Laugh? I Dam’ Near Dead..... a Shadow of a Smile,
or Better exposed at Birth?
I don’t know exactly what it is but somewhere around
our early 40’s we sort of lose touch with the cutting
edge of what’s going on out there, whether it be popular
music, fashion, even humour. Our kids would roll their eyes
and say, “40? Try 25!”. It seems a natural enough
thing, in fact trying to keep up with yoof kultur pretty soon
looks pathetic, unless your livelihood depends on it, in which
case it is pathetic, but understandable. I guess we just have
other priorities and get comfy with what we took aboard between
the ages 16 and 40, and can’t be bothered to pretend
different any more....
My first job when I got to Hong Kong in 1974 was running an
advertising agency. One of our main clients was the then mighty
conglomerate ITT and with it came Sheraton Hotels. Checking
current copy I was amazed to find promos for a very unfunny
British comic called Norman Wisdom. Poor old sod was attempting
to fill up those odd outlets at the top of hotels they used
to call “Supper Clubs”. He had to pay all his
own expenses and only after the hotel had took its whack would
he be able to earn a crust, if he was lucky. Fat chance! He
was history by the end of the 50’s, except in Albania.
Old Norm’s take on humour was to wear a cloth cap and
walk funny. He was of that order known as “the Great
British Comic”. A genus that included such appallingly
unfunny comedians as Charlie Drake, Ken Dodd and Morecombe
& Wise. Thinking along these lines put me in mind of all
the funnymen I’d liked or cringed at from the mid-50’s
to the mid-80’s. I sort of lost touch around the time
of the Rik Mayall, Eddie Izzard era.
In the 1950’s it was comedy radio and Ealing comedies.
I loved and still do, Alistair Sim who had a truly amazing
face, weirdly sinister or benign by turn, whether doing his
signature line in bishops, judges or serial killers. He was
mentor to George Cole, from ever so ‘umble beginnings
who started his career out English “nitting” the
likes of Ian Carmichael, in a radio series called “A
Life of Bliss”. He then went on to Flash ‘Arry
in the Belles of St Trinian’s series. He was to make
a lifelong career as a minor villain with “Minder”
and the like.
“The Goons”, weren’t really funny at all,
except that Peter Sellers and the hugely anarchic and subversive
Spike Milligan were two of the best comics there’ve
ever been. Tony Hancock likewise. He used to empty the streets
and pubs when he was on. Ably supported by Sid James.
My all time favourite was Tommy Cooper, and to this day I
still don’t know why. You saw him and you laughed. And
yet.... “people say I’ve only got to walk out
on stage and they laugh. If only they knew what it takes to
walk out there in the first place. One of these days I’ll
just walk out there and do nothing. Then they’ll know
the difference.” The story of his short lived American
career is classic. “We’re sorry Mr Cooper, perhaps
if you come back when you’ve got the magic tricks down,
we can review it....”.
I loved Les Dawson too. A large, Northern working class man
with a lugubrious world weary manner and sporting his immense
erudition invisibly, he’d shuffle on and kick off with
lines like, “I was vouchsafed the vision by a pockmarked
Lascar in the arms of a frump in a Huddersfield bordello....”
Talking of immense erudition what can one say of Kenneth Williams?
Wherever he was, whatever he did, however bad
or good the platform, he was inspired. Largely through him
Polari, the Italo-Romany Yiddischer faggy criminal cockney
English as she is spoke in the Billingsgate fish market and
in the merchant marine, came out of the closet and into common
parlance:
“Oooh hello, I’m Julian and this is my friend,
Sandy.”
“Why, it’s Mr Horne. Fabulosa, how bona to vada
your dolly old eek again.”
Williams more than held his own with the likes of Dennis Norden,
Frank Muir, Dilys Powell, Anne Scott-James, Clement Freud
and Lady Antonia Fraser in those superb literary fun and games
that used to be put out by the BBC on the World Service. Poor
Ken, the gay world had gone all butch in them days and no
respecting queer would be seen dead with him, except poor
Joe Orton and look what happened to him. Now Polari’s
back and all the rage.....
If we had upper class English nits & twits, we also had
mean lecherous cads and nittish lecherous cads in the persons
of Terry Thomas and Leslie Phillips. Next came Pete &
Dud, with inspired and appalling dialogues about lobsters
and Jayne Mansfield’s arse. And in no time we’ve
reached Monty Python, the funniest of them being Cleese, Idle
and Palin. What Englishman reared in an English boarding school
cannot relate to be being crucified or severely thrashed for
wrongly declining his Latin nouns, laughing in church or,
at “my wisible fwend Biggus Dikkus?” Last on the
list Rowan Atkinson, inspired as Elizabethan and Regency Blackadder.
Miranda Richardson as QE1 is a perennial delight. As for the
appallingly unfunny Mr. Bean, if Edmund Blackadder is no more
and Bean lives, then Atkinson should be disembowelled.
The greats of the period were:
Alistair Sim, Tony Hancock, George Cole, Spike Milligan, Peter
Sellers, Tommy Cooper, Kenneth Williams, Leslie Phillips,
Peter Cooke, Dudley Moore, Les Dawson, John Cleese, Eric Idle,
Michael Palin, Billy Connally and Kenny Everett.
“Parson’s Egg Award” & honourable mention
to:
Ian Carmichael, Joyce Grenfell, Dennis Price, Michael Bentine,
Frankie Howerd Esq., Sid James, Hattie Jacques, John Le Mesurier,
Eric Sykes, Kenneth Horne, Benny Hill, Dick Emery, Arthur
Lowe, Ronnies Barker & Corbett, Bernie Cribbens, Marty
Feldman, Pythons Graham Chapman & Terry Jones, Derek Nimmo,
Joanna Lumley and French & Saunders.
Better for us they had never been born:
Norman Wisdom, Charlie Drake, Ken Dodd, Morecombe & Wise,
Rolf Harris, Bruce Forsythe, Stephen Fry, and Rowan Atkinson
(a.k.a. Mr. Bean).
Not forgetting our American cousins, with whom we sort of
share a language and, to a lesser degree, a sense of humour
:
American funnymen of merit on a good day include:
Danny Kaye, Ernie Kovacs, Jack Lemon, Walter Matthau, Mort
Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Bill Cosby, Lily Tomlin,
Richard Pryor, Gilda Radner, and Eddie Murphy.
American snores:
Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Jay
Leno, David Letterman, Bill Murray, Robin “Mawkish”
Williams.
Retchingly awful Americans:
Bob Hope (I know, he started as English, but he didn’t
try to earn a living being funny back then), Jerry Lewis,
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Gene Wilder, Rodney Dangerfield,
Jim Carrey, Austin Powers.
