Over the next two hours, I'll be digging into the comedy archives,
looking at the lives of some of our most legendary performers...
Bloody Greta Garbo.
..and the men and women who inspired me.
I'll discover how they took their innate gift of the gab
and unique comedy eye...
HE YELLS
..and broke through to become much-beloved entertainers
and household names that have stood the test of time.
Polly!
I'll be talking to some of them, too, as I'll be joined by
the comedy greats that are Jo Brand, Ross Noble and Jasper Carrott.
Welcome to Paul Merton's Comic Heroes.
I've always loved comedy.
I remember being taken to the circus as a small boy
and enjoying the clowns immensely.
The sound of other people's laughter was joyful.
I became obsessed with comedy,
from the legendary comic genius that was Charlie Chaplin
and the slapstick perfection of Laurel and Hardy.
I loved it all, although in this programme
I will be focusing on British performers.
As I've learned from experience and as a fan and student of comedy,
whether it's on stage or radio, TV or film,
laughter can have the power to unite us.
HE CHUCKLES
What makes us laugh may differ from person to person.
But in some way, whatever our background, class or beliefs,
we all have a sense of humour.
Now, comedy is a broad church.
We can't possibly cover everything and that's why I'll be honing in
mostly on just a few performers
who have made an impact on me personally.
The first time I saw Charlie Chaplin would have been
one of his early Keystone films that I was watching on television,
probably when I was about six or seven,
and my grandad pointed at this man and he said,
"That's Charlie Chaplin. He was the funniest man in the world."
JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
I mean, in those days, it was enough just to run around,
kick people up the arse and fire a gun in the air.
That was a comedy classic.
JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS
Later on, of course, he developed into an extraordinary comedian,
and the films he made are lasting monuments
of fantastic 20th-century art.
But those very early ones, certainly, you can look at them
and think, "What's... What's... What is... What's he doing?"
Perhaps one of the most famous moments in any Chaplin film
is very early on, a film that he made called The Tramp
in 1915, where he's walking down this road.
And as he walks away from the camera
and he's feeling downtrodden and he's lost the love of his life,
and he's looking a bit miserable,
then he looks up and he hears the birdsong.
MELANCHOLY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
He picks up his heels and he shrugs his shoulders and he becomes
more optimistic and walks off to, hopefully, a brighter future.
When he pulled this off, this particular moment,
the reason why it's still a famous moment, I think, is,
even people who aren't Charlie Chaplin fans
or know much about silent cinema
are probably familiar with that image of him walking away.
It was just that he managed to, sort of, convey emotion,
a change of emotion with his back to the camera,
purely from just physical mime, just through what he was...
Body language, essentially - what he was doing.
And that was considered rather remarkable at the time.
JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
Chaplin was incredibly athletic and moved in a very funny way,
and that's what a lot of early silent cinema is about,
particularly in comedies, is people moving quickly.
Chases were very popular, simply because it was...
You were doing stuff that you couldn't do on stage.
In silent film, you could be running across the countryside,
you'd be climbing up buildings,
you could be ducking in and out of doors.
There's a whole lot of business you could do
which wasn't so easy to achieve on the stage.
Chaplin held out against the talkie revolution.
His film City Lights came out in 1931,
two to three years after talkies had completely vanquished silent film.
Not only was this the first time he had composed a film score
but it was also his most critically acclaimed work to date.
SOLEMN MUSIC PLAYS
DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS
HE SPEAKS GERMAN
VOICE OVER: Democracy is fragrant.
Liberty is odious.
The Great Dictator in 1940 still has lots of visual moments in there,
where he did have speech and there was dialogue sequences
but he also maintained that ability to create incredible poetic images.
And it's true that when we watch a film,
we remember the visuals more than we remember dialogue.
MUSIC PLAYS
When Charlie Chaplin was touring America and got spotted by
Mack Sennett and put into Keystone films at the beginning of 1914,
the troupe that he was travelling with, the Fred Karno Troupe,
also featured an English comedian called Stan Jefferson,
who later changed his name to Stan Laurel.
So, it is extraordinary that these two giants of 20th-century comedy
should be working together.
After the break, Stan Laurel teams up with Oliver Hardy.
And comedy legend Jasper Carrott joins me
to enthuse about our shared love for that classic double act.
Welcome back to Paul Merton's Comic Heroes.
Time now to talk about one of the greatest film double acts
of all time - Laurel and Hardy.
Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.
Well, I couldn't help it. It turned out it was your job, right?
Kids liked Laurel and Hardy, I think,
cos we like adults being silly.
Children find adults doing silly things very funny, cos adults
are meant to be the serious ones that don't do silly stuff.
So, when you watch a couple of adults and as an eight-year-old
you feel mentally superior to them, that's very charming.
Who is it?
It's a lady about the trip. Ooh!
Just a minute. My friend Mr Hardy will speak to you.
Hello?
Er, excuse me, please.
My ear is full of milk.
The magic was allowed to come through because Oliver Hardy's
great ability as an actor, being able to look at the camera and
hold a scene, meant that Stan could react to what Oliver was doing.
So, Stan could be just be, sort of, just looking bit puzzled,
and Oliver was holding the scene and Stan didn't have to do so much.
He didn't have to carry the whole thing himself.
In one of their silent films,
a film called The Battle Of The Century, the idea came up
that there should be a custard-pie fight in the street.
The public got pretty sick of custard-pie fights quite quickly
and so the idea that Laurel and Hardy should do
a custard-pie fight was initially treated with some scepticism.
And I think it might have been Stan Laurel who said,
"Yeah, but let's do the biggest custard-pie fight there's ever been.
"Let's have thousands of custard pies."
It's kind of illogical, a custard-pie fight, because,
you know, why are custard pies readily available for battle?
But Laurel and Hardy got past that by having a company bring it in.
You see the van in the shot and stuff.
But generally speaking, custard-pie fights lacked logicality.
When we think of Laurel and Hardy, we do think of their voices
because, unlike some of the other silent comedians,
their voices matched their personalities.
They sounded the way we thought they should.
Say, Ollie... What? You don't think we're taking
any chance going back there tonight and robbing that safe, do you?
Chance or no chance, we've got to get that deed back.
And if we think about Laurel and Hardy in the talkies,
then it's not often dialogue sequences that we think of -
it's either action sequences or, in the case of Way Out West,
where they're doing the charming dance...
YODELLING
Or there's the song The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine,
which, again, is... It's lyrics, yes, but it's not dialogue.
# Oh, June
# Like the mountains I'm blue
# Like the pine
# I am lonesome for you
HIGH-PITCHED: # In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
# On the trail of the lonesome pi-ine. #
The two of them worked so well together. They made over 100 films.
They had such a genuine friendship and when Oliver Hardy passed away
in 1957, Stan was devastated
and refuse to perform on stage or act in another film without him.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
My first guest is Jasper Carrott,
who shares my passion for Laurel and Hardy and, as you can see
by this hometown gig in Birmingham,
after 50 years on stage, he's still adored by legions of fans.
I believe that Laurel and Hardy were an influence on you.
Yes. I mean, I don't know whether they've influenced my humour
but it was wonderful laughing at Laurel and Hardy
and you're thinking, "Crikey - I wish I could do that."
Yes. There's a wonderful piece, Laurel and Hardy, where Laurel,
all he does - he laughs for about six or seven minutes.
And you are in agony because you're laughing with him,
and you don't know why.
So, I know a great deal about alternative comedy,
as it was called, what the circuit was like and how it grew up,
cos I was there at the time.
But the folk-club circuit, I don't know a great deal about it.
That's how you first started, wasn't it, on the folk-club circuit?
Could you tell me a typical evening in a folk club might be like?
Folk clubs really were responsible for the start of
the new-wave comedy - there was myself and Billy Connolly,
Max Boyce, Mike Harding.
We couldn't really work working-man's clubs
because the audiences didn't want raconteuring.
So it was folk clubs that became the nursery for the people that
came through, like myself and Billy,
and that's where we learned to communicate with the audience.
And it was a big difference,
because you were talking TO the audience and not AT them.
A lot of folk clubs obviously started out as very traditional,
you know, and it was blokes fingering their ear,
singing 200 verses of how somebody lost their virginity
to a farm lad who got killed by a badger or something.
HE CHUCKLES
And then we actually developed that style of comedy.
Now, when you first started, was it more music than comedy,
or was it a mixture of the two right from the beginning?
Fortunately for me, I was a pretty lousy guitarist and I didn't
have much of a voice, so it had to be the comedy that worked.
And, of course, it was, in a way, unique.
There weren't too many others doing it. And it's not as if we worked
off each other, cos I hardly ever saw anybody work,
because I was so busy working myself.
In fact, Billy Connolly, I used to bring him down from Scotland
to do Midland tours.
And I used to have a folk club myself on a Monday night
but I could never book him because he was always working Walsall
on a Monday night, so I never saw Billy till about 1976.
