Do Not Adjust Your Set
Programme Summary
Although planned and transmitted as a childrens' programme, Do Not Adjust Your Set also proved to be very popular with adults. It was one of the programmes that acted as a 'forerunner' to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin began writing zany sketches, which followed one another in quick succession. There was an early appearance by David Jason, who appeared in a regular spoof serial as 'Captain Fantastic'. This character became so popular that his 'adventures' continued in another programme after Do Not Adjust Your Set finished. Neil Innes and his group, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, provided musical interludes. Terry Gilliam supplied animations for the last few programmes.

Info from the TV Comedy Database

"The first thing we did was a Christmas Special. A Boxing Day show. We didn't know who the hell they were and they didn't know who the hell we were, and there was a definite tangible air of mistrust. I came up with this idea for a song called 'B-O-X, it's Boxing Day, I-N-G it's fun all the way, D-A-Y you've heard nothing yet, Do Not Adjust Your Set.' It was so appalling it broke the ice, then we careened into it. They had been writing sketches and the Bonzos were the Bonzos with no idea of what television was for at all. If we thought that something was better, we'd change it, so they never knew where to point the cameras at us. We never learned anything, and we carried on in that way."

"Later on, we were on the road all the time, through both series. We made 26 in all. That's very nearly half a year. We used to do a week at a time in those days, pretty much. Somewhere. In a club or something.

"The management rang up and said, 'The television company want to know what props you need.' Legs Larry Smith answered the phone, and said the first thing that came into his head, 'We need three cardboard boxes, a springboard and a petrol tanker.' And they went, 'right.' Then he came into us and said, 'Ha ha ha, guess what I just told them?' We all had a good laugh. A couple of days later, the phone goes again and I answer the phone, and it's the management saying, 'Well, we've got the three cardboard boxes and the springboard, but we're having trouble with the petrol tanker. Would an oil drum do?' I had the task of explaining to them that Larry wasn't serious. They hit the roof, but we didn't care because we were fed up with them by then.

"A few days later, Vivian, Rodney and I went round to see the management. We'd bought special, completely over-the-head rubber masks of various descriptions of gargoyles and animals or whatever. They sat there, and had this bizarre conversation with the manager, who sat behind one of those open plan office panels. He wouldn't actually confront us, so he was shouting from behind this panel. He said, 'Take those masks off.' And we're going 'mm mm mm mm', and finally he snapped and said, 'Right, I've had enough of you. Get out!" We said, 'Can we have that in writing?' And he said, "No, you're not getting away that easily!' It was very adult.

"The thing was, we were unmanageable, but on the other hand, we were absolutely being farmed like chickens. No time off, no time with the family or anything. It was go out, work, work, work."

Neil also said: "The difference between the Pythons and the Bonzos was that the Pythons just had a little bit more control over the wackiness than the Bonzos did. The Bonzos were completely freefall anarchy and whatnot. If anything new happened in what we did it was because somebody thought of something that might put somebody else off, and if it got a laugh, it stayed in." - from a 2000 interview

From Nostalgia Central: The content was rather adult for kids, primarily because the brief was to create a show that the writers found funny, rather than "writing down" for children. Terry Jones claims that "we were just doing what we would have done anyway really, so the fact that it was a kids show was just an excuse".

Adults would rush home from work on Friday nights to watch this 'kids show', so the second series was repeated at a later timeslot for the adult audience. If truth be told, it was really a show for grown-ups, with lip service paid to it being for kids, by virtue of a silly Childs song at the end:

Oh the Elephant goes miaow
And the pussycat moos like a cow
And the tiny little dog goes oink like a frog
And the lion goes bow wow wow (wow wow wow)