appears as himself. Parsons is due to open Henderson's off-licence, and Lovebucket wants to put a stop to it. Misinterpreting the request, they spend an evening with Parsons, who stays in their company because he believes them to be competition winners, the real ones having been pushed off the road by the Dreamytime Escorts' van in an earlier scene. The two are confronted the following morning by Lovebucket, who wants to know what they've done with the money provided with the contract (they have, of course, drunk it). Lovebucket insists that they complete the contract.

Mr Jolly Lives Next Door was released on VHS in the late 1980s, and became available on DVD when the entire Comic Strip Presents... series was released as a box set in the UK in June 2005. It has also been repeated occasionally on the Paramount Comedy Channel.

Trivia

• The van used by Dreamytime Escorts is a Honda Acty TN7.
• The Tom Jones songs featured in Mr Jolly Lives Next Door are "It's Not Unusual" and "What's New, Pussycat?" However the version featured on Mr Jolly Lives Next Door was not actually sung by Tom Jones. Other Tom Jones references included an instrumental version of "Delilah" heard in the background in the scene in the Dorchester Hotel.
• The "old English" pubs featured in Mr Jolly Lives Next Door are ^[1]:
  • The Lord Elgin, Maida Vale, now known as The Elgin
  • The Royal Oak, Bethnal Green
  • Neon Tepee, located opposite The Royal Oak and described as an Old English Illegal Drinking Establishment. It is probable that this building for obvious reasons was not actually used as an illegal drinking establishment and the scenes filmed in this building were filmed elsewhere
  • The George, Soho
• Other filming locations included in Mr Jolly Lives next door had included ^[1]:
  • Westminster Bridge at the County Hall corner of the bridge
  • Trafalgar Square
  • Holiday Inn, Regents Park, now known as Marriott, Regents Park
  • Camden Lock at the back of the former TV-am building that is currently occupied by MTV Europe
  • Downing Street
  • Dorchester Hotel
  • Singer Street, Islington, EC2, the location near to the area where Heimi Henderson's off licence and the offices for Dreamytime Escorts and Mr Jolly's Little Fluffy Toys Ltd were to be found.
• Although they share similar titles, the film is not related to the American drinking song, Jolly's Mom Moved in Next Door.
• The fictional name of Mr Jolly's company in the film, Little Fluffy Toys Ltd, now exists as a software house owned by fans of the film that has published a computer game featuring exploding tonic water and voice-overs by Nicholas Parsons.^[2]

Credits

Director

Stephen Frears

Screenwriters

Adrian Edmondson

Rik Mayall

Rowland Rivron

Cast

Adrian Edmondson

Rik Mayall

Peter Cook

Nicholas Parsons

Peter Richardson

Gerard Kelly

Granville Saxton

Producer

Elaine Taylor

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshy/sets/727167
2. ^ "About Little Fluffy Toys Ltd « Little Fluffy Toys Ltd". Littlefluffytoys.com. 2010-09-11. http://www.littlefluffytoys.com/?page_id=2. Retrieved 2011-01-01. 

External links

• Mr Jolly Forum- The only forum on the net devoted to the film and a wide source of information.
• The Comic Strip Presents - the BBC's guide to The Comic Strip Presents
• Mr Jolly Lives Next Door on the IMDB
• Audio samples of Mr Jolly Lives Next Door
• Wayback Machine archive of the script and some screenshots