Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ooh... that's dated badly

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #76
    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.

    Comment


      #77
      Originally posted by My Name Is Ian View Post
      Loadsamoney 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.
      I think that this is because the Pub Landlord has existed at a time when audiences are a bit more clued-up as to what is the real point of the joke. It’s in any case safer ground for them to be laughing at an unreconstructed white bloke, as opposed to, for example, a stereotypical Greek kebab-shop owner.

      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.

      Comment


        #78
        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.
        ​​​​

        Comment


          #79
          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.
          I love Disco and the orange TVs, but fucking Ilja Richter and his unfunny skits are infuriating. I mean, good production values and some of his parodies were spot on, but generally they were not funny, and his clowning and face-pulling and wide-eyed punchlining are just unbearable. Richter's great regret was that her was born 45 years too late to be a cabaret star in Berlin. I imagine that when he saw Joel Grey doing his thing in that movie, Ilja thought he saw himself reflected on to the big screen.

          Did you see the episode where the audience goes conga-lining to Heino? It's like the HJ in flared trousers.

          Comment


            #80
            Originally posted by My Name Is Ian View Post
            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.
            ​​​​
            My Name Is Ian I've listened to a few of these now and was already going to mention my enjoyment so far. However tonight I was out for a run and was listening to the Nationwide one and when the tiny atlas competition scam was being discussed my first thought was "sounds like that daft c*** who was trying to beat the Spot the Ball and never won" and then of course he turned up a few minutes later! I clearly remember the original report, I'm sure the guy had a rubber stamp made up of loads of X's, which he used to make his multiple entries, and I can almost hear him now saying at the end how long he'd been playing and how much he'd spent, and his voice rising, saying "and all I've ever won is five pounds and a voucher for a PAIR OF PANTS".

            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

            Comment


              #81
              Glad you're enjoying the podcasts :-)

              That story about spot the ball is amazing. I'm in awe a bit of the fact that they got away with it for so long.

              Comment


                #82
                That’s an amazing story, and as the author notes, would make a great mini series.

                Comment


                  #83
                  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.'

                  Comment


                    #84
                    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.

                    Comment


                      #85
                      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.

                      Comment


                        #86
                        Home James! was a sequel? Given that I currently live in the area I'm tempted to watch an episode of Up The Elephant & Round the Castle.

                        Comment


                          #87
                          Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                          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.
                          On Monty Python, though, surely, surely they were exposing not exploiting the thing underlying the humour by naming a middle-class character "Mrs Nigger-Baiter"?

                          Comment


                            #88
                            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.

                            Comment


                              #89
                              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.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                What'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.

                                Comment


                                  #91
                                  Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                  On Monty Python, though, surely, surely they were exposing not exploiting the thing underlying the humour by naming a middle-class character "Mrs Nigger-Baiter"?
                                  Well, 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.

                                  Comment


                                    #92
                                    Originally posted by George View Post
                                    What's Loadsamoney done to upset people?
                                    Listen to the Friday Night Live episode of Ian and Dotmund's podcast - that explains it far better than I ever could.

                                    My Name Is Ian That's another hearty recommendation by the way.

                                    Comment


                                      #93
                                      Just listened to it. It was a one trick character that quickly outstayed it's welcome, but not one I can in anyway get upset about.

                                      Comment


                                        #94
                                        Originally posted by Kowalski View Post
                                        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.
                                        It says something about the racial politics of the show that it finds closure on racism in that episode when {SPOILER ALERT} Bodie leaves the hospital at the end with his arm around the nurse.

                                        Comment


                                          #95
                                          Originally posted by George View Post
                                          What'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.
                                          The issue isn't so much that it's a probematic character. That's broadly irrelevant, to me. As this tread has shown, there have been problematic characters everywhere in TV from the 1950s through to the 1990s and beyond. For me, though, the real issue comes when a character bleeds out into wider society and feeds into its prejudices, and Loadsamoney definitely did. As mentioned above, even the creators ended up killing it off. But they monetised it, had a hit single, did very nicely out of it.

                                          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.

                                          Comment


                                            #96
                                            I 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.

                                            Comment


                                              #97
                                              Bill 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.

                                              Comment


                                                #98
                                                Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                                                Well, 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.
                                                Not to defend Python's attitudes to race in general, but one of those examples ("Who does?") is a joke about a racist member of the public ("Mrs Scum" - there's a clue) being caught outside their normal frame of reference, being goaded and humiliated in a brainless tv quiz show ("tonight's star prize, a blow on the head") by a patronising and unctuous host, and talking gibberish. I think it was pretty clear that the object of the joke was stoopid tv first, and racist members of the public second. I'm not saying that those jolly funny grammar/private/Oxbridge educated lads taking the piss out of the public doesn't have it's own issues to grapple with, before even getting to the female characters in the shows, but not particularly debatable in the racism context?

                                                Comment


                                                  #99
                                                  Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                                                  Bill 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.
                                                  I thought it was all grim as fuck, and I was 14, which I think was pretty much his target demographic. We're quite fond of anger leavened with jokes here, and I'm particularly fond of it, but there was too much anger for any jokes to withstand. It was listening to Bill Hicks that made me realise that some comedians are telling you a lot more about themselves than they'd like. I wonder where he would have wound up if he'd not died so young. I strongly suspect that his trajectory would have lead him rightwards all the way into the arms of the people he railed against.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                                    I 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.
                                                    This is a problem with loads of 80's stuff isn't it? Everyone's having a good time, it's going well, and before you know it out comes the Alan Carr impression, and you're either watching through your fingers or hiding behind the sofa.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X