Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand

This programme contains some strong language

CHATTER

We were all slightly mystified

by what was going to happen on the evening.

There was a certain element of Scooby-Doo about it,

a certain element of,

"You'll be wondering why I've invited you all here,"

especially cos it's not somewhere you'd associate with Bob.

My goodness, we felt so lucky to be there.

We really did. Sitting there, in that very intimate environment.

Bob was very keen for me to come down that night, which is...

It's a source of great pride.

Bob had asked for people to come along who he wanted to be there,

and I was one of them, so I was kind of a bit honoured by that, actually.

I think I did know that he'd been ill.

Obviously we didn't know it was his last-ever time that he would be

performing for an invited audience, but it felt very exclusive.

And he said, "I'm doing this thing at the Albany,

"would you like to come down?"

And I thought, "I appear to be mates with Bob Monkhouse!"

You knew from the moment you entered the room

that you're about to witness something special.

I always like the sound of a chatty audience.

If they're chatting among themselves, they're less inhibited,

they're communicating,

they're having a good time.

They're also getting well-oiled. They've got a drink each,

which is always good for an audience,

to feel that they're less inhibited

because of booze. Not too much.

They get another little break.

See, I heard my name mentioned then,

you see. The ears twitch.

So, really, this is the moment where I feel...many people,

many comedians I know, are racked with insecurity and fear.

I'm so stupid I don't understand that anything could go wrong.

I'm filled with anticipatory glee.

I can't wait to get out there,

so, if you'll excuse me, I'll get out there.

Bob Monkhouse!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That's a lovely welcome. Thank you very much indeed for that.

Oh!

I think... Hey, I've done my time!

That's a hell of a welcome. Thank you very much, Dominic,

for that introduction. I think of all the introductions I've ever had

in my life, that was the most recent.

Sincerely, Dominic.

As you know, this cellar is a Fred West franchise...

Oh, God... Hi, Kevin!

That's as vile as I get.

I guess it's cos of my age. I am feeling my age lately.

I haven't gotten one of those stairlifts,

I haven't got one of those yet, or a walk-in bath...

..but my bed has one of those inventions

that gradually brings you to an upright position.

Viagra. You know.

I stayed overnight last night in a London hotel.

If you're like me, when you get to a hotel room, is it your domain?

For me, it's paid for,

this is where I live, this is my kingdom for the period I'm in it.

I like to sleep in the nude, and, er...

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, do you?

And I'm lying there, naked, on the bed,

and the chambermaid walks in.

Finally.

I think sleeping in the nude is a perfectly natural...

I can't... Well, maybe you shouldn't do it on those long flights.

And I'm not a good flyer, anyway.

I can never get over when you get to the airport,

and they have luggage shops in the airport.

Who arrives at the airport with his arms full of underwear?

"Oh, thank God, cases!"

When he starts, it's just, erm...

Every joke lands.

You can tell the craft, the timing.

I think one of the things that Bob was always accused of

was it was almost too immaculate.

I don't think that can be a real thing.

When you see it in the flesh, you think,

"Oh, God, this is why he's still doing it." He was quite brilliant.

Uh, there's an interview with Les Dennis,

who says, er,

that he wants to spend more time on his own.

So I guess he's going on tour again.

Oh, The Naked Chef. He's done a great job, hasn't he, Jamie Oliver,

of encouraging out-of-work students to become chefs?

I think he deserves every kind of...

Last night, apparently -

it doesn't say where, Clarence House or somewhere -

he prepared a four-course meal

for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles,

and he says, "The Prince really tucked into the mousse,"

but I imagine that was later, after he'd gone.

And... Ulrika is quoted.

It says, "Despite what they say, Prince Edward is all man."

He was in the military, wasn't he?

It says here,

"Prince Edward was, sometime... was in the Hussars."

It doesn't say "Hussars" he was in, it just says...

That's all it says.

This is not the seven-o'clock-on-a-Saturday-night Bob Monkhouse.

This was... But then again, you know, he knew his audience.

He wasn't performing in front of kids,

he was performing in front of other people who do stand-up for a living.

There's that initial...almost worry, that you think,

"I don't really want him to go too far.

"I don't want Uncle Bob to turn into Nasty Uncle Bob."

Then, of course, you realise he's way too good to do that.

He knows exactly what he can get away with.

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare is here,

the only seaside "peer" upon which Danny La Rue has never performed.

OK, had to slip in an old one, there, and I do like it.

They're going over the fact he gave £2,000 to Monica Coghlan,

who was a prostitute.

If you give £2,000 to a woman and have no sex,

that is not actually prostitution, that is alimony.

And I have never paid for sex in my life, by the way,

never in my life have I paid for sex.

I've left some screaming tarts behind me in a fury!

I don't understand prostitution anyway.

What man wants to go to bed with a woman who has nothing but

total contempt for him and is only doing it for the money?

You can get that at home.

Monica Lewinsky arrived in London tonight.

Last night, actually,

She's 31 tomorrow. 31 years old.

Gosh, seems like only yesterday she was crawling around on all fours

in the Oval Office.

So that is the way...

For those of you... There are professional comedians here,

and I'm very flattered and delighted that they are.

Of course none of those headlines are in here,

they're all bits of paper I've stuck in here.

Les Dennis, "number one", see?

There's absolutely no need to strain yourself, is there, really?

I think he knew that he didn't have a natural sort of stand-up persona

and he had to work at it, a bit like the Geoff Boycott

of stand-up, in a way.

"I'm going to practise more than anybody else."

I've had my great days, I suppose.

I like to think of myself as one of those Superman characters,

I love the movies that show all the comic-book characters.

My wife calls me Spider-Man.

Even at my age, Spider-Man.

That's because I can't get out of the bath unassisted.

