| “ | It's just a big bloody joke to you, isn't it? Oh, Geoff can't tell a joke! Geoff is a joke! Geoff enters a talent competition and loses! Me mam said I would win. I was only eight. WELL YA KNOW I'VE GOT THIS GUN, DON'T YA?! | „ |
| ~ Geoff during one of his psychotic episodes. |
Geoff Tipps is the tritagonist in the BBC Sitcom The League of Gentlemen.
He works for a plastics company and aspires to be a stand up comedian, but repeatedly fails at telling jokes. He is disliked due to his short temper and tendency to threaten those around him, usually suffering a violent outburst that involves him pulling out a gun. He appears as one of the three main protagonists in the 2005 film adaptation The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, where he is treated as a more bumbling individual than the bad tempered character appearing in the TV Show, and acts more heroic in his quest to save Royston Vasey.
He was portrayed by Reece Shearsmith who also played Papa Lazarou, Edward Tattysyrup, Ross Gaines, Bernice Woodall, Judee Levinson and Cathy Carter-Smith from the same series, Mr. Jelly, Maureen Sowerbutts, Jeremy Goode and Silent Singer in Psychoville, Ray, Tom, Hector, Dr. Maxwell, Mr. Warren, George, Dr. Jacob Tyler, George, David, Henry and Viktor in Inside No. 9, Gagan Rassmussen in Doctor Who, Malcolm Webster in The Widower and one third of the Vogons in the 2005 film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Biography[]
The League of Gentlemen (1999 to 2002 TV Series)[]
Season One[]
Geoff works for a local plastics company along with his best friends Mike and Brian, the former whom has been his friend since childhood. He has a rather frosty relationship with the two of them due to his violent outbursts and bad temper, and resents the fact Brian ended up marrying his ex-wife Katie. Geoff also tries to impress them along with others with jokes, but constantly fails miserably. In the first episode he forces Brian to tell a joke about the "Mau Mau", but reacts violently when Brian fails to remember the details and threatens to murder Mike by shooting him in the head. However, it turns out that Mike has already heard the joke before, and things resume normally as if Geoff's outburst never happened.
Mid-way through the first series Mike is due to marry a woman named Cheryl, who Geoff seems to have a dislike towards despite wanting to be Mike's best man. Mike allows Geoff to be his best man, although during the reception Geoff goes off on a rant and tries to act superior by saying he "won the mums", as his mother outlived Mike's.
At the end of Series 1, Geoff pulls a prank on his friends when they attempt to throw him a surprise birthday party, pretending to commit suicide with his gun. This leaves them devastated, but Geoff reveals he is alive, causing them to storm off in anger, much to his confusion.
Season Two[]
The second series follows Geoff, Mike and Brian going on a trip to a conference, but end up being abandoned in the middle of nowhere by transsexual cab driver Barbara Dixon after Geoff insults her numerous times. They end up stranded in the woods and during the night Geoff attacks Mike in the dark thinking he is someone else following and trying to harm them. Believing he has killed Mike, Geoff tries to bury him in the woods only to find he is still alive. The three of them make it to the conference late, although Geoff shows more concerned at whether or not they missed having the cakes.
Season Three[]
Geoff is the focus of the third episode of series 3 "Turn Again Geoff Tipps", in which he is layed off from his job at the plastics company and travels to London to pursue his dream of becoming a stand up comedian. He travels to the Salmon of Knowledge comedy club owned by his old friend Don Lynch, where he struggles to make a group of people laugh and ends up insulting them and storming off in anger. Lynch gives Geoff a job to deliver a car to a friend's wife, during which time he runs ino Mike, who has traveled to London in order offer him his old job back (due to the disappearance of Brian), but believes that the car belongs to him and that he has indeed found stardom in the city.
Later, Geoff becomes a suspect in an act of terrorism when it is revealed that the car he delivered contained a bomb, and an e-fit is put out poorly matching his description. Upon learning that Lynch has left the club, Geoff steals the Legz Akimbo van and flees back to Royston Vasey, phoning Mike in order to accept his offer. Not paying attention to the road, he nearly hits Pauline Campbell-Jones (striking and killing Lance Lomgthorn when he saves her), and crashes into a wall (crushing Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen to death on the other side), where his face is badly mutilated. When he is taken away in an ambulance, he is relieved to hear that he will have to undergo plastic surgery and he his face will be changed, thus avoiding him being found.
In the final scene of series 3, Geoff is shown to be in hospital with a bandaged face and telling jokes to the patients, staff and friends, causing them to finally laugh, much to his pleasure.
