The Museum of Everything
The Museum of Everything is a Radio 4 comedy series, written by and starring Marcus Brigstocke, Danny Robins and Dan Tetsell, broadcast between 2003 and 2006. The series is essentially a sketch-show, with various recurring characters and surreal scenes linked together by the concept of a museum that contains literally everything.
Tropes used in The Museum of Everything include:
- Brick Joke: Tom Waits is initially introduced as a museum curator as a throwaway gag. He returns later.
- British Accents: The full range; most notably the cheerful Bristolian tour guides [1] (and their Essex girl temp), the Geordie Falconer Travis [2] and the upper-class twits with a fondness for bizarre drinking games and casual bigotry.
- Cherubic Choir: Heard whenever the gift shop is mentioned.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Just about everyone, but especially the curator. Who, for some reason, happens to be gravelly-voiced singer-songwriter Tom Waits.
- Code Emergency: Often used to humorous effect: "Will Mr Fire please come to the flammable items gallery?"
- Eye Scream: The museum's curator, Tom Waits, will frequently tell some surreal, rambling anecdote inevitably featuring someone with a missing eye. He's eventually forced to admit that he doesn't know anyone with a full set of working eyes.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Oh so very many.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only Series One has been released on CD, although it appears on Radio 4 Extra[3] from time to time.
- Mishmash Museum: Well, what do you expect when the museum contains literally everything?
- Museum of Boredom: Largely averted, as you might expect. Certain exhibits count, such as the history of stairs exhibit which is located between floors one and two.
- Only Sane Man: Museum visitors often come across as this.
- Parody Commercial: Numerous, including a worrying-sounding theme park called Badgerland (parodying the Toy'R'Us adverts) and regular adverts promoting bizarre partworks: Build your own life-size BobDylan! Week by week, build your own full-scale replica of the Cutty Sark! How about a one-to-one scale replica of France!
- Politically-Incorrect Villain: The mistress of Bagshot Grange (a stately home now open to the public due to the owner's debts) shows nothing but contempt for her disabled husband. She's also convinced that anyone foreign or working-class must be a criminal, which proves a problem when she's giving them guided tours.
- Recursive Reality: It's pointed out that a Museum of Everything would also have to contain another Museum of Everything, and so on.
- Also the sketch involving a man unable to leave the gift shop, since all the doors lead straight back in.
- Running Gag: Plenty, such as the constant expansion of the gift shop.
- Take That: The Museum of Everything Film Institute features pretentious film critic Tom Commode whose distinct accent (pronouncing film as fillum) is an obvious parody of critic Tom Paulin. On one occasion he interviews the most important figure working in fillum today: Himself. The name also appears to be a swipe at critic Mark Kermode.