We had our, erm...

We had our 29th wedding anniversary last year, we'll be 30 this year.

I took her to Le Gavroche, you know, somewhere really posh.

It was horrible.

The head waiter was so snooty.

Ruined our evening. He came over...

I said, "I'd like the crab, toasted,"

and he raised a glass of white wine to my wife and said,

"Your health, your health."

Which... Which ruined the... And then we went out in Barbados

and I took my wife shark-fishing, which was very...

She didn't know she was shark-fishing. Thought she was water-skiing.

A joke is like this beautiful piece of precision engineering,

the perfect miniature three-act play -

beginning, middle, punchline - and Bob had this wonderful way of

just casting a look or establishing a sense of knowing with the audience,

just to really sell those key points of the gag, but without SELLING it.

He knew how to make those connections so subtly

and make the material work so beautifully.

A Rolls-Royce of gag-tellers.

This is the Albany Comedy Club, by the way.

Not just comedy - they have a stripper in here every night.

They take the label off and call it vodka.

When in doubt, wait, and then wait some more.

I have had a sex life, just in case...

Don't look at me with too much pity.

As a lad, I was fat and plain and pimply.

I couldn't strike up a conversation with a girl of my own age,

and I devised... It sounds ludicrous now, but I thought it would work -

there used to be a bar on the way through to a dance hall,

where I lived in Beckenham, Kent.

You probably know I come from Kent.

I hear people mention the word, they mutter it as they see me.

And I managed to get a set of six industrial-strength magnets,

very powerful little magnets, like little, heavy Polo mints,

and I sewed them in a semicircle around the fly of my trousers,

and I posed on a stool not unlike this one, thus,

hoping that a girl might pass by on her way into the dance hall

wearing a lot of rings on her fingers.

Entering my field of magnetic attraction, you understand,

her hand would, inadvertently and uncontrollably, fly into my fly,

as it were, and we could strike up an elegant conversation based upon...

Not a bad scheme.

Well, I must have been looking that way when this short man with braces on his teeth came by...

He still writes.

'He was a wonderful stand-up comedian.'

And even on that night,

even allowing for the fact he was tired and he was ill,

his technique is still fantastic, his timing is fantastic.

The devices he has to delay a punchline, just little things,

there's one bit where he just licks his eyebrow, like that,

and it's just clever. They're all deliberate as well.

You know, as a stand-up yourself,

you know these are deliberate things, not just tics or gestures.

I had an affair with a lady optician once, who drove me mad in bed.

She kept saying, "Is it better like this or better like that?

"Is it better like..."

Guys used to come back from overseas with infections, you know,

social inconveniences...

and they would say to their ladies, "I swear to God,

"I haven't been with another woman, I swear to God I haven't.

"I must have got it off a toilet seat."

This was the story. Whenever guys came back from overseas,

"I must have got this infection from a toilet seat."

And I always wondered whether you could do that.

And I said to the doctor,

"Is it possible that an innocent man such as myself

"could get a social infection from a toilet seat?"

You know what he said?

"Yes.

"Yes, if you sit down before the other fella's got up, yes."

You need eyes in the back of your head, ladies and gentlemen.

His timing, technical ability, for him as a comedian,

is just really lovely to watch, cos he's very slick.

I don't mean that in a smooth, smarmy way, I mean, he's just slick.

Funny thing is,

there are a number of guys and a couple of gals here tonight

who are funny for money.

Generally speaking, it's a lonely path to walk.

Got to find your own way to it.

I found my way to get exposure on TV was to get myself a vehicle,

a game show.

There are disadvantages. People think that's all you do.

They think you're just a game-show host.

For about 20 years, that's all I did on television,

and people see me coming and they go,

"It's Monkhouse. That's bleedin' Monkhouse.

"He's got prizes..."

"I'll keep him talking, you look for his van."

And then I'd ask the time, they'd get it right,

they'd expect a bloody food mixer.

Only certain shows were difficult to do.

The National Lottery was a bugger to do,

because people didn't tune in to hear jokes,

they tuned in to see the National Lottery, see if they've won,

so they had no sense of humour when they tuned in the National Lottery.

I'm there doing 17 minutes live on a Saturday or a Wednesday,

presenting the National Lottery. A thankless task, I'll tell you that.

I'm doing gags that deeply offend people.

I said, in Eastbourne they'd opened a new branch of Next,

and it was a funeral parlour. Well...

Jammed switchboard, right away.

I had a gag about dyslexia and the producer said to me,

"Oh, my God, you've done a gag about dyslexia."

He said, "We're going to get letters." I said, "No, we're not."

"Some bugger's going to get 'em, but not us!"

We were in Sicily, and they have a national lottery there,

and it was really weird, because the guy came on doing the news,

" 'Ello, is ze news from Sicily 'ere.

"Very important - a man shot in broad daylight.

"This is tomorrow by 9.30.

"And the national lottery,

"the winning ticket is 22, 33, 9, 44, 51, and...

"I don't know, 62.

"Congratulations yet again, Don Vincenzo."

So you see, this was my living for 55 years.

And I am a gag merchant, but my heroes have always been comedians.

They've got to be people that you admire without reservation,

and I grew up watching the great comics of variety theatre.

And you know, Max Miller - you can't see him on film, it doesn't happen -

his eyes actually twinkled, those blue eyes actually...

they were hypnotic. And the great ones,

Max Wall, Jimmy James, and eventually Morecambe and Wise,

set up a world of their own comedy and said,

"You can come in if you want to, but, otherwise, we don't need you."

You had to go into their world that they'd invented.

That was The Goons and that's, of course,

The League Of Gentlemen and that was Monty Python.

Wonderful gift to be able to do that, to create a world of illusion,

of fantasy, and hypnotise your audience

so that they can't do without you.