But he was going through exactly the same process as me - you know,
singing, playing - but, obviously, people wanted to hear the stories.
The car-insurance claims thing that you do, which is very, very funny -
how do you get hold of that material in the first place?
Are you not breaking some kind of confidentiality clause or something?
How did you get hold of this material?
I found it in Reader's Digest in 1969.
Seriously. Brilliant! And then I was running a folk club
and I just went out on the night and I just read them out,
and people really were really taken with it.
So, I expanded it and then I found some more,
and I found some more in Australia.
And then I...
I left it alone for 20 years but I brought it back because I've been...
I'm thinking, "People are still doing the same thing."
Yes.
I got about seven or eight brand-new ones, which are really funny.
I won't do them for you. No, don't, no.
Let's not give them away.
Yeah, it's given the whole thing a new life.
But, essentially, it's...
They're 50 years old.
"I bumped into a lamppost which was obscured by human beings.
"Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I haven't got."
HE CHUCKLES
"The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week."
Did you think this was something
that would eventually translate to television?
I did a show in Stratford-upon-Avon, at the Shakespeare theatre,
and I did... It wasn't a one-man show.
The support was Victoria Wood. Aha.
Unbelievably, yeah.
And she was about 23 at the time,
and the tickets were only about seven and six or something stupid.
And Michael Grade came up from London.
He was head of London Weekend Television,
and he saw me and he offered me a pilot.
Fortunately, the pilot went very well.
I did another five, so it went out
as An Audience With Jasper Carrott, six half hours.
I didn't, sort of, work it all out from the beginning.
It just fell into place as it went along.
Did you feel at that point that you were on top of your game?
I was very, very confident because I was so familiar with the material.
But later on, in 1982, I did a sort of satire show
called Carrott's Lib, which was live to air.
Now, that was really scary,
because I didn't really know what would work and what wouldn't.
I couldn't try... I could try it out maybe once, possibly twice,
before I actually did it on the Saturday night,
but that was really scary, but a terrific learning experience.
Because then you do know your strengths and your weaknesses.
I always wanted to know this -
why was the programme called Carrott's Lib?
What were you being liberated from?
HE CHUCKLES
I don't know.
I mean, you...
You've got to come up with a title and I suppose liberation,
the word "liberation", at that stage in 1982, was not overworked.
There was women's lib, obviously, and that had made big inroads
into entertainment all over the world.
So, Carrott's Lib was my way of saying,
"Well, hang on - here's something a bit different."
Yes, and it was, and it was very successful.
You still tour, don't you? Yes, I work now purely for the pleasure.
I haven't been really creative, Paul, for quite a while.
You get to a point where you think you've done it all
but stand-up was my first love and I've gone back to it.
I left it alone for about 10, 12 years, and then I started
about five years ago and rediscovered the thrill of being on stage
but not the big ones - not the 5,000 seaters or the 10,000 seaters.
These were the 1,000 seaters, the 700 seaters,
and it was like going back to my roots.
And I got back the real enthusiasm for it.
I've enjoyed the last five years
more than any time in my career, I would say.
Is that because you feel that you've proved yourself,
you don't have that pressure now...?
Yep. You can just go on and enjoy it
and almost be doing laps of honour, as it were?
HE CHUCKLES
It's one way of putting it.
It's the twilight of my career and I'm having a ball.
It's been fascinating.
I'm, sort of, back on the road
and some things have changed, some haven't.
I've had to change the backstage hospitality quite a bit.
For years, you know, it's been booze, uppers, downers.
That's all had to change now.
Now, now, I have to insist on Deep Heat,
Horlicks...
and a bath with a door in it.
# Look up and laugh, be happy, bright and gay
# Imagine the sun is shining every day
# Even though we have to strive
# Gee, it's good to be alive
# Go home together and laugh your troubles away. #
When sound films became established in the early '30s, people who
wouldn't have been, perhaps, successful in silent films
suddenly had huge careers.
There was Gracie Fields, for example, in this country,
who was born in Rochdale, who was extremely popular.
Let's all just sing this last chorus together.
I'm gonna cry in a minute. Come on.
# Walter
# Tears are tasting saltier and I've lost my handkerchief, too. #
Her strength was that she was one of the people.
She was an ordinary working-class individual,
born above a fish-and-chip shop.
Oh, you're Grace, then, the one on the stage?
That's me. Will you give us a hand with me basket?
She wasn't a star that you looked up to.
She was one of us. "Our Gracie".
That was part of her huge appeal -
that she could easily be your next-door neighbour.
How do I look?
SHE CLUCKS
Well, I'm afraid it doesn't quite suit you.
I'm afraid that won't quite suit anybody.
The roles that she tended to play in films were working-class roles.
One where she leads a strike, she leads the workers out of a factory
and she's singing as they do it.
# Sing as we go and let the world go by... #
People really liked that working-class authenticity.
"Salt of the earth" used to be the expression that you used to use
for people like her, where you felt that she was on your side.
You mean the shipyards are going to open up again?
No, I'm afraid not.
This evening, the committee and I have decided against it.
But, Lord Randall, that isn't right. Those men haven't enough to eat
or warm clothes for their family, or a decent place to live.
I know them all - they're all friends of mine.
She was one of the first entertainers to sign up to a company
called Ensa, to entertain troops abroad during the Second World War.
So, she went to northern France very early with Ensa.
When General Gracie took command with the PEF in France,
millions heard the broadcast.
This was during the Second World War.
Entertainers who were popular with the public were seen as very much
morale boosters, that you could go and, sort of, lift people's spirits.
# A song and a smile, making life worthwhile
# So, sing
# Hh-ha-ho-ho-ha-ho
# As we go on by. #
You know, it would be not something that you would do
to necessarily boost your ow career
but something where you would be giving something back
to the audiences who had supported you in peacetime.
AUDIENCE: # When the skies are blue, you're beguiling ... #
And when they're grey, you're still smiling.
# And when they're grey, you're still smiling. #
There is a belief that Hitler declared Gracie Fields to be
an enemy of the Third Reich.
Um, this diminutive working-class woman,
you wouldn't think would be much of a threat to the Third Reich
but maybe there was something about...
He could see that her power of popularity amongst ordinary people,
if I can use that phrase, was very, very strong, and so
maybe he saw her as a strong morale booster for the Brits,
at a time when he was trying to bomb us into submission.
# Sally... #
Not many voices on the other side.
# Sally
# Pride of our alley
# You're more than
# The whole world
# To me. #
Hitler was not somebody that was, I would have thought,
too much of a Gracie Fields fan.
I can't imagine him sitting down listening to Sally from the alley
and all this kind of stuff, but maybe he did.
Maybe he had a private gramophone collection
that we know nothing about.
Still to come...
I catch up with my old friend Ross Noble, who shares
my appreciation of a comedy legend.
I love Max Miller.
Haven't I got a nice figure, ladies? Haven't I? No, I have, haven't I?
# With me little stick of Blackpool rock
# Along the promenade I stroll
# It may be sticky but I'll never complain
# It's nice to have a nibble at it now and again... #
George Formby's double entendres are so slight that you don't...
As a child, certainly, watching them...
"Me little stick of Blackpool rock."
I mean, it's just referring to a stick of Blackpool rock.
It would never occur to me that it could be referring to anything else.
# One afternoon, the band conductor up on the stand
# Somehow lost his baton - it flew out of his hand
# So, I jumped in his place and then conducted the band
# With me little stick of Blackpool rock... #
He was playing Blackpool, I think it was, and there was
a big poster up and his face on it and he overheard
a mother saying to her young child, boy, she said to...
She pointed at the picture of George Formby.
She said, "Now, look at that face," she said.
"You'll end up looking like that if you don't stop playing with yourself."
And I don't know whether that's a true story or not but I think
he told it himself once or it's an autobiography or somewhere.
I've read it.
But I don't think he had any airs and graces about himself.
# With me little stick of Blackpool rock. #
All his films seemed to have the same title. They were always called
Let George Do It or George Does It,
We've Let George Do It, George Wouldn't Let Us Do It.
They always seemed to have titles like that, so they're quite similar.
If music be the food of love, play on, MacDuff, play on.
We haven't time to do all the act - we'll miss the train.
Go on. We've got an audience. I'll go round with a titfer,
then we'll eat tonight. That'll be a novelty!
He's kind of a male equivalent to Gracie Fields in a way, I think,
and he was born in Wigan.
And Wigan and Rochdale, where she was from,
are only about 26 miles apart.
It's the same part of the world,
one of those places around Manchester.
You know what they say about back home?
I've got the eyes of a hawk, the strength of a fox,
the speed of a hare and the brains of an ox.
Hey...I've got that wrong somewhere.
George Formby would flirt with the risque but it was always done
with a great charm and a...
