Carabine FM

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Firstly thanks to virtualclass008 for finding this show and posting some links.

Carabine FM was a Swiss comedy show from the 80s that had quite a few sketches involving topless women. I've collected as many as I think are out there currently and will post them here. My French is half decent so I'll try and describe what's going on if it seems worthwhile.

The sources are the episodes virtualclass008 linked, a few others I found on the net and then a 3 DVD set that got put out a while back. Sadly the DVDs were just a few compilation shows rather than all the episodes, so some clips are still not great quality and I'm sure there's a bunch missing.

For starters there's a silent comedy skit about AIDS awareness, then one about a sexy assistant at the radio station. I think the joke's obvious in that one. In the guy's dreams about her she's a bad worker and rejects his passionate advance. Then, in real life, she brings him the report he wants topless but he doesn't know what to do with her.

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In Doctor a woman locked out of her room asks for help. He treats the door like a patient, then opens it in the style of an operation. He keeps asking for a sponge and the woman gives him her clothes. Then he gets embarrassed.

Kelcon is a spoof advert and basically just a stupid pun. The woman clearly wants the repair man to see to her, not the washing machine, but instead he gives her a lecture about how ordinary washing powder didn't protect her appliance. The woman says 'Quelle con!', which means something like "What an arsehole!", which he turns into an endorsement of Kelcon, a new, more powerful, washing powder.

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These are a couple from one of their recurring sketches about Maxime, a reporter on the radio show who gets sent on dangerous assignments. In audio he does his report on whatever intrepid situation but the visuals reveal that he's actually usually sneaking in to some woman's bedroom.

In the first one he claims to be trying to free his jeep from the sands of the Gobi desert, when he's in fact stealing a sleeping woman's bra. In the second, not particularly PC (it was the 80s), installment he's talking about being alone at the South Pole whilst actually in a "schoolgirl's" bedroom. That one has English subtitles for some reason, so anglophones can check I'm not lying.

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Another couple of Maxime clips. In the first he's having trouble in Papua New Guinea making his way through the valley, so he tries a different road with a better view. In the second he's in the North of Alaska and so exhausted he's having trouble even getting his shoes off.

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Final two Maxime sketches I have. This time he's not on particularly dangerous assignments, in the first he's at an international conference in Tokyo and in the second he's at a religious gathering in a intensely meditative atmosphere. That is until his Mum arrives and messes things up.

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Now for the examples I have of another of their recurring sketches, the memoirs of Inspecteur Nichon of the Brigade Criminelle. Nichon is slang for breasts, so he's essentially Inspector Tits or Inspector Boobs.

The sketches are all basically the same. Inspecteur Nichon doesn't mean his job is to inspect breasts, it's his name, and the joke at the start of all of these sketches is that he introduces himself saying he's from the police, and the women think that he's ordering them to show him their boobs. He then usually gets annoyed and tells them that it's his name.

His assistant turns up and they discuss the crime, most of the discussion is a series of ridiculous puns and then one of them always arrests the other for the murder because of a 'fact' that is one of those torturous puns. For example in one Nichon has a sandwich with a pickle on it, in french a cornichon. As a result of that he is arrested for murder because "vous savez oů est le corps, Nichon" (you know where the body is) - the pun being that you pronounce 'corps, Nichon' the same as cornichon, so really it's just that he knows where the pickle is.

Then, at the end, the woman always talks to or about Nichon getting his name wrong, she's corrected, and thinks she needs to show her tits again.

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A few more adventures of Inspecteur Nichon.

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Last few Inspecteur Nichon I have. Same 'plots' as before, the second one here is from the 'goofs' section of the DVD so sadly they corpse before the second flash, which is a shame.

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Few more miscellaneous skits. The first is a guy on the phone to his wife, the second is a collection of spoof adverts (ad breaks are introduced by 'pub' on francophone TV, short for publicité, so 'pube' is another pun).

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Last sketch I have. The first 3 guys try to get the barmaid to leave with them on a trip of a lifetime, then someone comes in needing a push for his truck.