Absolutely amazing to be sat there.

A, to see him in the flesh,

but then for him to acknowledge our programme

that had only very recently been on the TV - it was quite new in 2003 -

and for him to think... I couldn't believe he'd seen it

and was referencing it in the same sphere as The Goons.

It was a real honour to have him acknowledge it like that.

It was fantastic.

Sort of validated our version of the way we package our comedy.

Of course, it wasn't what he did,

but it was lovely for him to notice, you know?

When The Goons were hot on radio, every child was imitating them,

but so was every teacher.

So was every bluestocking, every don.

It was amazing. So was Prince Charles.

What do you want for a comedy infection greater than that?

Just marvellous. So I'm going to talk a little bit,

if you'll stay with me, about some of the great comedians

of my generation and the generation before.

But I grew up with a lot of them.

It segued into something totally unexpected, which was him,

not reminiscing, but explaining his relationship

with a lot of very famous people.

People say, well, Benny Hill was a terrible gag-writer.

He didn't write gags, he remembered jokes.

A really smart-looking guy,

with his thick, wavy hair, and he really always had a lovely face.

And the girls really loved him.

"We were in the West End together," he said -

cos he still had this West Country sound -

"We're going to open in the West End, going to be a smash hit."

Well, it was Westbourne Grove. It wasn't exactly the West End.

We were in a revue called Spotlight, at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre on

November the 7th, 1947,

and we did three nights and the agents came in to watch us.

And Benny was awful.

He had this terrible spot, which was really embarrassing,

cos he hated being himself.

He really hated talking in his own voice.

So he used to rock from side to side, and talk like that,

and try to be posh.

And he had a red tie, so if a gag died he could go,

"Oh! Thought me tongue was hanging out"...

..which, as an insurance line, loses something, I think, over the years.

And he just happened overnight,

and came up with such fertile ideas

for doing something on television no-one had ever done before,

split screen, all kinds of notions he could use which were televisual.

He just left me behind. We used to have a thing of being rivals on TV,

I would make jokes about him, call him Benny Hell or Belly Hill

or whatever, and he'd say Boob Monkhouse.

But pretty soon we dropped that,

because he was just going to be so big.

I could see he was going to be big.

He was carrying me if he did those jokes about me,

so he dropped doing it and I understood.

You could never get to know Benny.

You could know him, and he was a dear, good friend,

and generous and kind

in that he would go round his cast with a little plastic bag,

handing out oranges and apples to the girls. And, er...

..and he didn't ask much of life.

The cheques used to come in from the office of Richard Stone

and he would put them behind a plaster devil

that he kept on the mantelpiece,

and when it looked like the plaster devil was going to fall over

and break, he'd send the cheques in.

Otherwise he didn't even look at them.

He didn't care about money at all.

He cared about being very thrifty.

All his furniture was stuff that he'd been given

for opening furniture shops, and he drank plonk.

He watched two TV sets at the same time, both of which he got free.

He used to buy tins of stuff rescued from a dock where

the labels had been washed off.

He didn't know what it was, but he could get them for a penny each.

An old penny, an old 1d, yeah.

He would open them up - and you didn't know what you'd find inside -

and he would make great meals out of it. He was a good cook.

He had a cold-water flat in Maida Vale.

You had to crawl up five floors to get to it.

He was extraordinarily parsimonious,

but at the same time he had a sweet, sweet nature

and he would go off during his free time

to two middle-aged ladies that he knew

and clean their homes, and do domestic work, voluntarily.

Now, you don't get stranger than that.

It wasn't a case of him saying, "Oh, I remember when..."

This was just... It was stuff that people didn't know,

because they hadn't seen him do this.

We saw him in game-show mode, you know.

We didn't know about this.

We didn't know he'd worked with all those brilliant people.

I hope you're happy with my going through these names.

Peter Sellers.

Peter and I were together...

He was very fat and spoilt and awkward,

with thick, thick, wavy hair,

and he used to play the drums.

We were on the bill together at the Camberwell Palace,

which was a variety theatre.

And he did a rotten act.

Six minutes of drumming, which numbed the audience.

It was awful. He was in heaven. His eyes were glazed.

And then he would get up and put a notice down

on the front of the stage that'd say,

"Mr Sellers is deaf, please applaud loudly,"

which never got a laugh,

cos the audience is going, "What does that say?"

A dreadful thing to do. And then he would say, "My suit is too big.

"I had it made in Leeds. I'm a much bigger man there." I couldn't believe the stuff.

Then he did these brilliant impressions.

He was a master impressionist.

Wonderful voices. He did George Sanders,

who became Grytpype-Thynne in The Goon Show,

and he did Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, stars of the time.

A brilliant George Formby, who was his hero.

Ha, wonderful. So I persuaded him to give up the drums.

It took a week. And I rewrote the jokes to make his impressions funny.

I really worked hard on him.

So by the end of the week, Friday, a guy called Alf Braden,

who was a talent scout for Van Damm's Windmill Theatre,

came round to see me, to book me for the Windmill.

Didn't like me - booked bloody Peter!

It was fantastic to hear about his time with Peter Sellers,

early time with Peter Sellers.

I was fascinated with how much he hated the mother.

The thing about Peter is he was obsessed with women,

but there was only one woman in his life, really.

That was his mother, Peg, who was a brute, and really unpleasant.

And ugly, too.

I could never believe... Yeah, really, no kidding!

If you took her for a walk in the woods, she'd find truffles.

It was so savage, it was great. I thought, "What did she do to you?"

I could never believe that she was an act!

Apparently, she used... Long before, when Peter was a kid,

she used to swim about in a tank of water on the stage

in a skimpy bathing costume eating bananas.

Yakapoo! So, Peter wasn't happy with that life at all.

