KENNETH WILLIAMS: 'BEYOND OUR KEN'

 

KENNETH WILLIAMS: 

‘BEYOND OUR KEN’

 

‘OOOH – NO, Stop Messin About’… 

the outrageous diaries of ‘Carry On’ star Kenneth Williams 

only reached the Bookshops after his death, often irascible, 

 candid and scurrilous, but seldom boring. It was only in 

that way that he was able to dish the dirt on Tony Hancock, 

Joe Orton, Stanley Baxter, Barbara Windsor, 

and on his own tortured sexuality. 

ANDREW DARLINGTON 

takes a sly retrospective peek…

 

‘Prick Up Your Ears’ (1987) is a salacious movie bio-pic which explodes the short, brutal and sexually incandescent career of playwright Joe Orton across the screen. It’s also a hugely acidic black comedy of the submerged Gay sixties subculture. Orton – played by Gary Oldman, is eventually murdered by his more staid live-in lover Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), yet this is a film simultaneously brilliantly funny, provocatively vulgar, and ravenously hungry for experience. A life that burns meteorically through encounters with Paul McCartney all the way through to anonymous blow-jobs in the Holloway Road gents, from scripting mischievous movies like ‘Loot’ (1970) and ‘Entertaining Mr. Sloane’ (1970), to lustful group-sex with Arab boys in Tangiers. The film leaves nothing to the imagination…

…except the real-life presence of Kenneth Williams. 

The movie-maker’s extreme discretion edits the ‘Carry On’ star clear out of the story. But he was there. He was the neurotic Inspector Truscott in a role especially written for him by Orton in the original stage production of ‘Loot’. But, uneasy with the character, he played it ‘like Himmler’. In John Lahr’s definitive biography on which ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ is based, a smugly preening Kenneth Williams is also photographed lounging between the thuggishly rough-trade Orton and Halliwell in Tangiers in 1965. 

And, in Williams’ posthumously published diaries*, he leaks more details. ‘Went up to see Joe Orton and Kenneth. Both were so kind. We talked a lot about homosexuality… John (Joe) walked me all the way to Kings Cross…’ But unlike Orton who delights in sleaze and its capacity to shock, Kenneth Williams was never at ease with his sexuality. And Orton playfully finds such reticence an irresistible target. One of the last people to see the duo alive, Williams humourlessly confides to his diary his continuing indignation at Orton’s transparently teasing accusation that Williams ‘posted’ used condoms into pillar boxes.

 

Kenneth Charles Williams was born 22 February 1926, maintaining a close ‘open’ intimacy with ‘Louisa’, his mother, throughout his adult life. He began writing details of his thoughts and experiences at fifteen, in a Collins Emerald Diary, recording everything clear down to his collar and hat size (14 and 7 respectively). Edited into a hefty 827-page but still manageable book form by Russell Davies and published by Harper Collins (£20) the diaries are often unsavoury, irascible, candid and scurrilous, but seldom boring – acid drops, a kind of sour confection, is an apt description, with Williams dishing the dirt in uncensored musings on his contentious relationship with Tony Hancock, Joe Orton, Stanley Baxter, Barbara Windsor, and more. His early publicity photos show him striving for conventional Matinee Idol good looks. His role as ‘James Bailey’ in the first ‘Carry On Sergeant’ (1958) has him as the highbrow University-graduate, superciliously intellectual rather than effete. In the December 1959 ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ episode the East Cheam Scribes effectively mock modernist poetry with Kenneth dramatically declaiming ‘straw in the wind, straw in the wind, straw in the wind, fly, fly, fly’. Yet he was drawn to the warm approval of reassuring audience laughter, dropping his character traits even into supposedly serious repertory stage roles. 

In life Kenneth Williams claimed to be celibate, and the diaries more or less confirm this. He seems never to have engaged in ‘penetrative intercourse’, while fearing and loathing the spectre of his desire to do so. His movie image may have been to ‘Carry On Camping’, but he confined his own sexual activity to the long wank sessions his diary-entries detail. He records the duration of some wrist-jobs in exact minutes and seconds, fuelling them on mildly masochistic fantasy. ‘Masturbatory success is the result of imaginative conceit’ he pronounces vainly. 

‘Williams was surprising to meet’ confides Lahr. ‘A complicated, touching man who bore no apparent relation to the haughty buffoon of the ‘Carry On…’ films or the whining camp voice from ‘Round The Horne’ or ‘Beyond Our Ken’. His actual speech was clipped, animated and vivid – but in recounting his stories his voice slipped easily into the wide range of delicious postures that had made him one of England’s most popular comedians, sprouting plummy and pinched vowels as it swooped from posh to ‘dead common’. Williams made the act of speaking funny.’ More than that, he transmuted it all into comedy gold, in a style uniquely his own. 

Those complications go way beyond the ‘tears of a clown’. Kenneth Williams veered between narcissism, and self-disgust. Prurience and prudery. His comedy always tinged with neurotic hysteria. His sexual itch attracted to, and repelled by the Gay life-styles (what his coded diaries refer to ‘traditional matters’ or ‘tradiola’) which his most outrageous routines lampoon. ‘Curious how far away I feel from all this sex twaddle’ he writes (26 February 1962). ‘People wanting to possess people. Ridiculous.’ 

He achieved stardom through radio, yet never considered it a ‘serious’ medium. He will be best remembered for the affected anguish of his performances in the ‘Carry On…’ films, theatrically shocked by the enveloping avalanche of Hattie Jacques’ amorous advances, or outraged by Sid James’ earthy innuendos. As trash movies they are now the subject of reappraisal as the quintessence of bawdy English smut. Yet he despised them too. His primping limp-wristed style is best captured in ‘Carry On Dick’ (1974), or ‘Carry On At Your Convenience’ (1971) in which he plays Mr W.C. Boggs, a lavatory manufacturer on a Works Outing to Brighton. On the pier he debates the validity of ‘Gipsy Rose Lee’-type clairvoyance with Sid James… 

‘Fortune Tellers? They’re all fakes, looking in their crystal… er…’ ‘Balls?’ suggests Sid helpfully. ‘I quite agree’ flounces Williams with a haughty snort, and immaculate comic timing. 

His diary entry (for 20 February 1964) records ‘the script of ‘Carry Of Spying’ (1964) is so bad that I’m really beginning to wonder. I’ve changed one or two things but the witless vacuity of it all remains…’

 

---0--- 

When radio star Kenneth Horne died in February 1969, a Kenneth Williams tribute ‘soundbite’ catches his bitchiness in full flood. ‘Horne’ he says, was the ‘rock’ around which all the comic insanity revolved. A double-edged scratch-your-eyes-out that infers more at second glance. Kenneth Horne was an established figure in BBC radio comedy with appearances dating back to ‘Much-Binding In The Marsh’ during the war years. His was the star name that provided Williams with his point-of-entry to a mass audience. ‘Beyond Our Ken’ ran from Tuesday 1 July 1958 to 16 February 1964, seven seasons (108 episodes), written by a fledgling Barry Took and Eric Merriman. It was immensely successful, remaining a big-selling item today through a series of BBC cassette and CD editions. Horne’s rich indulgent tones provide the framework for absurd sketches, ‘Panel Shows’ and songs spoofing styles and genres through the surrealism provided by the visual third eye of the listener’s imagination. It was followed by ‘Round The Horne’ (from 7 March 1965 to 9 June 1968, four seasons, 66 episodes) with Took now in partnership with Marty Feldman. Together they scripted fifty out the sixty-six episodes.

