He arrives home late (sometimes months or even years) and when questioned by his wife as to his whereabouts, his excuses swiftly collapse into the plots of well-known fiction, finishing with his desperate catch-phrase: "... and that, darling, is what really happened!"
Despite his repeated protests that he "never done it" and that his confession had been coerced by various methods of police torture and brutality, he was convicted for killing a typist at a meat-safe in 1974 by strangling her with a pair of ladies' pants.
Dobsky has the mental age of a four-year-old child, speaks in a soft, flowing Carlisle[1] accent, and generally gives the impression of being a completely harmless simpleton.
However, the prison warders describe him as the most dangerous man in Western Europe, and keep him in strict confinement, restrained by methods very similar to those used for Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme's film version of The Silence of the Lambs.
He joyfully rides out of prison on his space hopper (called "Mr Hoppy") to the music of "Come" by Eddie Warner, only to find things have changed too much for him to understand.
For the most part Dobsky is able successfully to remain in control, until the conclusion of the first series ends with his mind snapping and him dismembering the prison staff to construct a horrific space hopper made from bits of their bodies (on which he rides to freedom to the music of "Sunrise" by Pulp).
Later sketches saw other people responding to them with extreme violence before they can even get to the front of the queue: "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying and I'm going to have to arrange to have you crushed to death by a grand piano."
Geoff is a wimpy bespectacled office worker who constantly tries to pluck up the courage to fellate strange men in toilets or parks ("cottaging" is the slang term), but is always thwarted somehow, and when he finally succeeds with a fellow gay co-worker, he finds that he does not really like it (although they end up cuddling instead).
A group of middle class friends who are constantly holding very dull dinner parties, until a bizarre or out of the ordinary event happens to liven it up (e.g. in one episode a guest suddenly suggests playing Russian roulette and in the next scene one of the guests has been shot in the head; in another a couple are talking about how they had children via IVF using eggs and sperm donated by athletes and geniuses, at which point the children come downstairs and cause their parents' heads to explode using the power of telekinesis (a homage to the films Village of the Damned and Scanners).
A man named Guy who constantly speaks in the emotionless, non-committal style of a TV voice-over, including during sex, in the crowd at a football match, drunkenly admonishing other customers in a pub, when crying during a speech at a friend's funeral and other times when it is normal to talk in an emotional manner.
A cardigan-wearing man named Brian walks into his local pub, called "Jefferie's", which, although he is the only patron, has on each occasion been transformed by orders of "the brewery", seemingly as an attempt to attract more customers.
Omar, a former privileged public schoolboy, is a fanatical Islamist and a member of a terrorist organisation he calls 'The International Revolutionary Jihad for the Liberation of the Islamic Republic of Great Britain'.
Omar has recruited two teenage boys, Abdul and Shafiq, to carry out suicide bombings in the name of Allah - but through various comical misadventures, their plans always fail.
The effectiveness of their terror campaign is somewhat undermined by the fact that Abdul and Shafiq seem to take their jihad for granted and treat it with the same offhandedness as the mundane details of their daily lives such as sport (their beloved West Bromwich Albion F.C.)
and television (shows such as Room 101 and Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes), and also because Abdul and Shafiq (and Omar to a lesser degree) are so very much a part of the Western culture and lifestyle they are attempting to defeat.
It is possible the inspiration for this depiction of radical Islamicist ideology in the midst of otherwise normal modern British life comes from the detention of the so-called Tipton Three at Camp X-Ray.
He often writes gushing letters to his family in India about how wonderful his new life in Britain is (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), and even chooses a strip club as the ideal place to look for a girlfriend.
In one episode, a Madrid-Barcelona equivalent featured, wearing football shirts and Spanish moustaches despite the fact, unlike London and Essex, the two cities are over 300 miles apart .
Her boyfriend tries to remember to compliment her on her new style, but is always distracted by some extraordinary event, such as an alien invasion, the arrival of James Bond or even the Second Coming of Jesus.
An ominous, imposing character who executes innocent people whom he accuses of being child molesters on dubious evidence, parodying the hysterical waves of moral panic over the issue of paedophilia that swept Britain at the time (largely driven by the tabloid media), leading to certain individuals being demonised for little or no reason.
James", a public swimming pool attendant whose Speedo trunks are mis-read as "Peedo", and the cast of a production of Fiddler On The Roof because of the dubious innuendo of the title.
When executing suspected paedophiles, he will cite justification with the likes of, "By the powers invested in me by a text vote on Sky News...", "by a bloke I met down the pub, who knew for definite...", or "By prurient wishful thinking...
A grotesquely fat middle-aged man with a quiff, sideburns, poor personal hygiene and a penchant for Andy McNab books and REO Speedwagon, greets his Thai mail-order bride who turns out to be beautiful, intelligent, adoring of him and completely impervious to his disgusting lifestyle.
On one occasion he is admitted into a nursing home, but has to leave when the other elderly people realise he is Die (sic) Weiße Engel - a reference to a scene in the movie Marathon Man and to Dr Josef Mengele, latterly of Auschwitz.
A father of a young girl is hopelessly addicted to gambling and resorts to selling her possessions and birthday presents received from her family to fund his habit.
Having pawned off her last remaining possessions, Dad has a dream where he resorts to selling one of her kidneys and part of her liver, despite ex-footballer, Tony Adams's words of wisdom.
Rebecca launches her own highly successful career, while her mother's fifteen minutes of fame are ending disastrously (resulting in a naked Fran begging outside the TV studios: "Gissa job!
The sketch begins with Matt Harding's haunting "Our Conversation" playing in the background, as a doctor and another researcher discuss the problems related to a disease or over-exposure to a specific drug.
A caricature of Tony Blair who makes a speech (later in front of an American flag to satirise his overtly US-friendly outlook), making repeated ludicrous promises such as "Magic beans for every household", "terrorism to be phased out by 2006" and "robots to cure cancer, made out of gold" with the odd realistic promise like "Post to be delivered on time" or "houses that people can actually afford" included, with the implication that they too are just as unlikely to be delivered.
Many of the visual gags, both small and large, mirrored contemporary events, such as the MRSA scare,[4] news stories concerning tissues taken from deceased patients who were not registered donors,[5] and even babies born in the maternity ward being sent home with the wrong parents.