And by the time I met him, he'd been in the RAF,

he was a little older than me, er...

I had a machine!

I don't know, somebody told me about it, or I read about it,

called a Pickersgill Recorder.

No-one had ever heard of a personal recorder.

But a guy called Pickersgill, engineering firm

in the North somewhere, made this thing, a great heavy turntable,

and you put an aluminium disc on it, covered with black wax,

and you put this thing on it and talked into a moving coil mic.

And you recorded your voice on this disc.

Which would be playable back, not with a regular needle,

with a thorn needle, and I could do auditions this way.

So, I recorded a whole lot of material, sent it to the BBC.

Got a couple of dates from this. Peter heard about it.

Now, he was a gadget man.

He said, "I want it. I'll pay you for it."

I said, "It cost me 80 quid and I had to wait six months for it."

In those days, you couldn't get things manufactured quickly.

"I'll give you 20% profit on it." "All right, what's that?" "£100."

Maths not good but I like that amount of money.

So, he came round with his father,

who Spike Milligan once described as a man who's been dead a long time

but nobody's interested in telling him.

A musician with a charisma bypass.

He was crushed by this dreadful mother, Peg.

You know, goes in for an ugly contest and they say,

"No professionals." Anyway...

It rains and water gushes out of her mouth, one of those jokes.

So...

So, Daddy comes around, Daddy comes round, collects the machine from me,

doesn't give me the money, takes the machine away.

Next thing I get is a call from Peg.

"You're not getting that money."

"Excuse me?" "Peter is not paying you a penny."

It was broken. The machine was broken.

"It was fine when it left me."

"It's broken and we're not paying for it."

Next thing I know, a guy called Dennis Main Wilson, who's a producer

at the BBC, lovely guy, says, "We're getting some great discs

"from Peter Sellers, they're wonderful.

"They're being made at Strutton Ground

"in Jimmy Grafton's pub,

"with Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan

"and Harry Secombe and Johnny Vyvyan,

"and they're making these great discs, and we think they've sold it

"to the BBC as a radio show called Crazy People.

"They want to call it The Goon Show.

"But at the BBC, they're saying, 'What is this Go On Show?'"

So, they didn't know what it was.

And I realised that the machine was still working.

So, I got very peevish about it.

I realised at that point that Peter...was bonkers.

It seemed to me that he was saying things that he hadn't said before

or hadn't said for a long, long time.

When he started talking about his idols.

When he started talking about Peter Sellers.

And how much he'd helped Peter Sellers.

These are all things that we didn't know.

We were going to have a double wedding, him and Anne Levy,

and me and my first wife.

But Peter's terrible tempers, he used to go transparent.

I mean, you could see through his skin, he got so angry.

His eyes went crazy and he'd fall down

and drum his heels on the floor.

And you know the story about BE, I'm sure.

He fell completely for a charlatan,

a guy who said he was a clairvoyant called Maurice Woodruff,

a total phoney. And Peter wouldn't do anything unless Maurice Woodruff

said, "That's OK to do."

Well, Woodruff got in cahoots with Peter's agent.

Lovely man called Dennis Selinger.

But whenever Dennis wanted Peter to do a date, or a show, or a film,

he'd call Maurice Woodruff and say, "Tell them to do this."

And Woodruff would do it.

He'd say, "I just had a tremendous message through.

"There is somebody with the initials BE.

"Whatever BE says, do it." He meant Blake Edwards.

And Blake Edwards had a movie that he wanted Peter to make.

He'd done the deal with Dennis Selinger.

Now, in the week between meeting Blake Edwards,

Peter runs into Britt Ekland.

Marries her.

Goes off on a honeymoon with amyl nitrate.

That was the first of his major heart attacks.

He died at the age of 54.

He must have had seven heart attacks and he was eight times dead,

clinically, on the table.

And I'm talking about heroes of mine.

I felt that the more he talked about other people,

a little bit out of school stories, he somehow, because it's him,

he has a cheekiness and a charm with him

that he can get away with it.

There was, I think, a moment, probably everybody was like,

"Hang on, this has changed, this is different.

"This is not the..." We were waiting for all the gags

that were going to come and it wasn't like that.

I know Peter Sellers was a genius.

The trouble with genius is you call a comedian a genius,

you're implying he's mad.

Peter was mad.

Dickie Henderson wasn't.

He was the most practical pro I've ever met in my life.

His dad was a good comic.

His dad used to come into the wings, hang a bowler hat on a nail,

walk on stage, do 20 minutes, walk off, that was it.

Do that twice nightly, that's a living.

Dickie grew up in the shadow of his father.

That's what you do. It's not inspiration.

"I'm not looking to be a major sensation.

"I'll do what my dad does.

"That's what they want? I'll slice them off that much sausage.

"And tomorrow night, that much sausage again."

Now, Dickie and I did a series called I'm Bob, He's Dickie.

A big spectacular, six big one-hours for ATV.

And I must have gone mad.

Because I said to Dickie, whom I loved, "You know,

"when I do a television show, I get about 50% of the available audience.

"And when you do a show, you get about 50% of the available audience.

"So, if we do a show together,

"we should get 100% of the available audience."

And Dickie said, "Dream your dream.

"If we get 100% of the available audience,

"you can buy me a very large gin and tonic

"or I'll buy you an even bigger one."

Now we do the shows.

The ratings come in, they are invisible to the naked eye.

They are under the underfelt, we are a disaster!

And I said, "We're getting zero here."

And Dickie said, "Understand this, Bob.

"Half the available audience hates you..."

"The other half hates me, the bar is this way."

We should have been cherishing all the time we had with him,

whatever he was doing,

bit like Les Dawson on Blankety Blank, same thing.

He had done so much, and so much writing,

a prolific writer of gags for so many other comedians.

