Who is Tony Mammoth?

Could the new BBC Wales sitcom be the best one it's put out in years?

I first encountered Mike Bubbins around 10 years ago (give or take). I remember it because he was as distinct then as he is now. We were guests on different segments of the same Radio Wales show and we passed in the green room (back then, a series of sofas on a mezzanine at the end of dark corridor), his handle-bar moustache and floral shirt making him a figure. who, when he’d pop up over subsequent years on TV, radio, and podcastland, that (non)encounter would come to mind. The lasting impression I have of Bubbins is that he is a comedy character, one played by whoever it is who plays Mike Bubbins, likely a guy named Mike Bubbins, but who knows. Perhaps the blurred lines of the real Bubbins and the performed Bubbins will never be unblurred. But I can’t help but feel one day it will be revealed Mike Bubbins was Steve Coogan all along, or Joaquin Phoenix, or Andy Kaufmann.

That Bubbins character, rather like an Andy Kaufmann put-on, is becoming more interesting the longer and deeper it goes on - and far more interesting when you consider that it may never be peeled off. And make no mistake, the rumour that Bubbins is a piece of performance art begins right here. There is no suggestion anywhere, so far as I can see, that Bubbins is not Bubbins, like Dame Edna Everage was not Barry Humphries or Paul O’Grady was not Lily Savage. Interesting that I have gone for two drag acts in my comparison there, but in a way Bubbins is a drag act, a kind of 24-hour Life on Mars comedy cosplay.

Wikipedia will tell you Bubbins was once an Elvis impersonator (but was he?) and that he was a PE teacher (but was he?). Both former occupations seem all too neat, the sort of pasts you’d write for a support character in a seventies sitcom. Indeed, in his new sitcom Mammoth, he plays a 70s PE teacher frozen in ice, along with his non-PC views, thawed and re-introduced to his old job and world that has most-definitely moved on. But who is playing who? Bubbins the man playing Bubbins the character is playing Tony Mammoth (impossible not to think of Kaufmann’s Tony Clifton) the trapped-in-time PE teacher whose glint-in-the-eye allows him to deliver his un-PC one-liners. Who is playing who here? I’d be tempted to check Bubbins’ medical history. Who knows, it might say “Thawed, 2010”.

The intrigue is compounded by the fact that Bubbins is always Bubbins, no matter what he is required to do (although, I doubt he has ever been asked to do to anything other than “Bubbins”, seeing as he does it so convincingly and it goes over so well). Bubbins has a natural lilt to the way he delivers his lines, in a Cardiff drawl that isn’t always an accent so easy on the ear (not to this Newportonian, anyway), but in the form of Bubbins has a certain lyrical quality to it. He was the best thing (the only good thing?) in the BBC Wales comedy Tourist Trap, playing a man in a floral shirt and handle-bar moustache seemingly shackled to 70s attitudes. I enjoyed his audio comedy The Unexplainers with John Rutledge. The pilot for Mammoth, which I saw in 2021, was the best of a bunch released by BBC Wales at the time in an honourable attempt to copy the American model for commissioning (ie. sticking out a load of pilots and seeing what the feedback is).

And I’m glad Mammoth got a full commission (although at 3 episodes, what exactly is a full-commission nowadays?), not only because I liked the pilot and the way it charmingly delivered its premise of uncouthness, but because I was intrigued to see if they could make the one joke go further (no shame in a one-joke sitcom - many have had less to work with and gone on for a 100 episodes). Mammoth, it turns out, has all the feel of a comedy that might just have something to it should it be given enough time to find its feet and develop. In this oh-so-brief 3x30minute episode series, it is almost a pilot+. It is only by the end of the third episode we begin to see the potential in many of the characters, and the potential in their story strands to do something more interesting and lasting than the one joke that underpins the series. Why Mammoth hasn’t had the usual BBC 6 episode commission I do not know.

The one joke - how things have changed - has surprising stamina, and it is almost entirely down to Bubbins. Bubbins (whichever level of Bubbins we’re talking about) is a really good actor, and only the most sour-faced could possibly be offended, or even dislike, his creation here. Moments of Brentishness aside, Mammoth has potential comedy icon written all over him. The question is, how much of Mammoth is just Bubbins by another name, and how much of Bubbins is there outside of Mammoth?

But the burgeoning lives of the support characters, well-realised by Sian Gibson, Mali Ann Rees, Joseph Marcell, and Joel Davison, suggests the possibility of a sitcom of real heart in the future, expanded beyond that one joke (although it wouldn’t be wise to abandon it and refine Tony Mammoth). I hope it gets the life it deserves.