The Mary Whitehouse Experience is a British topical sketch comedy show that the BBC produced in association with Spitting Image Productions.
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.
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.
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.
These are usually sensitive situations such as speaking out at a funeral, apologising to an old man after running over his wife in his car, and complimenting a suicidal child on his drawings.
At other times Ray has experienced near-fatal accidents, such as having an arrow shot through his brain, which are ignored by passers-by given that even his cries of pain sound sarcastic.
In the final episode, on being given a Cure album as a present, Ray cannot bring himself to sound sarcastic when thanking his friend and, bizarrely, starts speaking Flemish.
(played by Rob Newman) Ivan is a daytime television presenter who hosts a show similar to the BBC's Pebble Mill at One.
Strange is the archetypal 'man your mother warned you about', the weird man who walks around town in a dirty old mac, indulging in disturbingly eccentric behaviour.
History Today is a supposed historical discussion TV programme presented by two elderly, scholarly professors, both well-spoken and well-groomed.
This was prompted by Baddiel's observation that, although the band's earlier material had been recorded in a downbeat, 'doom and gloom' Gothic rock style, they had later moved in a more poppy direction (with singles such as "Friday I'm in Love").
Each sketch features Robert Smith and The Cure performing a particularly happy, cheery song or nursery rhyme in the band's goth style.
The songs included "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" (originally by Rolf Harris), "The Laughing Policeman" and Tommy Steele's "Flash Bang Wallop".
Rob Newman admits to growing his hair to look like Mark Gardener and Tim Burgess (members of, respectively, the bands Ride and the Charlatans), and while praising their musical accomplishments, he demonstrates why you wouldn't want to 'hang out with them' in several scenarios.