How Kellogg's tried to rewrite Peep Show

...and some other trivia as the sitcom turns 15

Kellogg’s once tried to a change a line in Peep Show – to make it more of an advert for their Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

The company was consulted over a scene in season two in which Jeremy, Mark and Super Hans visit the flat of a music composer called Gog in a bid to intimidate him into paying some money he owes.

Wielding a baseball bat, the trio suggest they are going to smash up his home, with Super Hans’s first move being to tip a carton of breakfast cereal on the floor saying menacingly: ‘Nice packet of Crunchy Nut you’ve got here. Pretty expensive as I recall.’

However Robert Webb, who played Jeremy, has revealed that the manufacturer requested the line be changed to ‘ludicrously tasty as I recall’.

The actor said that Channel 4 ‘politely declined’ to use the advertising slogan – but said Kellogg’s gave permission for their product to be featured on the show anyway.

Webb shared the memory on Twitter to mark the 15th anniversary of Peep Show’s first episode yesterday.

Other trivia he tweeted was that Russell Brand auditioned for Super Hans; the first three days’ filming of series 1 had to be reshot because the sound guy didn’t record any sound and that the series is set in Croydon partly because the first director lived nearby and liked the tram.

Co-creator Sam Baines then chimed in with some facts of his own, revealing: ‘The dog leg Rob ate on the canal boat was in fact a turkey leg; the burglar episode was inspired by me capturing and sitting on a burglar while working in a video shop; we wrote Super Hans with Danny Dyer in mind; the 1st draft of Quantocking [the finale episode of series 3] included Johnson committing suicide.’

Here’s the Kellogg’s scene: