Chanel 9

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This article is about the fictional TV channel. For real-life TV channels called Channel 9, see Channel 9.

Chanel 9 was a recurring sketch in the British sketch comedy TV show The Fast Show.

Chanel 9 is a fictional television channel from an imaginary country (ultimately revealed as an island dictatorship known only as "Republicca"), the idea being originally to parody the sort of programmes that British people end up watching whilst on vacation around the Mediterranean (in particular in Spain and Greece). The sketches' stars, usually Paul Whitehouse, Paul Shearer and Caroline Aherne, speak entirely in a nonsensical fictional language, which is mostly based on Spanish and Italian, but also contains words from other languages including English, Greek and large doses of gibberish. The hosts dress in garish 1970s-style suits and dresses and also appear otherwise glitzy. The sketch would often begin by appearing from untuned signal snow interference effect from what looked like the middle of a different sketch and itself appearing to be halfway through, giving the impression you were accidentally receiving a different programme on a foreign channel for a short while. After its length of a few minutes it would then untune and faze out again into the what looked like the middle of another sketch.

In the first season, the only program shown was the news, which always concluded with the weather forecast by meteorologist Poula Fisch (played by Aherne). The weather was always entirely "scorchio" (meaning scorching sunny hot) for the whole country, and the appearance of a single small cloud on one occasion triggered a panic on the set and was followed by an emergency on-site news report: "Sensacio! Nimbocumulus a costa!". The news was always interrupted by commercials for useless products ("te auto gizmo", "te garden gizmo" etc., actually the same object every time) of the sort advertised in late-night infomercials, complete with girls in skimpy outfits grinning inanely.

In later seasons, sketches also included other Chanel 9 shows: Mundo Tedios, apparently a current affairs discussion show which mutated into a garish, game show when the guest, a government minister, uttered the word "inflaytion" (sic); a lottery draw; the mysogynistic telenovela Macho Fantastico; and light enertainment specials such as [Holy] Sprog (a disco-rock-opera of the Christian nativity story) and Singing Ringing Binging Plinging Tinging Plinking Plonking Boinging Tree (a parody on The Singing Ringing Tree). Further Chanel 9 celebrities were introduced, including overweight 70s disco freak Miki Disco, as well as additional adverts for dubious brands such as "Pissi Bir" and "Futha Mukka Piney Shine".