The following is a list of all major recurring characters in the BBC animated television series Monkey Dust.
Series one
Labia A series of sketches featuring a morally dubious consultancy company begin several episodes. Initially a satire on the Royal Mail renaming itself Consignia, the company charges large amounts of money on ridiculous rebranding exercises, e.g. renaming cancer as "Closure" and advertising it as an attractive end-of-life option or rebranding the fire service as 'Icarus' to combat their reputation as an "essentially reactive organisation" by going into the frothy coffee business.
The man who invents their new brand names is an international adventurer who looks like Lord Byron. The company's offices are in the shape of their logo, just like the former NatWest Tower (Tower 42).
Clive Pringle In each episode, Clive walks slowly through the city back home, which is located in a tower block of high-rise flats. 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 catchphrase: "... and that, darling, is what really happened!" Examples include The Lord of the Rings, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune, 24, a specified episode of The A-Team, the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, the song "Hotel California" by the Eagles, and even The Holy Bible...which his wife stops him on because she knows he will recite the whole Bible to her. When his long-suffering wife coolly points out his obvious plagiarism, Clive is forced to reveal his actual whereabouts. This usually involves something sexually degrading, such as bestiality or S&M. As the series progresses, his wife eventually reaches the point where she cuts him short in one episode (she is due to meet her friend Janice in five minutes), and in another she cuts him off as he is about to reveal a spoiler for the next episode of 24, which she has not seen yet. In one, as soon as Clive arrives, she barks out: "Excuse?" Clive: "I got lost on the common!" "Theme?" "Scott's Polar Expedition 1910-1912!" "Reality?" "I was getting tag-fucked in a pub toilet." At one point, Clive is abducted by aliens who cover him in lipstick marks and beer. When Clive says he has to get home, the aliens tell him to say exactly what happened. Unfortunately, because Clive is like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, he replies, "Actually, I haven't got that good of a track record." In the final skit, his wife has actually left him, and it is revealed that he is delivering his pathetic excuses to only himself in a mirror, meaning he can finally smile ironically and conclude; "I knew you would believe me!"
Liar Clive's skits are always prefaced by him walking home at night to the sound of "Lovely Head" by Goldfrapp.
Ivan Dobsky
Designed and directed by British animation director / illustrator Steve May and voiced by Simon Greenall, Ivan Dobsky is a supposed notorious criminal, known as "the Meat-Safe Murderer", held in custody in the high-security H.M. Prison Crowmarsh, and, after its destruction at Ivan's hand at the end of Series 1, New Crowmarsh PLC High Security Prison. 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 bears more than a passing resemblance to the true case of wrongly convicted Stefan Kiszko.
Dobsky has the mental age of a four-year-old child, speaks in a soft, flowing CarlisleAs stated by Harry Thompson in the DVD commentary. 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.
Early episodes depict him being pardoned and released when DNA evidence exonerating him comes to light. During his time in custody he has been oblivious to changes taking place in the world outside the prison walls, and thus when he attempts to rejoin society he appears as a throwback to the 1970s. 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. After deciding he'd rather remain in prison than to face the modern world, he ends up actually committing a murder in order to be reincarcerated.
Mr Hoppy seems to have a mind and will of his own, carries on conversations with Dobsky, and often encourages him into violent action. The two characters are implied to represent different manifestations of a multiple personality disorder, in which Dobsky is an unwitting innocent and Mr. Hoppy a sociopathic monster. 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).
In the second series Ivan marries a prison visitor who then becomes the object of Mr Hoppy's jealousy and is brutally murdered by him.
Many celebrities appear to campaign to free Ivan from prison, including Brad Pitt (hired to play Ivan in a Hollywood movie), Billy Bragg, Jeremy Hardy, Manic Street Preachers, Bono and Nelson Mandela.
In the first episode of series three, Mr Drummond, the prison superintendent and Dobsky's chief caretaker, becomes enraged at factual inaccuracies pertaining to himself in the film version of Dobsky's life and joins Ivan and Mr Hoppy in a murderous rampage.
