Julian, Sandy, Rambling Sid Rumpo and Round the Horne

MG writes:

The burgeoning prosperity of the late 1950s in the UK (didn't Macmillan say that we had never had it so good) bought many things in its wake as the fifties moved rapidly into the sixties; the 'mini', in both senses of the word, kohl enshrouded eyes à la Mary Quant and Twiggy, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, affordable housing with bathrooms and inside lavatories, immigration on a massive scale. All of these things were, in their own way, shattering to the reserved and quaint middle-aged British public, raised as they were on a diet of powdered egg, Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson and the ever present class struggle.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, Auntie Beeb as Kenny Everett would have it, was a bastion of conservatism, moral prudery, middle class Tory values and represented all that the young, flushed with prosperity, wished to tear down and build anew in their own image. In the early to mid-sixties, it was the only radio broadcaster and one of only two TV broadcasters in the country, it therefore wielded great power; it was, in those media, the arbiter of both taste and access. Into that mix, came 'Round the Horne'!

Round the Horne, written by Barry Took and the incomparable Marty Feldman, was a simple comedy 'sketch show' which ran for half an hour between 1965 and 1968. Unlike some of its contemporaries, Hancock's Half Hour and the Navy Lark*, it did not try to tell a story, it was simply a series of relatively short pieces featuring the same charcters every week with a finale 'Armpit Theatre' which would spoof some popular film or play, not necesssarily modern or current. The show was recorded in front of a live audience, at least in the beginning, and, bizarrely, the actors were gathered around a microphone  reading from the script; there was absolutely no attempt to get 'into character' except in their voices!

The show adopted the same formula each week. Each episode was introduced by Kenneth Horne, the perfect 'straight man', giving the answers to the questions that were posed in the previous week's episode, except that they weren't; the audience were expected to come up with their own!  Regular features on the show were sketches involving: Beatrice Clissold, Lady Counterblast, and her ageing, overpessimistic butler Spasm; folk singer Rambling Sid Rumpo; the camp pair, Julian and Sandy; Fiona and Charles, two ageing lovestruck ex cinema actors and the announcer, Douglas Smith who, in addition to announcing the show at the very beginning and the 'musical interlude', common to all variety shows in the 1960s and 1970s, also appeared in sketches as, variously, a car, a volcano, or a boat amongst others.

Round the Horne, a nautical pun on 'rounding the (Cape) Horn' but also a reference, already common, to a 'horn' (erect penis) followed in the tradition of the anarchic, surreal 'Goon Show', with Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe which influenced, and continues to influence, so many British comedians and comic writers and 'Beyond our Ken', which also starred Kenneth Horne. Took and Feldman wallowed in the mud of language in a largely successful attempt to subvert the heavy censorship which was the norm for the times, even going so far as to spoof the actual BBC department responsible.

Building on a vocabulary which was part invention and part subversion of genuine, but uncommon, English words and which the audience could then become accustomed to, they brought the 'double-entendre' to new heights. In most cases, the double entendre relies on there being two (or more) distinct meanings to a particular phrase such as 'My pussy's feeling really sore today' which plays on the two meanings of 'pussy'; cat and vagina. What Took and Feldman did was to take a 'nonsense' phrase such as 'I nadgered my moulies', as a real example of English and invite the audience to make up the other possible meaning.

This was exemplified in the songs of the folk singer, Rambling Sid Rumpo, intoned by Kenneth Williams; one of the great comic actors of the twentieth century. Largely incomprehensible, Rumpo's songs nevertheless embody all that is great about British seaside postcard humour except that, in many ways, the sexual innuendo, or double entendre, is not in the mind of the writer but only in the mind of the listener. A brief example of Rambling Sid's art, which is sung to the tune of 'Clementine', is below:

The Ballad of the Woggler's Moulie

Joe he was a young cordwangler,
Monging greebles he did go,
For he loved a bogler's daughter,
By the name of Chiswick** Flo. 

Vain she was and like a grusset,
Though her ganderparts were fine,
But she sneered at his cordwangle,
As it hung upon the line. 

So he stole a woggler's moulie,
For to make a wedding ring,
But the Bow Street Runners caught him,
And the Judge said he will swing. 

So they hung him by the postern,
Nailed his moulie to the fence,
For to warn all young cordwanglers,
That it was a grave offence. 

There's a moral to this story,
Though your cordwangle be poor,
Keep your hands off others moulies,
For it is against the law............ohhhhhh! 

Perhaps the most daring and subversive characters that Took and Feldman created, and got past the censors, were Julian and Sandy, the out of work, 'resting', actors. Always introduced in the same way, 'Hello, I am Julian and this is my friend Sandy', spoken in high camp by Hugh Paddick, and the two running some business or other which Kenneth Horne wished to avail himself of, these were obviously two gay men working, and presumably living, together at a time when homosexuality was illegal, even among consenting adults, in the UK. Their gayness was reinforced by their use of 'polari', which while being of romany origin, had become a lingua franca of the gay community in the 50s and 60s; Julian and Sandy's business always began with 'bona' (good), so 'Bona Seats' for a theatre booking agency or 'Bona Clean' for a male housemaid service. Most Britons, at the time, would not have been aware of polari but, nonetheless, it did, I think, for most people reinforce the gayness. Much like the slang of the criminal community, Britons recognised that this was a language of a 'community' which was different from their own.

Sadly, Kenneth Horne died of a heart attack in February 1969, ironically while presenting Took and Feldman with a BAFTA (the UK equivalent of the Oscar), and, while a 5th series had been commissioned, it could not go ahead without the eponymous 'hero'. The remaining cast members did try to gallantly soldier on with a series of 'Stop messing about', which followed closely the format of the 'Round the Horne', but the game was up without the quintessential straight man and they all went their separate ways.

It is difficult to realise how ground-breaking Took and Feldman's scripts are. In an age when anything goes in comedy, from 'Monty Python', the 'Young Ones', Frankie Boyle, Bill Hicks or Eddie Izzard, when censorship, either in film, theatre or radio is almost non-existent, Took and Feldman broke new ground in an age of repression and control at least as great as the Goons that had preceded them.

I leave you with a quote from 'The Admirable Loombucket' (a spoof on 'the Admirable Crichton', a film starring Kenneth More, about how a upper class family are saved from disaster, after they have been shipwrecked on a desert island, by their butler***)

Kenneth Horne (as Lord Tantamount Horseposture): "Oh, yes.  And see there, dominating the island, the sacred volcano of Gonga (played by Douglas Smith with a hole in his head and steam coming out of his ears).

* The Navy Lark was a comedy series set aboard the British frigate, 'HMS Troutbridge', which highlighted the incompetence of the crew and, more especially, the Captain whose favourite phrase, when turning the ship, was 'Left hand down a bit'.

** Chiswick is an area in west London

*** While the film takes sweeping strikes at the 'class system' in Britain, Crichton, the butler, is the intelligent one in the group. The film ends with rescue and Crichton reverts to the status quo; no longer the leader of the band on merit but content to fulfil his merely subservient role. While he, likely as not gets the girl, Tweenie, the chambermaid, Britain wasn't ready for a revolutionary from 'downstairs'!