If you watch his stuff, he's very good at,
sort of, like, prompting the audience to laugh,
cos he giggles himself a bit in the songs,
as if he's only just heard the line for the first time.
And he does it so naturally and he does it so well
that you don't think of it as being manipulative.
You just think of it as being part of his craft. "Hey, here we go."
HE CHUCKLES
# Mr Wu no longer has a laundry... #
There was one song where he looks like he's gonna
sing the word "bloomers"
and then changes it to something else at the last minute.
# Customers he's washed for
# Now are in bad humours
# They feel quite neglected
# And I've heard the rumours
# Lots of girls on winter nights go out without their garters
# Cos Mr Wu's a window cleaner now. #
I don't know what this obsession with trying to ignore the fact
that women wore underwear is about but it was certainly
something that the authorities didn't want people to know about.
Although there was generally, censorship was quite Draconian,
during wartime some of those standards could be relaxed.
So, in Let George Do It, there is a scene where he parachutes
into Berlin and meets Adolf Hitler
and punches him and knocks him to the ground.
I'll wipe the British Empire from the face of the Earth.
Lad! I want you.
Hey! You're my last janitorial demand in Europe.
You Schweinehund. For this, I'll knock your head off of the block.
Haha! Not if I knock your block off first.
Then what gets me is all the storm troopers start dancing, you know.
HE CHUCKLES
It's a strange piece of choreography but, yes, while Neville Chamberlain
was prime minister and we were trying to, sort of,
keep Mr Hitler happy,
that would never have got past the official film censor.
Under the inspector's eye is Max Miller,
comedian and policeman's headache, there to get the party going.
Max Miller was a comedian who became very popular from the 1930s onwards.
Max Miller wasn't his real name - his real name was Thomas Sargent.
But, for some reason, he didn't think
that was appropriate for a stage act.
Thanks very much. I expected more but I'm satisfied.
Blimey, you don't know what to wear this weather, do you?
It's raining again, duckie. You all right in here? That's right.
You'll be all right. Stay there.
He used to dress in these sort of...
A bit like what I'm wearing, this shirt,
but he would have a suit made out of this kind of flowery pattern
and a big white hat.
If he was in his 30s or 40s now, I think he'd be a huge star now.
He just had that ability to control an audience.
I know exactly what you're saying to yourselves.
"Why's he dressed like that?" I'll tell you why.
I'm a commercial traveller and I'm ready for bed.
Now, listen, the last time I played this theatre,
I cracked a joke and somebody told the manager.
They're not entitled to do that. It's jealousy. And how do I know?
Because, as a rule, he sits in the box and tonight he's not there.
He'd look in the wings if he was gonna do
a slightly risque joke which, by today's standards, they weren't.
But he'd look in the wings like that and he'd beckon forward like this
and he'd sort of, like... He'd look
to see if the manager was looking. "He's not there, he's not there."
Now, I'm gonna crack the same joke but don't you laugh, because if you laugh, he'll know it's rude.
Now, I'll find out where he is. I think he's round the back.
Now, don't move. And don't go out. Don't you go out till I come back.
He would have this ability, in a huge theatre,
to give you the impression he was talking just to you.
He's on the side, sitting in a Bath chair with a silk hat and a whip.
Now, don't laugh. Haven't I got a nice figure, lady? Haven't I?
No, I have. Haven't I, duckie? No, honest. No.
When I'm talking, it's rude to interfere.
It's like married life. Now, ain't I nice, lady?
You hear mainly female laughter. Women found him very funny,
mainly because he's undercutting the supposedly male superiority.
We fell down, we fell on the sand,
and I wanted to teach her a game that I knew
but she wouldn't wear me, see?
So, I said, I said, "Have you had a wash this morning?"
"No." "Why?" "We can't get any water."
"Well, how do you keep yourself clean?"
She said, "We smother ourselves with oil."
And she was speaking the truth because every time I went to kiss her, I felt myself slipping.
I like the girls who do.
I like the girls who don't.
I hate the girl who says she will and then she says she won't.
But the girl I like the best of all, and I think you'll say I'm right,
is the girl who says she never does
but she looks as though she... Here!
I worked as a civil servant for a few years when I first left school
and there was another guy working there who had seen Max Miller
at the Holborn Empire and told me about this particular technique
that Max would have where his theme tune, Mary From The Dairy...
HE HUMS
That would start playing and as soon as the audience heard that,
they'd burst into applause and stuff
because they knew he was about to come on.
But he'd be waiting in the wings and listening to the audience.
And as the applause started to die down,
then he would come on, so the applause would go up even higher.
So, it's a very clever thing to do,
where you just wait, delay the entrance, delay, delay, delay, now.
CHEERING
And with the songs, as well,
I think it's always a great compliment, music and comedy,
when you put the two together.
# I fell in love with Mary from the dairy
# But Mary wouldn't fall in love with me
# Down by an old mill stream
# We both sat down to dream
# Little did she know that I was thinking of a scheme... #
You can still tell Max Miller jokes today and get a laugh.
When I'm doing TV programmes and there's a warm-up for the audience
and, you know, you're invited to say something for the microphone
and stuff, I often do this Max Miller joke,
which a really simple joke, and it's...
I went home the other night.
I said to the wife, "Here," I said, "I hear the milkman
"has made love to every woman in this street bar one."
And she says, "I bet it's that stuck-up cow at number 54."
The beauty of that joke is that it's the woman
that's got the power in the joke. It's like she... Her attitude is,
"Well, you know what she's like over there - she wouldn't even make love to the milkman."
It's sort of... Whereas we think that she's gonna say,
"I don't know what you're talking about."
For my money, he is the first real
modern-sounding stand-up and this is from 80 years ago now,
so that's some achievement.
Ross Noble is not only a regular on Have I Got News For You
but we also share some of the same comic heroes.
And after 20 years in the business,
he's routinely playing enormous venues like this one.
Ross, thank you, first of all, for doing this.
Tell me, what first inspired you to get into comedy?
I must have been, like, really, really young.
I was probably about...
Probably about four or five
and my gran used to have loads of comedy records.
So, she had Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott.
She had loads of Max Boyce records as well.
And I used to go around there and I'd listen to those
and I'd hear the laughter and I didn't really understand it
but the sort of...
You know, like, the Welsh tones and the Scottish towns and stuff...
Yes. I just found it, sort of, intoxicating.
Do you think it's important...? So, how were you as a schoolkid?
How did the other schoolkids think of you?
Well, this'll sum it up entirely.
I used to ride to school on a unicycle.
Too poor to have a proper bike - just the one wheel?
My dad said, "Next Christmas, if you work hard..."
HE CHUCKLES
Cos I was also obsessed with, like, erm, circuses, juggling, stuntmen.
You know, all that sort of stuff - that's what I was into.
You were dyslexic - and still are dyslexic, presumably -
so did that make you feel a little bit like an outsider?
And if it did, is the feeling of being an outsider
useful to a comedian?
Wow!
Um...
What it did do was it made me realise
that I wasn't gonna get a job...
That's why I got into the circus and stuntmen and all that,
cos it was basically a thing of, I went,
"I need a job where I don't have to write stuff down.
"I'll just throw myself off a building on fire."
I have met quite a few stuntmen in the past
and you are absolutely ideal casting to be a stuntman,
if comedy hadn't have worked out. Cos you love adrenaline. Yeah.
Well, what I used to do was, I used to set fire to boxes
and jump off the roof onto the boxes.
And I honestly thought there'd be some big Hollywood producer
walking past and go, "Oh, my God.
"That kid knows how to fall into boxes.
"I'm gonna put him in the movies."
GRUFF VOICE: "I am Batman. I am the Dark Knight.
"I'm here to defend Gotham City."
There's a riot going on. No-one can hear what he's saying.
There's shit exploding.
"I am here. I am Batman."
"You what, mate? Sorry. Can't hear a fucking word you're saying."
"I am Batman."
"Meh-meh-meh?"
"Batman."
"Meh-meh?"
"Meh-meh."
"Meh-meh?"
"Meh-meh."
# Ma-ma-na-na-na... #
Meh-meh. # Na-na-na-na
# Mah-na-ma-na Na-na-na-na-na
# Na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na-na-nah. #
So, when you were starting out, was it more or less the same approach
as you have now, where you don't really have a script?
You've got some ideas in your head, which you start to talk about?
No, when I first started, I was sort of a props act. Aha.
Do you remember how there was, like, Garfield?
All the shops used to sell Garfields
and they were in different costumes and stuff.
And I used to do stuff about how you never saw Garfield and
Yasser Arafat in the same room together, and I'd pull out Garfield
and he was dressed as Yasser Arafat.
And I used to... And it was so...
It was so disjointed for adults, going,
"Why has this kid got a cat dressed as Yasser Arafat?"
And then what happened was, I used to take the props on and then,
a bit like all the guys from the folk clubs that I really admire,
they would do songs and jokes
and then the bits in between the songs got longer.