 

Kenneth Williams had appeared in the ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour’ radio and TV-shows, but fell out with Tony Hancock and was subsequently dealt smaller and smaller bit-parts until he was effectively written out. Behind the rumour-mill of jealousies, insecure geniuses, conflicting egos, tantrums and intrigue lies the clear fact that ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour’ was becoming increasingly an ensemble show operating from the group dynamic of Bill Kerr and Hattie Jacques as well as Kenneth Williams and the sly Sid James. But despite the popularity of the format that was not the way Hancock saw his career developing. He preferred the high-wire strategy of risking failure alone, rather than succeeding as merely one of a group. Kenneth Williams, by contrast, was never a ‘comedian’ in the stand-up or solo sense, he was more a ‘comic actor’ who excelled in situations that thrive on interactions within such groups. Later in his career he could turn in what amounts to bravura solo performances on chat-shows, but his most memorable work always took place as part of the ‘Carry On...’ crew, or the Kenneth Horne teams. Indeed, when he moved centre-stage to front his own radio ‘Stop Messing About’ show, following Horne’s death, it survived for just two Sunday lunch-time series. 

Instead, it was Horne’s radio shows that enabled him to develop his persona through the grotesque vocal exaggerations Lahr describes. He became ‘Ramblin’ Syd Rumpo’ the Protest Folk Singer with an ersatz-dialect style verging on the edge of blue in opuses like “The Ballad Of The Woggler’s Moulie” or “Green Grow Your Nadgers-O”. ‘Keep it clean’ urged producer Jacques Brown, ‘precious rather than poufy.’ Some chance! He was also the wheezing old pervert ‘J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock’ in sketches including one about telephone bugging. He shrills ‘Hold on, there’s someone on my extension!’ then ‘my private discourses are being interfered with!’ Each innuendo delivered through a full lubricious wealth of meanings. ‘It’s hard to tell whether you’re boasting or complaining’ comments Horne, adding ‘we’d never get away with this on television’ in a knowing aside. 

But Williams’ richest subterfuge came in league with Hugh Paddick as the mincing ‘Julian and Sandy’, lifting the secret gay code of ‘polarè’ and inflicting it into the airtime of a million Sunday lunch-time nuclear families. Developed by the Gay subculture as an internal language to confuse and baffle outsiders, Kenneth Williams’ game drew it through the airwaves in delicious satires of ‘omi palone’. An omi is a man, palone a woman. So, taken together, the phrase denotes a gay man. To vada his lallies is to look at his legs, his face is eek, so a good-looking boy is bona eek, with nice riah (hair). The words might have French or Italian derivations, elements of polarè can be traced back to the eighteenth century, some claim to find evidence of it in Shakespeare. Williams and Paddick requisition it as their own private in-joke, both party to its double-meanings, and ridiculing the community from which it sprang. 

As a kid I loved the characters. I imitated their vocabulary in the school playground without being remotely aware of its gay connotations, “OOO – inn’e bold!”, which must have sent out confusing messages to any uninitiated passersby! To me, Julian and Sandy weren’t sexual. They were just brilliantly funny. They still are. One week Mr ‘Orne visits them, this time in their Advertising Agency bijou studio-ette. ‘I used to specialise in cigarette adverts. I was never alone in the Strand’ vamps ‘Julian’ Williams. ‘Whatever the pleasure – I completed it. I used to sit on this horse in a polo-neck, all butch and dominating. Then I’d take a puff, and gallop off…’ And as if that’s not quite close enough to the edge, the punch-line to the sketch is that his advertising career has been brought to a halt by anti-smoking legislation, when ‘THEY BANNED FAGS FROM TV!’. The delivery lusciously exploits every possible nuance of double entendrè to the maximum, the two voices building and developing the camp saucy characters into beautifully realised absurdity. 

Mary Whitehouse and Conservative MP Cyril Black weren’t so amused. But BBC Director General Hugh Green defended and supported the programme, because he liked ‘dirty shows’. 

Kenneth Horne provided Williams with the opportunity to become a national star. Yet rather than acknowledge that debt he used the posthumous tribute soundbite to demonstrate just how his own talent tended to reduce Horne to the role of straight-man in what was nominally his own show. An act of hideous disloyalty – even if there is a trace of truth in what he says.

 

Audiences love some comedians with a warmth that transcends their often poor material. Eric Morecambe. Or Tommy Cooper. Even Frankie Howard. But Kenneth Williams is not loved, he’s laughed at, admired for his endless excess of comic talent. But not loved. He could be an unpleasant man. Unlikeable, even to himself. To ‘Observer’ journalist Peter Conrad, the Kenneth Williams revealed in his diary-pages regards his sexuality ‘as a jest of nature for which he could not forgive himself.’ Also, for most of his life – with homosexuality illegal, it was an orientation that made him technically a criminal. Unlike Joe Orton, he was never able to ‘come out’. A reticence that forced him to repress, distort and caricaturize himself through the merciless comedic flagellation of Julian and Sandy, and beyond. 

Yet he was always quick to detect traces of his own effeminacy. ‘I heard me on the radio doing ‘Desert Island Discs’’ he writes (22 May 1961). ‘Not bad really. Voice came over a bit common and pouffy.’ And later, with a near-tragic irony, ‘I am now looking like the elderly preserved queen I used to meet pityingly at parties.’ Nothing seemed to give him real pleasure. He visits Dublin to guest on ‘The Gay Byrne Show’, staying at Bloom’s Hotel, unimpressed by what he finds there, ‘…only in Ireland could you have found such an incongruous and unfunny mixture.’ He could have been writing about himself. 

The ‘Carrying On’ came to a halt on the 15 April 1988 with a barbiturate overdose. His last entry in his diary reads ‘oh – what’s the bloody point?’ It sometimes seems as though Kenneth Williams was a character inhabiting a Joe Orton black comedy, ripped apart through psychological and sexual warfare for our amusement. 

