Toast Of London

Apropos of nothing, this week I shall be peeling back the skin of Toast Of London, taking a look at what lies beneath and maybe even sniffing it.  I say apropos of nothing, as I cannot link this week’s choice to anything happening in wider popular culture (plus the wankiness of the term suits the pretension of the programme in question).  Toast Of London’s three series came out between 2012 and 2015, yet my stumbling across them on Netflix in recent times and harnessing the gentle mirth and subversive lampooning of the luvvies that dominate British acting as my accompanying background viewing to Sunday evenings’ food prep marathon (step one: peel sweet potatoes, step two: accept the weekend is over) is particular only to me.  Yet that has never stopped me doing anything on this blog – in fact, regular readers will know it revolves more around me than it does around actually providing useful boxset recommendations.  That said, I have been craving more of Matt Berry since I made my way through The IT Crowd.  My need for his incredible voice was partly fulfilled by old episodes of The Adam Buxton Podcast (that’s right, I also voraciously consume content in podcast form – the eagle-eared among you may even have noticed a quotation from Russell Brand’s Under The Skin in this very introduction), but a vehicle of his own would surely hit the spot.

Fans of silliness will be well rewarded, though the brand of silliness is more conceptual than you might find in my other favourite silly sitcom, Miranda.  Toast is a London-based actor who isn’t that successful.  He gets enough degrading voiceover work to keep going, he has potentially been a household name during a previous decade’s heyday, but he still needs to badger his agent for work while she too badgers him to take up unsuitable jobs.  Like Andy Millman in Extras, he exhibits seething jealousy for any member of his acting cohort who is doing better than him.  The best thing about all of these minor actors is their surnames.  Toast in itself is enough to stop any top billing sounding too serious, conjuring up images of melting butter spread with crumb-covered knives.  Surpassing that English word for banal naffness is the name of Toast’s greatest rival, Ray “Bloody” Purchase.  Purchase is such a wet sock of a word and of a name.  Neither glamorous, nor familiar, it’s a simple monetary transaction for a good or service.  Starring Ray Purchase and Steven Toast isn’t what you want to hear about any blockbuster film.  Nor will you.  Purchase turns up on almost every job of Toast’s, outdoing him through chumminess with difficult prima donna directors or getting on better with smirkingly smug mugs of voiceover booth technicians.

Both take their craft seriously, but the comedy comes from showing how amateur and ham they really are.  Even Toast’s natural flair as a high winds actor (shouting in front of large fans) doesn’t bode well for future jobs, as whatever can go wrong does.  Helping to expose the evil of taking acting too seriously is a supporting cast with names as delicious as Toast’s and Purchase’s.  There’s Ken Suggestion, Duncan Clench, Cliff Bonanza, Jenny Spasm and Max Gland, not to mention a further raft of names who are only ever referred to such as Warren Organ and Sookie Houseboat.  Each belongs beneath a signed black-and-white headshot in a regional curry house.  Most beloved for me, though, is Toast’s agent, Jane Plough (pronounced Pluff).  Played by Doon Mackichan (whom I’ve always loved since Smack The Pony and I once smiled at on a train), Plough makes grandiose statements about never opening the attachments on emails (amen) and is often seen calling her client from completely unexplained sexual scenarios involving scantily clad young men and some dessert options.

Self-importance is easily made ridiculous, but we all end up on Team Toast, rooting for him to catch a break, despite him being a misogynist pig who only cares about himself.  He is aghast at current trends and longs for his younger years galivanting around Soho when he was a youthful upstart, rather than having to cope with the sniggers his voiceover recordings invariably draw.  Sending up how the British revere their stage and screen actors might seem like easy prey, but Toast Of London’s silliness has a caustic edge, an absurd narrative and a surrealist approach to almost every scene.  You’ll feel delicious every time you hear that immortal line: “Hello Steven, it’s Clem Fandango here.  Can you hear me?”  And so, apropos of nothing, let’s have another series please.