nyah nyah*

before ‘the League of Gentleman’, there was ‘Nyah Nyah’.  Before there was ‘Nyah Nyah’, there was ‘Boot to the Head: Nyah, Nyah’.  Before that, there was other stuff.

Largely responsible for the decades-long tradition of Sunday Morning Radio Comedy on 3PBS FM being shut down and moved to some hidden timeslot late on a Thursday night, Nyah Nyah not only broke down the walls of sketch comedy, but replaced them with bigger, better walls, extended them right out, put in a rumpus room for the kids, and built a patio.  Creating unforgettable characters like ‘Aldous Blire-Blydrant and his Talking Fire Hydrant’; ‘Mr Funnyperson (and his Kooky Pals)’; unstoppable womanising scottish-sounding secret agent / superhero ‘Floor Noodleman: Action Guy’; the inquisitive, nosey, misanthropic, chemical-weapons-distilling, fat-children-hating, suspicious-behaviour-database-compiling old couple ‘Laurie and Doris Binkley’ (and their 47-year-old caged beast-child Malcolm); all-purpose straight man ‘Gerald Straightman’ (pronounced ‘straight-mn’); the acclaimed ‘Three Swiss People (who Aren’t German) and Can’t Tell Jokes Very Well’; and lovable corrupt Australian cops ‘Officer Gestions’ and ‘Chief Inspector El Mussels’, Nyah Nyah were sure to tickle the restricted fancies of those few people who got to accidentally hear them.

Now retired, Nyah Nyah strove to push the comedy envelope, constantly redefining words like ‘funny’, ‘punchline’, ‘worth putting to air’, and ‘self-referential’, until the pressure of so much revolutionary paradigm-shift caused the three members to drift into other, altogether more useful, pastimes.  Mystery mAT has vanished entirely; e-Wok has blossomed and carried his cutting-edge humour to his cinematic and compositional works; and Matthew K Sharp is Air Traffic Controller at underground community television station Channel 31.

Whatever is said about Nyah Nyah today, it can never be doubted that, as a comedic force, they really did put the ‘ostmo’ in ‘postmodernism’.

Nyah Nyah can be found here.

comparable to: the d-generation, the league of gentlemen, lano and woodley, shaun micallef, monty python.