jim henson

'Rutland Weekend Television' ran for two seasons in the UK in 1975 and '76 (a total of 14 episodes) on BBC2.

It featured Eric Idle and Bonzo Dog Band member Neil Innes, with a supporting cast of players.

But for the wealth of musical numbers provided by Innes, the show was similar in content to 'Monty Python's Flying Circus', and was Idle's first project following the end of the Python TV series in 1974.

RWT is best remembered these days as having provided the debut of Innes and Idle's creation, The Rutles.

- Follow the link to an article about 'Rutland Weekend Television' appearing at Neil Innes' website.

For more of Neil Innes, see also:
- Words of Innespiration - The Lyrics & Unplanned Career of Neil Innes

- The Doo Dah Diaries: "A year-by-year account of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band"





The run of RWT also spawned an accompanying book, 'The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book' and this LP. ⬇

On the few musical tracks I've provided from the LP, the personnel is:

Neil Innes - vocals, piano
Andy Roberts - guitar
Dave Richards - bass
Roger Swallow - drums

- - except on 'Testing' and 'The Hard To Get':

Roger Rettig and Billy Bremner - guitars
Brian Hodgson - bass
John Halsey - drums





From 'The Rutland Weekend Songbook' LP (Passport Records, 1976),
Listen to the following Neil Innes tracks:

Front Loader
Star Time with Stoop Solo
Testing
Boring
The Hard To Get

(click for audio)

- - And for redundancy's sake, here are some YouTube links to the corresponding video clips from RWT, just for the cause of being repetitious in presenting the matching television excerpts of the songs listed above as they appeared in video form on Rutland Weekend Television:

Front Loader
Stoop Solo
Testing
Boring
The Hard To Get

Happily, you can currently find dozens of other Rutland Weekend Television clips available at YouTube.

- - And several full-length episodes can be seen at Veoh.

For those who care, the songs used on the 'Songbook' LP were recorded in sessions separate from what aired on the show.