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British television series

The Mary Whitehouse Experience is a British topical sketch comedy show that the BBC produced in association with Spitting Image Productions. It starred two comedy double acts, one being David Baddiel and Rob Newman, the other Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. All four comedians had graduated from Cambridge University. It was broadcast on both radio and television in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The show was named after Mary Whitehouse, a campaigner against what she saw as a decline in television standards and public morality. She became the target of mockery in the UK for her attitudes. The BBC feared Whitehouse would initiate litigation for the use of her name in the show's title, and for a period the alternative title The William Rees Mogg Experience was considered.

A radio pilot was broadcast on 10 March 1989 on BBC Radio 1 and a series of 13 shows began on 7 April the same year. Bill Dare devised the format. The two pairings of Newman and Baddiel and Punt and Dennis were central to the show, with support from Nick Hancock, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Mark Thomas and Mark Hurst. The show also included musical interludes from Skint Video and The Tracy Brothers. It was originally aired at midnight on Friday. It was subsequently moved to a 10:30pm slot, before being moved again for its fourth and final series to 7pm on Saturday evenings.

A television pilot aired on BBC2 shortly before the fourth and final radio series, on 3 October 1990. The first series started on 3 January 1991 and ran for six episodes, with a second set of six episodes in 1992. The television series was a mix of observational comedy sketches and monologues, in a format similar to shows such as Mr. Show and The Kids in the Hall. The show featured a lot of satirical takes on famous people, films and TV shows of the day along with original character material. Each show was made up of sections usually headed by a caption relating to the topic about to be discussed. The caption took the form of 'The [topic] Experience'. One of the performers would begin talking about the topic in monologue form, sometimes with input from another performer who appeared in character. The monologue would make reference to a humorous scenario which would be played out in sketch form, returning either to the same topic or moving on to a different or loosely related one. Lines or characters from sketches might recur throughout the show either as a continuation of the original sketch or an invasion of another one. The pace of the show was fairly rapid, helped by the inclusion of a boom camera in the studio which panned quickly around the audience and back to the stage at the beginning of each monologue. Each section was punctuated with a small excerpt of the theme music, Jack to the Sound of the Underground. A companion book to the series was released in 1991, titled The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia, which contains references to some of the sketches featured on the show and much new additional material.

History Today made its debut in the second half of the show's second TV series. History Today is a supposed historical discussion TV programme presented by two elderly, scholarly professors, both well spoken and well groomed. The first of these professors, who introduces each 'episode' and its topic of discussion, is played by David Baddiel although the character is never named. The second is Professor F. J. Lewis, Emeritus Professor of History at All Souls College, Oxford, who is played by Rob Newman. Each 'episode' begins as a standard historical debate, but quickly degenerates into a playground style quarrel with the professors exchanging childish insults. The humour lies largely in the juxtaposition of the professors' formal tone of voice with their puerile words. This sketch spawned perhaps the show's most popular catchphrase " That's you, that is", spoken after they had described someone/something supposedly pathetic and/or disgusting. This sketch was later carried over into Newman and Baddiel's own show, Newman and Baddiel in Pieces.

The majority of the first three radio series were repeated on BBC 7 in 2003. However, rights issues precluded further transmissions, although there have been very occasional one off airings in the Saturday morning Comedy Controller slot. A run of selected episodes started on Friday nights in September 2013. Although there were edited compilation repeats of the television series on the BBC within a year of the original broadcasts, it has never been released on home video.