But we WERE amused…

 

KENNETH WILLIAMS 

22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988 

Kenneth Williams’ first TV appearance was as an angel in the BBC-TV adaptation of H.G. Wells’ ‘The Wonderful Visit’, broadcast 3 February 1952 

He appeared in 26 ‘Carry On...’ movies, from ‘Carry On Sergeant’ as the haughty proud and intellectually superior ‘James Bailey’ of Able Platoon (in 1958), to ‘Carry On Emmannuelle’ as ‘Emile Prevert’ (in 1978) 

Access the ‘Round The Horne’ & ‘Beyond Our Ken’ complete Episode Guides at: www.britishcomedy.org.uk/kwas/rth 

‘Stop Messing About’ BBC Radio 2 with Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Joan Sims and Douglas Smith. Series 1 (6 April to 29 June 1969 – 13 episodes written by Johnny Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Myles Rudge) Series 2 (19 April to 12 July 1970 – 13 episodes by Myles Rudge, David Cumming and Derek Collyer) 

* ‘Kenneth Williams Diaries’ edited by Russell Davies (Harper Collins, 1993 – ISBN 0-00-255023-7, paperback 0-00-638090-5) 

‘Just Williams: An Autobiography’ by Kenneth Williams (Dent, 1985 – ISBN 0-460-4688-8) 

‘Kenneth Williams: A Biography’ by Michael Freedland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990 – ISBN 0-297-79701-8) 

‘The Complete Acid Drops’ by Kenneth Williams (Dent, 1980 expanded into Orion, 1999 – ISBN 0-75281-835X)

Radio Comedy: 'ROUND THE HORNE'

GOING 

‘ROUND THE HORNE’ 

 …AGAIN 

 And suddenly – Radio Comedy is back, in a big way. 

As stage presentations of favourites such as ‘ROUND THE HORNE’, 

‘THE GOONS’, and ‘MORECAMBE & WISE’ are starting out in 

new West End productions, and playing to full houses. 

  ANDREW DARLINGTON catches up with them in Leeds...

 

 

 ‘BEYOND OUR KEN’... 

“My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen 

Master of the Hounds, Mistress of the Ostler, 

Stable-Boys and Un-Stable-Boys, 

Ladies in Waiting, Ladies who’ve given up waiting, 

Whippers-in and Whippers-out, please be up-standing…” 

That stage up there is a giant radio, dull nut-brown with a luminous-lime tuning band. At the same time it’s also a sound-stage in the basement of ‘Paris Studios’, Lower Regent Street, the BBC annexe to the towering edifice of Broadcasting House. There’s a sound-effects booth stage-left, while overhead-panels illuminate, informing the audience to ‘APPLAUSE’ when necessary. And to the right, another dual sign that alternates ‘RECORDING’ with ‘REHEARSAL’. 

‘We start with the answer to last week’s photographic question,’ drolls Kenneth Horne, with only the barest hint of lurking humour. ‘Which was… that the big one belongs to Sean Connery, and the little one belongs to Cliff Richard.’ He’s talking about pens, of course, but this is a quiz to which no-one ever got to hear the question, and it’s a question that’s not previously been posed anyway. But after all, a photographic competition – on radio, is itself a surreal absurdity. Yet it sets the tone for the rest of the evening as laughter-detonations equal – and exceed the high expectations of a capacity-packed Leeds Grand. There’s always the risk of legendary radio-comedy becoming static during its translation to the stage. After all, this mismatched rabble of an audience have come on an impossible mission… to rekindle their years spent beside that radio the stage is designed to resemble. Yet no-one’s disappointed. 

Stephen Critchlow looms large as obligatory straight-man host Kenneth Horne, the ultimate foil around whom all else orbits. But Paul Ryan and Jonathan Moore ignite a riptide of applause the moment they mince ‘Hello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy.’ They seem genuinely shook-up by the audience-wave of instant recognition (‘he gets touched, he gets easily touched… and moved, touched and moved, every time he goes to the Theatre he wilfully suspends his disbelief…’). Arguably theirs is tonight’s most daunting task, for the camp duo remain the show’s most recognisably memorable characters... unless, perhaps Rambling Syd? But this eerily accurate take on the limp-wristed bona pair, out of work ac-tors ‘between engagements’ who fill in with ‘Bona Drag’ or ‘Renta-Chap’ (‘domestic chores undertaken’), succeeds in eroding your most stubborn critical instincts. And how bona it is to vada their jolly old eeks again! Although – to be fair, the whole show is never less than a team affair, with Stephen Boswell as bumbling announcer Douglas Smith and Sherry Baines as Betty Marsden both punching above their weight. Surreal jokes rattle off like Gatling-gun fusillades, leaving no time for breath before the next wave of ‘insinuendoes and catch-penny horseplay’.

 

Just five microphones. Five actual performers. Surely not. My imagination is populated by dozens of outlandish characters. But of course, they were – they are created from the voice-pool of just five people. I always knew that. But knowing is an unreliable instrument when placed against the mind’s eye. Surely, Rambling Syd Rumbo is a kind of sleazy version of Donovan, all faded denim jacket, frayed cap, guitar and harmonica harness, singing “The Ballad of the Loom-Bogglers Boom” or “The Toddle-Groper’s Dance”. I see him now in my head exactly as I could see him then. Only, it’s not like that. ‘Kenneth Williams’ steps up the mike in his suit and does the vocal ‘dangle-oh my dearies’ stuff on “What Shall We Do With The Drunken Nurker”. Those weirdly dialected lacerations of Folk songs dug from his ‘ganderbag’, for which no-one knows exactly what he means but everyone has a damned good idea. And of course, that’s how it really was. Despite everything your brain tells you to the contrary. 

Attempts at re-conjuring past showbiz magic carries a high risk of failure. But this combination has already ‘done several exciting things in the West End, now we want to do something risky in Leeds’ to paraphrase Julian & Sandy. Now: 

‘Jules and I are going to do something we’ve always wanted to do, we’re going to mount a musical…’ ‘Mount a musical what?’ enquires Horne disingenuously. 

‘Well, it’s too early to tell…’ 

Really, it’s all in the delivery, the voices loaded with multiple-meaning, but hear it in its original and it’s enough to turn your lallies to water! Yet this stage version pulls it off better than most, because it’s largely made up of original material tweaked by Brian Cooke, the last surviving member of the original writing team. And it’s the scripts that are the genuine stars. Even if, for long-term devotees, it still takes some getting used to seeing performers other than Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams (in the original stage-version played by Robin Sebastian), Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and Douglas Smith delivering the bawdy jokes and smutty puns that so shocked Mary Whitehouse and disgusted MP’s. During its original radio-runs, J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock – ‘the world’s dirtiest old man’, drew predictable complaints from the Mary Whitehouse tendency while MP Sir Cyril Black raised questions-in-the House over Gruntfuttock’s free-wheeling lack of religious regard. 

And just perhaps – according to their own repressive Right-wing agenda, they had a point? Perhaps there is artful subversion in there? The tie-in radio docu-programme (BBC3, Sunday 13 June 2004) is preceded by a ten-minute exploration of ‘Polari’, the secret dialect adopted by the 1960s gay scene – pre-Wolfenden Report, which is used to such outrageously ‘bona’ effect by ‘Round The Horne’. And at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, Julian and Sandy’s camp sauciness does allow suburbia to laugh openly along with what had been strictly taboo. ‘OOOO – in’he BOLD!’ But – as Barry Took observes, ‘if you find some of the references in the show baffling just think how puzzled the hierarchy of the BBC were back in 1967’. 

 ‘YOU’RE NEVER ALONE WITH A SPLIT PERSONALITY...’ 

