BOYS ON FILM
NOBODY PUTS KEITH LEMON AND PADDY MCGUINNESS IN A CORNER…
Some cinematic classics are about to get a little extra Lemon flavour, as Keith and his pal Paddy Mcguiness present a series of abridged, affectionate remakes of much-loved films. We can look forward to their unique take on Ghostbusters and Return Of The Jedi in upcoming weeks, but first the duo will be doing Dirty
Dancing. We caught up with Paddy and Keith to find out what inspired the series… Was this something you’ve always wanted to do? Keith When we did Let’s Dance For Comic Relief in 2009 [as Johnny and Baby], that’s when we came up with the idea of doing half-hour versions of films, and we wrote a version of Dirty
Dancing and pitched it and no one were interested.
And then Paddy went away and became successful, and so did I, so we pitched it when we were more successful and luckily enough they said, ‘Yeah, all right then’.
Paddy When we first pitched it years ago, this exec – who shall remain nameless – turned round to us and said ,‘Films? Is that a bit niche?’. Films!
Those things that every single person has seen at some point in their life? That’s what we were up against at the beginning!
So what can we expect from your versions of these films?
Paddy We’re not poking fun at them – we love the films, so we’re just sort of doing them as fans, and there’s a little bit of a narrative running through it where it cuts to us talking about the scene you’re going to see next, and certain scenes that didn’t make it in.
Keith I think you’ll see the love in the show. For the film, and for each other.
You have celebrity guest stars in each episode – what will they be doing?
Paddy With the likes of Phillip Schofield and Ant and Dec, you know, telly people, they’re in it doing bits. But we wanted to give the meat and gravy of it all to proper actors like Stephen Tompkinson, Michelle Keegan, Anna Friel, Sarah Parish, Will Mellor. They did it dead straight, really good accents, just properly invested in it – and that’s what we wanted, so we could just mess about around them!