Mitchell and Webb spoof Dawkins

December 12, 2015 • 1:00 pm

This video is over three years old, but I hadn’t seen it until just now. The British comedy team of Mitchell and Webb do a good job of spoofing Richard Dawkins, with Robert Webb playing Dawkin’s agent, looking for new attack-bait after The God Delusion. David Mitchell does a great imitation of Dawkins’s voice—at least I assume it’s an imitation, since I’ve never heard Mitchell speaking as himself.

And if you haven’t seen Mitchell and Webb’s brilliant “Homeopathic Emergency Room” sketch, click on this link.

h/t: GBJames

78 thoughts on “Mitchell and Webb spoof Dawkins”

  2. Mitchell’s voice is much like you hear it. The BBC broadcast comedy duo are very big over here. Lots on line of course.

    1. Yes David Mitchell does pretty much sound like that but I think here he gets Dawkins’s cadence of speaking right.

  3. David Mitchell’s ordinary voice sounds very similar to Richards Dawkins so it’s not a big stretch. It’s pretty much the standard British ‘posh school accent’.

    There are plenty of good sketches by Mitchell and Webb on youtube. The most popular seems to be homeopathic A&E.

      1. I Horror!
        The very suggestion that M & W would emplacement the admission of failure that is a laugh track!
        I suspect that you’ve got an unauthorised version.
        I know that ‘canned’ laughter (in EN_GB ‘caned’ ; “what a difference an en makes” I’ll stop singing now and you can take your Odysseys out of your ears.) is a routine part of US TV, but surely it is taken as a sign of failure by the (deliberate, comedy) producers? I remember watching a (late) episode of M*A*S*H in the us which had been ‘caned‘, and half the time the floggers (or whatever the name of that profession is) started the whip (again, ‘or whatever that implement for moral improvement is called’ ; there should be a word, and in German there probably is, for logically required materiel, whose name is unknown) before the joke had been made.
        Does German have a word for floggers who don’t understand the languages they are flogging?

          1. Double spell checker strangulation! Worryingly, my electron – threatened spell choker recognises “strangulation “. Even if it thinks Germans speak German germanely in Germany. Ich floggen ein mord schwein.

          2. Does German (hallelujah! ) have a word for words which German should have, soon? As a notoriously agglutinative language, it would have a certain je ne sais quois.

        3. If you think laughter tracks are an admission of failure I’ve just got one word for you: Blackadder – another word: Fawltytowers: more up to date perhaps: TheITcrowd.

          Argument? Rejected!

          1. Disagree with Saul. I detest – in general – laugh tracks. I usually regard them as an admission that the scriptwriters are useless, the humour is pathetic and can’t stand on its own. Most sitcoms, for example (Sturgeon’s Law applies). There are some (usually American) sitcoms where all I remember is, they had a laugh track, excessively applied. Every time a character says a word, cue laugh track.

            IF the material is good enough then a laugh track is superfluous and goes unnoticed. This is maybe why I don’t remember a laugh track in Dead Parrot or Spanish Inquisition or Blackadder’s dungeon sketch for example.

            In fact, on checking, most of my most-revered TV comedies have some form of laugh track (though in many cases I think, it was often a genuine studio audience). Pythons, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Not The Nine O’Clock News, Who Dares Wins.

            Oh, links: (It took me a good hour to check and write this comment, so I don’t see why your day shouldn’t be similarly derailed:)
            Pythons – Spanish Inquisition:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixgc_FGam3s
            Blackadder:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY41eD4lS28
            Red Dwarf:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYAlB1Kxayc
            NTNON:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ZE0GYf0Jw
            Who Dares Wins – Emperor’s New Clothes (NSFW!!)
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXIfgOCM54U

            cr

          2. Okay, I think I wasn’t paying attention to the original post – when I saw ‘laughter track’ my mind simply went to ‘a studio audience present during the recording, who laughed’. The latter was the case in my three examples, but I see you’re talking about pre-recorded laughter played over audience-less comedy, presumably because they didn’t trust their own writing.

            In that case…well, I can’t actually think of anything I’ve watched, never mind liked, that had pre-recorded laughter…nevertheless I’m with you on that. It’d be an admission of failure.

          3. In their defense, I think the very fast paced banter and precise timing used by M & W would take a hit if they relied on a live audience.

          4. I hate laugh tracks, but do agree thst the three series you mentioned are brilliant ( but coukd easily lise the LTs).

          5. Hmmm, I can’t remember if Blackadder used a laugh track. Fawlty Towers I’ve never liked and don’t generally bother to watch unless … well ,to be honest, if it’s on, I’ll generally go and read a book. The IT Crowd – I know the name, but I guess that it’s from the 80s, 90s or 20s, when I didn’t have a TV.