‘Round The Horne: For the young at heart, and the weak in the head…’ 

Meanwhile, over at the ‘West Yorkshire Playhouse’, you could be watching ‘Ying Tong’ written by Roy Smiles and produced by Michael Codron. A homage to ‘The Goons’, and especially the deranged genius of Spike Milligan, it sees Spike under increasing pressure to create The Goon Show to end them all, while simultaneously planning his escape from St Luke’s Psychiatric Hospital dressed only in pyjamas. Losing his grip on reality even further he applies to the British Museum to get his marbles back, while threatening to murder Eccles, the most notorious of the Goons menagerie of characters. And on. While later, here at ‘The Grand’, there’s ‘The Play What I Wrote’ replicating Morcambe & Wise, elaborated from Eddie Braben’s original scripts by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley. That same Braben, you recall, who penned for the duo for fourteen years. Originally produced for its West End run by Kenneth Branagh, there’s a vague plot-line in which Kim (Wall) has wrote a play – an epic set in the French Revolution called ‘A Tight Squeeze For The Scarlet Pimple’. While Clive (Hayward), on the other hand, wants their double act to continue. He believes that by performing their tribute to Eric & Ernie, Kim’s confidence will be restored and their act will go on. But first Clive needs to persuade a guest star to appear in the play what Kim wrote… you know the routine. Own up. You know you do. But, taking these three stage productions together – alongside Rhys Ifans impersonating Peter Cook in Channel 4’s Xmas 2004 ‘Not Only But Always’, the biopic written and directed by Terry Johnson around the careers of Pete and Dudley Moore, there’s definitely something stirring. A preoccupation with days of comedy past. And, at least on a two-thirds basis, with radio comedy. 

Around the time the comedy ‘New Wave’ was erupting it was fashionable to denigrate such stuff, Ben Elton referred derisively to radio shows made up exclusively of catch-phrases, ‘The Fast Show’s ‘Ken & Kenneth’ deliberately satirise punch-lines that aren’t funny and only become funny through relentless repetition. But in ‘Round The Horne’ it’s easy to spot prototypes for much of the BBC comedy that’s followed. Critic Stephanie Merritt points out that ‘where would ‘Little Britain’s ‘only gay in the village’ be without the pioneering innuendo of Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick as former chorus boys Julian and Sandy?’ (‘Observer’ 9 January 2005). Of course, she’s right. This is family tree material from which everything else grows.

 

Radio comedy still exists. Often it’s very good. Although sometimes not quite as smart as it thinks it is, with clumsy supposedly-satiric stabs at George Bush and Tony Blair to denote its alleged topicality. It’s just that then… way back then when the Goons and the ‘Round The Horne’ crew were at their peak, television had yet to completely dislodge radio as the dominant source of home entertainment. It defined its own time simply by being there. Radio could demand the most highly-regarded writers, performers and production teams. The kind of talent soon to be creamed off by TV. There were other programmes, equally as legendary. Tony Hancock, Sid James and Kenneth Williams in ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour’. Leslie Phillips and Jon Pertwee in the chaotic nautical escapades of ‘The Navy Lark’. A mischievous Jimmy Clitheroe in ‘The Clitheroe Kid’, all of which briefly – and with varying degrees of success, transfers to black and white TV. Plus Ted Ray starring in ‘Ray’s A Laugh’. And Jimmy Edwards as the devious headmaster in ‘Wacko’, which didn’t.

 

So, what brings the audiences trolling in ‘ere?’ Well, ‘Round The Horne’ was always that bit different. Avuncular’s always the easy term to describe Mr ‘Orne, a benignly indulgent uncle, a ‘master of the revels’ to the anarchic misfits and deviants he presides over, an impression emphasised by his stature, and his rich eyebrows which compensate for the total lack of hair above them. Essentially a solid establishment figure with a broad streak of silliness, Charles Kenneth Horne was born 27 February 1907 in Anthill Square off the Tottenham Court Road, within a stone’s throw of Broadcasting House. According to Leslie Philips he was ‘not a comedian, a singer or even an actor, he was a successful business man who had a way with words, words which he used to sell everything.’ They’d once appeared together in a stage version of Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men In A Boat’. Horne began as the youngest of seven – four girls and three boys, in the close-knit family of Congregational Minister Sylvester Horne. He went on to Cambridge and the LSE, but was ‘sent down’ in 1927 after an all-play and no-work regime devoted to rugger and tennis. For a time he played tenor sax in Dance Bands and sold records part-time while working for a Safety Glass Firm in Birmingham… before the RAF intervened. 

Like many comedy-activists of his generation, National Service, the War Years and the immediate adjustment-period after provides career-opportunities. As Spike Milligan’s autobiographies indicate. So his slightest of show-biz experience determines that Acting Pilot Officer Horne is recruited to organise an ‘Ack-Ack Beer-Beer’ outside radio-show (1939-1944), where he meets up with Richard ‘Stinker’ Murdoch. They discover – apart from an affinity for irreverent humour, that they’d been Cambridge contemporaries, although they’d never actually interacted before. Yet from there, they soon graduate to working together on the cult war-time radio series ‘Much-Binding In The Marsh’, working alongside moustachioed future-DJ Sam Costa, Maureen Riscoe, Maurice Deham, and Dora Bryan. Originally part of the BBC General Forces Programme it runs to five series, and translates to both the new ‘Light Programme’ from 28 July 1945, as well as prime-time Radio Luxembourg. In a pervasively monochrome pre-TV Britain lit by this single Pop-orientated radio-channel, this strange sit-com of mildly comic songs, inoffensive running gags and catch-phrases soon becomes part of the national vocabulary, a show that hits massive response, and survives until 1954. And within which Horne and Murdock’s scripts were already exploiting the inner-CGi of pure-sound to conjure the confused ineptitude of this fictional RAF base, in ways that would escalate into what follows.

 

Horne graduates to hosting the BBC’s follow-up – ‘Beyond Our Ken’, despite the interruption of a violent stroke in February 1958 which necessitates speech therapy. He’s joined by ENSA and Stage School-graduate Betty Marsden, by Kenneth Williams – already what Leslie Phillips calls ‘a refugee from the Hancock purge’, and the rest. Linked by the continuity of Horne’s rich, urbane and genial tones, it’s an instant success. Until, after a falling-out with the BBC in 1964 writer Eric Merriman opts out of the show – taking the title with him, so collaborator Barry Took – commissioned to create a replacement, teams up with a young Marty Feldman. Hence the first fifty-ish scripts of ‘Round The Horne’ are created by the Took/Feldman team. With a final season involving Johnnie Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Donald Webster – although Marty is still on call for consultation over the ‘Julian & Sandy’ sketches. 

Horne also finds time to DJ for ‘Housewives Choice’, guests with Ted Ray on ‘Does The Team Think’ – a kind of panel-game precursor to ‘Have I Got News For You’, and reads ‘The Art Of Coarse Acting’ for ‘Woman’s Hour’, although his deteriorating health mean he’s by now on long-term anti-coagulant drugs and physiotherapy – and even has consultations with a Faith Healer. But it’s the two shows operating around elements of his name that define his celebrity. And after its full four seasons, plus occasional Xmas specials, and a peak audience of fifteen-million, ‘Round The Horne’ is only brought to a halt by Horne’s untimely death. He falls off the podium mid-speech at the ‘Annual Guild of TV Producers Presentation’ at the Dorchester Hotel, and dies shortly afterwards. It is 14 February 1969.