The League of Gentlemen's Apoclaypse (2005)[]
Geoff appears as one of the three main characters along with Herr Lipp and Hilary Briss. He is a lot less "villainous" than his television counterpart, and is more bumbling than bad tempered and psychotic. He is taken hostage when driving to work by an escaped Hilary Briss, who has another hostage in the form of Herr Lipps. Briss takes the pair of them to a church to avoid the police, and end up locking themselves in a room which transports them to the "real world", in which it turns out they are just fictional characters in a television show.
The three of them are informed on the situation by other characters Edward & Tubbs Tattsyrup and Papa Lazarou, who were sent on a mission to track down their creators the League of Gentlemen, although led to the demise of one of them Jeremy Dyson. Edward, Tubbs and Lazarous then send them to London to track down the remaining creators Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss as the end of the show is risking the demise of Royston Vasey.
They end up kidnapping Pemberton and steal a computer containing the League of Gentlemen's new movie - The King's Evil. Lipp takes Pemberton's place, and Geoff and Briss hold Pemberton at a hotel in order to try and get him to write a new film for Royston Vasey. Pemberton escapes and as Briss chases after him, Geoff transports himself into The King's Evil universe where he ends up in 17th Century Britain and saves the King from being killed by a demonic creature.
The League of Gentlemen (2017 Anniversary Series)[]
An older Geoff Tipps returns in the 2017 Anniversary Specials, which picks up 15 years since the events of the original series. Geoff no longer works in plastics and is instead employed at a garden centre, although is down in his luck. Despite his "happy" ending in the original series in which he was shown to finally make people laugh, by this point he miserable as ever before. He goes to meet Mike and Brian who are employed with a building society in order to give them a business pitch to convince them to give him a loan. Brian isn't impressed with the pitch and turns Geoff down, although Mike tells Geoff he will fund him as long as he will murder Cheryl for him, who has become bedbound with morbid obesity. Geoff willingly accepts the offer without hesitation.
After gathering the tools needed, he breaks into what he believes to be Mike and Cheryl's residence. He smothers "Cheryl" with a pillow, and later reports to Mike over the phone. But it transpires that Geoff has actually broken into the wrong residence, as the house in question did once belong to Mike and Cheryl but they moved out four years prior and into a bungalow. It turns out that Geoff has actually murdered Pauline Campbell-Jones, who is discovered by her distraught husband Mickey.
The League of Gentlemen Live Again![]
In the 2018 live tour, which follows on from the anniversary specials, Geoff appears as the best man once again when Mike and Cheryl decide to renew their wedding vows, after she manages to lose a lot of weight. The segment acts as a semi-remake of when he was the best man at their wedding in series 1, in which he points out that he "won the mum's" when Mike's mother died back in 1987. Geoff threatens to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, but is talked out of it by Mike, and Geoff proceeds to hug him, proclaiming that he hates him.
The live show also reveals that he in fact didn't murder Pauline, as she faked her death to commit insurance fraud, as she had a life insurance claim.
Personality[]
Television[]
Geoff is a violent, psychotic, and bad-tempered man who is shown to be antagonistic to people around him, especially his two best friends and work colleagues Mike and Brian. Geoff shows his more psychotic streak when he threatens to shoot Mike dead unless Brian finishes a joke that he and Geoff had heard.
Although Geoff aspires to be an entertaining comedian, his jokes aren't funny and are often outdated. He sometimes tends to use darker senses of humor that may be unappealing to other people, such as when he pretended to commit suicide, unaware of how much it would hurt those around him. But by the end of the original series following his accident and being disfigured, Geoff was shown to be able to tell jokes and make people laugh, and entertained those on the hospital ward.
Geoff is also shown to be quite competitive, and he dislikes it when people are better than him. This caused him to think that his mother outliving Mike's mother meant that he was for once a winner, and finally beat Mike at something and that made him superior.
In the three part anniversary specials, an older Geoff is still cynical and at the bottom of the pile from everyone else.
Film[]
In the film adaptation, Geoff's violent and psychotic tenancies were removed, and he was more of a bumbling character who only wished to be seen as heroic. He accomplishes this by transporting himself into another fictional work The King's Evil, in which he managed to save the King and gain recognition for his bravery. Although displaying a cowardly nature such as giving into the film's antagonist Dr. Pea and leading him to Royston Vasey, Geoff ends up being the one to defeat him and save the town. Through his bumbling acts he accidentally kills his creator Mark Gatiss, although this act actually ends the apocalypse for good.
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 Villains
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League of Gentlemen Psychoville Inside No. 9 | ||