That was a fascinating early life that he had, constantly.

Like Barry Cryer, working and writing for everybody.

When he talks about, you know, whimsically throws in his time

with Tommy Cooper, it's incredible to think of the greats

that he's just been around and absorbed from.

I was asked about Tommy Cooper.

In 1950, I'm in a show called Sauce Piquante

at the Cambridge Theatre in London and it's a weird show.

It ran three and a half hours. Had to be chopped.

Norman Wisdom was the surprise hit of the show.

He had 19 entrances which were then cut to three,

which he bitterly remembers now.

He's a very angry man still about that.

Jesus, he's angry!

And in that show came Tommy Cooper,

who'd been a big success at the Windmill, and he came to the show.

When I first met him, he was about 6ft 6,

he had come out of the Guards, huge man, and he was bare to the waist.

He had his shirt off and he's in this crowded dressing room.

Me and Wisdom, he gives me a stick of Leichner, dark make-up.

He says, "Do me a favour, write B-A-C-K across my shoulder blades."

So, I write B-A-C-K across his shoulder blades

and he puts his shirt on, saying, "That should end the confusion."

So, I have met a lunatic.

We were in London, once, Tom and I.

And I was at Euston station, I was going to get a taxi and he said,

"Oh, no, you don't bother with that, go on the Tube."

I said, "Well, you know, people recognise you, Tom,

"and they might clock me and that could be a bit of a nuisance."

He said, "No, not in London." And he was quite right.

Because if you do that in Birmingham or Manchester or Carlisle,

people are going to clock you, but in London they'd ignore you.

I never understood this.

So, we went on the Tube and we were sitting there chatting

on the underground and this beggar came on -

disgusting-looking man, filthy, dirty, horrible man

with an awful mongrel under his arm going, "Rrrrr!"

I mean, really revolting sight.

And "need food" or something around his neck, horrible.

And he's going along the underground

and he's picking up money from people,

with "Rrr", the dog, and he gets to us,

and Tommy's talking to me about something quite important.

And he looks up and this guy says, "I'm starving."

And Tommy said,

"Eat your fucking dog."

I never admired him more.

It was rendered more poignant by the fact that we knew he was ill,

without a doubt.

We knew it was unlikely that this time the following year

he'd still be with us.

Even though he touched on it, I don't think it was...

I don't think it was delivered or taken with great sadness.

We were all just enjoying this little pocket of time

in this tiny room with this legend.

One or two people have been kind enough to ask about my health,

which I greatly appreciate. I'm all right.

A couple of years ago, I found my visits to the loo

in a seated position were becoming less and less productive,

and so I thought this is not just good old constipation,

which is fun, fun, fun, but it's worse than that.

So, they said, "You've got some kind of virus in the muscle

"and you've got some kind of arthritis."

And then it got worse, so they took me into...

..the Princess Grace Hospital in London, in Euston Road,

to give me an enema, and it didn't work.

So, they took me to Princess Grace again and it didn't work.

I was in Princess Grace more frequently

than Prince Rainier ever was.

They gave me a depth bomb called Picolax,

with which they tried to raise the Titanic, I have to say.

And I took this damn Picolax and they said,

"It'll work in exactly 60 minutes."

Nothing happened for about 12 hours

and then I gave birth to the Mississippi Delta.

And so, the following night,

there was a great mass of clay that was within me.

I don't know how many of you know this.

Are you familiar with the phrase "faecal impaction"?

I said, "Yeah, I saw it, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close."

But it's a build-up of waste matter that won't come out of you.

So, it came out of me, and I thought,

"That's it, I'm better now."

No, I wasn't, I was trembling and in great pain, so somebody accidentally

took my PSA measure, which is a measure of cancer in the blood.

PSA, prostate-specific antigens.

And they found that... Normally, I'm sure for every guy here,

and it's a male thing, it could be between two and ten.

Ten would be not so hot. 12 is bad.

I was 606, so they said, "Well, you're dying of cancer."

Oh, wow. So, you ask the inevitable question, "How long have I got?"

And the oncologist said, "Ten."

And I said, "Ten months, ten weeks?" And he said, "Nine..."

I thought, "That is a brilliantly dark joke!"

It was lovely to hear, "I'm all right now, I'm fine."

And it sort of set you at ease.

But you were fully aware that he had had a tussle with it

and it's a horrible thing to have to be making jokes about.

I'm still alive.

This is two years later nearly and it's working fine.

So, I'm all right.

I walk a little stiffly but you do. I'm 75, for Christ's sake.

Of course you're going to be a little awkward.

But, I mean, I will live as long as I can possibly live

and the medication is working,

so that takes care of that particular problem.

Now, I have never lost my admiration for this man.

And I've never lost my regret,

as I'm sure you have never lost your regret,

that he withdrew from show business as a professional on the scale

on which he originally performed.

It's a genuine privilege to me that he's come along at my invitation,

because he very seldom appears in public any more.

And I'm so delighted that he wants to talk to me in front of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you welcome one of my heroes,

Mike Yarwood?

APPLAUSE

I feel like Dave Allen up here at the moment.

My God, Jesus, I've got to stop the stuff!

Anyway. So, how are you, Bob?

I'm great, Mike.

I can't believe it's so long ago

that I was playing cabaret at the Garrick Lee.

Garrick Lee, yes.

-You came in the door and stood there watching me do my act.

-Yes.

Because you knew that we were together that summer season

for six months.

Oh, God, yes, right into the illuminations at Blackpool.

That's right, we opened in May, and finished off the illuminations

in November 1965, on the Central Pier.

-I still have the poster.

-Yeah, me too.

And you were wonderful.

At that time, you had just zapped the viewing audience

with your impressions of Harold Wilson,

and no-one had ever done a politician before.