 

‘KEEP TAKING THE (ROMAN) TABLETS…’ 

‘That sinful city of ancient times, the seat of a corrupt empire which 

 wallowed in bacchanalian orgies and sadistic spectacles…’ 

 ‘Oh, Bognor?’ suggests Horne 

Each radio edition of ‘Round The Horne’ has a dramatic presentation from Horne-Ographic Productions, frequently a ‘Kenneth Horne: Master Spy’ James Bond spoof, or perhaps a ‘The Palone Ranger’ Western, The Three Musketeers or a ‘Little Caesar’ Mafia quasi-epic. On stage tonight they adapt two such scripts, ‘The Lost Island Of Gonga’ – first broadcast 2 April 1967 (in association with Pound-A-Flesh Ltd, the ‘friendly loan company’), and the Movie-Go-Wrong film adaptation ‘Continuum Medicum Romanum’, from 19 May 1968. This ‘Gladiator’-style swords-&-sandals drama concerns a second-hand British slave in good nick – Frigidius Maximus (Horne), the girls call him Frigid Maxie for short (‘…but not for long!’). He’s sold to new master Glucosius (Kenneth Williams). ‘I sprawled at his feet, all I could see was the rays of the setting sun gleaming on the strap of his sandals – yes, just a thong at twilight!’ ‘Gird up your loins, I can’t bear an ungirded loin’ demands his new master, a Tribune who hopes to be a New Statesman. He ‘tugged me to my feet by pulling at my chain… I flushed!’ (a lavatorial reference that now probably requires explanation). His new role – from when he ‘sundials on in the morning until he sundials off at half-past V’ is to wait on Glucosius hand and foot ‘and any other part of me that requires waiting upon.’ Until – Russell Crowe-style, he’s sent to ‘St Hilda’s Gladiatorial School’, and from there to the arena. He whets the edge of his sword (‘well, it takes some of us that way’). Douglas Smith plays the lion – ‘growl growl, roar roar’. And an impressed Nero (same Kenneth Williams, different voice) recruits him, so he changes ‘to Praetorian Guards’. Nero is ‘a nervous man and would allow no weapons in his presence, so day and night I stood at his side with a drawn cucumber’… and on. There’s a special civic orgy, a splendid affair where ‘wine flowed like water, the fountains gushed with milk stout, and scantily-clad maidens performed wild sinuous dances – it was all I could do to keep my cucumber steady.’ Seduced by Nero’s wife Popaia (pronounced ‘Popeye’), Frigidius protests ‘but I’m Nero’s guard, Madam, love is a word that’s forbidden to me.’ ‘Oh very well’ she responds, ‘tonight is made for politics. Come with me.’ So he goes and ‘all night long I politiced her’… until they wake, ‘no, it can’t be dawn, it’s only X-to-IV’, to find Rome in flames while Nero fiddles the closing number, a square dance ‘doin’ the Appian Way’. Of course, some of the humour depends on your familiarity with now-lost cultural references. Toilets that flush when you pull the chain. TV cigarette-ads. And cheesy old Pop hits.

 

But then again, the show’s surreal invention was never pointedly satirical. There’s clear topicality in the person of inept chat-show host Seamus Android (Eamonn Andrews), Fanny Haddock (a survivor from ‘Beyond Our Ken’ modelled on domestic goddess Fanny Craddock), and the movie-spoofs featured in ‘Armpit Theatre’. Even Julian & Sandy were originally based (although subsequently caricature-exaggerated) on West End Musical writers Sandy Wilson and Julian Slade. You can guess at the archetypes behind ‘Charles & Fiona’, with Betty Marsden as Dame Celia Molestrangler and Hugh Paddick as ‘aging juvenile’ Binkie Huckerback, those dated cinema idols engaged in their stilted Noel Coward-style dialogue – ‘I know’, ‘I know you know’, ‘I know you know I know’, pause – ‘I know’. But among the further cast of absurd creations, from Kenneth Williams’ Dr Chou En Ginsberg MA (failed), with his ‘lovely concubine’ Lotus Blossom played by lumbering Hugh Paddick, to Betty Marsden’s seductive Daphne Whitethigh and astrologer Madam Osiris Gnomeclencher, you’re left to draw your own conclusions. All that’s now left to mention is the music of Edwin Braben & The Hornblowers. A mid-point close-harmony song from the Fraser Hayes Four. And… of course, Ramblin Syd’s “The Ballad of the Woggler’s Moolie” or his paean of praise to “My Grandfather’s Grunge” – ‘they don’t make them like that anymore, you can’t get the drippets’ he explains, ‘limply but cunning’. 

And ultimately – own up, watching ‘Round The Horne’ on stage can add a shared contact-high appreciation to the experience. Giving you the chance to see, for the first time since select studio-audience’s saw it first time around, how Horne and the gang performed the show in its heyday. This is actually how it must have been. ‘Kenneth Williams’ tends to steal the show. But then Kenneth Williams always stole the show anyway. This version comes to Leeds with a lot was riding on it and a reconfigured cast from the one that made ‘Revisited’s first London run such an odd success – but, if anything, they deliver more doppelganger-accurate performances that their West End counterparts. ‘What brings you down to these parts?’ ‘I’ve got a lousy agent’. Until there are moments when it’s almost possible to forget you’re not still at home, ear pressed to your Bacolite Bush. It’s a unique experience, an event, and unbridled fun en masse. In fact, I remember one episode in which J Peasmould Gruntfuttock applies for a job with the ‘stuffy and hide-bound’ BBC intent on bringing ‘the fresh clean wind of reality up your corridors of power’, only to be told ‘your work is obviously the product of a one-track degenerate childish mind.’ ‘I suppose that means you’re giving me the sack?’ he queries. ‘Oh good heavens no, you’re just the chap we need to write for ‘Round The Horne’!’ It’s almost possible to believe that almost, just possibly, it might really have happened something exactly like that. Fantabuloso... 

‘wonders will never cease, but for the time being, 

‘Round The Horne’ will, so – till we meet again, 

from all of us, ALL OF US, cheerio…’

 

‘BEYOND OUR KEN’ 

From Tuesday 1 July 1958 to 16 February 1964. Seven Seasons (108 episodes) 

‘ROUND THE HORNE’ 

From 7 March 1965 to 9 June 1968. Four Seasons (66 episodes) 

Complete Episode Guide: www.britishcomedy.org.uk/kwas/rth 

‘SOLO FOR HORNE’ 

biography by Norman Hackforth 

 Excerpt published in: 

‘SELEXIO’ edited by Andy Robson 

(UK – September 2020)

COMEDY RECORDS OF THE ROCK 'N' ROLL ERA

ON THE TRANSISTOR RADIO: 

COMEDY RECORDS 

OF THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ERA 

Pop Novelty records – we loved them, didn’t we? 

from the Goons to the Goodies, 

from Charlie Drake to Jasper Carrott, 

they’ve tickled our chuckle-muscles, 

and how tickled we were…!