That's what happened with my props.
It got to the point where I'd take the props and I never get to them.
So, was there ever a gig when you took on a suitcase, didn't open it,
didn't take anything out of it,
and then walked off with it again at the end? Yeah.
Which would have been a very amusing thing to do. Yeah!
So, you talked about the acts in the folk clubs -
Billy Connolly, you're a huge fan of.
What was it about him that you particularly liked?
Billy Connolly - you know, he's the governor, he's the king.
But if you look back, there was people that came from that scene...
Obviously, Jasper Carrott, Mike Harding.
Richard Digance as well.
You know, obviously, Connolly's thing...
You know, the crucifixion sketch that he used to do.
And, obviously, Carrott was doing the Magic Roundabout
and the stuff about the mole.
I remember Richard Digance had this brilliant thing about, er,
clay-badger shooting, about covering badgers in clay,
throwing them in the air and shooting them with a water pistol.
It just felt incredibly imaginative
and then they would play a song or they'd do a parody of thing.
But Max Miller was perhaps a prototype for these folk-club people
in using the guitar to mix the marriage of song and comedy,
which is a very potent mix, if you get that right.
I mean, Max Miller...
Like, I love Max Miller.
What I love about him was that if you listen back to his records,
cos you hear him do a full...
Like, a full concert, there's times where you can hear him
really, like, milking the crowd, you know?
Yes. He invented all of the things that then variety comics copied.
At your gigs, you, er...
Would it be too strong to say you encourage hecklers
or you don't mind hecklers? What would be the best way to put it?
Heckling's the wrong term for it, I think. Aha.
To me, a heckler is somebody that's trying to be disruptive, you know.
I like it to be conversational.
SHOUTS FROM AUDIENCE
How do I...
eat my garlic?
Well, it's always nice to have one of the Roux brothers in,
the Roux brothers.
"How do you eat your garlic?"
How do I what?
Cook a garlic.
How do I what a Dalek?
Cook. C-O-O-K.
C-O-O-A.
C-O-O-A. Cooa.
Cook. Cook!
How do you cook a Dalek?
Sorry, I'm dyslexic.
She might as well have gone,
"Z-Z-O-R, four, five, seven, nine, forward slash."
Haven't got a fucking clue.
No idea.
I want people to come in and feel like
tonight, we're gonna be part of a thing that only exists...
Like, it exists in that room and then it's just, it's gone, you know.
If you're building an idea, you come up with something at the start
of the night and then as it builds,
it takes you to a place which,
by the end of the night, you can be talking about things
that everyone in the room understands
but it came out of something that happened in the room
at the start of the night, so anyone that comes in...
It's basically a way of
stopping people sneaking in for the second half.
PAUL CHUCKLES
Is there something now that you know about comedy and about
performing live that you wish you'd known when you started?
Everything. Absolutely...
Like, literally, when I first started I tried on all these
different, sort of, "Oh, am I the guy that does this thing?"
You know, "Should I be that sort of comic?"
And there was a moment where I just went,
"Oh, well, I just won't be that distinctive.
"I won't have a particularly distinctive thing."
And I just thought, "Oh, I'll give up on all that - I'll just be myself."
When you stop trying to find the thing,
you realise that who you are is actually...
Is actually enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's all from me.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Coming up, my mate Joe, who I first met over 30 years ago
on the alternative-comedy circuit.
I just wanted to see if I could make people laugh.
And these two remind us
just why they are
the best-loved double act
this country has ever seen.
Tea, Ern?
Welcome back. Time now to move on to one of the best-loved double acts
this country has ever seen.
Bringing a bit of sunshine to all our lives,
of course it's Morecambe and Wise.
# Bring me sunshine
# In your smile
# Bring me laughter
# All the while ... #
I remember there was an LP that the BBC brought out,
a long-playing record back in the early '70s,
which had a photograph of Eric and Ernie on the front cover.
And I remember looking at this cover -
and I was, like, 12, 13 or something -
and just thinking, "Wouldn't that be wonderful -
"to be creating laughter together with your best friend?"
And that's the feeling that very much comes across.
In one particular episode, they're round at their domestic setting
and Ernie's throwing some paper up in the air, and then one of them...
Like, a little paper hat, a tiny paper hat, lands on Eric's head.
If I promise to do that play properly, that one there...
If I promise to do it properly,
no messing about, how does that grab you?
This play? Yeah.
Ha! Ha!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I bet you couldn't do that again.
He just waits. He just waits, cos he knows that Eric will say something,
he trusts that Eric will say something, and he'll let Eric
get that laugh, he'll let Eric take his time on it.
He's not gonna rush him, he's just watching.
And, eventually, Eric says, "I bet you couldn't do that again."
You know, and it's not the most hilarious line in the world
but it's the perfect line for there.
A little hat falling on the head is something
that's completely unplanned and unrehearsed.
As a contrast to that, there is a routine that they do
where they have to swap...
You know, each is wearing the other's trousers.
Look at your I suppose.
Now. What?
You should now have another spare leg.
Another spare leg? For me.
I've got one there. Have you got one? Yes.
Drop it on the floor. Good lad.
Are you ready? Yes.
There you are.
Yes. Now then. What?
Take it all easy, nice and casual.
Relaxed.
Now, you turn round, very slowly, like that.
Doesn't matter which way we turn.
We've got the wrong seats on. Right.
So, we can start the show now... Yes, start the show. ..and walk off very slowly. Why?
It brings the tears to my eyes. Are you ready?
This must have been something they did in the summer-season show
or a pantomime or something, because it's so well done.
That's not a routine that you could write and rehearse in a week
and get it as slick and as smooth as that.
And they know exactly where the laughs are,
they know what they're doing,
they know how visually funny it is, and it feels...
It feels like a well-worn routine, in a good way.
You know, it's...
Literally, the material is strong, and not just the trousers.
HE YELLS Thank you.
There would be bits of business that they would repeat,
that I sometimes think might have been there for, maybe,
superstitious reasons, almost like a lucky charm.
Tea, Ern?
Tea, Ern!
That's a belter, that. I haven't done that one for years, you know.
That's one from the archives, that.
There is such a natural timing between the two of them.
As long as human beings find human behaviour funny,
we will always find Morecambe and Wise funny.
I've known my next guest for about 34 years and she's one of
the country's best-loved comedians,
as you can see from the welcome at this show
at the Lyceum in London a few years ago.
When we were both growing up, I suppose,
perhaps the biggest act on TV was Morecambe and Wise.
Were you a fan of theirs?
I was a fan of theirs.
I mean, obviously - and most people would say this -
I absolutely loved Eric Morecambe.
And the stuff I liked...
I mean, all Eric Morecambe's stuff was really stupid,
but the more stupid the better.
And he certainly kind of pushed the stupid boat out
and I really admire comics that have the confidence to try something
so utterly ridiculous that it's a risk.
I always used to love the thing of Eric and Ernie in bed, as well.
I thought that was...
That was so before its time, you know, and so weirdly innocent
and quite touching in a way.
Now, Jo, when you were starting out, there was a lot of performers -
me amongst them - who weren't particularly that skilled and adept
at handling an audience.
Particularly female comics at that time,
who were often judged before they even started.
You know, it was like, there would be a nervousness in the room.
Well, yeah. I mean, there was a natural assumption...
You know, let's say particularly, I think, on the part of men.
But I stood behind women at the Comedy Store and I heard one say
once to her friend - they were in front of me...
"Oh, there's a female comic coming on now.
"Shall we go to the toilet?"
"How flattering."
I just don't think people expected much of us, really.
What was your inspiration to start doing stand-up comedy?
Beryl Reid I was a massive fan of,
because I think she took quite a lot of risks,
really, in her career choices.
Like The Killing Of Sister George, for example,
which was about a much older gay woman
having a relationship with a very young woman.
And I also loved her cos I thought
she was really very naturally funny and good at comedy.
These are not my new earrings, you know.
They're not big enough!
No, these are bowls. Now, this one's called a wood and it's got bias.
My dad says my mum's got bias. You know,
"BUY US this and BUY US that."
The jokes keep coming with me.
Now, this little white one here -
this is called a Jack.
And when the wood rolls up to it, it says, "How are you, Jack?"
And this one says, "I'm all WHITE."
Were there any comedians from the older school
that you admired or you liked?
My knowledge, sort of, started with the alternative circuit, really.
Apart from, you know, Marti Caine and people like that on
light-entertainment shows.
Well, you mentioned Marti Caine,
who came through that circuit of working men's clubs,
and I think this might have something to do with
the lack of female stand-ups from that particular era and circuit,
because those places were very rough to play.
And she - who was, you know, a very good-looking woman -
would have to make jokes about her physical appearance
to try and subvert any references she might get from the audience.
Yeah. Particularly women tend to be more self-deprecating
and they think, "If I do it, I can get it out of the way
"and I can do it funnier than someone in the audience can do it,
"then they'll hopefully leave me alone."