Well, no, they hadn't actually.

John Bird had done it on TW3.

But I was doing it live on the road, if you like.

And he wasn't, he was just doing it on That Was The Week That Was.

But the big trick for me in those days was Steptoe And Son.

Yeah. And it's still running today, so you could still do it.

I used to do Steptoe And Son together.

"You dirty little man." "Cor blimey, Harold!"

"Don't put me in an old folks' home, Harold, please, don't."

"Oh, God, you disgust me!"

And that was my big finish.

Harold Wilson was sort of tucked away somewhere else in the act.

What I did with...like for instance Harold Wilson

is rather than just say, "Well, here we go,

"this is what Harold Wilson sounds like, I THINK,

"tell me what you think," I would then put in little bits of business.

IMITATES: And get into this sort of a posture, like...

"I doubt if I could sit on this if I were alive."

-And then he'd have a laugh.

-HE LAUGHS

"Oh, Mary, have you heard this?

"Bob Monkhouse is still working."

And silliness.

And I never really wanted to put any...

there didn't need to be narrative, really. Just silliness.

I love silly humour.

And I thought, "Let's make Harold Wilson silly

"and let's make a lot of our characters silly."

Doing comedians is different because you've got to really be funny,

because if you're going to do Bob Monkhouse,

he's funny, so you must be funny, or...well, you know...

Oh, you nailed me!

-AS MONKHOUSE:

-I sat over there earlier, enraptured, Bob, at your...

not just as a comic but a raconteur.

Or was it a racketeer? I'm not sure which.

It always killed me because you used to do...

-AS FRANKIE HOWERD:

-Oh, God, don't look. Poor soul, I'm dribbling.

Oh, no, don't titter!

You used to do impressions of me in routines

that were written by David Renwick

and they were so brilliant and I used to score so well with them

that a week later people would say to me, "I saw you last week,

"you were marvellous on television." And they thought,

because they couldn't remember the details, that it was you.

-But you know the story, I'm sorry, Bob.

-No, go ahead.

The story about Max Bygraves.

I was doing an impression of Bob on one of his shows and I was doing

the smallest books in the world,

like Famous Jewish Cricketers, and...

..Australian Etiquette, that kind of thing.

And one of them was,

I was doing Bob Monkhouse. "The smallest book in the world.

"Do you know what the smallest book in the world is?

"The Wit Of Max Bygraves."

And a couple of weeks later, I was doing the Royal Variety,

if I may show-drop...

Yeah, it needs dropping, doesn't it?

Sorry, I keep doing that. Just nerves.

And I'd done The Wit Of Max Bygraves as Bob

and Max Bygraves came up to me in the dressing room

at the Royal Albert Hall and said, "Here, I saw the show last week.

"What about all this The Wit Of Max Bygraves,

"the smallest book in the world?

"I thought we were supposed to be mates."

I said, "Well, I was doing Bob Monkhouse."

He said, "What the hell's that got to do with it?"

I said, "Well, it's the sort of joke Bob would do,

"not the sort of joke I would do about you."

I thought, "I'm getting away with this."

And he said, "Well, I've got to hand it to you,

"that's one hell of a get-out."

"What I'll do, I'll ring Monkhouse and give him a bollocking."

That's wonderful!

I have admired Mike Yarwood for as long as I can remember

and to see him walk out with Bob Monkhouse,

well, we couldn't believe our luck.

Mike Yarwood came out and the first couple of minutes,

the first thing he's doing is more or less exact,

he's doing a couple of voices or whatever, because

that's his comfort zone, but then when he drops that

and starts to talk about how his life is at that point...

Every comedian here in the audience experiences the high of

getting the buzz out of an audience that loves what they do.

-Oh, yes.

-Don't you miss that, Mike?

Yes, I do, of course. Of course I do.

I've heard laughter here tonight since I came on stage

and there's nothing to beat it, really.

I think what I had to do with myself was actually rethink.

What I was doing with the shows,

cos they finished in 1987 and I started getting a little bit...

not too finicky about the scripts and thinking,

"As long as I look like the people, as long as it looks good,

"as long as I look like Reagan or I look like Bob Monkhouse or whoever,

"it doesn't matter whether it's funny or not."

And the laughs stopped.

I went out on the road

and I could see the colour of the seats in the theatre.

Whereas at one time I could never tell you the colour of the seats

because it was packed.

And that went in the '80s.

Oh, yes, I was playing... I went down to Bournemouth in 1984

-and it was 30 and 40 people in the first house.

-I didn't know that!

And that's what made me think, "What the hell?

"I don't want to do this.

"I don't want to sort of hang around when I'm not as good as I was

"and I'm not as sharp as I was.

"I need to take a long break.

At least two years, anyway, I thought.

But the trouble is it's like a parking space.

You mustn't move your car unless you have to, because when you get back

-somebody else has parked there.

-Yes.

And I stayed away and when I got back,

I'd been more or less replaced, if you like.

It would be very easy to take things out of context,

look at Mike Yarwood's show in 1972 or something,

and he could do Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, Brian Clough,

a couple of other people, probably not as well,

if you look back at it now, as we thought at the time, I don't know.

And it'd be very easy to dismiss it but that would be as daft

as sort of saying Isaac Newton was a rubbish scientist

because not all his theories of motion were right.

At the time, at the time, it was...

With what they had to go on,

they were brilliant. You've got to sort of see it in the context

of the times and Mike Yarwood was,

I don't know if I'm right in saying this, he was certainly

the first superstar impressionist on television,

and so he was coming from nowhere.

He had no-one to copy or anything.

It seems a daft thing to say about impressionists

but he was just trying it himself, and so...

..it was tremendously innovative and I loved it,

absolutely loved it when I was a kid.

