Smashie and Nicey
The characters reference such DJs as Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, Alan Freeman, Mike Read, Peter Powell, Noel Edmonds and Jimmy Savile.
[2] Harry Enfield stated that his choice of characters for his show was a calculated move to gain the biggest possible audience by creating archetypes people could relate to.
During their initial appearances as recurring characters on Harry Enfield's Television Programme, the pair host neighbouring mid-morning slots, with each sketch typically centering around the cliched and insipid banter during Smashie's handover to Nicey's show, with self-congratulory references to their charity work (which they pronounce as "charidee").
Every sketch ends with Nicey using an oversized fader to play his favourite (albeit dated) record "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Bachman–Turner Overdrive, which he usually introduces with a bad pun on the band's name.
[citation needed] At the end of the second series, the new controller of Fab FM attempts to rejuvenate the station's dated image by demoting Smashie and Nicey to a midnight graveyard slot on sister channel "Radio Quiet" (a parody of BBC Radio 2), with their usual morning shows being handed over to fresh-faced DJs Mark Baddier and Simon Christ (parodies of younger presenters of the time, such as Mark Goodier and Simon Mayo), who prove to be even more inane than their older counterparts.
Mike Smash (Smashie, played by Paul Whitehouse) is a bland and lightweight DJ who fills his airtime with terrible jokes and moronic observations of no consequence.
After being sacked from Radio Fab FM, he attempts to reinvent himself as a laddish TV presenter (in the style of Mark Lamarr and Terry Christian); remarries to a much younger trophy wife; and accumulates a net worth of £200 million through Bulgarian property holdings.
The characters became very popular, appearing in adverts, featuring on their own compilation album, Let's Rock,[4] and presenting episodes of Top of the Pops, including the 30th anniversary special edition on New Year's Day 1994.
Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield also reprised their roles to present a special edition of Pick of the Pops on 30 September 2007, commemorating the 40th birthday of Radio 2 and following the death of Alan Freeman.
[citation needed] Nicey briefly appeared in the 2015 special An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, revealing that he had been cleared of "all but one of the charges" by Operation Yewtree, echoing what had happened to Dave Lee Travis.
It combines elements from the careers of several real DJs, with Smashie seen hosting a Saturday night TV show called Smashie's House Party, a parody of Noel's House Party, and having turned his show into a plea for his wife (named specifically as "Tessa") to come back after she has left him, repeatedly playing Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" (Tony Blackburn did this in the mid-1970s when his wife, actress Tessa Wyatt left him).
Much of the station's output was widely considered dull and unchallenging, and the average age of both listeners and presenters had risen above thirty, when it was intended to cater to a young audience.
[8] When Matthew Bannister arrived at Radio 1 in 1993 with a mission to rejuvenate the station, he referred directly to the characters in stating that his goal was to rid it of its "Smashie and Nicey image".
