Humour’s a dangerous subject. Friends once recommended the TV “comedy” series, The Royle Family, to me, and I lasted ten stony-faced minutes before switching off with a sense of near-orgasmic relief. Once, when singing the praises of Father Ted, which had had me in tears of laughter the previous evening, a colleague assured me it was the unfunniest programme he had ever seen – “the worst kind of asinine, tenth-rate slapstick”. And I once played friends a tape of a mock cricket commentary which had literally had me rolling about on the floor, only to be met by utter bafflement.
As I said, tricky subject.
Here’s a list of my all-time comedy favourites, just to give you an idea of my taste (or lack of it):
Funniest TV Series: The Day Today
Funniest Radio Series: The Goons
Funniest Film: Le Diner de Cons or Withnail & I
Funniest Novel: Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse
Funniest Cartoonist: Matt (Daily Telegraph)
Funniest Critic: Clive James writing about TV
Funniest Diarist: Auberon Waugh
Funniest Political Writer: Frank Johnson
Funniest Magazine: Private Eye (1960s/1970s)
The basis on which this selection was made is simple: the winners all reduced me to tears of laughter more consistently than anything or anyone else in their respective categories. And, believe me, I rarely cry with laughter.
Today, I want to single out Frank Johnson, whose real forte was parliamentary sketch-writing, but who also penned very funny columns on a variety of subjects. Johnson, born in the East End into genuine poverty in 1943, left school at 15 with one “O” level, having developed a lifelong passion for Opera and Ballet (he had to pretend he was visiting football matches in order not to get beaten up). In a sentence that demonstrates his speciality – confounding the reader’s expectations – he summed up his childhood milieu:
“To many of us born into this world of warmth and sharing, there was one overriding question: how to get out of it?”
Given his background, he should have been a truculent lefty, but he was an old-fashioned, visceral Tory to the core of his being. He was simply too witty, too sharp-brained, too amused – and too good-hearted - to harbour resentments about his upbringing. For instance, far from deriding the 1950s as a grey, class-ridden, impoverished decade, he declared:
“…to grow up in 1950s London was to grow up in the last decade when everything was more or less as it should be.”
After taking the tea-boy route into journalism, followed by jobs on various regional and national newspapers, he became political sketch-writer for theDaily Telegraph in 1972, and, later, in the 1980s, did the same job for The Times. He took on a variety of more senior editorial roles in later life, but it was sketch-writing which allowed his genius for comedy to shine.
Pomposity, self-regard and hypocrisy brought out the best in him. Speaking of Anthony Crosland, an intellectually snobbish Labour Foreign Secretary, he commented:
“…no disrespect is here intended to Mr. Crosland, who is one of the cleverest men in the Commons, as he would himself concede.”
His description of Michael Foot’s style as “the Roget’s Thesaurus school of oratory” was perfect. As was this remark about Roy Jenkins: “That incomparable voice, beside which Sir John Gielgud sounds like rough trade”. As was this, about an eminent Tory smoothie: “But there, the following morning, in the lobby, encased in seven foot of Savile Row suiting and four foot of Jermyn Street shirting, awash in half a gallon of aftershave, was Mr. Heseltine.” Or this, about Ted Heath, another favourite target: “On the issues, Mr. Heath silent is as interesting as Mr. Heath talkative, as well as easier to understand.” Or this brilliant demolition of Roy Hattersley’s habitual displays of compassion: “We know that when he is visibly moved (as happens often) about the plight of elderly people or of the disabled or of racially disadvantaged groups in our so-called equal society, he does not really mean it. That somehow makes it less offensive.” Or this brilliant description of Enoch Powell’s “haunting voice, with its Black Country accent which makes Mr. Powell sound like an admixture of St Thomas Aquinas and an Aston Villa trainer.” Gosh, that’s good!
Again and again, it is the exquisitely worded and placed aside that does the trick:
“The Tory backbencher, Sir Bernard Braine, frothed: ‘It is more than a coincidence that the majority of traitors in this country since the war have been loners, perverts, or drunkards’ (A representative cross-section of society, really).”
But he was much more than a pure gagster - his description of events on the night of the Brighton bombing was full of truly effective touches:
“Sir Keith Joseph was sighted wearing an immaculately tied dressing gown from which protruded rather chic, cream pyjama legs – the whole effect resembling Sir Noel Coward at his most characteristic.”
That is genius.
As is this definition of “misinterpreted”: “Mr. Reid said later in the day that his remarks had been ‘misinterpreted’ – the word which politicians use when they have said something they regret, as a synonym for ‘quoted’.” Bull’s-eye!
When I was complaining the other day about the oleaginous praise heaped on that old windbag Michael Foot, I remembered that Johnson had nailed – once and for all – the Tory addiction to delivering encomiums to the recently deceased, no matter how objectionable their politics. Here he is, imagining a Tory praising the dead Soviet premier, Leonid Brezhnev:
“Sir Leonid, one of the greatest proceduralists that the politburo has ever seen… a man who touched life at many points… remembered for his many personal kindnesses to new members… unfailing courtesy… is survived by his wife, though not by many of his critics.”
Conservatives and right-wingers alike owe Frank Johnson an enormous debt of gratitude. He not only made us laugh more than any other writer, but also validated our contempt for the relentless espousal of the politics of victimhood and entitlement by the chattering classes (his phrase, by the way). He captured perfectly the cumulatively enervating effect of their dreary, self-righteous, smug championing of one bloody silly cause after another:
“There were some exchanges about the death grant. That is this month’s cause among the compassionate classes. The grant is still too low apparently. Either that, or people should not have to die in order to qualify. Or it should also be paid on behalf of the living so as to make it a life grant. Who knows what the precise complaint is? Or cares?”
If you haven’t found any of the above quotations remotely amusing, that’s okay: it doesn’t make you a bad person. If you smiled once or twice, the good news is that JR Books recently published a compilation of the best of Frank Johnson’s writings, edited by his widow, Virginia Fraser (he died of cancer in 2006). “Best Seat in the House: The Wit and Parliamentary Chronicles of Frank Johnson” is utterly brilliant, and worth its cover price ten times over. (My one criticism is that it misses out his sketch about a Merseyside MP droning on about the prevalence of glue-sniffing in his constituency amongst “children as young as ten”, which prompted Johnson to comment, “Well, they’ve got to start some time.”)
I met the Great Man once, in 1996, when he was on the panel of a TV programme I was producing. I cherish the memory of the guests and production team all unwinding over a drink in the early hours of the morning, enjoying Frank Johnson’s flow of anecdotes, impersonations and waspish asides. It isn’t every day you get to meet one of your true heroes and not feel in the least disappointed. What a privilege.
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