If ever there was a TV show that captured the zeitgeist, it was Dom Joly’s Trigger Happy TV. The post-Britpop hidden camera show brilliantly paired sketches with exceptional music, becoming essential viewing and catapulting Joly to fame.

Unlike many sketch shows, it wasn't built around elaborate setups or punchlines - it relied on seeing absurd behavior dropped into ordinary public spaces and capturing real reactions.

The soundtrack carried the emotional tone of a scene, turning a simple gag into something oddly cinematic. So, Britpop, electronica, and alternative tracks underscored such crazy scenes as a human-sized snail crawling across a zebra crossing in a busy London street, or over-sized dogs beaten each up with truncheons.

Against the backdrop of Faithless and Elastica, Pulp and Portishead, The Beatband, Gene, and A Flock of Seagulls, Joly trusted viewers with minimal dialogue, no laugh track, and no host constantly telling you what was funny. The audience got to discover the joke on their own -treating them like grown-ups.

And for a generation who grew up loving Joly’s work, his new book and tour are a celebration of Trigger Happy TV’s 25th anniversary.

Joly is stunned that time has gone by so quickly. “Trigger Happy TV happened in this curious moment in time. It was the beginning of the Millennium when so many things were changing. We had the internet, but it was still dial-up. We had mobile phones, but they were still very basic. You could call, text and play snake. That was about it. Television was about to explode into pieces. YouTube and TikTok were years away. Making a show like Trigger Happy TV felt like being in The Wild West.

Joly says: “We were definitely on a fulcrum point. Between old school, mainstream hidden camera shows and the anything-goes free-form of You Tube. Between everybody watching the same channels and the digital grazing that constitutes modern viewing habits. Between the aftermath of Tory Britain and Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia honeymoon.

“The idea of Trigger Happy TV was to spread a little surrealism into people’s lives. We always saw ourselves as this weird thing existing just below the surface of reality and occasionally bursting through to put a bit of oddness and wonder into somebody’s normal day. We never wanted to anger anybody. We never wanted to make anybody unhappy. We were absurdists doing absurd things in an absurd time… with a cracking soundtrack.

Joly took the show on the road at the end of 2025, with four gigs in large theatres. Predictably, they sold out. They also prompted a flood of requests for him to visit more theatre across the UK. Joly duly obliged - and, in a style that only he can muster, fulfilled the brief and then some, booking a gargantuan 100-date tour that visits all corners of the UK.

He will be appearing at The Savoy Theatre in Monmouth on 25th September.

Tickets for Trigger Happy TV’s 25 Anniversary Tour are available from: www.DomJoly.TV