Timo Kahilainen

Kummeli is the name of a Finnish comedy crew formed by Heikki Silvennoinen, Timo Kahilainen and Heikki Hela from Tampere.

They are also the heads of Porkkana Ryhmä, the crew's production company.

Other famous members have included Olli Keskinen, better known for his on-screen persona Eero Kakko, and Heikki Vihinen who replaced Keskinen in the mid-90s.

Kummeli appeared on television between 1991 and 1995.

After a successful three-part pilot aired in 1991, they were given their own show on YLE's channel 2 with a completely new look.

The Kummeli TV show was primarily composed of skits with insane characters, but would also feature musical guests as the core crew of the team were actually musicians rather than professional actors (with the exception of Hela, who, ironically, ended up behind the camera for the early episodes of the show).

Some episodes would also have a running set of skits that would reach a conclusion at the end of the episode (such as a father and son visiting an exhibit where the wax figures are actually the caretakers in various costumes).

In the mid-90s, after the end of the show, the Kummeli crew would make random appearances on TV and at different events.

During this time Keskinen left the crew and was replaced by Heikki Vihinen.

Kummeli was re-launched at the turn of the millennium, with Keskinen returning to host the show, now with a live studio audience.

Their second film was the 1997 Kummeli: Kultakuume (Gold Rush) which told the story of a motley crew of characters travelling to Lapland to collect a gold treasure hidden by the main protagonist's father during the war.

The movie also featured popular comedy actors such Aake Kalliala of Pulttibois fame and Vesa-Matti Loiri of Uuno Turhapuro fame.

Another re-launch occurred in 2004, with Mikko Kivinen hosting the show for its short run.

In between these two seasons of Kummeli, Keskinen and Silvennoinen, along with some other colleagues, produced another short-lived show Mankeli.

Kummeli comes from a Finnish word for a sea marker (basically, a pile of stones, a cairn) which indicates territorial waters.

This is sometimes used as a symbol of fans for the group as a signpost of comedy and telling people to do their own thing.

Though the Kummeli crew do not deny the potential symbolism the reason for picking the name (which was suggested by Keskinen's wife), it was probably chosen just because it sounds humorous to Finns.

The group is often incorrectly referred to as Kummelit which is the plural of "Kummeli" and is not the name of the crew itself.

The official name of the team is Porkkana Ryhmä, which translates as "Carrot Crew".

In the earlier seasons of the show the actual group was referred to as "Kummeli pojat" ("(the) Kummeli boys"), though the carrot group text and logo was also shown at the beginning of an episode.

The literal translation of "älykääpiöt" would be "brain-midgets", which is a term used by and while talking with children, meaning a person who behaves in a way that makes them stupider than they are

Some characters were also created just to deliver two or more words as short skits.

Most infamous being the famous "Kyllä lähtee!"

shout which became the show's trademark opening.

The word kyllä usually meaning yes, but very much in this context and lähtee being the third or improper form of the word lähteä meaning to leave.

The meaning of the phrase is to describe something to be fast or powerful, translating to "it will surely take off in a hasty manner".

In the context of the program, the translation could be "it's on!".

Later this was replaced by another pair of men called Kippe and Mosse (probably meant to be nicknames) one asking the other "Kippe/Mosse is everything OK" and the other replying "OK" followed by them saying "OK" all over again until they usually move out of the picture in a car, on a bicycle or with another vehicle.

After the mid-90s the Kummeli crew began to make films.

Their first, Kummeli: Stories begins as a story of a fictional military conflict between Finland and Luxembourg but concentrated on the stories of the soldiers which were built into long skits.

The skits also had recurring characters and one of them reveals the character of Kahilainen to be the grown up version of a character he portrayed in the TV show.

The movie also contains a movie in itself; a short flick called Lakaisijat (The Sweepers) about newlyweds staying at a hotel run by a murderous psychopath who has trapped his simple-minded twin brother in the attic.

The titular Sweepers are a two-man cleaning company (Silvennoinen and Kahilainen) modelled after the stereotypical Frankenstein's monster and Igor characters.

A third movie Kummelin Jackpot, was released in February 2006.

It was about a divorced man portrayed by Silvennoinen, who realises a way to trick himself a jackpot in football betting.

In 2008, Kummeli: Alivuokralainen, was released.

The script was based on a play by the same name and starred Mikko Kivinen, Heikki Silvennoinen and Timo Kahilainen in the starring roles, along with numerous other Finnish comedy actors.