Frozen Peas is the colloquial term for a blooper audio clip in which American actor and filmmaker Orson Welles performs narration for a series of British television advertisements for Findus.
The BFI database also lists four more 1970 Findus advertisements with place names: "France",[5] "Highlands",[6] "Normandy[7] and "Shetland".
The outtake/blooper reel was presumably spliced to circulate as a bootleg recording, and nothing is known about who made it or their connection to Findus or J. Walter Thompson.
The earliest record of the bootleg dates to 1979, when advertiser Peter Shillingford shared a copy with Welles, who enjoyed it.
"We know a little place in the American far west, where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes..." This is a lot of shit, you know that?
[13] When the engineer attempts to give Welles some pointers, the actor reveals his frustration of being a performer, a "hired hand" on the commercial being given conflicting advice from different people in the booth.
In the animated series Animaniacs, an episode featuring Pinky and the Brain titled "Yes, Always", featured a near-verbatim restaging (with vulgarities replaced by innocuous substitutes, e.g., "...and I'll make cheese for you" in place of "...and I'll go down on you"), with Brain playing the part of Welles and Pinky as the director.
In another episode, Welles, upset over having to read a living will, begins endorsing for "Mrs. Pell's Fish Sticks" instead, eating them and declaring that "they're even better raw".
He even appears later as a ghostly apparition to Margo Sherman to continue promoting and eating the fish sticks, declaring that "they're even better when you're dead".
Welles is frequently distracted by the TV crew and finally, he gets up and walks off (taking an entire roast turkey with him).
Welles (as a head in a jar) agrees to recreate his famous War of the Worlds broadcast for Lrrr, the Planet Express crew and a cheese log even when complaining on-air about obvious plot holes in the script.
The tape was referenced in the "Bishop" skit from Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album, where it is mentioned that "Bath and Wells" is busy "doing frozen peas for Nigel.
The experimental music group Negativland incorporated "frozen peas" in its entirety in the track "Jolly Green Giant", a collage also featuring sound effects and other archival recordings of commercials in production phase.