25 Years Of Trigger Happy TV: One Of The Funniest Shows Ever Filmed In London

Last Updated 14 January 2025

25 Years Of Trigger Happy TV: One Of The Funniest Shows Ever Filmed In London
25 years of Trigger Happy TV: A human sized snail crwwling over a zebra crossing
Dom Joly did silly things around London, like this, in Trigger Happy TV, which first aired in January 2000. Image: Absolutely Television/Channel 4

"HELLO?!"

It doesn't sound like the best catchphrase in the world. But 25 years ago this was the word I was itching to hear rasping from Dom Joly's gob at 9pm on a Friday night, as Trigger Happy TV barged its way onto the screen.

With a comically huge mobile phone, an operatically stentorian voice and nerves of tensile steel, Dom Joly would rib the general public — Londoners, mostly — in an cavalcade of hidden camera skits. Yes, there had already been Candid Camera, Beadle's About and all that malarkey. And afterwards, there would be Punk'd and the snickering shenanigans of Ant and Dec. But Trigger Happy TV was in a league of its own.

The "HELLO?!" skit was the most infamous; a raucous send-up of the me-me-me-ism of mobile phone mania just beginning to grasp the nation. But Trigger Happy TV's ideas were as bountiful as they were childishly absurd. Dressed as a traffic warden, Joly would flag down a black cab then tell them the driver they 'couldn't stop here, double yellas'. He'd don a huge wig and wander into tourists' Big Ben snaps. At poetry open mics nights he introduced a new piece he'd written called 'Five Million', then begin "One, two, three, four, five, six..." As a cartoon sketch artist in Trafalgar Square, he'd scrawl 'GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD' on the canvas, then scamper off and plunge into the icy waters of the fountains.

It was all very immature, of course, yet Joly's dour demeanour and uncrackable poker face carried every joke to perfection. He was also loaded with quick-witted retorts; in the guise of a park keeper, while intimating that he suspects a group of Octogenarians of letting off fire extinguishers, he replies to their insistent refutations: "All I'm saying it that we all get a bit carried away sometimes." It was mischievous, but never mean — there was always a strange warmth to it. Even when Joly was pretending to be a brass-necked burglar looking for a leg up. You wonder if current comic sensation Troy Hawke was a Trigger Happy-ite too.

Another highlight was when Joly interviewed celebs in the guise of a twitchy interviewer with a violent temper. Cutting off a chat with soon-to-be Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, Joly rushes over to a bloke in a Gorilla costume holding a 'Hello Mum' placard, duffs him up then coolly returns to his subject: "Sorry. Ken Livingstone — you like wildlife?". Joly once upset Gordon Ramsay too.

Wrapping up the Trigger Happy package was an indie soundtrack flecked with Pulp, Faithless and Super Furry Animals — plus the headbanging theme tune from Elastica. It told you that you would never be watching an episode of Keeping Up Appearances again. Inspired by Joly, and his trusty cameraman sidekick Sam Cadman, me and some mates would tune into the Trigger Happy TV webcam (these were the budding days of dial-up internet) for a glimpse of our new heroes in their Charing Cross offices. We had a go at our making our own version of the show too, although the good people of Suffolk didn't react well to a group of kids going around and screaming into a ginormous Nokia made out of shoeboxes. There's no accounting for taste.

Trigger Happy TV's first episode went out on 14 January 2000, meaning this month marks quarter of a century since it first aired. If you've not seen it before, give it a watch. No one actually talks on their mobile anymore, I know, but the vast majority of skits still play out with the same hilarity as they did at the beginning of the new millennium.

And now to play out this article in the only way possible: