Kevin Turvey

Kevin Turvey was a British television comedy character, created by actor and comedian Rik Mayall, who featured in the BBC sketch show A Kick Up the Eighties in 1981.

''A Kick Up the Eighties''

Turvey, an awkward and socially inept character who spoke with a broad West Midlands accent, was a self-styled "investigative journalist" who still lived with his mother, wore a shapeless blue anorak, fancied a local girl called Theresa Kelly, and rarely ventured outside his home town of Redditch, north Worcestershire. Each week, his 'investigations' amounted to little more than an over-excited, rambling, uninformed monologue delivered straight to camera, providing absolutely no insight into the subject-matter whatsoever.
The Kevin Turvey segments used as theme music the third movement alla marcia from the Karelia Suite by Sibelius; the first movement, Intermezzo, was the theme of ITV's This Week current affairs programme.
Mayall went uncredited for these appearances, with "Also Featuring: Kevin Turvey" in the end credits rather than his real name. Mayall's then-girlfriend, Lise Mayer, also wrote for these television appearances uncredited.

''The Man Behind the Green Door''

In 1982 a one-off mockumentary, Kevin Turvey the Man Behind the Green Door was broadcast. In this, a BBC 'fly-on-the-wall' camera crew followed Kevin for a week as he went about his "investigations". Robbie Coltrane played Mick the lodger, Ade Edmondson played Kevin's friend Keith Marshall, and Gwyneth Guthrie played Kevin's mum. Roger Sloman appeared as a psychotic park-keeper. Making guest appearances, as part of Kevin's band "20th Century Coyote", were Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron, known as Raw Sex.

Influences

Mayall described Turvey as "an accent and a mood from the West Midlands" where he had grown up. J. F. Roberts has suggested that Turvey bore some strong similarities to Peter Cook's dullard, know-it-all character E. L. Wisty.
Mayall had previously performed a similar, though slightly differently named, character called 'Kevin Turby', on stage at London's the Comic Strip. Critic Ian Hamilton described Turby's routine: