Before YouTube we had TakeoverTV – yes like YouTube full of absolute shit, and strangely the same cat/violence/zombie/sex obsession of later web 2.0, but occasionally there was the odd gem. Divine David aka David Hoyle was one of those, popping up in I think his first TV appearance, as well as Adam & Joe and a few other people I’ve not totally fixed but look scarily familiar. You might know David from his Nathan Barley appearance, and someone who should’ve been a lot bigger.
The producers went onto create shows with the best of these artists – the 4 Adam and Joe series (which you can now watch on demand in the UK!), United States of Television (quite influential on my art degree, I did a lot of VJ cutups using the odd cable TV stuff) Divine David Presents (where this clip comes from) and a lot of strange shit and bad-sounding reality shows (Dancing With Dogs anyone? Pete [Burn]’s PA? 25iest: Celeb-u-tots? Sex Change Hospital? Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter? I’m not making these up ) as well as Manhattan Cable (Laurie Pike, what happened to her?).
And yes looking at YouTube it seems their idea of TV was right…even down to the odd surreal meme-contexts and weird DIY home productions. And cat/gore obsessions, toy animations (LEGO star wars anyone?) and bad sex/gay jokes. Thankfully we now have the ability to skip and search 😀
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