2007 saw BBC2 commission a documentary series called Comedy Map of Britain.

Narrated by Alan Whicker it ran into 2008 and there were 12 episodes across the 2 series. Each lasted an hour and S1 was shown at 10.10pm on Saturday evenings.

Each episode focussed on an area of the UK and, using stories from various comedians, analysing the impact of the location on the comedic style that evolved into recognisable comedic perspectives.

This probably means nothing to people outside of the UK but some parts of Britain have more vibrant comedy scenes than others (obviously around the larger cities). As well as the rivalry, for example, between such as Mancs and Scousers – you also get audience preferences shaping the output. Whereas the North of England could (at one time) be stereotyped as being all “working men’s clubs and mother-in-law jokes”, the London area was the breeding ground for the more alternative content that blossomed in the 80s and 90s.

Having not seen this the series I don’t know how much that perspective came through, btw, as the clips that I watched were more about showing “this is where…” type stories.

Filmed in late 2006 it contained footage of the comics visiting venues or landmarks relating to their career, mixed with footage from the BBC archives.

Annoyingly there is scant detail of the shows and the BBC website only has a small amount of information for S2 (here).

Various sites (including IMDB) detail Jimmy as being in S1 Ep1, broadcast on January 27^th 2007. Apart from those “TV listing” type sites I’ve not been able to screw the details down any tighter.

IMDB lists that episode as featuring (amongst other less well-known names):

• Jimmy Carr
• Bill Bailey
• Brian Conley
• Ricky Gervais
• Stephen Merchant
• Peter Cook
• Bob Hope
• Michael Palin

This Ep1 newspaper clipping (and other press clippings on the British Newspaper Archives) only mention that Bailey, Palin and Merchant were featured. In 2006-7 they were probably the more familiar names to an older TV audience. Which I suspect was the target demographic for a Whicker fronted BBC2 documentary series.

TVMaze (here) doesn’t list cast / crew but does at least identify which areas were covered by each episode. There are some short clips in this BBC playlist and four of the full episodes are on YouTube, linked below. Not the one that I’d be interested in seeing though!

• S1 Ep1 – West London to West Country
• S1 Ep2 – West Country to Wales
• S1 Ep3 – Wales to Birmingham
• S1 Ep4 – Birmingham to Manchester
• S1 Ep5 – Manchester to Liverpool – HERE
• S1 Ep6 – Liverpool to Glasgow, via Belfast and the Isle of Man – HERE
• S2 Ep1 – Nottingham to Cambridge
• S2 Ep2 – Aviemore to Edinburgh
• S2 Ep3 – Newcastle to Leeds
• S2 Ep4 – Leeds to Nottingham – HERE
• S2 Ep5 – Norwich to Hastings – HERE
• S2 Ep6 – Brighton to Whitstable