And it's sad in a way that...
as you say, Marti Caine was, like, really good looking.
Why did she feel she had to do it, you know?
Because, certainly, I'm not in that category, but...
You know, I like men. In fact,
well, I'm glad they're not habit-forming
cos I can't do without 'em.
You think their heart's pounding with passion and all the time,
it's their gold medallion banging against the pacemaker.
I once had a raging affair with a fella with a pacemaker.
Oh, it was an amazing experience.
Every time he got excited,
the next-door neighbours' telly changed channel and the video ejected.
So, do you think, in a way, it's quite a good technique
to say something about yourself before somebody else does it,
because then you're disarming them?
Oh, absolutely.
I really think it's a fantastic technique,
and it's certainly worked for me.
The only times it didn't work where when people were so drunk
that they didn't take any notice of my very witty jokes about my weight
and stuff and they just kind of carried on.
But those people always ruin gigs, wherever they are.
They're the people who want to be up on stage doing what you're doing
but they haven't got the nerve or the inclination or the talent
or the aptitude or the jokes.
Absolutely. So they have so many reasons to hate you.
We've got a little group of lads down here, which is a bit scary.
You obviously got free tickets,
cos lads do not come to see me willingly.
So, welcome. I hope you have a good night, all right?
And don't worry - I can't run either, so...
if I start winking at you and looking slightly
middle-aged and hormonal, just leg it, all right?
When you started off doing stand-up,
how was that different to what you do these days?
I was kind of a nervous performer.
Not particularly about hecklers -
that was the bit I didn't feel uncomfortable with at all.
But I was nervous about how to deliver a line.
So I just delivered my jokes in a very monosyllabic way.
I tried very hard to change that and the way that I changed that
was by compering gigs, because that meant
that you had to talk to the audience.
And that worked pretty well, apart from one night I was in
the Red Rose and this guy said to me, "Do you do anything else here?"
And I said, "Well, like what?"
And he said, "Well, do you have to clean up afterwards?"
"No. I'm a comedian!"
He obviously just thought I was shoved up there
cos someone hadn't turned up, you know.
So, yeah, that does help, the compering thing, I think.
It's generally accepted amongst a lot of people that you were
a great role model, because you were somebody that was doing it,
that was making it work.
And, of course, when you see other people doing it and succeeding,
you say, "Well, if that person can do it, then maybe I can do it."
Well, thank you for saying that.
I try not to think of that too much
because I... I don't know why I try not to think of it
too much but it's kind of a bit terrifying, in a way.
And, um, well, I think...
What I did, which hopefully helped people,
is I kind of use that thing of...
If you look like you couldn't care less,
eventually people believe that you couldn't care less.
So I'd occasionally be under siege at student gigs or something
and I'd have people saying the most appalling, sort of, misogynist...
Like, threatening stuff to me.
And I'd just look at them, "Yeah, OK," like that.
And, actually, in the end, that really helped me to, sort of,
believe that I could deal with it, really,
because I've had so many people in the past say to me -
other comics, and not just women, either -
say that they find that really, kind of,
vicious stuff from audiences really difficult to deal with.
And, you know, it's caused them to think of giving up.
And I think we would lose so many great people
if people weren't able to deal with that.
So, that's certainly one thing that I think really works very well.
Why did you want to become a comedian?
Despite the fact...
You know, I had a difficult childhood in many ways,
cos my dad was a very difficult character
who suffered from depression and had a terrible temper.
But, weirdly, there was quite a lot of laughing in our household.
You know, both my brothers were very funny
and I just always used to think to myself... You know,
it's a bit of a miserable bloody place, the world, isn't it?
And if you can actually make someone laugh,
what a great thing that is to be able to do.
Almost greater than anything else.
Better than being a singer, better than being a good actor.
And so it was those sort of abstract reasons, really.
I just wanted to see if I could make people laugh and, thankfully, I did.
I was outside a wine bar the other night.
This woman came running up to me and went,
"Jo Brand, you're a ledge. Get in there and get wankered."
I was like, "Mum, it's the beginning of the night."
She's a nightmare.
After the break,
the '60s takeover of telly by Oxford and Cambridge graduates -
and we loved it.
Welcome back to Paul Merton's Comic Heroes.
I'm taking a look back at some of my all-time favourites.
Still to come, Pete and Dud...
My Aunt Dolly would have done it for nothing.
..Billy Connolly...
The world's fucked.
..Bruce Forsyth...
This is satire.
..Victoria Wood...
I've never swum such a long way and some of it's in the dark.
..and Lenny Henry.
How fast do you have to drive to get one of THEM?!
Norman Wisdom was so incredibly popular.
Started first as a stage comedian and that character that he had,
which I think he called the Gump,
which had that hat and the jacket
that was slightly tight for him and stuff.
That's a very unusual thing that you don't see much these days,
where a comedian, a male or a female performer,
has a standard uniform or a comedy costume.
SIZZLING
Oh. Oh!
Oh! Well, get off it, then.
HE YELLS
"Brand identity" would not have been the phrase
that people would have used at the time but you knew...
As soon as you saw Norman Wisdom, you knew who it was.
No smiling, please. I'm not smiling -
I've got a bloomin' light stuck right in my face.
One of the early Norman Wisdom films I remember seeing,
Man Of The Moment, there's a scene that he does with a photographer -
I think he's played by an actor called Michael Ward -
and the set-up is simple. It's like,
"You're going to have to take a passport photograph.
"Now, you mustn't laugh."
HE CHUCKLES
Control yourself, please.
I can't help it.
The more you stop me, the more I seem to can't help it.
Pull yourself together.
HE STIFLES LAUGHTER
Hold it, hold it. Oh, it's going.
HE CHUCKLES
It's very funny. It's, sort of...
It's just... Watching somebody else laugh
is incredibly infectious, if it's done well.
STIFLING LAUGHTER: Go on!
Go on. Now, go on. Now, force yourself. Go on!
HE MUTTERS THROUGH LAUGHTER
HE HOWLS WITH LAUGHTER
Control yourself!
HE GRUNTS
Go on, take me. Take me!
Too late. HE CHUCKLES
Norman Wisdom, of course, was a very physical comedian, very visual.
Adept at pratfalls.
And there's a show that him and Bruce Forsyth did
at the London Palladium...
I love you, too.
I really do.
BRUCE CHUCKLES
Oh, you're so lovely.
There's one point where he runs towards the grand piano,
slides across the top of the piano on his stomach,
and then when he falls down the other side,
he's managed to turn in the air so he lands on his back.
I mean, this stuff is difficult enough, you know,
when you're trying to do it on film or something, or in rehearsal.
But to do it on a live TV show...
I'm gonna finish this if it's the last thing I do.
Right, lads, come on.
# When Irish eyes... #
Yes, I'm gonna...
# When Irish eyes are smiling
# Sure, the world... #
He disappears down a trap door, which is not a particularly
big trap door and it's going down quickly,
so if you're not right in the middle of it, there is a risk of injury,
cos you could hit your arm or your leg
or your face could be going down quickly.
I had to watch it two or three times to figure out how he's doing it,
because he doesn't watch where he's going.
Because if you did that, if you started to look to see
where you're going, you're telegraphing the joke.
You're indicating to the audience you're looking for something,
so there's something on the floor, so when you do disappear,
the audience are halfway expecting something like that to happen.
When Irish eyes are smi...
Norman Wisdom once said that people always find
people falling over funny and, I mean, this is true.
I mean, we can think of...
One of the funniest moments of the last 20, 30 years is Del Boy
in Only Fools And Horses
leaning on the bar and falling through the frame.
I think we're on a winner here, Trig, all right?
Play it nice and cool, son.
Nice and cool - you know what I mean.
And, again, like the Norman Wisdom thing,
David Jason does it absolutely perfectly.
He doesn't telegraph what he's doing.
He doesn't look down where he's going.
He just leans against the bar
and just falls as if, you know,
in a line. Beautifully done.
And I'm a great admirer of that.
I love watching that kind of physical skill.
When you look at Peter Cook and Dudley Moore,
they were both Oxbridge -
Peter was from Cambridge
and Dudley Moore got a music scholarship into Oxford,
although Dudley was a working-class individual
from Dagenham, I think it was.
You see in their comedy references to...
High-cultural references
that you wouldn't have seen in comedy much before that.
I've been looking for you for the last half hour.
We said we'd meet in front of the Flemish Masters.
No, we didn't, Dud. We never said anything of the sort.
When I last saw you, you were in the Pissarro, weren't you?
That's right. Well, I said I'd meet outside the abstracts,
we'd go through the old Greco,
up the Van Eyck and I'd see you in front of the bloody Rubens. No.
They're in an art gallery,
so they're referencing various oil paintings that are around them.
They're referencing famous pictures
that people who are connoisseurs of painting would know.