          6. It (Blackadder) does. I checked. Why d’you think it took me an hour to write that comment? 😉

            The thing is, if the laughter fits the sketch, then it isn’t obtrusive and you don’t remember it.

            (And after all that I posted the wrong link to Not The Nine O’Clock News, the link I meant to post was this:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U
            Hate it when that happens!)

            cr

          7. That’s definitely a parody of discussion about a parody. I’d never seen it, and I’m glad you fished it up for us.

          8. It was first broadcast the week following the actual interview with Cleese and Palin v. Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark (which you can find on YouTube). The bish had a heavy crucifix which he fondled like Atkinson fondles his lens thingy.

            /@

        4. “Caned laughter”? In Britain will still say “canned”.

          Anyway, the Mitchell and Webb laugh track is most likely a a recording of a real audience laughing.

          1. Bah! This is why I usually don’t comment on other people’s spelling misteaks: “In Britain we still say “canned””.

    4. It’s referred to as ‘Oxbridge’ the Oxford and Cambridge style of speaking. Posh school. like Eaton, accents are much more like Prince Charles’ way of speaking. It would be unlikely to hear among academics – as the blue bloods tend to look down on academics.

      2. For reference, IIRC, Dawkins went to Oundle School, which is notorious for producing highly intellectual paradigm – breakers. I learned to work woods in that area, plausibly from the same gamies.
        Oundle is about 3/4 of the way from Oxford to Cambridge, on a fairly straight line.

  4. Yes, the non existence of Wimpy. Appears they do still have them, although I wonder if they aren’t different today than back in the very early 70s?

    1. The poor man’s McDonald’s – and if that phrase doesn’t send a shiver down your spine…

    3. Oh no wait not that …. jammy bar steward. And he gets to connect Victoria Coren’s dots. Bar steward!

      1. Did you see her on Have I Got News… a few weeks ago? She was leering all over Jacob Rees-Mogg – so she obviously has a ‘type’…

  7. Oh boy, Mitchell and Webb. See the conspiracy theory demolitions! The only one they haven’t lampooned is 9/11, and I can understand their sensitivity on it.

    See YouTube!

  8. I have not seen this one, and I was cackling all the way thru.
    I use the homeopathic medicine sketch for my Senior capstone course, as part of my shtick on pseudoscience and pseudomedicine. It always cracks them up. Many students do not know about homeopathy, even though more than half of them want to get into med school. I love the look of amazement and lip curling disgust I get when I explain to them what it is.

  11. I’m really not sure how serious people are about the two voices. Neither David Mitchell’s voice nor accent is remotely like that of Richard Dawkins and it would be surprising if they were as the two men are of different generations.

  12. I am an ardent Anglophile but this is the first I’ve heard of Mitchell & Webb. I am going to be spending much of this evening going through their videos on YouTube.

    1. I hope you have good core strength and have been keeping up with your sit-ups. Abdominal muscle tone is an absolute requirement, or you won’t last more than a 4 or 5 clips. It starts slowly with a few chuckles and soon you will be doubled over with laughing cramps.

    3. David Mitchell is also consistently brilliant on Would I Lie To You?, the world’s most underrated panel show. It’s got an absolutely brilliant premise, a good host and the chemistry between the two team captains(Mitchell’s one of them) is what makes the show. Easy to sneer at as light entertainment but it really is extremely good.

      And Mitchell & Webb also star in Peep Show – maybe the best British sitcom of the last decade.

      Both worth checking out if you can.

      1. Yes I googled all of those episodes and watched them in rapid succession. He has been on QI I think also.

      2. He’s extremely witty, so great for panel shows like would I lie to you. Also brilliant as the host on The Unbelievable Truth, on Radio 4.

  13. The Dawkins one is perfect! I just can’t understand what they are talking about after ghosts???

  18. “You’re flogging a dead God!”

    That line did make me laugh out loud. Also made me wonder what would have become of Nietzsche had he had a 21st-century-style literary agent.

  20. Yes, David Mitchell´s real voice does sound like the one in the sketch, and I don´t think it sounds too much like Dawkins´.

    Mitchell and Webb are great comedians, much underrated in my opinion, and doesn´t get the recognition they deserve. They have made many great TV shows, and regularly appear on talk and game shows. One of their shows, is one of the best shows ever, in my opinion, it´s just too bad so few people have heard about it. If you want to have a laugh, and watch some comedy gold, and great acting, go see the Peep Show (seasons 1-8). The ninth and appearently last season just premiered a few months ago, and is still going on television.

    1. I thought I detected some Dawkins tones you don’t find in Mitchell’s ordinary speech. Something in the tighter way he holds his mouth — in his embouchure when playing the Dawkins instrument.

Comments are closed.