Lenny Henry mentioned the opening tennis sketch from this episode in his second autobiography, 2022's "Rising to the Surface".
Lenny recalled: "The great thing about the whole experience was that I got to meet and befriend Alexei, who, during rehearsals on show day, would stay in his dressing room with his wife Linda, only walking onto the studio floor when he was needed. He scowled in a dissatisfied manner a lot of the time.
We bonded properly during a terrible tennis sketch on location. In between takes, I was brave enough to begin a conversation, the opening gambit of which might have been, 'This sketch is rubbish, isn't it?' and we've been mates ever since. He told me that his main problem with OTT was that it wasn't his show, so he had to just endure it."
Lenny recalled: "The great thing about the whole experience was that I got to meet and befriend Alexei, who, during rehearsals on show day, would stay in his dressing room with his wife Linda, only walking onto the studio floor when he was needed. He scowled in a dissatisfied manner a lot of the time.
We bonded properly during a terrible tennis sketch on location. In between takes, I was brave enough to begin a conversation, the opening gambit of which might have been, 'This sketch is rubbish, isn't it?' and we've been mates ever since. He told me that his main problem with OTT was that it wasn't his show, so he had to just endure it."
OTT is of its time and so may shock or offend some when watched in modern times.
The opening tennis sketch for this edition contains a sequence where Chris Tarrant's narrator uses a racial epithet to refer to Lenny Henry, describing him as a "six foot n** nog."
The opening tennis sketch for this edition contains a sequence where Chris Tarrant's narrator uses a racial epithet to refer to Lenny Henry, describing him as a "six foot n** nog."