Any survey of UK comedy records of the Rock ‘n’ Roll era has to start with the Goons. Not only because their “Bloodnok’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Call” c/w “The Ying Tong Song” was a September 1956 ‘New Musical Express’ no.3 – below Doris Day and Anne Shelton, and a few positions above Elvis’ “Hound Dog”, but because it sits at the ignition-point of a web of interconnections into Pop culture that leads directly through to the Beatles and beyond. Yet bizarrely, that wasn’t the oldest record to chart. 20 December 1975 saw Laurel & Hardy at no.2 with “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine”, originally featured in the 1937 movie ‘Way Out West’, but gathered as part of a comedy compilation from which it was championed on Radio One by John Peel. The original film-clip shows Stan Laurel miming to the deep bass voice of Chill Wills, with the last few falsetto lines – after he’s been hit on the head by Ollie’s mallet, by Rosina Lawrence. A fitting extension to the duo’s long and distinguished career. But the Goons should be the starting point. 

“The Ying Tong Song” is brilliantly timeless insanity, virtually impossible to evoke in flat text, it shifts through a sequence of gentle soothing orchestration, into an operatic lullaby his mother used to sing as she tucked him in when he was ninety-three, interrupted by Spike Milligan’s ‘who what that bum?’, directly into a nonsense sing-along chorus, a rasping horn break, an angelic voice, a rude raspberry… disrupted by an explosion, hasty footsteps dashing into the adjoining room – ‘LOOK OUT!’ another explosion, after which they sing in posthumous speeded-up voices. At a time of dull buttoned-down conformity the Goons radio-show was a force of chaotic anarchy, virtually incomprehensible to adults, but just as much a vital release as the incendiary insurrection of Rock ‘n’ Roll itself. Largely the manic creation of an inspired Spike Milligan, with co-conspirators Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers, the radio episodes form a kind of embryonic adolescent counter-culture, a style of absurdist surrealism featuring “The Search For The Bearded Vulture”, “Ten Thousand Fathoms Down In A Wardrobe”, “The Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler (Of Bexhill-On-Sea)” and “The Mystery Of The Fake Neddie Seagoons”, routines imitated by schoolkid listeners including John Lennon, the future Monty Pythons… and me. An earlier single – “I’m Walking Backwards To Christmas” c/w “Bluebottle Blues”, hit no.4 in June 1956. There had never been anything remotely resembling the Goons, and there never would be again. 

But Peter Sellers went on to have a couple of duet hits with the very wonderful Sophia Loren with whom he was filming the romantic comedy ‘The Millionairess’ (1960). Originally intended for – but omitted from the soundtrack, they were taken instead from the 1960 ‘Peter And Sophia’ album. For “Goodness Gracious Me” – a no.4 hit on November, ‘conceived and instigated’ by none other than George Martin who also carries producer credits, Sophia is the patient in love with Sellers’ examining Doctor Ahmed el Kabir, done in exaggerated Asian accent. Her heart goes ‘boom-biddy-boom-biddy-boom’ in his presence. Was it racially offensive? Possibly it could be retrospectively interpreted that way, at the time it was purely seen as evidence of Sellers’ talent for amusing mimicry. “Bangers And Mash” – no.22 in January 1961 has Sellers as the Cockney Tommy who marries the Italian Sophia, but he prefers simple English home-cooking to her macaroni and minestrone. 

There’s an irresistible sixties Pop-culture gravitation connecting George Martin, the Goon’s electronic experimentation with bizarrely edited sound effects, and the Beatles, which result in Peter Sellers’ no.14 hit reading of “A Hard Day’s Night” in December 1965, delivered as a Shakespearian soliloquy. Granted, at that point, anything with a Beatles-link was likely to chart. Comedy actress Dora Bryan had already got to no.6 with “All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle” in December 1963. While the Beatles connection extends into the Peter Sellers movie of Terry Southern’s novel ‘The Magic Christian’ (1969), which had Ringo following him around like a big amiable dog. 

By which time Harry Secombe had returned to the charts with the syrupy sentimental mush of “This Is My Song”, with Wally Stott’s string arrangement taking it up to a high of no.2 – despite a rival version by Petula Clark at no.1, at the same moment that Jimi Hendrix and “Strawberry Fields Forever” were charting. The song is only salvaged by its being composed by an ageing Charlie Chaplin, the century’s first and enduring comic genius, as an almost fitting deliberate eulogy to the nostalgic ideal of romance. And yet the Goons were not quite finished. “The Ying Tong Song” was reissued in July 1973, when it climbed back into the charts, as high as no.9, illuminating a new generation with its inspired madness. 

Novelty records have a long history. A catchy tune, a nonsense lyric – ‘mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey,’ that briefly but persistently stick in the brain, and it’s a fad, even in sheet-music editions. “The Sheik Of Araby” was written in 1921 in response to the success of the Rudolph Valentino film ‘The Sheik’, and became an early jazz favourite notably performed by song-&-dance star Eddie Cantor. In a unique constellation of connections, the Beatles perform it as part of their failed Decca audition, with George Harrison taking lead plus John and Paul adding silly-voice interjections. Accelerated by the potential of studio technology to create amusing effects, as well as by the ingenious radio drama and comedy department’s ability to conjure vast mental images through the strategic manipulation of evocative sounds, the 78rpm single, and then its 45rpm successor became the perfect accessible low-budget vehicle for novelty. Including the speeded-up voices of – for example, the 1958 US no.1 “Witch Doctor” by David Seville (the real-life Ross Bagdasarian) and his spin-off creation the Chipmunks. In the days before VHS – the first home-recording technology, the only way to hear favourite comedy routines over and over again, was through record albums. And before video killed the Radio Stars, the 45rpm single offered the useful career bonus of a marketable promotional opportunity. 

Most comedians made records. Tommy Cooper had “Don’t Jump Off The Roof Dad” (1961), issued through the small Palette label. Punctuated by Tommy’s infectious laughter, he sings about how ‘Daddy came home from work tired,’ and after a particularly arduous day he decides to end it all with a suicidal leap from the roof, only for his kids to shout up at him, concerned not for his welfare but for the damage he’ll cause to mother’s petunia flowerbed below. They advise him to drown himself in the local park instead! Only Tommy Cooper could make suicide funny. The ‘Two Of A Kind’ Morecambe And Wise recorded one of their most popular comedy routines – “Boom Oo Yata-Ta-Ta”, written for them by Sid Green and Dick Hills, but shaped and evolved through a series of performances. Eric decides to go solo as a leather-clad Pop singer. Ernie says no, he needs a backing group, who just happen to consist of him, Sid and Dick. Although it doesn’t work out quite as intended, until the group take lead vocals and Eric is no longer required. ‘It’s tough at the top’ he complains into the fade-out groove. Popular, but neither Tommy Cooper nor Morecambe And Wise actually chart. 

