Eurotrash - Complete Series

Remember EUROTRASH? This outrageous tongue-in-cheek late-night TV-series, presented by Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier, launched on Channel 4 in 1993 and ran for a whopping 160 episodes until 2004, oui! With its irresistible blend of Gallic charm, utter smut, celebrity interviews and countless clips celebrating the weirdly wonderful and the wonderfully bizarre, each 30-min episode introduced viewers to a rather alternative side of our European neighbours – not to mention Pipi and Popo, the show’s two loveable cardboard giraffes made from toilet paper tubes!
Now you can revisit this entire cult-series which has just been released by Network on Air as a 20-disc DVD set!

Conceived in Paris for London-based Rapido Television, the first seven series of Eurotrash were presented by French writer, actor, director and TV-presenter Antoine de Caunes together with fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier (who left after Series 7, with de Caunes co-presenting with various other guests). With their unique and often naughty sense of humour (not to mention their astonishingly bad English), de Caunes and Gaultier rarely missed a beat and often poked fun at the stuck-up Brits although in all fairness it must be pointed out that the two presenters didn’t shy away from poking fun at their country of birth. Topics were usually all over the place and included the good, the bad and the ugly – often the show introduced us to European pop music such as camp-as-a-Christmas tree Swedish outfit ‘Army of Lovers’ or Finland’s very own rockabilly rebels ‘Leningrad Cowboys’ (complete with mega-quiffs and massively exaggerated winkle pickers) whose mantra “Stinky and drinkie in Helsinki” made America’s ‘Stray Cats’ look tame.

From an over-50s nudist camp (inhabited by German tourists) in Croatia to the much-cherished peeing boy statue in Brussels, from a restaurant which serves up dishes prepared with water rats to nude cleaning services and mock-Barbie dolls with enhanced genitals, right down (no pun intended) to the world of adult porn – no subject was taboo or tasteless enough – with the late Lolo Ferrari (who had the dubious honour of appearing in the French Guinness Book of World Records as ‘the woman with the largest breast implants’) featuring in several episodes.
Occasionally, featured guests were slightly more respectable, such as controversial Italian director Tinto Brass or German fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth who snapped just about everyone from rock and pop royalty to supermodels – her advertising shots for Guess Jeans propelled a then unknown Claudia Schiffer to international stardom. Speaking of: former supermodel Carla Bruni (these days better known as the wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy) also featured in Eurotrash. Other glamorous ladies featured on the show included Swedish media personality Victoria Silvstedt, while Graham Norton featured as a ‘roving reporter’ in series 9 – handing over to former Page 3 gal Melissa Messenger for the last series.

Equally interesting is a clip featuring French avant-garde director Jean-Luc Godard promoting his ill-fated version of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ – with Godard himself as The Fool, American novelist/journalist Norman Mailer as King Lear, Molly Ringwald (yes, really!) as Cordelia, Peter Sellers as Will Shakespeare the Fifth, Burgess Meredith as Don Learo and Woody Allen as Mr. Alien. Say no more!

If you think that you’ve seen it all then EUROTRASH is proof that you’ve seen nothing yet – you have been warned!