Band Line Up 2015

For some critics and programmers the success of Dirty Sanchez represented the apotheosis of amped-up, dumbed-down 21st century television. But for a generation in on the joke, these self-described worthless but loveable under-achievers made for unlikely heroes. This wasn’t so much warts-and-all broadcasting, but warts and booze and vomit and broken bones. The Dirty Sanchez crew seized the day, stapled it to a shopping trolley, set fire to it and sent it careering down the hill. The show was a huge success and the crew’s mayhemic globe-trotting journey began!

MTV’s most successful UK show was a rocket-fueled rise that was as rapid as it was surprising. Friends since their teens, Pritchard and Dainton were the raddest and baddest grommits on the South Wales skateboard scene. While touring and entering competitions, they decided to document their existence – every trick, prank and pitfall was captured on video cameras. The result was their first skate film Pritchard Vs Dainton, which had gained a near-mythical reputation before it even premiered in 2001 at a cinema in Newport, thanks, in part, to its scatological content.

“It was the right time, right place and a bad idea,” says Dainton, who was raised a Jehovah’s Witness in Pontypool. “I knew with the antics we were getting up to we could make a video that would make you laugh and have good skateboarding in. The UK scene needed something that was not so grey and drab – we wanted to kick it up the arse and showcase the best of British skateboarding. And show us having a fucking good time being stupid!”

But not so stupid as to give up doing what they love. Pritchard vs Dainton remain a big live draw to this very day in front of packed audiences countrywide and together take part in the annual Gumball Rally. Pritchard now owns a tattoo and barber shop and runs Sleep When You’re Dead, a company that throws legendary boat parties and has its own clothing line. He also regularly undertakes feats of endurance for a multitude of charities – including both cycling and running from John O’Groats to Land’s End, running the London marathon in a mankini, skateboarding from Cardiff to Newquay and doing Ironman events.

Dainton runs skateboard company Kill City Skateboards and continues to do a lot of film work, including soon to be released internet show called GoonTV, which promises to be “a Pandora’s bin box of boundary less bastards that’ll stop at no spectrum of the senses to upturn peace of mind for the sake of hauling laugh-ass out of every moving object with eyelids.”

The founding pair are now set to return in Pritchard Vs Dainton: The Rise and Falls, which presents this enduring love/hate relationship in all its visceral glory. Now older and even possibly slightly wiser, it charts their humble half-pipe beginnings through their system-smashing rise as young men getting paid to break the rules and do the dumb shit they enjoyed doing – or as Dainton puts it in the film: “Our mad journey from zeroes to heroes…and back to zeroes!”

Sex, drugs, skating, vomiting, blood, piss, shit, bongs, snot, glass, cuts, breaks, bruises, enemas, stunts, chaos…and cheap sunglasses. It’s all here and will be the funniest hour you spend on your sofa this winter!

Available to pre-order from www.pritchardvsdainton.com