‘The Lad Himself’ Tony Hancock and his ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour’ regular guest-voice Kenneth Williams had singles together – the 1963 Galton-Simpson penned “Wing Commander Hancock: Test Pilot” – in which the airborne Hancock discovers mechanic Ken still sitting on the airplane fuselage, and Ken’s solo “Hand Up Your Sticks” (Decca, 1961) written by Peter Cook – in which Ken rehearses his lines in order to rob a bank, but messes up with ‘hold hands, this is an up-stick’ during the raid itself. Both are clever and extremely funny, they receive plenty of radio airtime, but are essentially comedy routines, not songs, and hence don’t bother the chart compilers. 

Unlike the diminutive Charlie Drake, popular enough to star in his own front-cover ‘Radio Fun’ comic-strip (art by Arthur Martin), with his ‘Hello, My Darlings’ catchphrase. He was first levered into the chart by an opportunistic cover version of Bobby Darin’s US novelty Rocker “Splish Splash” which reached no.7 in September 1958, winning out over Darin’s original. Relaxing in the bathtub – with watery sounds, he doesn’t know there’s a Rock ‘n’ Rolling party going on below. He follows it with another cover, this time taking Larry Verne’s US no.1 “Mr Custer” – a comedy song about a cavalryman reluctant to ride into the ill-fated Battle of Little Bighorn massacre. Taking elements from its style as his starting point, “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back” was co-written by Drake himself, with a Johnnie Spence arrangement and George Martin production sheen. The story-song of the boy who was ‘a big disgrace to the Aborigine race’ forms a complete self-contained audio comic-strip in itself, with the kind of sound effects – the exploding Flying Doctor’s plane, and silly voices – the annoyed kangaroo, that prefigures “Yellow Submarine”. It peaked at no.14 during October 1961. He followed it with “I Bent My Assegai”, a similar scenario transplanted to an African setting. 

In order to demonstrate their All-Round entertainer versatility, Music Hall stars frequently finished their sets with a song. Hence the biggest-selling comedy star of the sixties, bizarrely, was the Squire of Knotty Ash – the tatiffilarious Ken Dodd, although his numerically-impressive string of nineteen Top 50 hits are only laughable in the broadest sense of the word. The tickling-stick wielding Liverpool star discovered an alternate career as a romantic balladeer of big overblown cheesy Italianate dirges, starting with the pre-Beatles “Love Is Like A Violin” (no.8, July 1960), then going on to dominate the chart at no.1 for six weeks with the execrable “Tears” through October 1965 while Manfred Mann, the Yardbirds and Small Faces had to be content with lesser positions below it. In his defence, one of his TV shows has Doddy warble his November 1965 no.3 hit “The River” in its original impeccable Italian as “Le Colline Sono In Fioro”, only for him to hastily produce a lyric-sheet to then sing it in English. How tickled we were. With his theme-song “Happiness” Ken Dodd was still touring and performing until his 11 March 2018 death. 

But when it came to strict comedy-records, naughty mischievous Benny Hill not only took the cover of the ‘Radio Fun Annual’ (1960) but was still around in 1975 for the cover of ‘Look-In’ with ‘The Many Faces Of Benny Hill’. With only mild innuendoes, “Gather In The Mushrooms”, a song sung ‘in the modern idiot’ with accompaniment directed by Tony Hatch, gave him not only his debut hit (no.12, February 1961), but a first outing for his joke about bathing in ‘pasteurised milk’ – ‘I’ll be happy if it comes up to my chin.’ “Transistor Radio” (no.24, June 1961), co-written with Hatch (under his ‘Mark Anthony’ guise), is even better. Taking the fad for portable music, Benny’s attempts at love-making are consistently thwarted by interruptions from his girlfriend’s radio, allowing him to spoof various current music styles. She first tunes into a speeded-up Chipmunks-Pinky & Perky insert, then an Elvis voice ‘I do not have a wooden heart, I have a wooden head’, followed by a ‘Two-Way Family Favourites’ announcer making dedications to ‘Ngia Gooki of British Honduras, Umbongo Appledory of New Guinea, and Fred Glockenlocker of British Hartlepool’, and – in Jimmy Jones “Handy Man” falsetto style, ‘you told me you were just eighteen on the telephone, I thought that you meant eighteen years, but you meant eighteen stone’. The record’s punch-line closer is that when she turns to him with romantic intentions in their honeymoon hotel room, he asks ‘ere, where’s the radio?’ to her dismissive retort ‘Music he wants!’. 

A more complex character than surface impressions suggest, Benny insisted on writing his own material, unlike many of his contemporaries. Which worked well during these inventive early years of his career. The next hit single – “Harvest Of Love” (no.20, May 1963), is an innuendo-laden rural romp, ‘I’m gonna sow the seed of deep devotion, fertilize it with emotion, water it with warm desire, and then I’ll reap the harvest of love,’ adding cheekily, ‘if the wife ever finds out she’ll kill me.’ By 1965 his “I’ll Never Know” was an affectionate Doo-Wop parody, and with the arrival of the ‘Protest’ boom, he was singing “What A World” while wearing a mop-top wig – ‘now the folksinger came from America, to sing at the Albert Hall, he sang his songs of protest and fairer shares for all, he sang how the poor were much too poor and the rich too rich by far, then he drove back to his penthouse in his brand new Rolls Royce car,’ a snipe at Bob Dylan just that’s as acutely perceptive as Chumbawamba’s “Give The Anarchist A Cigarette” would be decades later.

 

But as the pressures and demands of fresh TV series intensified he fell back increasingly on the racial stereotypes and the sketches in which an attractive girl’s clothing gets ripped away to reveal designer underwear, resulting in speeded-up chase sequences through the park. The comic potential of repellent old men letching after beautiful younger girls may have a history that goes back as far as the ribald humour of ancient Rome, but it set Benny Hill up as the most obvious target for the more idealistic non-exploitational New Wave of comedy. His career suffered, and has never fully recovered, although he retains a cult following in the most unexpected of places. Dolly Parton plays his “Yakety Sax” chase theme during her Glastonbury set, and Rapper Snoop Dogg cracks up laughing while he describes how he loves to watch the sketches in which Benny slaps ‘Little’ Jackie Wright on the bald-head. Yet there’s a sense in which Benny Hill gets the last laugh, when his single “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” topped the chart – no.1 for five weeks through December 1971, above T Rex, Slade and the mighty Who. Reprising his line about bathing in pasteurised milk, ‘Ernie, I’ll be happy if it comes up to my chest’, the story of Ernie facing off in a Western-style duel with Two-Ton Ted from Teddington for the love of a widow known as Sue, ends with the sound of ‘Ernie’s ghostly gold top a-rattling in their crate’. I hated the record’s success at the time. After the sensational evolutions of music through the build-up last few years of the sixties, it seemed a poor portent for what was to come in the new decade. Looking back now, I quite enjoy its harmless silliness. 

