Al Murray popped up on tracteurgarcon's facebook a while back to talk about painting WW2 figures. Which was all very strange and brilliant at the same time.
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Originally posted by My Name Is Ian View PostLoadsamoney was killed off by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, run over on Comic Relief. I wondered whether Al Murray might have done the same for The Pub Landlord, but this doesn't seem to have been the case.
The killing-off of Loadsamoney was decidedly clunky. Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse supposedly became ‘disturbed’ by the character becoming hero-worshipped, but I can’t say I recall the character being met with anything bar total non-ironic appreciation from the start.
I recall Enfield doing a lot of ‘disowning’ interviews ahead of Loadsamoney’s demise: having him run over on Comic Relief was a very cringeworthy moment of TV, borne out by the sheepish look on Ben Elton’s face when they returned to him in the studio from the set-piece.
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One of the podcasts that we did was the first appearance of Loadsamoney (the whole episode of Friday Night Live is on YouTube), and there's little reason to think it's a satire of anything. He's introduced, BTW, as "The Plasterer."
Harry Enfield has a massive blind spot for this sort of thing. There was that Nelson Mandela thing as well, and he was still defending that last year.
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Originally posted by sw2borshch View Post
I have spent many an hour the past couple of months on Friday and Saturday nights with a belly full of Weizen watching Ilja Richter on Disco 7x and his baffling skits.
Did you see the episode where the audience goes conga-lining to Heino? It's like the HJ in flared trousers.
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Originally posted by My Name Is Ian View PostOne of the podcasts that we did was the first appearance of Loadsamoney (the whole episode of Friday Night Live is on YouTube), and there's little reason to think it's a satire of anything. He's introduced, BTW, as "The Plasterer."
Harry Enfield has a massive blind spot for this sort of thing. There was that Nelson Mandela thing as well, and he was still defending that last year.
And then the predictable exchange in our living room - Mam "poor old fella", Dad "bloody idiot more like".
Trying to find the original clip just now brought up this confirmation that, for one version of the competition at least, it really was a scam.
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/...e_ball_swindle
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The one on 'In Sickness And Health' is very bleak. WTF were Speight and Mitchell thinking could be achieved by bringing him back in the middle of the Thatcher era with a stereotypical black gay character and Arthur English as a racist echo chamber? I don't question their sincerity but I think it was remarkably narcissistic of Mitchell to think he was doing a good job when he knew people were walking up to him in the street and clearly sympathizing with Alf's position. Speight just seems incredibly, consistently naive, having also written 'Curry And Chips.'
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Yeah, I do think there's a point at which you have to allow for 'different times', for the good of your (my) own sanity. I mean, I vaguely remember this programme from when I was a teenager, but all I really had of it in my memory banks was him pushing his wife around in a wheelchair, so the last series before Dandy Nichols died.
There's just too much of a pattern for it all to have been misinterpreted. You've got Q and Curry & Chips in 1969, Oh in Colour in 1970, Love Thy Neighbour in 1972, It Ain't Half Hot Mum in 1974, Mind Your Language in 1977 and Up The Elephant & Round The Castle in 1983, all bookended by Til Death To Us Part from 1965 and In Sickness * In Health from 1985 to 1992.
Essentially, you've got four main players, here: Vince Powell (who wrote Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language), Johnny Speight & Warren Mitchell, and Spike Milligan. And right at the tail end you've got Jim Davidson, who remained a regular on primetime Saturday night television until into this century.
And I've forgotten more than I can remember, there.Last edited by My Name Is Ian; 09-05-2021, 00:41.
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There was also racism/stereotyping a go-go in Monty Python and The Goodies, concurrently to the above. (And doubtless many other programmes.)
Jim Davidson was the worst offender, IMO. At least in those other shows there was an ‘attempt’ at some kind of craft - albeit a misguided one in the majority of cases.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostThere was also racism/stereotyping a go-go in Monty Python and The Goodies, concurrently to the above. (And doubtless many other programmes.)
Jim Davidson was the worst offender, IMO. At least in those other shows there was an ‘attempt’ at some kind of craft - albeit a misguided one in the majority of cases.
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I strongly advise not watching Up The Elephant & Round The Castle. The episode of it that I saw featured some series of mishaps leading to Jim Davidson wearing a pink negligee owned by a woman he'd just copped with and freaking out that his friends would think he was gay if they saw him in it, or something.
Also, in a move so hackneyed you half expect 50 Sunday league football teams to run out and start up some matches, his character's name is Jim London. Good job he wasn't involved in The Fosters.
