Hale and Pace

Hale and Pace
Genre	Comedy
Written by	Gareth Hale Norman Pace Adrian Baldwin Lenny Barker
Directed by	Vic Finch David G. Hillier Peter Orton
Starring	Gareth Hale Norman Pace
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	10
No. of episodes	66
Production
Producer(s)	David G. Hillier Alan Nixon Mark Robson
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	London Weekend Television
Release
Original network	ITV
Picture format	4:3
Original release	2 October 1988 – 20 December 1998

Hale and Pace were an English comedy duo who performed in British light entertainment television shows doing comedy sketches in the 1980s–1990s.

Gareth Hale (born 15 January 1953) and Norman Pace (born 17 February 1953) met at Avery Hill teacher training college in Eltham, South East London. They discovered much in common, particularly humour, and began playing clubs in a comedy band. One of the clubs that they most liked playing was "The Tramshed" in Woolwich. This developed into sketch writing, with a show entitled Don't Stop Now - It's Fundation. Before appearing on TV, they did a series of radio shows for Radio 4 based on their show at the Tramshed. Their early TV break came on The Entertainers (1984), Pushing Up Daisies (1984) and the Saturday Gang (1986). They also appeared in The Young Ones three times, in the episodes "Flood", "Nasty" and "Time".

After a single one-off special for London Weekend Television in Christmas 1986, they were given a full series in 1988. The first series won the Silver Rose of Montreux, as well as the Press prize. Their relationship with ITV lasted a decade, with most of their programmes going out around 10pm on a Sunday. Their most famous comic creations are the stone faced bouncers The Two Rons – also known as The Management, who include the phrase 'I do Ron, Ron' in their stilted conversations in a reference to the song "Da Doo Ron Ron" by The Crystals. They are also famous for their ever-smiling and colourfully dressed children's TV presenters Billy (Hale) and Johnny (Pace). A number of their TV sketches caused controversy, especially the sketch in which they pretended to have microwaved a cat. This clip got them onto the top 50 on "50 most shocking comedy moments" and they believe that the sketch gave them the notoriety that kept them in work for all the successive series. They went one-up on this sketch in the first episode of the second series where Norman holds a baby and they both move aside to show the microwave behind them. Gareth flips a coin, then the baby upstages them (assumedly unscripted) by vomiting over Norman's arm. Other sketches were heavily criticised for being perverted or almost pornographic. One sketch showed a British couple staying with a Swedish couple. The Swedes were nudists who were constantly naked, with the man (Hale) constantly asking for very intimate details of their sex lives. Although the British couple are clearly shocked and offended, they finally claim that their Swedish hosts are boring. At one point, the Swedish couple are filmed with full frontal nudity. Their genitals are only hidden by the very close positioning of the British couple's heads.

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