For the era of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ (1973), ‘Hotel California’ (1976) and ‘Rumours’ (1977), no suburban ‘Abigail’s Party’ was complete without the comedy album revolving on the front-room stereogram turntable, usually either Monty Python or Billy Connolly. For less confrontational evenings there was always the more mild-mannered humour of ‘The Two Ronnies’ – Barker and Corbett, with their amiably twee repertoire of amusing songs. But Python records sold like Rock albums, with all the generational cult following once enjoyed by the Goons. Fans recite sketches word-for-word, the Dead Parrot, the Five-Minute Argument, Spam Spam Spam and Spam. Inevitably there’s a hit single, in the belated shape of Eric Idle’s curiously whistleable existentialism. “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” is sung during the crucifixion scene of ‘The Life Of Brian’ (1979) – ‘life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it, life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true, you’ll see it’s all a show – keep ‘em laughing as you go, just remember that the last laugh is on you.’ When reissued as a single it became a no.2 chart hit, 26 October 1991, and despite all the Moody Blues Prog-Rock profundity posturing, this could just about be the most philosophical truth ever committed to vinyl. 

Connolly albums were a private pleasure that involved liberal naturalistic use of ‘adult’-content four-letter words, something you couldn’t hear elsewhere, outside of demolition-raconteur ‘Blaster’ Bates or Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. The Big Yin started out as a Glasgow Folk musician, with Gerry Rafferty (and originally Tam Harvey) in the Humblebums, recording three albums for Transatlantic alongside near-hit 1970 single “Shoeshine Boy”. Solo, his freewheeling between-songs banter expanded in exact ratio to the reducing song-content. Seemingly unscripted, rampaging off into expletive-laden improvisational forays, his huge albums included ‘Cop Yer Whack For This’ (1974) – done live at the Glasgow ‘Kings Theatre’, and ‘Get Right Intae Him!’ (1975), at the Glasgow ‘Apollo’, which spun-off the Tammy Wynette-spoof “D.I.V.O.R.C.E” which took him to no.1 for the single week of 22 November 1975, more in recognition of his contagiously enjoyable performance than for any incidental cleverness involved, burbling with laughter at his own bleeped-out tale of taking his dog to the vet. Although he followed it with another parody, “No Chance (No Charge)”, no.24 the next July, his future lay in movies and TV rather than hit singles. 

Meanwhile, Tony Blackburn introduced Jasper Carrott on ‘Top Of The Pops’ (28 May 1975), to lip-synch his no.5 hit “Funky Moped”, recorded with the full Brummie Jeff Lynne ELO mafia on hand to play back-up. This Shangri Las-referencing refutation of the Heavy Rock ‘Born To Be Wild’ Biker-chic was the acceptable ‘A’-side way of navigating around the BBC ban on his even more popular “Magic Roundabout” ‘B’-side, supposedly a filched advance-script in which Dougal and Dylan speculate about Florence’s ‘horizontal pleasures’ and her Toy-Town promiscuity with Noddy. The audience instantly pick up on and respond to each sniggery in-joke about the innocent children’s animation with a disturbing familiarity. 

With the advent of ‘Alternative Comedy’ The Young Ones found it necessary to hijack an unsuspecting Cliff Richard – who may have assumed the anarchic foursome to be some kind of tribute act, and a more knowing Hank Marvin, in order to return “Living Doll” to no.1 (5 April 1986), as a Comic Relief charity single. Although Nigel Planer’s ‘Neil’ took Dave Mason’s “Hole In My Shoe” – with lyrics that even his fellow Traffic members considered a tad risible, and tipped it over into pure comedy with very little added effort, equalling Traffic’s chart place by taking it up to no.2 (21 July 1984) just below “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

 

But – unless we’re compelled to include the Wombles, it was the Goodies who proved to be the biggest comedy chart act of the period with five hits promoted by regular ‘Top Of The Pops’ spots spaced between the December’s of 1974 – with a bowdlerised version of ‘Rugby Song’ “Oh Sir Jasper” reconfigured into “Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me” (no.7) and 1975’s “Make A Daft Noise For Christmas” (no.20). Although they share histories across an impressive spread of radio and TV projects with Marty Feldman and various Pythons, including ‘I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again’ and ‘At Last The 1948 Show’, their own series – launched on BBC2 in November 1970, was more wacky than subversive. It was a kind of sit-com flaunting Monkees-style surreal touches with bits of stop-motion animation (including the rampaging ‘Kitten Kong’), dismissed as a ‘kid’s programme’ by John Cleese in a guest appearance – as the Genie, in ‘The Goodies And The Beanstalk’ episode. 

The trio enjoy their biggest Pop moment with the “Funky Gibbon” spoof dance-disc (no.4), romping around the TV-studio stage making knuckle-dragging monkey sounds. Principal songwriter Bill Oddie urges ‘will you give me an oooh? (to an answering ‘Ooooh’), will you give me another oooh? (‘Ooooh’), and will you give me an oooh? (‘oooh’), now put ‘em together, what’ve you got (to much manic ‘Oooh-oooh-oooh-ooohing’)’. “Black Pudding Bertha” (no.19) saw them trading Simian behaviour for hugely exaggerated flat-hats and northern accents, ‘when she starts to dance she shimmies like a plate of tripe’ sings Oddie, as backing-voices Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor chant the ‘tripe and cowheels, tripe and cowheels’ chorus. With their tagline ‘We Do Anything, Anytime’, there was much harmless fun to be had on their Goodies-bicycle made for three.

 

It’s worth remembering that despite virtually inventing the cars and girls Rock ‘n’ Roll genre, the most respected guitarist and songwriter in the history of Rock, Chuck Berry’s only UK and US no.1 hit was with the silly suggestive nudge-nudge novelty of “My Ding-A-Ling” in 1972, a song that even Chuck himself was subsequently too embarrassed to play live. While Lonnie Donegan’s Music Hall “My Old Man’s A Dustman” with its drop-in comic gags – recorded live at Doncaster’s Gaumont cinema not only gave him a massive million-selling single and his final no.1 in March 1960, but virtually destroyed his credibility as Skiffle King. But Pop singles have always been an awkward contradiction of art and commerce, as well as being a novelty impulse-purchase, a disposable souvenir of passing fads and transient trends. There have always been comedy records, from Mike Sarne (“Come Outside”, with Wendy Richard, a 1962 no.1) to Bernard Cribbins (“Right Said Fred”, with George Martin magic, no.10 in 1962), from Ray Stevens (“The Streak”, no.1 in 1974) to Russ Abbot (no.7 with “Atmosphere” in December 1984), which gave way to TVs Spitting Image (“The Chicken Song” written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, no.1 in 1986) or the Firm (“Star Trekkin’”, no.1 in 1987). Or even – gulp, “Mr Blobby”, the Christmas no.1 for 1993 from Noel Edmunds inexplicably popular ‘House Party’ show. Popular. Forgotten. But also tangled up in ludicrous memory of time and place. Old singles found in dusty boxes stashed away in the loft. Oh yes, I remember that one, it was fun. That’s more than enough.

Poem: WHY A TRUMP-VOTER IS A FLIGHTLESS BIRD

 

WHY A TRUMP-VOTER 
IS A FLIGHTLESS BIRD 

I don’t see the 

point of a flightless bird, 

birds are made for 

the freedom of flight 

soaring to the 

limits of the sky, 

there’s just no point 

to a flightless bird, 

it’s like a 

thoughtless human, 

humans are designed 

for the freedom of thought, 

there’s just no point 

to neglectful misuse 

of the mind, 

I don’t see the point 

of a Trump-voter