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Just before lockdown last year someone in work was getting rid of a stack of DVDs so he gave me first dibs. I noticed the Professionals boxset so I thought I'd gave that a whirl because I've been watching it on and off for years on ITV4 and I wanted.to see if there were any episodes I hadn't already seen.
The boxset contained an episode that they don't show anymore; the one with the KKK type movement led by Tony Booth. Obviously the episode contained racial epithets, and quite a few of them came from the lips of Bodie in fact. I watched a few more episodes and noticed a couple of things; Bodie used racial epithets in quite a few episodes and they make a lot of edits to the episodes they show on ITV4.
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Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View PostOn Monty Python, though, surely, surely they were exposing not exploiting the thing underlying the humour by naming a middle-class character "Mrs Nigger-Baiter"?
If it was ‘exposing’ this type of racial stereotyping, then I’d say it was very close to the mark.
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- Jan 2015
- 9589
- Wrexham... ish
- R. + R. McReynold's Travelling Circus, The Jurgen Klopp Farewell Tour XI, Page's Boys
- Ginger Nut
Originally posted by George View PostWhat's Loadsamoney done to upset people?
My Name Is Ian That's another hearty recommendation by the way.
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Originally posted by Kowalski View PostJust before lockdown last year someone in work was getting rid of a stack of DVDs so he gave me first dibs. I noticed the Professionals boxset so I thought I'd gave that a whirl because I've been watching it on and off for years on ITV4 and I wanted.to see if there were any episodes I hadn't already seen.
The boxset contained an episode that they don't show anymore; the one with the KKK type movement led by Tony Booth. Obviously the episode contained racial epithets, and quite a few of them came from the lips of Bodie in fact. I watched a few more episodes and noticed a couple of things; Bodie used racial epithets in quite a few episodes and they make a lot of edits to the episodes they show on ITV4.
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Originally posted by George View PostWhat's Loadsamoney done to upset people? I heard Simon Price had a go at the character recently on the CM podcast, but he's prone to being a po-faced bore.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I think Harry Enfield is a racist, or say that he intended to feed into that idea of an 'undeserving poor', or played up to the prejudices of some scumbags, but I don't think he has paid due diligence repeatedly in creating some of his characters over the years. That episode of Friday Night Live also featured Stavros. All comedy performers know that they're playing with fire when they play with prejudice. For many nowadays, I suspect it's the biggest reason they do it.
I certainly ascribe less responsibility/blame (choose your poison) to Harry Enfield than I do to Warren Mitchell and Johnny Speight, because the latter two did Alf Garnett for ten years, went away, and then came back and had another go which lasted another seven years (and without so much as the tempering voice to his ranting), in full knowledge of how that character had smacked the law of unintended consequences square in the face, in terms of appealing to the people it was claiming to satirise. What I would add, though, is that Warren Mitchell was Labour-voting and of Jewish upbringing, and the fact that someone from that background and of his age - he was 13 when WW2 broke out - could still be pedalling Garnett in the 1990s shows both how much attitudes have changed and how long ago it now is since the 1990s.
There is a general miasma of prejudice in the shows that we've watched that just hangs over TV from the past generally, though. You can just never be quite sure when someone's going to black up, or grope someone, or speak in a 'hilarious' foreign accent, or start mincing, or whatever. There's barely any on shows for kids, at least not for for younger kids, and as a result many - though far from all - of them have aged far better than, say, most sitcoms. News and current affairs does little but use extremely dated language.
But it's at its most prevalent in comedy and light entertainment, and even with the knowledge that these were different times, it can be a difficult watch. Suffice to say that when they do cross those lines, it's never funny, but the contemporary audience is guaranteed to be laughing, screaming and applauding themselves silly. But in part that's why I love the medium in the first place. It's such a perfect time capsule. It's a medium speaking to the world in which it lives, seldom with much thought for what irs cultural legacy might be. Having so much of it at my disposal via Youtube and stuff I've downloaded from elsewhere, it kind of feels like having a time machine in the corner of my living room. It is, in a way, I guess.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostWell, I’m a big Python fan, but I’d say it’s debatable. There were several other sketches featuring lines such as: ‘She doesn’t like darkies? (Pause) Who does?’, or a parody black servant called Rastus possessing a predictably stereotypical accent, plus the associated blacking-up.
If it was ‘exposing’ this type of racial stereotyping, then I’d say it was very close to the mark.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostBill Hicks at his best was one of the finest stand-ups of all time - but that 'Goatboy' routine he insisted on doing was grim as f***, even for the time.
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Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View PostI have been watching Robin Williams' 1980s appearances on Johnny Carson's show. He is sensationally good until he goes into a mincing routine, when he just becomes like any other homophobic comic. Predictably it gets a bigger laugh than his good stuff.
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