But you were loading in new voices all the time.

Well, not that many. We did quite a few.

On my last show I did nine new characters

but that was the point, you see.

It was like I was doing people for the sake of it,

just to fill in every show, seven shows, ten shows,

plus a Christmas special.

And you find yourself then doing it for the sake of it

and I don't do anybody of today's ilk.

I don't do Tony Blair, I've never even tried to.

And so all of those new characters that we're seeing people do now,

like Jon, and others, they are... they're a no-go area to me.

I don't bother. I don't think I really want to do it again.

No, I understand that.

What I miss is your comedy.

I mean, the fact that the impressions perhaps became outdated

or less familiar is not as important to me

as the fact that you can get up when you do,

as you did at your daughter's wedding,

as you did at my This Is Your Life,

and you simply ad-lib and you are brilliant.

You are as funny as any of the people you've ever imitated,

from Eric Morecambe to Harry Worth.

You just are...wonderfully a funny man.

-Why can't we have that comedy from you?

-Well, it's not up to me.

I would certainly... I'm not...

When I said I don't really enjoy doing the impressions any more,

I mean in the context that I did them then.

That type of show,

which is being done anyway now.

We've got Dead Ringers, we've got Alistair,

we've got Rory Bremner, and so...

..for me to come back now,

I need to come back with something different, I think.

Not a game show but something that might help me...

LAUGHTER

No, I wouldn't see you doing a game show.

No!

When was the crunch point, Mike?

Because we know that you've been very frank about alcoholism

and you've helped a lot of people who suffer from that disease,

but what was the point at which you said,

"No, I can't walk out there any more"? When was that?

Because we've all...every comedian here has faced that point where you go,

"I don't think I can do it tonight."

Yeah. It was on the way...

in the car, going to a...

There is a sort of dark humour to this.

I got an anxiety attack in the car -

being driven, I wasn't driving myself -

to do a radio show with Dr Anthony Clare,

The Psychiatrist's Chair,

and I got a panic, an anxiety attack.

-LAUGHTER

-Yes!

Please laugh, because I think it's funny as well.

LAUGHTER

And I said to the driver, he'd been driving for me for years,

he was like a mate as well.

"Lou," I said, "you've got to turn around."

He said, "What's the matter?" I said, "I just feel bloody awful."

Really like this.

"You've got to turn round, I can't do this."

So he turned and he said, "OK, boy,"

Welshman, lovely Welshman, he said, "All right, boyo, we'll turn round."

And we went back and as soon as we started to drive home, I felt fine.

It was almost like saying, "Turn around and we'll go back again.

"No, it'll come back again," you know.

But the point was that I was going to see this psychiatrist

who could've helped me anyway,

and I could have walked away with, instead of a fee,

a prescription.

LAUGHTER

So that was really the first time I thought,

"Hey, you really can't do this."

Because so many shows got cancelled.

I mean, there were other shows, Bob.

And I was so lucky because it didn't get into the newspapers

on most occasions.

He spoke about those subjects so honestly,

and I think the warmth and grace of being with his great friend Bob,

it brought out a wonderful honesty to that conversation.

Once again, we were so lucky to see that, too.

These two men who were on TV all your...

growing up, you know, you were watching them,

that they were vulnerable.

And it was real life and they were sharing it with everybody,

and that's where the evening... it turned into...

actually you could have heard a pin drop.

It went very, very quiet.

You have made attempts to come back.

I mean, your John Major at the Royal Variety Performance was one.

Yes, but I had throat trouble that night,

plus I never did him very well anyway. It looked OK.

But you've also made other attempts to overcome this reluctance to perform.

You've been back in the studio a few times.

Oh, yeah, coming here tonight,

when you asked me to come here, I thought,

well, I don't socialise much, I am a semi-recluse.

I don't go out that very often, but I do love to go out.

I've got my daughters, I've got my little grandson, three months old.

I've got all of that in my life, which is absolutely beautiful,

but to me, this is like a lovely evening out for me

and I'll get up tomorrow morning and I'll think,

"I went out last night," and I'll tell my kids,

"I went out last night." "Where did you go?"

"I went and recorded an interview with Bob Monkhouse."

Cos I don't go out, just...

I don't go in pubs any more.

So, you know, this is a lovely way to spend an evening, Bob.

So it is a quiet life?

APPLAUSE

I don't see any better note on which to conclude this, Mike.

I think that's wonderful.

-You speak with contentment...

-Yes.

-..and it's wonderful to see.

-Yes.

And a great many of us,

myself included, I guess,

go on seeking some kind of other contentment as a performer.

You've found an answer.

-Are you happy, Mike?

-Yes, I am very happy.

And it's not particularly good money for this show but I'm happy.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen,

my grateful thanks to my dear friend and great hero, Mike Yarwood.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Thank you, Mike, thank you.

That was really from the heart.

If there's any questions that anyone wants to ask that might produce

a productive answer of any kind from me, I'll be happy to try it.

I see a hand up. Thank you.

Are there any tricks of the trade you're prepared to share with us?

Oh, yeah. I learned from so many people who preceded me

with tricks of the trade. There were tricks, I still use them.

You absorb them, not through imitation -

though that's perfectly legitimate -

you see something that works, you go, "Wow, that works."

Somehow the next night you're doing it.

Arthur Askey, the tiny, wonderful comedian that I first saw in 1937,

when I was, what, nine years old, eight years old.

I saw him do things that I never forgot,

so that if he had a gag, and you know this happens to every comedian,

you've got a piece of material you know is worth applause but

that crowd is not going to applaud it because they're not yet ready,

they're not hot enough. So Arthur used to do a check step back,

as if he was leaving, just psychologically.