500,000 quid we paid for that.
It's worth more than Tottenham Hotspur, ain't it, eh?
Well, it's worth about the same
now they've signed Gilzean at centre forward,
but it's not worth 500,000 quid, that load, is it?
My Aunt Dolly would have done it for nothing.
She does anything for nothing, don't she, your Aunt Dolly?
Yeah. Filthy old cow.
You enjoying that sandwich?
Dudley was particularly a bit of a giggler,
and so he could, in show-business terms, he could corpse.
He could laugh when you're not meant to be laughing.
And Peter would pick up on that and would sort of, not viciously
but rather directly, twist the knife a little bit.
Mine's appalling - I can tell you that much.
It's worse than the paintings, my sandwich.
There's a kind of status thing going on between them, isn't there?
They're both idiots but Dudley is a bit more idiotic.
Dud's a bit more idiotic than Pete but Pete is also as idiotic as Dud,
if you know what I mean, in a strange way.
The status fluctuates rather, a bit,
but they can reference books about philosophers,
they can reference classical musicians or something like that.
But a lot of their comedy's
just about the strange, surreal nature of these two people.
I was just about to drop off when suddenly...
tap, tap, tap at the bloody windowpane.
I looked out. You know who it was? Who?
Bloody Greta Garbo.
Stark naked...
..save for a shorty nightie.
She was hanging onto the window sill.
You have the kind of surrealism, the love of culture,
but put into the voices of working-class individuals.
But, of course, Peter also, as well, specialised in
more middle-class characters.
Roger...
your mother and I were having a bit of a chat the other day
and she thought it might be a good idea
if I was to have a bit of a chat...with you.
In order...
LAUGHTER
In order...
for you to be brought about,
it was necessary for your mother and I...
to do something.
Perhaps there's an inspiration there from The Goon Show.
He was one of the young men who listened to the Goons
when it first came out,
and maybe there's a touch of Grytpype-Thynne
in what he's doing,
where the voice of authority is also, you know, bonkers.
Talking of bonkers, who'd have thought
that one of the classic moments in British television
would be this bit of genius?
One of the very...
I think it's in the first show, they have a sort of...
John Cleese is doing a very animated...
It's almost like a radio piece or something.
A very animated commentary on various, sort of, like,
modern artists, various painters, in a cycling race.
I can now see Picasso is cycling down very hard
towards the roundabout. He's about 75, 50 yards away
and I can now see his painting. It's an abstract.
I can see some blue, some purple, some little black oval shapes.
I think I can see...
That's not Picasso - that's Kandinsky!
Good Lord, you're right - it's Kandinsky, Wassily Kandinsky.
And who's this here with him?
It's Braque, Georges Braque, the Cubist, painting a bird in flight
over a cornfield and going very fast down the hill towards Kingston.
And, again, there's a good example there of these cultural references
that I mentioned in the Pete and Dud thing, where...
You knew all these... I mean, I never...
Picasso I knew of was a lot of the other painters I'd never heard of
but they're all genuine painters, and you get the idea.
You don't need to have a knowledge of the history of Western art.
Delaunay, De Kooning.
Kokoschka's dropping back a little bit.
So's Paul Klee dropping back a bit.
And right at the back of this group, our very own Kurt Schwitters.
Schwitters is German!
As yet, absolutely no sign of Pablo Picasso.
And so, from Tolworth Roundabout, back to the studio.
It was extraordinary.
They tore up the rule book of what sketch shows should be.
So you would have a character, the army colonel, general, moving in
from one sketch to another. He'd say,
"This is silly - you've got to stop this."
He'd been in a previous sketch.
There's another sketch happening, and he just walks into the sketch.
I'm not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any further,
as I think this is getting too silly.
Quite agree, quite agree.
Silly, silly, silly.
Right, get on with it.
There's a moment where John Cleese is just standing
dressed as a policeman and Michael Palin comes up and says
something along the lines of how he's been robbed
and as it plays out, it just feels like
you're watching something that hasn't even been written down.
That this is a 30-second idea that somebody's had that they do
and as John Cleese walks off at the end,
he's got this broad smile on his face,
which tells me that this was completely unplanned,
unrehearsed and just happened, brilliantly, as a 30-second idea.
Inspector, Inspector... Yes, sir.
I was sitting on a park bench just now and I put my coat down
and when I picked it up again, I found my wallet had gone
and £15 had been stolen.
Did you see anyone?
No, no-one at all.
HE SIGHS
Well, there's very little we can do about that, sir.
HE TUTS
Do you want to come back to my place?
Yeah, all right.
And then you see the parrot sketch come up, or whatever it would be.
A sketch I've only seen once or twice but I know it word for word,
because every boy in school the next day was doing the parrot sketch.
People would memorise stuff as it went out.
Hello, Polly.
Polly!
Polly Parrot, wake up!
Polly!
Now, that's what I call a dead parrot.
No, no, it's stunned.
And, so, it was an extraordinary event
in the history of British television.
A very strange, wonderful show,
capable of so many surprising different things.
# What shall I wear, this bright May morning?
# Roving the hills so free
# Velvet moss, my gown so fine
# Cobweb apron tied behind
# Stockings made of fairy wool
# And a feather fan to keep me cool
# I will wear a goblin jerkin
# Neatly buttoned, one, two, three. #
Joyce Grenfell, fantastic monologist,
did comic monologues and beautiful dramatic songs as well,
that she wrote. And she was somebody that was discovered
in the most extraordinary way.
She was at a party doing one of her party pieces,
a character that she was doing,
and got spotted by a producer and shortly,
within a very short time, she was in a West End show, she was in a revue.
Her comedic talents on stage led to offers to appear in film comedies.
One of her most memorable characters was the irrepressible
Sergeant Ruby Gates in the St Trinian films.
Girls!
Girls, where are you?
Girls!
Hello, darling.
Hello. Who's this?
It's Creepy, our new games mistress.
Miss Britton, I just had to see you.
You've no idea what's going on in the summerhouse.
There are two strange men in there. It's practically an orgy.
But I think she's best remembered for this brilliant monologue,
where she plays the role of a nursery-school teacher.
What shall we tell our story about today?
Rachel, take your shoes off your head and put it on your foot.
Now, shall we tell our story about a little mouse or about a big red bus?
What did you say, Peggy?
About a dear little bunny rabbit? That's a very good idea.
We will. We'll tell our story about a dear little bunny rabbit.
No, Sidney, he was not a burglar bunny and he...
No, nor was his daddy. No.
Well, he was just an ordinary...businessman.
Joyce Grenfell is somebody whose choice of language,
use of language, is absolutely wonderful.
And the best of her stuff just really does stand up so well
and I'm sure she must have been an influence
on performers coming after her.
Coming up, one of the most influential comedians
since the Second World War,
and the Lancashire lass with some of the funniest songs ever written.
Hello again.
Now, my next comic hero is someone who is often referred to as one of
the most influential comedians since the Second World War.
He went from the shipyards of Glasgow
to becoming a knight of the realm.
It's Glasgow's favourite son, The Big Yin, Sir Billy Connolly.
My parents used to take me to Lewis's department store
on Argyle Street in Glasgow.
They were skinflints, you know.
They'd take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.
"It's a big ginger cat." I said, "It's a baby tiger."
"Where's the elephants?"
"They're away for their lunch. Now, hurry up, come on."
One of Michael Parkinson's children,
I think, had a Billy Connolly comic album and said to his dad,
"You ought to hear this bloke - he's really funny."
Michael Parkinson heard it, said,
"Oh, we must get this guy for the show," so he had him on the Parkinson show.
"Oh, hello, how's it going? "Fine, fine."
He said, "How's the wife?" He said, "Oh, she's dead."
"What?" He says, "Dead. In the ground.
"Dead. I murdered her. Pfft. Forget it."
He said, "Kidding me on." He said, "no, no, this morning."
He said, "Show me."
Sure enough, there's a big mound of earth.
But there's a bum sticking out of it.
He says, "Is that her?" He says, "Aye."
He says, "What did you leave her bum sticking out for?"
He says, "I need somewhere to park my bike."
Like Jasper Carrott, Billy started out
on the folk club scene in the '70s,
and his early TV appearances usually featured
a stringed instrument and a silly song.
Here's a wee Glasgow one.
# Oh, the pigeon
# He's a nice bird
# And he sits
# On the grass
# And when he
# Gets excited
# He sticks his head
# Under his wing. #
I'm not always a fan of comedians that swear,
or swearing in comedy, let's say.
Sometimes it's used just to bolster a, sort of, poor joke
into a stronger one,
because audiences will laugh at certain words that they hear.
And also, when I was growing up with my family we would watch things
like Sunday Night At The London Palladium, and we'd sometimes say,
"Oh, I don't like that comedian - he's laughing at his own jokes."
That was a thing that we didn't like as a family.
