100 Days of Stephen Fry

Illustrator Morgan Ritchie has been illustrating the world of comedian Stephen Fry based on his plummy Twittering Tweets for the past 100 days. Yesterday was the final drawing. See the multi faces of Fry above.

And below...in honor of Beatles 09-09-09 day and all the goodies that have been released (Rock Band, Remasters), here is day 69 of Ritchie's Fry journal.

Mrs. Stephen Fry is pleased.

100 Days

Hysteria! AIDS Awareness and British Comedy

Back in the 1990's, I lived on and off in London. I was addicted to British television and the comedy scene of Leicester Square's Comedy Store. This fascination may have been fueled by the original British Who's Line Is It Anyway, mixed with my love for Black Adder both birthed by my original romance with Monty Python. I'd come back to the United States with an arm full of VHS Pal tapes such as The Best of the Big Breakfast, Jeeves and Wooster, The Harry Enfield Programme, French and Saunders and Hysteria!, ready to bring a bit of my "second home" back to my first one.

The Terrence Higgins Trust is a charitable outreach organization in Britain established to provide information and assistance on AIDS. It's still very much in existence today. The aformentioned Hysteria! was a benefit performance hosted by comedians such as Fry and Laurie who, along with their comedy friends, put on funny skits about sex to encourage donations for the Trust and AIDS awareness. It introduced me to Craig Ferguson. Along with his success on The Late Late Show, and his recent U.S. citizenship it's cool to see how America has embraced his talent. The same can be said for Hugh Laurie as well.

Here's a performance from 1991 with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Freud, Rowan Atkinson and Ferguson. "Condom Language". It's not outrageously hilarious, but on a day where I can think of nothing, it's kind of fun to look back.

Stephen Fry in America

How lucky the British public are in having Stephen Fry as their brethern. He's a renaissance man of the modern world, a ranconteur, writer, actor, comedian, director, documentarian, activist, humanist, newspaper columnist, novelist, blogger, Macintosh geek, techie freak, manic-depressive bundle of plummy British teddy bear joy. In his new documentary "Stephen Fry In America", which airs tonight on BBC1 in the UK, the forever curious Fry unfolds the wares of his travels across the United States within the past year or so, when he brought a camera crew, his laptop and his open minded British perspective on a country that claimed its independence from his own nation a few hundred years before.

My admiration for Mr. Fry began in the late 80's, when he and comedy partner Hugh Laurie ("House") brought their freshly baked Cambridge Footlights satire to the UK airwaves, appearing in various sketch comedies, culminating in their own BBC show "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", which evenutally appeared on these shores via PBS and Bravo in the early 1990's. Their encarnation of Woodhouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" aired on Masterpiece Theatre, and further solidified their resume of fine work both here and abroad.

In the tradition of the Great British BBC documentary, Mr. Fry, quite the man of words, provided a companion book of the same name to go with the broadcast. No one can explain the thrust of this project better than Stephen. Here's an excerpt:

"For years then, I have harboured deep within me the desire to make a series of documentary films about ‘the real’ America. Not the usual road movies in a Mustang and certainly not the kind of films where minority maniacs are trapped into making exhibitions of themselves. It is easy enough to find Americans to sneer at if you look hard enough, just as it is easy to find ludicrous and lunatic Britons to sneer at. Without the intention of fawning and flattering then, I did want to make an honest film about America, an unashamed love letter to its physical beauty and a film that allowed Americans to reveal themselves in all their variety."

Stephen Fry in America on BBC 1 on Sunday October 12th @ 9.00pm (And hopefully on American channels soon).