“Out with a lady last night sir? Did she want it sir? Did she?”*

“Oh! Suit you sir!”*

 

What better way to be introduced to the two most sly, sneaky, and slightly perverted sales people out there, than to pay a visit to your local tailor. Ken and Kenneth, the two button-pushing suit fitters from the Fast Show’s crack team of comedy writers, have now been impaled on the minds of all their viewers, with their phrase “Suits you” now being synonymous with the pair. In fact, the phrase has become so well known from the sketch, that it is now a chain of Menswear stores in the UK (a slightly tongue-in-cheek nod to the show).

 

The typical build up of their real underlying motives is what makes this sketch so great. A man walks into a store, be it a customer of the highest social regards and stature, a man accompanied by his housekeeping, innocently unsuspecting wife or perhaps a well known celebrity (all Fast Show fans will remember the one with a certain Johnny Depp). Ken and Kenneth portray themselves to have the sort of professionalism that is cut from the cloth of Saville Row; hands behind their backs, waiting expectantly to serve the customer. Of course, with absolutely no intention in doing so.

 

Ken – ”Good Morning Sir, and how are we today sir?”*

Customer – “Fine and how are you?”*

Ken – “Radiant, sir. Radiant!”*

 

Like all great Fast Show sketches, the same theme runs again and again, with different characters we know from all walks of life being subjected to their sex-obsessed interrogations.

 

A true English Gentleman enters the establishment:

 

English Gent -“I am looking for a suit. Not too formal not too casual. Lightweight, not too flimsy. A neutral colour, but not too dull.”*

 

Ken – “Oh! You know your own mind don’t you sir?”*

“A suit sir? Is that all you’re after sir? Have you ever thought about going at it full pellet with a tranny sir?”*

 

Or from another scenario;

 

Ken – “Are you looking for a new suit sir?”*

Customer – “Why, yes. I am starting a new job in fact.”*

Ken – “Will you have a secretary sir? Will you be giving it to her sir? Oh!”*

 

For the last ever episode of the Fast Show, long time fan and great admirer of Paul Whitehouse, Johnny Depp made a quick cameo appearance – adorned with American cowboy hats and boots – looking for “something in a very traditional suit.”*

 

Kenneth – “Are you by any chance an American sir? Been here long sir?”*

Depp replies sheepishly “Eh…. a couple of days.”*

“BANGED anyone yet sir?”*

Depp – “I just eh… ”*

Kenneth – “ ‘cos you don’t hang around normally do you sir? I remember in the War you yanks were in like a shot. Didn’t do any actual fighting, you were a couple of years too late for that sir.”*

 

Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams are the writers in the team behind Ken and Kenneth, and they carry these two characters superbly. It’s their comic timing that makes the line “Suit you. Sir!” never seem to get old fashioned. With their slick, combed hair and measuring tape dangling around their prim shoulders, ever at the ready to measure the inside length of the next leg to walk through the door.

 

* quoted from The Fast Show/ Suit You sketch