But, of course, Billy Connolly does both, so it shows you,
there's no golden rule in comedy.
I was brought up on a housing estate just outside Glasgow.
Well, in Glasgow but just outside civilisation.
And I was...
And they used to have these vans.
You shopped at vans, you know?
All the shops... They were all boarded up.
It was like fucking Fort Apache, you know?
"What do you want?
"What? Cigarettes?
"Here. Get the fuck out of here."
The place was under siege!
It's just his language. It's what he says, it's what he does.
I don't find it remotely offensive.
Sometimes it's used for shock effect but, I mean, you know,
that's all part of the armoury, that's all part of the vocabulary.
The world's fucked. The world's fucked.
The whole thing's a huge fucking plot.
You know, also, he does laugh at the stuff that he's saying,
but that's cos you get the firm impression he's just thought of it, he's just said it.
It's the ugliest fucking dog in the world.
Them pit bulls, they're bought by
those spectacular tattooed fuckwits, you know?
Like...
It's a shark on a leash, isn't it?
It's got this pointy head with eyes in the corners.
Big row of teeth and an arsehole.
He is... I mean, I don't know of any comic, really, in Great Britain
that wouldn't place Billy Connolly right at the top of the tree.
He is hugely influential, probably one of the most influential
comedians since the Second World War, certainly in this country.
It's true. It's fucking true.
Or, I should say, in this island.
Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome Bruce Forsyth!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
Bruce Forsyth...
I was very fortunate to meet him on several occasions.
The first time I met him, I...
You know, I was on television so he knew who I was.
Obviously, I knew who Bruce Forsyth was.
And it was at a Johnny Dankworth- Cleo Laine concert.
There was a drinks afterwards, sort of reception thing.
And he came up to me... I'd never spoken to or met him before,
and he came up to me and said, "What you doing here?" Which...
HE CHUCKLES Which made me laugh immediately,
and I said, "Well, what are you doing here?"
What a lovely crowd. They're not a bad audience, are they?
Yeah. Wait till your fans get here. I know.
We've locked them out - there's no room for them.
He was an extraordinary figure.
I interviewed him once on Room 101 and we had a particular bit
where we wanted to show him tap dancing
but with his legs on my body - a kind of camera trick.
Music when you're ready.
MUSIC PLAYS
And he wanted to rehearse it quite seriously for about an hour or so,
which I really took note of,
because he was really quite a dedicated man
when it came to rehearsal, to try and get everything right.
And normally on something like that,
we would have tried it out a couple of times
but we wouldn't have spent an hour on it.
But the fact that we did made it all the better,
because I was comfortable with what we were doing,
he was comfortable with what we were doing. So it really paid off.
He was a great inspiration.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I remember the time he did Have I Got News For You
the first time and he was actually, surprisingly...
Surprisingly to me - I hadn't met him many times at that point.
He was quite nervous.
There we are. Thank you. Oh.
But as soon as he was introduced and he walked on, and I think they had
this pair of glittery curtains which he walked through, and suddenly...
And it was Bruce and he was doing the whole, "How are you?"
This sort of stuff. The audience loved him.
It's definitely time for...
Now, these are the cards that the Americans...
Please!
This is satire.
His nerves beforehand showed me how serious he was taking it -
that he wasn't just going to walk on expecting to be brilliant.
It was. But the fact that he was nervous beforehand,
I liked seeing that.
Tony Blair insists that weapons of mass destruction
will eventually be found in Iraq.
Well, it would be nice to see them, to see them...
AUDIENCE: Nice!
I think one of the things that's very interesting about him,
as well, is how he made this big leap from doing
end-of-the-pier shows to suddenly compering a live television show,
when he had no experience of doing live television.
Good evening!
# Ladies and gentlemen
# Welcome to Sunday Night At The London Palladium... #
One of the biggest shows in the country,
and you're doing new material every week, as the compere.
You can't do your act as you've practised it over the years.
So you've got to have a great degree of self-confidence.
Bruce did have self-confidence - there was no doubt about it.
I mean, he was a skilled dancer, singer.
You know, there was lots of things he could do.
Versatility - that was the key thing for him.
But people don't do that now.
I don't suppose they feel the need to.
MUSIC PLAYS APPLAUSE
The first time I saw Larry Grayson
was on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, I think,
and this would be in the early '70s.
I heard someone at my door. I said, "Who can it be?
"Who is at my door? Is it the milkman - Sterilised Stan...
"..trying to forces his yogurt through my letterbox? Or is it...?
"Or is it the window cleaner, Peekaboo Pete,
"with a dirty chamois? Anyway I said..."
I suppose he must have been in his 40s by the time he came to national
fame, so he'd had a long time to hone his act, to develop his act.
And his sense of timing, his comic timing, his verbal delivery,
I don't... I don't know anybody that's better, to be honest.
He's just so good.
If you look at some of the words written down, they may not seem
particularly amusing, but it was just the way he did it.
"Shut that door." And this knock came upon my door.
I said, "Come in," and the baker came in.
And I said, "Just one big one," I said, "and two fondants."
And, er...
LAUGHTER
I said, "And a fairy cake if you got one." And, um...
And, do you know, I could hardly move, cos the pain down here...
I could hardly... And he looked at me and he said,
"You have funny turns, don't you?"
I said, "Who told you?" He said, "The dustman."
There was an acerbic kind of acid quality to what he was saying.
You know, I lay in bed. I just lay.
And I thought, "I'll be all right in a minute."
LAUGHTER
You suffer with it, don't you?
I could tell, the way you're sitting.
Just that delivery, the put-downs. Just the...
And the, sort of, turning of the head and all this sort of stuff.
It was just... And you could hear, audiences loved him.
And who should be coming down the road but the postman,
Pop It In Pete.
LAUGHTER
"Hello, Pete," I said.
"You've got a big bundle there."
I said...
LAUGHTER
I said, "Is it all for me?" He said, "No."
Later, when he did The Generation Game, you couldn't be like that
with members of the public in front of you.
So, he was friendlier and cuddlier, as it were.
Jim...? Causer.
Causer - that's an unusual name, Jim.
And... It's a French word, actually. It means "to chat".
Oh, does it? Yes. Oh.
She got in quick, didn't she?
He emerged fully formed in the early '70s.
We didn't see his apprenticeship.
He just arrived when he was ready.
I think I first saw Victoria Wood in a series she did
with Julie Walters called Wood And Walters, which was the first
of the modern-day female double act in the early '80s.
Who did you say it was again?
BOTH: Walters.
And what's the name of the programme?
Wood And Walters, studio six.
Nope. Sorry.
The combination of Victoria Wood -
Victoria's writing and performance skills,
allied with Julie Walters' supreme ability as a comic actress -
was wonderful.
And when she then moved on to do Victoria Wood As Seen on TV,
the sketch show,
the two series she did of As Seen on TV was just superb.
No, sorry, sorry. The black ones.
They're a flat lace-up.
Beg pardon? Well, those aren't flat.
Flatter now.
Lots of people remember the one with the cross-Channel swimmer,
where she plays the young girl that's gone swimming
across the Channel and disappears
and her parents don't seem to really care about it.
That mixture of, er, comedy, tragedy, drama,
charm was brilliantly done.
Are you worried about tomorrow?
Well, I am in a way, because I've never swum such a long way
and some of it's in the dark. And I don't really like the dark.
There's no support vessel, no officials, nobody.
Chrissie's entirely alone.
Are you still gonna go, Chrissie?
Yeah, I think so. I might as well.
That was eight days ago.
Chrissie hasn't yet reached land.
Oh, I'm sure she'll turn up eventually.
Slow but sure - that's our Chrissie.
When you're writing stuff on your own as a comedy writer,
very few people do that because that's really hard.
When you're writing stuff on your own, how do you know it's funny?
You know, if you're writing in a partnership, two of you,
the other person laughs or they don't laugh.
"Why didn't you laugh at that?" "Well, I didn't think it was funny."
"What about this, what about that?" You kick it backwards and forwards.
One person doing it is extremely hard and extremely rare.
The whole Acorn Antiques thing - I mean, it was totally inspired.
Somebody had better answer that phone.
PHONE RINGS Oh, blow!
I suppose I'd better answer it.
You answer it and I'll get you a nice cup of...
Hot cup of coffee. You don't have to.
After all, you are the sole proprietor of Acorn Antiques now.
Hello?
The Ballad Of Barry And Freda, I think it's called, which is one of
her more famous ones, as a piece of work, that really is extraordinary.
The momentum, the tempo, as it gets funnier and funnier
and funnier and funnier and funnier.
I mean, the whole thing must be about five or six minutes long.
# "Let's do it, let's do it
# "Do it while the mood is right
# "I'm feeling appealing
# "I've really got an appetite
# "I'm on fire
# "With desire
# "I could handle half the tenors in a male voice choir
# "Let's do it
# "Let's do it tonight... #
And it just gets better and better and better and better,
until the audience are almost sort of, like,
hypnotised into some kind of comedy trance.
