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Thank you, Baby Jesus, for Ben Elton

eltonI’m probably going to tell this story incorrectly, but this is how I remember it:

When my friends Kevin and Jenn moved back from Scotland to the U.S. in the (early?) 90s, they brought with them a couple cassettes of Ben Elton’s stand-up comedy. I’d never heard of Ben Elton, although I had heard of Blackadder and The Young Ones, two British comedy shows for which he’d written.

These two cassettes, Motormouth and Motorvation, were a revelation. I was already a big fan of stand-up, but I’d never listened to any British comics, and Ben Elton’s left-wing humor was right up my alley. I wore the cassettes out listening to them, memorizing every line.

Sadly, I lost the cassettes in a move, and by the time I looked to order them again, it was very hard to get either album in the U.S. A couple weeks ago, nearly 20 years after losing the originals, I found a vinyl copy of Motormouth online at Vinyl Tap. It arrived in the mail today. I’m listening to it right now. It’s just as funny as I remembered, and I have a huge smile plastered across my face.

Published in Comedy

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