I do not know sometimes whether my brief stay in hospital a couple of years ago did not occasion some surgery to my brain, outside of the natural occurrence, although I think that I was conscious for the whole time, because I appear to have had a humour by-pass. I do not often remind myself of this possibility because it is rather depressing but I was forced into a position last week watching, and wasting 90 minutes of my life, a British film, 'Gladiatress'. The premise was sound, a tribe's 'comic' attempts to thwart Caesar's invasions of Britain in 55 and 54BC. This would hark back to 'Chelmsford 123' (AD) about the occupation and which was mildly amusing and that great classic of great, and cheap, British cinema, 'Carry on Cleo', which contains the line, almost as iconic as 'Play it (again), Sam'; 'Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!'. Unsure of what it was, and its expected audience, Gladiatress trod both the 'Carry on' genre and vain attempts to engage in post-feminist 'humour'* to the extent that it did neither very well; the comedic high spot of the film was when the anti-heroine, a 'weak and feeble' female, Worthaboutapig, with all of the anticipation of a 'blow job' to end all 'blow jobs', bit the genitalia off of a gladiator in the arena and so gained a victory.
People put up their hard earned cash in the expectation of deriving a return from this drivel; I have had more smile-inducing enemas. Perhaps I should write a script based around '1066 and all that'; could scarcely be worse.
I expect my disillusionment starts with the growth of 'alternative' (read anti-Thatcher) comedy in the UK in the nineteen eighties. I had been an admirer of Stanley Holloway monologues and Lenny Bruce on a good day, (he was too prone to ramble incoherently like the drug-fuelled alcoholic that he was on a bad day), and latterly Billy Connolly, Richard Pryor, Mike Harding and Bill Hicks to name but a few. However, even as I watched Billy Connolly perform the 'incontinence pants routine'**, it was hard not to hark back to 'That was the week that was', 'The Goon Show', 'Do not adjust your set' or 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' which had all gone before.
I suspect that TV is a large part of the problem. The bar has been lowered. Comedians, with one eye on the riches to be gained from a series, after-dinner speeches or frequent appearances on a myriad of TV game shows, temper their humour, their outrage, into an anodyne simulacrum of what humour is supposed to mean. Humour is one of our most powerful tools to express dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, the incomprehensibility of the world; by laughing at it, laughing with it, rather than lobbing fruit, eggs or a bomb at it.
Unfortunately. I have seen a number of the TV 'comics' 'live' without the restrictions imposed on them by terrestial TV and, without exception, they were as unfunny as their TV doppelgängers. This is not to say that they did not have anything of worth to say, they did, but merely that it was not funny; it did not make me laugh/
Perhaps the only 'current'comedian, now, to make me laugh, laugh out loud, is Frankie Boyle; a Scotsman, like Billy Connolly, but a man who considers no subject taboo, no subject unworthy of his contempt, his derision, however politically incorrect it might be; surely a comedian to wear the raincoat of Lenny Bruce. He is surely a beacon to the future, where self censorship does not hold sway. Except that it doesn't earn you mega-bucks in the media , in the main, although in Frankie's case it has, BIG TIME. Most of the 'alternatives' sold out to 'the man' as soon as they could but. just as their predecessors did, will not admit it. A perfunctionary 'fuck' on prime-time TV does not cut it, guys.
Which, very neatly, or not quite so neatly, leads me onto Dave Allen. A man, brought up in the intolerance of Ireland in the nineteen forties and fifties, an island so staunchly Roman Catholic that it could countenance the state 'approved' barbarism of the laundries of the 'Sisters of the Magdalene'; the 'Sisters of the Maudlin'***. Out of this, Allen fashioned comedy of the most enduring quality. Poking fun at beliefs, which few Brits at the time would have really comprehended, being in the main Protestant, he garnered an audience which, as reactionary as it was, the BBC was reluctant to forego. As loquacious as he was erudite, he would sit on his stool in his three piece suit, cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of champagne in the other and would spin the most wonderful tales. One did not go out when Dave Allen was on the television for fear of missing something profound or important in wit's guise or just laugh-out-loud amusing, wet-yourself funny.
Who could forget the 'Pope' undressing on the steps of a church to the strains of David Rose's 'The Stripper' flanked by applauding cardinals or the priest 'playing' musical chairs with the altar boys under the guise of a procession up the aisle? He garnered more criticism from the 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' than Frankie Boyle with his ill-timed but entirely apposite criticism of Rebecca Addlington, the UK Olympic swimmer, and yet still the BBC persevered. Allen once quipped (I'm quoting from memory here, so be generous) "I'm sorry for the people who found nothing to complain about in last week's programme; this is for you." while introducing a series of 'religious' sketches.
Perhaps he was the last of the 'true' iconoclasts. An individual that the broadcasters could neither silence nor suppress. his popularity precluded both. So why, in an age that cries out for it, is the media so lacklustre? Perhaps broadcasters have 'lost their bottle', assuming they had any to start with. Or perhaps I am just getting old and have lived too long to find, like Al***, anything amusing any more. Or perhaps nothing is as good as it was 'in my day' because I am always better than I think I was.
Or perhaps, satire was unusual enough in those days, the days of 'That was the week that was', that I find similar 'observational comedy' merely the same old grist to the same old mill. Like music, it has all been done before and, in the main, better for being first. If you want an example; the Who or the Jam? The Jam might have had a better guitarist but the Who win out on bass player, drummer, singer and compositional genius. The Jam built their reputation, as a live act, on the legacy of the Who's 'Live at Leeds'!
And I like the Jam!
PS
The BBC do a nice 90 minute 'Best of Dave Allen (at large)' DVD. They also do an excellent 60 minutes of Marty Feldman, he of the bulging eyes and 'my name is pronounced eyegore' fame, which not only contains 'The coach trip to the seaside' sketch but also Marty singing, in the style of a Brel or a Gainsbourg, the blurb of the side of a bottle of Brown Sauce (HP) in French,
* Feminist or post feminist humour should be engaged in only by women; guys make such a ham- fisted job of it that it is best left well alone by those with testicles. The script for 'Gladiatress' was written by a man!
** If you have never seen it, you must, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDhETFcgWTE
*** Magdalen college in Oxford is always pronounced 'Maudlin', mirroring the English word for the tearful sorrow of Mary Magdalene and the derivation of the word 'maudlin'.
**** From the story of my life as transcribed by one P Simon Esq:
You know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore
If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al, call me Al
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