The Elderly Couple An elderly man and woman say goodnight to each other and turn out the lights. When they fall asleep, the man has dreams of an extremely homoerotic nature, containing obvious phallic symbolism and numerous homosexual stereotypes which greatly interest him. Upon waking up, his wife asks him if he had any nice dreams, to which he replies that he did not really dream at all.
In the last episode featuring this couple, the woman has a similar dream, except involving woman bikers and a lesbian orgy to the music of "Alive" by P.O.D. When they wake up, the man asks her if she had any nice dreams, to which she replies, "No, nothing special. Just the dykes again."
David Baddiel The famous comedian is put upon to perform numerous tasks because, as a famous comedian he is just as qualified as a trained professional. Such tasks include rescuing a child trapped underneath the wheels of a car or piloting a Space Shuttle.
He is played by himself, and in real life is married to Morwenna Banks who provides voices for several of the characters in the show.
Daisy Harris press conference A bumbling police force investigating a young girl's murder appear alongside her foster family in a seemingly endless series of televised press conferences, but are unable to spot her foster father's obvious guilt despite the foster mother's accusing glare and stern expression. The foster father bears a marked resemblance to serial killer Harold Shipman, who went undetected for years before being identified and convicted. The inept police officer in charge constantly stresses that they are looking for somebody with "evil staring eyes" and the word "chillingly" is overused when describing the murder. A young local man of simple intellect is eventually charged with the murder, despite possibly suspect evidence (a reference to the conviction of Barry George for the murder of Jill Dando - the fictional suspect uses the alias "Frank Sinatra", while George changed his name to Barry Bulsara and claimed to be related to Freddie Mercury). The sketch is partially inspired by the Sion Jenkins investigation.
Divorced dad (with Timmy) Timmy usually lives with his mother and Roger, his mother's new boyfriend. Each week Timmy comes to visit his father but always just talks about what Roger has done for him. The dad does not feel that he can impress him and ends up committing suicide each episode. As he goes off to kill himself, Timmy, who in reality is deeply fond of his Dad, reveals the truth too late. Roger remains an unseen character until episode 4, when Timmy shows his father a photo of him – revealing that he looks like an older version of Timmy himself, complete with ginger hair. Realising the truth, Timmy's father decides not to kill himself but to be a good father to Timmy anyway. In the last episode featuring these characters (during series two), the divorced dad is enthusiastic about a forthcoming visit from Timmy because they have not seen each other since Timmy and his mother moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne several years previously, but on discovering that a now teenage Timmy has begun to dress, talk and act like a Geordie in order to fit in with the local kids, the father commits suicide for the final time out of sheer desperation. This turns out to be Timmy just showing off, and in fact he longs for things to be how they used to be with his father — alas, too late, as always.
The Cab Driver An immigrant taxi driver attempts to make conversation with his passenger, each time stating that in his country, he held a certain title. "In my Country, I am the inventor of the Hoover!" After saying this, the annoyed woman in the passenger seat states that she wanted to go to a normal location, and not the outrageous location he is driven to. (Narnia, Io and the Triassic era). In one sketch, when the taxi driver says that in his country he is the most senior heart surgeon, it is instead revealed his passenger is David Baddiel (from his own sketch in the show); who indignantly replies "No, I am!"
Chat room pervert A paedophile attempts to lure children via a chat room, but fails each time, unable to successfully portray himself as a 13-year-old boy named "Benji". Failures include correcting a child's grammar, inadvertently mentioning that he was in London while it was being bombed in World War II and trying to get a photo of the girl to whom he has been chatting, but only getting a photo of her friend "Lucy", a rabbit. When he eventually manages to arrange a meeting with one of his online friends known as "Charlotte", the "child" turns out to be another elderly chat room paedophile. The two curse ("Shit!") in unison and walk off in their respective directions.
The pseudo-intellectuals A group of pseudo-intellectuals make increasingly pretentious statements about art, culture and life in general while waving their arms around earnestly. Examples include: "The nineties were to the eighties what the seventies were to the sixties" and "Serial killers are just rock stars without guitars". They are shown queueing outside a club or restaurant, a church, and even the house of one of their own mothers. Each time, they are turned away when they get to the front of the line due to a "No Wankers" policy. 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 the first-time cottager