# "Don't choose me, don't use me
# "My mother sent a note to say you must excuse me
# I can't do it
# "I can't do it tonight"
# "Let's do it, let's do it
# "I feel I absolutely must
# "I won't exempt you, want to tempt you
# "Want to drive you mad with lust
# "No cautions, just contortions
# "Smear an avocado on me lower portions..." #
The comic imagery is richer and richer.
It's like joke after joke after joke.
And if you can combine that kind of writing with music as well,
it just is such a powerful combination.
# "Let's do it, let's do it
# "I really want to rant and rave
# "Let's go, cos I know just how I want you to behave
# "Not bleakly, not meekly
# "Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly
# "Let's do it
# "Let's do it tonight." #
Thank you.
There could be two members of her audience sitting in the front row
listening, "How did she know about this? Has she been watching this?"
It's just astonishing, and it...
It reaches the peak of comic invention.
It's extraordinary.
A big welcome, please, for Mick Miller.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ah.
Is that... Am I a double act?
Firstly, I'm not the fella from Little Britain in a wheelchair.
I've just, er...
Mick Miller was somebody who always stood out to me.
He had a bald head and this rather eccentric hairstyle,
almost as if he'd, sort of, been...
His hair had been cut by a drunken barber or something.
I was born bald, so I think I've done quite well.
I got this shampoo - it's called Shoulders.
Amongst a plethora of big northern men, he was different in his look.
He risked looking different
and he didn't mind looking a bit silly or comic.
Here's an impression. This is a pale man with a beard.
Very straight-faced, as well, I think.
Very, sort of, like, deadpan.
And, of course, being deadpan is something I do sometimes,
quite a lot or whatever.
It's quite a useful device because if the comic doesn't look like
what he's saying is funny to him, that makes it, kind of, funnier.
And there's a puzzled look where you look in in the eyes, like, "Well, why are they laughing?"
I keep rescue dogs and I've got one, bless him, Charlie.
He's eight months old, Charlie, and he's got an ingrowing tail,
Charlie, bless him.
And he costs me a fortune.
You know, I get him X-rayed every day, see if he's happy.
And that can sometimes add to the laugh that you've already got
by delivering the punchline, so it's a sort of...
You know, it's a technique that's as old as the hills
but I particularly liked him because of that,
and he didn't have chubby fingers wearing gold rings, either.
After the break, I'll take a look back
at Lenny Henry's amazing 45-year career,
and celebrate the man who inspired me to make
the move into comedy.
Welcome back. Our next comedy giant has the kind of career longevity
today's young comics can only dream of -
45 years appearing on stage and telly
in every genre from stand-up to sketch to sitcom -
even throwing in a bit of the old Shakespeare for good measure.
I am, of course, talking about Sir Lenny Henry.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
You can hear in the audience's response to his return to stand-up
a few years ago just how much the British public love Lenny.
Oh, yeah.
Good evening.
How you doing?
Nice to see you.
# Barack Obama
# Now he's in, we'll run a little bit calmer
# He's inspirational like the Dalai Lama
# When he goes down south, he'll have to wear a suit of armour. #
Myself and Lenny Henry are roughly the same age - late 30s -
and I remember seeing him on television, New Faces,
when he was about 16 years old, as indeed I was, some 15 years ago.
And, um, I was astonished by just the confidence he had.
I mean, you know, he was very funny, the impressions were very funny,
but he had such confidence, as a 16-year-old,
to be doing live television.
# Got myself a crying, talking, sleeping, walking
# Living doll... #
I don't know how he did it.
The extraordinary confidence and belief,
which is a wonderful thing to have at that age.
It took me... It took me a long time before I got there
and I'm not even sure I'm still there yet, actually.
I think there's still a way to go.
I'm Lenny Henry and I'm on the New Faces winners' show
a week on Saturday. It's time you old faces moved over a bit
and let us new ones get in.
Old faces!
True to his word, just six years later Lenny was on the BBC,
starring in a new comedy show.
Yeah, my name is Delbert Wilkins
and I'm from Brixton, hub of the universe.
You know Brixton, that well-known South London resort.
Well, the last resort anyway, you know I mean?
HE CHUCKLES
He was, sort of, the pioneer that was holding the torch up
for a future generation to come behind him.
It's a good year for my people.
Pfft! Anybody see the Lewis Hamilton?
CHEERING
How did he do that?
How did he pull a Pussycat Doll?
How fast do you have to drive to get one of THEM?
I've done 72 on the M4 - can I have a Nolan sister?
His importance, I think, can't be overestimated.
All right? Good evening.
My name's Alexei Sayle.
I'm actually a journalist.
I'm gossip columnist on What's On In Stoke Newington.
Yeah, you might have seen it -
it's a big piece of paper with "fuck all" written on it, you know.
Alexei Sayle - I remember seeing him in about 1980
in a very small theatre in London - a 60-seater or something -
and he was just astonishing.
There's a nice person here for a Morris Minor
going to Afghanistan this summer.
Room for eight more on the roof rack!
Seems like half the student union's in Afghanistan.
Nom, sorry - it's half the Soviet Union.
I get mixed up, sorry.
Political satire! Yeah!
This is what we come from Islington for! Yeah!
He gave you the impression that he didn't care
whether you found him funny or not.
He wasn't interested in whether the audience found him funny.
The fact that we were just having hysterics.
HE MUTTERS INCOMPREHENSIBLY
They're not called wine bars cos of what they drink.
It's cos of what they fucking do - whine all the time.
HE MUTTERS
"Ever had a multiple orgasm? Awful, isn't it?"
The suit got sort of, like, you know, tight around his body,
and just swinging his arms.
It was to the point where you just wanted him to stop,
because it was hurting so much.
"Seen the latest Woody Allen?" "Yes, awful, isn't it?"
"Oh, the quiche looks rather nice."
It's very funny to be very aggressive and angry about trivia.
So he would do stuff about a mime artist.
Ain't it a load of old wank, mime, eh?
I mean, who in their right mind would pay good money to see
a real man sew his fingers together,
walk into a high wind and get shut in a fucking glass box?
With some French fucker called Bip or Snot or something.
He pretends to sew his fingers together, walk into a high wind
and get shut in a fucking glass box
and people travel from Guildford to see him!
And he to do jokes about Mussolini.
You know, he'd have punchlines with the word Mussolini in them.
This girl comes up to me and she goes, "Here, are you Mussolini?"
I said, "Erm...
"Erm, yeah, yeah."
She says, "I thought you was dead."
I said, "No, it was just my day off, you know."
So, she pulled me over the dance floor and butted me in the face.
I said, "What's that for?
She said, "That's for the invasion of Crete."
Suddenly, here's this guy saying, "It's great being Jewish, you know,
"cos you can going to work and you say,
" 'Today I've got to sit in the back garden with a porkpie on my head.' "
The way he, sort of, "Porkpie."
You know, it was...
As if, almost, he was blaming the pie for being pork.
Just astonishing.
The attack was just...
A weirdness...
I'd never seen anything like that in this country up to that point.
You know, it was...
There are a lot of comedians, I think, who never saw him,
who are influenced by him because they've been influenced by
somebody who was influenced by him who's been influenced by him.
They don't even know they've been influenced by Alexei Sayle but they have.
There was a whole new way of doing stuff which he embraced.
And along with Billy Connolly,
he is one of the most influential comedians
since the Second World War.
And the great thing about Alexei is he'll readily admit that.
There's no false modesty - he knows how important he was, and is.
Sounds fair enough, really.
Tonight, we have looked at a tiny slice of the history of
British comedy, highlighting a few people along the way
who must stand in for the many
who are only omitted through the chronic lack of time.
Comedy is personal.
What you find funny may or may not appeal to everyone else.
Nobody likes a good laugh more than I do.
But the performers who I've highlighted this evening have,
by and large, pulled off the difficult task of building
large fan bases that have remained loyal throughout their career.
We Brits excel at comedy.
If comedy was an Olympic sport,
we would have earned hundreds of gold medals.
Well, I'm worn out before I start.
Why is something funny?
It can be an unexpected word or attitude.
She's dipping her slippers in vinegar and kicking you up the arse.
A description of a commonplace occurrence rendered farcical
through exaggeration or hyperbole.
A rude word, a funny face.
An astute observation that you've always known but never thought of.
Stannah stairlifts - you look like a right wanker on them.
A marvellous piece of misdirection which shows you one path
before suddenly revealing another,
verbally subverting reality and turning the commonplace on its head.
You know who it was? Who?
Bloody Greta Garbo.
Oliver Hardy disappearing into a very deep puddle.
Humour is subjective.
What you find funny is up to you.
But hopefully a lot of what you've seen tonight
has tickled your funny bone.
I do hope so.
Goodnight.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media