There’s nothing quite as disappointing as watching a favourite TV comic going through an unfunny patch. When a writer lays an egg, or a film director produces a turkey, we tend to concentrate on the bits that are vintage and draw a discreet veil over the rest: we assume they’ll eventually return to form. As Roger Federer put it when losing last year’s U.S. Open, “you can’t have ‘em all”.
But when great comedians lose it, it feels like we’ve lost something as well – because so few people actually, genuinely make us laugh. Besides, the failure is so public, it’s hard to know where to look. Jimmy Tarbuck (yes, I know, but he once had Britain eating out of his pudgy hand) memorably credited Michael Parkinson with getting the British public to laugh at him again after a lengthy spell in comedic purdah (working men’s clubs and ITV, in those days).
Frankie Howerd had an even more up and down career (Ooh! Ah! No, don’t! Please!). Harry Enfield, who was a comedy god in the mid-1990s, started complaining in the early Noughties that the public simply no longer found him funny – and he was right. Morecambe and Wise started off not being popular, soared higher and yet higher until the mid-1970s, when they became the most popular comedy act this country had ever seen, then went into rapid decline after a move to ITV.
The ultimate pratfall from grace – and I can barely suppress a warm surge of pleasure here – was probably executed by Ben Elton, who went from 1980s/1990s alternative comedy king (remember all those cracks about “Thatch” and “Normo Tebbs” – my God, how we roared!) and, more significantly, the co-writer of the Golden Age Blackadder, to being the man who sold his soul by writing utterly witless musicals about Queen and Rod Stewart. “Wot’s vat all abaht?” as he might once have bellowed in that ludicrously unconvincing mockney accent which he surely didn’t inherit from his English teacher mother.
And now it has happened to one of my comedy heroes – Paul Whitehouse. Having written scripts for Harry Enfield, and having acted as a brilliant foil in that comedian’s various superb 1990s’ BBC series, Whitehouse, along with co-writer Charlie Higson, created the magnificent Fast Show in the late ‘90s. Rowley Birkin QC on his own would guarantee Whitehouse a place in any comedy Hall of Fame – but add Unlucky Alf, Arthur Atkinson, Ron Manager, Ken (“Suit You!”) and Lindsey, the dickheaded offroader, and you’re talking about a real genre genius. After two series of a wet sitcom – Happiness – he returned to form playing an endless array of characters in Help (with the disgraced Chris Langham – which is why it’s never mentioned): Monty the cab driver was sensitive, poignant acting by any measure. Linking up again with Harry Enfield for the surprisingly good Harry and Paul from 2007 proved that he still had it. But the signs of a decline were already evident – it’s Enfield’s turns that tend to linger in the memory.
His latest work, the BBC2 series, Bellamy’s People, should be funny – the radio series that preceded it was pretty good - but it so absolutely isn’t. Other people are quite amusing – Charlie Higson and Simon Day have their moments, while Felix Dexter steals the show with his eternal Nigerian student, his deranged evangelical preacher, and his DJ, Early D. But Whitehouse seems to have forgotten how to be funny: here, he’s just as dire as in those dreadful Norwich Union adverts which, along with the GoCompare opera singer, must have the whole nation lurching for the remote control so it can hit the ‘mute’ button as quickly as possible.
Whitehouse’s cockney builder, Martin Hole, the hippie wreck Shadowman, louche rock impresario, Ian Craig-Oldman, and radio host Steve Goodall go on for ever – and they’re screamingly tedious. Accurate enough, but boring. (Simon Day’s fey Yorkshire poet, Geoffrey Allerton, is miles funnier than any of them.) Critics of the Fast Show complained that none of the sketches were allowed time to breathe (which was, after all, the point - the title’s a hint). Here, Whitehouse’s contributions don’t appear to have been edited at all.
Ah, well! Let’s hope it represents a brief laugh-free hiatus in what has been a career distinguished by some of the greatest comic acting I’ve ever seen, allied to some of the greatest comic characters ever created. He’ll be back on form some day – let’s just hope Ben Elton stays buried.
No comments:
Post a Comment