It wasn't really leaving, nobody thought that,

but he'd do a step back and he'd clap, and the clap,

that sound would start someone else going,

and that would multiply and he'd get a round of applause on that gag.

Just through the technique of the moving back and a "ha-ha",

the little triumphant laugh - "That's a belter."

Has your sharp-suited, smooth image ever hindered the comedy?

I wanted to be Bob Hope, really,

who's left us at the age of 100 and two months.

He was my role model.

I thought, that's slick, that's smart, but he runs himself down.

He comes out looking smooth and sharp,

but then he tells the crowd that he's not good with women,

he's cowardly and he's cheap.

The men relax, the women don't believe the lie.

LIGHT LAUGHTER

They go along with the illusion.

So I always thought that, right from the start,

I should wear a good suit, good tie,

good...you know, pay the audience that compliment,

because I hadn't anything else to offer.

You can see that model, there is an element of Bob Hope to him,

even in his sort of flirting with his film career, as well,

which was fascinating to see some of his film appearances.

He's really good.

-Sir?

-How do you cope with hecklers?

-Hecklers?

-Yeah.

So if somebody starts heckling you, sometimes they can be deadly.

Frank Skinner had one of the greatest, you probably know it.

He was taking one of those tremendous pauses that Frank takes

in some club in Rugeley.

There was a blind guy in the front row with a guide dog and white stick,

and the guy... Frank's paused,

and the guy says, "Fuck off, you're not funny, fuck off."

LAUGHTER

And Frank stands there, there's a long silence, and the guy says,

"Has he fucked off?"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Roy Castle had a great one.

He was playing Friday night at the Dudley Hippodrome,

which was dire and you had about 15 people in if you were lucky.

And a guy up on one side of the balcony goes,

"Could somebody switch the light off, please?

"I'd like to have a doze."

Roy stands there silently, and a man on the other side goes,

"Don't do that, I'm bloody reading."

But Paul Daniels has the greatest story, if I may risk boring you.

He's playing La Ronde, Billingham...

Ha-ha! Remember that bloody date?

And he comes out to...

The whole place has been bought out by a private society

and Paul's coming on, you know, "I'm on in five minutes,"

and the guy who's the secretary to the club goes out

and his cheeks are wet.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that Big Bill,

"Big Bill Campbell..." HE SOBS

"our chairman,

"on his way tonight, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

"We all loved Big Bill, but he's gone."

"He's dead."

"And I'm sorry to bring you this news..." He's crying, "Oh, God."

Strong men were weeping, women fainted.

The man was adored by all 500 people, they were just in pieces.

"Oh, ladies and gentlemen, we'll have a couple of minutes' silence

"for Big Bill."

HE SOBS

"All right, now here's your entertainment - Paul Daniels."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Wait, there's more.

Paul walks out

and the god of comedy must've leaned down from the clouds

and just touched him on the head.

Paul walks out and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen,

"I've no desire to entertain you tonight whatsoever,

"and I'm sure you've no desire to hear me entertain you.

"It's a question of just being brave, isn't it?

"And ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to entertain you,

"I'll tell you why, because,

"Big Bill, this one's for you."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Bob's respect for other comedians is his legacy now.

All of us who liked him

have spent so much time telling people how much he liked us

and how much he helped us, that by osmosis,

people who don't know him now know that Bob was one of us,

technically. They know that if Bob had been 30 years younger,

he would have been at The Comedy Store

rather than Blazers in Windsor.

At a time when a lot of other comics would be disparaging against

young comedians and everything, he was very, very welcoming and stuff,

and would learn from us, the same way that we learned from him.

He actually is actively interested in what new,

funny people are doing and he likes it.

I, on the other hand, try to keep the door well and truly shut.

I don't want to... I'm sort of terrified of seeing anybody

better than me so I just look away.

But it's lovely that some people are so

open and kind-hearted as to do the other.

There's a real sense of privilege at being invited,

because the people he invited were comics like me

that were good comics,

and at a certain level, but none of us were A-list stars,

none of us were superstars.

None of us were Billy Connolly.

You know, David Walliams wasn't David Walliams then.

When I see any comic in a suit, I think of Bob Monkhouse first,

cos that to me... even John Bishop,

I think there's an element of just the immaculateness of John,

and I think there's something in... that delivery.

Yes, he's completely different of course but in a weird way

I feel like there's an element of the neatness and the slickness

and the sort of easy manner that I think does... You know,

you wouldn't be doing bad if you were taking from Bob Monkhouse

as part of your stand-up.

You've been a wonderful audience.

Thank you very much for coming here tonight.

The affection and respect you've shown Mike has

lifted my heart. Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

God bless you all.

CHEERING

Thank you. Oh, oh-oh!

Oh, can't get better than that. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

That's wonderful, thank you.

WHISTLING

I think when I heard that Bob Monkhouse had died,

I think it was December time...

..that was a surprise, because he did almost give a suggestion

that the drugs were working,

and "Hey, it's been a couple of years, I'm OK,

"I'm going to get through it."

Not so much "I'm going to get through it", but you know.

I was surprised it was so soon, but then, of course,

I thought about it for a minute and, no, I wasn't surprised in the end

because of course that's exactly what he was saying all the way through it.

And I think that was

his very last, last show, and he knew it was.

We didn't know that. Now we do.

Since then, the night has sort of assumed legendary status,

it's almost become like the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club.

It's like the fact... Not a month goes by without somebody saying to me

either "I saw it on the documentary" or "Were you there?"

or "Tell me about the night" or "Why were you invited?"

Really, what did feel like a proper privilege, even then,

just to see him, cos this is one of the greats,

and it felt like that when you watched it cos it was like,

that's him doing jokes, not doing a game show.

And that was where we were back in the world he knew, I think, best.

He was clearly loving it.

He was alive. It was great.